OT/
C'mon, Bearcat Bob.
<Unless you have been to Japan.>
No, but I lived there for 10 years, started and ran two companies, one of which was sold in an acquisition, Then I went on to be a headhunter in Tokyo and worked on a team setting up Cisco Japan, the predecessor to Bay Networks, and many other tech companies. I finally left Japan after a five year stint as a manager for a Fortune 250 company there. I speak fluent Japanese and I have Japanese citizenship through my wife.
Does that count?
My friend there is a researcher in superconductivity, testing materials for the MagLev train that is to replace the Shinkasen. She works in a research lab that is a consortium: Nippon Steel, Tokyo Power, etc. The lab, in Tokyo's Hamamatsu-cho, is far superior to what we have in the US and licenses superconductive materials to companies like Motorola and Nokia to use in cell phones. I've been to that lab and I would have to agree it is probably more advanced than the US. Does the US have a bullet train? How about a MagLev?
Don't tell me the US doesn't have the population density-Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver Canada have great rail networks for their size and Western Europe has a great high speed rail network without Japan's population density.
They also do weird things in Japan like clad the roofs of the train stations in Tokyo with solar panels to feed into the rail network.
My utility here is Peninsula Light. PM me and I'll give you the phone number and name of their marketing manager who told me 2000 homes with a 200w system (actually 1.5 panels) would mean they wouldn't have to build a new generator. Such a system would produce, on a hot sunny summer day when the air conditioners are going, 400 kilowatts/hour. That is the size of a small/medium-sized rural generator.
Due to the decreased rainfall they are worried about hydro and with the hotter summers, here more Washington residents are putting in air conditioners-so the power demand is starting to spike on hot days. It never did this five years ago..
As long as people think that two solar panels per home will not help, those people will be part of the problem. Perhaps you missed the news that California wants solar systems on half of its roofs in 10 years. What California is proposing, about 5m roofs x 1000watts+ would generate 5 gigawatts per hour. This would offset airconditioner demand nicely and can be sold to industry on a sunny day when homeowners are out, removing the need for some gas generation and taking the strain off hydro.Yep, this is a trend and, for those that want it, a business opportunity.
It beats shooting depleted uranium at Iraqi kids for a few billion barrels of oil. |
