Is solar energy a viable solution to reducing oil dependence?

Yes

6 of 17

by Joost Steffensen

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From the summer of 1999 till the summer of 2000 I worked as a maintenance mechanic in a small kibbutz in Israel. Most of my time that summer was spent unfreezing air conditioners and fixing the solar collectors that were used to heat the water for the hotel, the houses of the inhabitants and the various bungalows the hotel rented out.

We had three different system which essentially all worked the same. The sun heated pipes on the roof to near boiling, some with the help of parabolic mirrors others by using thin black tubes and the heating caused the water to circulate, the hottest water filling the boilers for the showers and the coldest water rising to be reheated.

Temperature s reached, in this very old system, were very high and I scalded myself repeatedly trying to repair the hoses that kept exploding because of overdue buildup of steam. I tried desperately to find the right valves for the system, but was left to come up with makeshift solutions, because of budget restraints.

Despite this, from early March till late October, the sun was all that was needed to supply hot water for the showers in the entire village. I both hated and admired the system with a passion constantly wondering how all that energy that I constantly saw go to waste could be harnessed more effectively.

When Israel withdrew from the Lebanon border in 2000 more UN personnel was stationed in the area. Our kibbutz decided to rent out some bungalows to UN personnel. This was a welcome relief for our budget constraints and we were all encouraged to come up with ways to cut costs even more in order to save money.

I came up with a cost-saving measure I wasn't proud of. I quietly went up on the roof of the UN houses and disconnected the solar panels. These particular panels had been giving me a lot of trouble and by disconnecting them I could focus my energy elsewhere. The UN paid separately for electricity and they would never know that their hot water didn't come from the solar collector but was instead heated by an electric heating element. I have no idea what it added to their electricity bill, but it was no doubt a substantial amount.

What this experience made me realize was that solar power offered the potential of enormous savings in electricity. Not only is it possible to get most of our hot water from the sun, it is also possible to generate electricity from the sun directly or even to cool houses using the power of the sun. If we had had solar cooling in Israel I could have packed up my blow dryer and focussed on fixing the leaking taps all over the village. Or as one guest put it "Please save the water of Israel".

Solar power has enormous potential. If solar panels were implemented in houses and cars, if water was heated by the sun and are houses built to allow solar cooling we could reduce our carbon footprint significantly.

Howeve r I realized one thing quickly. This will only happen if we are given the right financial incentives. If the UN had paid an all-in price like the hotel guests I would never have disconnected the solar panels. There would have been no financial incentive to do so.

Solar power implementation requires an investment before you get your money back. You have to install expensive panels on your roof and you have to maintain them. Doing this can significantly add to the costs of building a house.
Only if the government starts providing incentives like subsidies on solar panels will people start using them. If they are widely used prices will drop and people will be more inclined to buy them. Changing building codes to require solar technology to be implemented could also help.

In the end I spent my year in Israel obsessing about the solar paradise the village could have been. Only about ten percent of the roofing was used for solar panels. The panels were eighteen years old, rusty and clogged with calcium. If the village had had the money back then to invest in solar cooling and electricity production total electricity consumption could have no doubt been more than halved. In summer the village could have been energy independent.

From the rooftops where I worked I had a splendid view over the surrounding Avocado fields. These trees grew without electricity producing the fruits that made up a large part of my diet back then, giving me the energy to do my daily tasks.

Now every time I see an avocado I marvel at the suns power.

There is a lot of sunshine in our future. Why not use it for our benefit?

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