Solar array teaches lesson in sustainability (July 16)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The City of Madera deserves to take a bow for its new solar power array at its sewage-treatment plant. The array, once up and running in a few more weeks, will generate about 60 percent of the electricity used by the plant. Put another way, the plant will generate the amount of power used by about 300 homes.
That’s a big deal for Madera, which only about 18 month ago made a commitment to become a more sustainable city. Soon, more solar panels will be up, with one installation planned for the new youth center. Even with these and other installations, however, it will be some time before this or almost any city’s power needs can be provided by combustion-free methods.
A few cities own their own power-generating dams, and some get a share of their power from windmills. But totally conserving the ecological balance may not be possible in the lifetimes of most of us.
One development under way, however, could make it possible for individual cities or groups of cities to generate combustion-free power in quantities that would be enough not only to electrify cities, farms and factories, but to charge electric vehicles.
The Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco and Babcock and Wilcox of Lynchburg, Va., are seeking approval of plans to build small nuclear reactors to provide clean power for local areas. The two companies together are the most experienced nuclear providers in the country. Bechtel built 64 of the 104 presently operating reactors in the country, according to The Wall Street Journal.
What they are proposing now, instead of big regional plants, are localized plants to provide combustion-free power without the energy loss of having to wheel it over long distances.
Add developments like that to solar and wind generation, and sustainability could be much closer.
