Thomas Edison on renewable energy
A short while ago I came The Thomas Edison Papers Project and did a little poking around. It seems that what's old is new again - or at least we're now being forced to confront more directly some of the challenges of using renewable energy.
Edison for example, seemed to think that biomass would once again be adopted in the future as a source of power as a January 18, 1897 article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News entitled Mr. Edison's Ideas on Fuel from Trees indicated. Was he a little too early on the "peak coal" front?
Men say that we shall be out of fuel for heat and power production in a comparatively short time, just because they foresee the possible exhaustion of the coal supply. But there need be no alarm, even in behalf of the future generations. It is true that, in time, the available coal will all be gone, providing its burning is continued. But while that is being done, Nature will be making more fuel, if men will only encourage her a little, and, as a business, this encouragement will be quite as profitable as most occupations.
He also pointed out, in the same article, the challenges of incorporating renewable energy sources into the power system, touching upon wind and tidal power stations:
What is needed most in the production of power is steadiness. Tide-mills work intermittently and, no matter how built, the intermittent feature of their work cannot be done away with. For a certain time the tide is rising every day; then there is a time of slack water; then there is a time of falling tide; then the tide rises again and so on. This fact alone prevents the production of steady power, and, as tides vary with the seasons and with the wind, the amount of available power from them must also vary.
What are prices likely to be with wind power? Here's Edison once again:
The expensive use of wind power, save for pumping purposes, is hedged about by somewhat similar obstacles and certainly will not come until all other more economical and convenient ways of making Nature serve man have been exhausted. But that we shall make Nature do more and more for us, year by year, until a more wondrous revolution in power production than anything yet accomplished has been wrought, there is no matter of doubt.
He's definitely an optimist.
He'd also spoken previously, and in more detail, on the potential and challenges of electricity generation from solar and geothermal sources in the Philidelphia Press (page 1, 2, 3). Once again you've got the challenges of intermittentcy and, in this particular instance, the need for integrating energy storage capacity.
Transmission system limits are one current problem with integrating renewables, but it was particularly amusing to see a system which seemed to involve men loading batteries onto trains as a primary means of power distribution (although Edison seemed to think that copper transmission lines would be far more practical).