The Coming Age of Solar Energy by D.S. Halacy (Avon paperback, 1975, $1.95) is a disappointing little book whose level is that of mediocre Sunday supplements. The author has little understanding of solar or any other energy, and at times his indiscriminate sun-worshiping is downright funny. Thus, he presents us with a two-page spread photo of a truck unloading steel drums, captioned "Getting rid of nuclear wastes uses up natural resources in the fonn of steel drums;" but two pages further we are shown an artist's impression of a solar "central power plant" as seen from the air, stretching over oodles of square miles, all of them densely covered with giant concrete and steel structures all the way to the horizon. Gone is the concern about resources.
In fact, the artists' impressions of these giant central plants are about the only good point that can be made about the book, for they make one realize how wasteful land-based, central solar energy conversion would be. They are all drawn as aerial views to get the Manhattan-sized sites into the picture, and they show miles of pipes holding molten metal, and other equipment that makes the author hail this type of solar plant as "safe." For example, there is a Russian proposal (never realized, of course) of 15 circular concentric railroad tracks, each of which carries a train of 10 cars with large mirrors focusing the sun's rays on top of some kind of Eiffel tower in the center. The trains would move along the tracks to follow the sun, and the arrangement again covers a hefty chunk of Mother Russia. The entire monstrosity would have produced a crummy 1.2 MW (when the sun was out), an amount that is below the dignity of a nuclear plant, but that can be produced by a fossil plant on a couple of acres, and more safely at that.
So if you wish to spend $1.95 on a book on solar energy, we recommend F. Daniels' Direct Use of the Sun's Energy (Ballantine Books). Although it is now 11 years old, it contains much of the basic infotmation that never grows obsolete, and its author (who died two years ago) knew what he was talking about. By and large, only the chapter on photo-voltaic conversion is outdated, and the book lacks a chapter on solar sea thermal plants, but it is still just about the best paperback on solar energy available.
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Vol. 3, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 3 Issue/No.: Vol. 3, No. 3 Date: November 01, 1975 11:10 AM Title: Back to Adam Smith
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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