Homely Scientist

The big announcement from Google a while ago that they were going to cover the roofs of Googleplex with solar panels has come to pass:

It’ll still be quite a while before that free electricity offsets the initial cost of the system, but at least the panels have earned Google a little positive PR.  The Earth Times Online, for example, states, “The Google system is also now the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the United States.”

To help people grasp the size of this development, Google has even created a new performance monitoring site; I’m told that, over the past day, those solar panels have generated enough electricity to run almost 6,000 loads of laundry.  There are interesting charts, as well – as it is solar power Google’s using, you’ll note that output drops to zero overnight. Source: Google’s Solar Panels Power Up | WebProNews

Google even lets you look at how much power has been generated. What does this mean for the rest of us?  We should do it.  Think about every building in a city with solar panels.  Think about an apartment building that generates enough power to cover, say, 50% of the residents’ requirements.  It’s powerful stuff.  No, this isn’t a 100% solution.  At night, well, no power generation, but if we’re trying to reduce the need for fossil fuels, being able to reduce power generation during daylight hours would be a huge step forward.

Now what we have to do is to get governments on the stick to allow homeowners to do this and be able to hook the panels to the grid so their power meter runs forward and backward.  On a long summer day you might not be at home using power, but your house could be pushing power onto the grid to keep you cool at work.

Not bad.

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