Creative Energies Blog

by Andy Tyson

Nice juxtaposition. Traveling last year in central China, I visited the under construction Three Gorges Dam. This is the largest dam in the world – touted to produce a huge amount of energy and regulate the Yangtze, a pernicious river, prone to flooding and all but impassible to boat travel. Now there is a long thin lake, great for commerce transport, sightseeing, and lots of electricity, with regulated outflow to control flooding. Despite the debatable gains, the human and environmental costs have been huge. I was interested to see the spectacle and get a firsthand feel for the impact. It is hard to summarize my impressions in a short post. The immensity of the dam and project, holding that volume of water in the face of one human, who doesn’t speak the language let alone understand the culture that brought the project to life. Possibly like visiting Martians and viewing their largest civil engineering project. As the tour was ending, I came upon a fascinating sight. Just down stream from the mile wide, electricity belching dam I saw a solar powered water monitoring station. Despite terawatts of electricity being produced less than a mile upstream, it was deemed financially and functionally appropriate to use solar electricity to power a monitoring station. The message was clear: choose the appropriate technology for the job. Solar electricity is reliable, robust, and independent. Solar is a fixed financial investment and it is well up to most of the everyday tasks we need electricity for in our homes. Our planets future is depended on choosing the right energy source for the job.

While we have several customers that are employing renewable energy systems comprised of two different technologies (PV and wind, PV and geothermal), we now have one customer who has three technologies working hard on a daily basis. This home outside of Cheyenne started with a PV and wind system about a year and a half ago. The system is grid-connected, although includes battery backup to help reduce the impact of their frequent power outages. Late this winter we added more PV and last week a solar thermal system, the latter of which should produce nearly all the owner’s domestic hot water needs. They will now only use propane for cooking. This system was entirely retro-fit, demonstrating the ability of renewable energy to fit into almost any existing home. We applaud this customer’s commitment to renewable energy and energy independence.

We are welcoming the longer days, as it has been a cold and windy winter in Wyoming. We managed to get some quality work done still, at the cost of cold fingers. Soon we will be slathering on the sunscreen and cooking ourselves on rooftops, but for now we are embracing the season of mud.

This space is headed towards keeping the blogosphere up to date on the happenings with Creative Energies, a renewable energy company based in Lander, WY and Victor, ID. The sun is rising soon…