Simple Ideas

I strongly suspect that one of the things that keeps us from making more progress on the energy front is that energy implies technology and technology implies, to most of us, extraordinary complexity. Many of us find technology so scary and feel so technologically inept that we figure some more powerful entity such as the government or industry has to solve the problem. Unfortunately we know how good a job they have done on that so far! Some energy issues are complex, but for the most part I think that actually nearly every major energy issue we have can be addressed through simple, fairly commonsensical (is that a word?) approaches.

I came across a great common sense sort of approach the other day on one of the energy forums on Yahoo. I would like to tell you which one but I belong to so darn many of them that I am not sure which one it was. But here is the idea. Stretched across this country are an enormous number of high voltage power line towers. Most towers are roughly 140 feet tall and run from the power plants (think coal and nuclear plants) to local power sub-stations. The suggestion I heard on the renewable energy board was straightforward, why not stick a wind turbine on each of these power transmission towers.

Let's think about it a moment. The Pro position goes something like this:

1. The towers are already very tall so we would be able to harness significant wind energy in most cases.
2. The towers inherently have the ability to transmit the electricity the wind turbines would generate.
3. Because the tower is already in place the cost of the tower would be eliminated making the wind turbine implementation very cost effective.
4. There would be no land or land rights to worry about because that would already have been taken care of by the power company.
5. The transmission tower designs are standardized so it would be easy to design a wind turbine mounting system to fit the existing towers. This would allow for mass production which would also make the system more cost effective to produce.
6. And finally, the oft cited (though lame) argument against wind energy, aesthetic appearance, would be eliminated. High voltage towers are already ugly! Sticking a wind turbine on top isn't going to make them any uglier. In fact, it might be an aesthetic improvement.

By the way, while we are on that last point, have you ever noticed that the energy companies never get hammered about high voltage power line towers spoiling someone's view. That only occurs when we talk about an alternative energy solution like wind turbines. I suspect this says a lot about the marketing power the traditional energy companies wield.

I am sure there are some Cons to this idea that the power utilities could come up with. For starters power might have to be temporarily rerouted while the wind turbines are added, though that strikes me as an incredibly minor inconvenience. Perhaps there could be some vibration issues though given how massive the transmission towers are I find it hard to believe that a wind turbine with a good vibration dampening system would present much of a threat. I am sure there are many locations where the wind speeds are too low to make it worthwhile. So fine, do it in the areas where there are good wind speeds. But overall, I just don't see a lot of negatives for this idea.

If you can come up with any pros or cons I haven't thought of please comment. Also, if anybody has ever seen an example of a utility company doing this let me know. I did some googling on the topic once I heard the idea but haven't found anything. Inquiring minds want to know!

More tomorrow!