SOFT-HEADED ENERGY SOURCES

"Disconnecting from the utilities" is what Nader and Lovins recommend, and on Dec. 21 we tried it for 21 hours at 22 degrees F below zero, though not by our own choice. A transformer supplying the area burned out, disconnecting the entire industrial complex of Golem Press and Access to Energy, making its power-controlled oil furnace as useless as any solar collector in the neighborhood, and dousing much of the machinery with water when the next thaw unfroze the pipes. Ever since I have loved both energy scholars, already enshrined in my heart, even more dearly. On the other hand, it is just as well that solar toys are subsidized only for the well-to-do by the rest of the population. Can you imagine the overload on the utilities, and the ensuing disaster, if everybody stopped playing with toys and wanted real power as soon as a good, old-fashioned winter hit?

In Why 'Soft' Technology Will Not Be America's Energy Salvation ($2) I pointed out that the solar automobile could never materialize, because for reasonable power ratings, the collecting areas would have to be prohibitively large.

As if to prove me wrong, a solar-powered aircraft (with a 106-lb pilot) crossed the British Channel in 1981. With a 2.75 HP motor, said I [Aug 81], that's 9 times less than the 25 HP I had assumed for a very modest, but still reasonable car.

And as if to prove me wrong, two Australians have now crossed their continent by solar-powered automobile in a 276-lb car ($45,000) accompanied by two gasoline-powered supply vehicles. Do I now eat my words?

Not one of them. For their sporting feat, I salute the two; as a demonstration of solar-powered transportation I call it pure eyewash. The article I have does not give the motor's power, but with a cruising speed of 15 mph, this must have been drastically below my assumed 25 HP or any other reasonable value; and with 1 kW/m^2 supplied by the sun, the Australian sports feat is not the beginning, but close to the inherent limit, of solar automotive technology.

For we are not talking solar energy, but solar power (energy per time). If energy is all you are interested in, there is a cheaper and more efficient method: You can live on food grown in the sun and walk from Perth to Sydney.