How will they control the supply with solar and wind energy?

[LostInAnomie]

The control of the supply is one reason oil and other fossil fuel industries have managed to make so much money. Very few people have access to oil wells of refining equipment, which meant that the supply could be controlled. With wind and solar, almost everyone will have access. There is no way that the energy industries are going to allow this. How are they going to limit the supply like they have in the past?

[Eric J in MN]

1. As long as we need oil for our cars,

...the oil companies will do fine.

[jeff30997]

2. HUGE permit costs only allowed to the "right peoples".n/t

[Canuckistanian]

3. "maintenance", that's how

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the reticulator on Unit #4 needs to be re-pronged.

Thank you for calling Shaft Windpower.

[DJ13]

4. By controlling the production...... same as oil

Expect a large legislative push to ban households from having solar panels or windmills as soon as a big corporation makes a push to providing energy on a widescale level from either.

Control the production, control the resulting profits.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. The same way water utilities do.

Even though people could collect their own rain.

[robinlynne]

6. They are certainly controlling the supply right now. by giving govt subsidies to oil, so solar

and wind power stay expensive, for example.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. How is "everyone" going to catch the energy?

You'll need some serious equipment to do that.

And that takes money.

They will simply move the revenue stream to a different part of the manufacturing/marketing/service cycle.

That's why the idea that "soft energy will free us from the evil corporations" is a pipe dream. We have TWO problems to solve -- generating physical power is one, and controlling of political power is the other.

Let us not be deceived -- moving to a more diversified, low-carbon-gas energy generating market is an excellent thing to do. But we can't slacken in our political efforts, either.

--p!

[IDemo]

12. I'm working on it

got dinner cooking out in the garden right now

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=236&topic_id=46241&mesg_id=46446

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Yum!

I made a solar oven out of cardboard and tinfoil when I was 11, during the first wave of solar-mania -- September of 1968. Made some hamburgers and a muffin.

It also was able to make "http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/thing.html">Creepy Crawlers", toy bugs and monsters that you could make out of rubbery thermoplastic ("http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/goop.html">Plastigoop") you heated in molds. The regular cooker was called a "Thingmaker", a very popular Mattel toy in the 1960s that came in on the heels of The Addams Family and The Munsters. The Creepy Crawlers made in the solar oven had a slightly different feel to them -- drier overall but with less-hardened details, and no bubbles.

I pulled the tinfoil oven back out the following January, and was able to cook hot dogs with it, in 40F weather.

It's still a little early to be thinking of using solar PV as a grid feed-in, but it works well for "survival energy". Between "passive" solar heating and solar cooking, solar energy can do a LOT of work.

--p!

[IDemo]

14. I'm 51, too. I guess some of us never grew up.

So I wonder about the SUPER BALL® as an energy storage medium? Hmmm...have to work on that one. :)

I only heard about the solar cooker concept recently, though. It sounded too easy (and green) not to try. Last night's split pea and ham soup guaranteed it will be used often.

[cbayer]

8. They can't limit if for individuals.

Those that can make the initial investment in equipment can't be limited.

[ben_meyers]

9. I think your mistake is in thinking that everyone

will have access. The bottle neck will still be in the distribution of the energy no matter how it's generated.

[LostInAnomie]

10. The difference between traditional energy sources...

... and solar and wind is the supply though. With oil, for example, there was a finite supply. Once all the supplies were bought up, there wasn't any place else to go. This made it easy for large industries to control the market supply.

With solar and wind, the supply is limitless. Corporations literally cannot buy up all the supply. They cannot buy all the land where wind turbines can be installed. They can't block out all the surface areas that could be used for solar panels.

It seems hard for me to believe that big energy corporations are going to invest in technology that they won't have an iron grip on.

[kristopher]

11. This is pure paranoia. nt

[LeftHander]

15. The same way they have done it for 100 years.

Lobbying congress to prevent development of technology, passing laws to prevent the application of the technology, preventing investment in companies, buying patents, stifling innovation.

Oil and car companies have long stifled, crushed and eliminated competing technologies. Oil and Auto worked together to make sure that profits were high, and the middle class was milked for as much money as they could get. Yes it created jobs but it created jobs based on a finite source of energy. They knew it and took as much as they could get.

[The2ndWheel]

16. Everyone and everything with access to limitless energy

You think our environmental problems are serious now?

Mining energy from below the surface, will then become mining energy from above the surface. We could fuck things up even more by extracting and harnessing "live"(energy which actively regulates the planet) energy for a single species, as opposed to extracting and harnessing "dead"(coal, oil, etc) energy for a single species. Hell, we might want, even demand, for Big Solar and Big Wind to tell us no.

[Gold Metal Flake]

17. They know that they can't. Don't you understand...

...why they are doing what they are doing? This is the chance for the current oilco management to secure their wealth. Those that can are grabbing at whatever they can because that gravy train is rolling to a halt. Eventually, the petroleum companies will fade back in prominence, run by lesser mortals as energy production becomes democratized. But the current crop of petro-royalty will have their vast fortunes to pass on and to use to fuck with other markets.