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Solar Comments
Chuck Missar, Solar Editor

The information presented here on solar energy is just a hint of what is available. For a technology that has had so little practical application, there is ample information available to educate the experimenter and builder. Solar devices for distilling water, heating domestic and swimming pool water, cooking food, and melting materials have been in use for years, the technology is well known and the results are reasonably predictable.

The recent 'energy crisis' resulted in a lot being witten on solar energy. Readers' Digest, Rotarian, Smithsonian Bulletin, Popular Science, and many other diverse periodicals featured the merits and possibilities of the sun's energy. However, like dozens of articles before them, they were too generalized for us to transfer the technology to practice. Solar energy is well beyond the vague generality stage. The solar chapter attempts to illustrate this by directing you to sources of ideas, plans and hardware from which you can build or buy your own equipment. The beauty of solar energy is that anybody can build a simple system that will decrease demands on our dwindling fossil fuel reserves. A simple cooker or a scrap-fabricated water heater are things you can build tomorrow, if you have sufficient interest.

Let's look at solar energy in historical perspective. Really active research and experimentation on the subject started in the late 19th century. Periodically since then (maybe on 10-15 year cycles), interest in it has risen and then fallen. With oil prices so low for so long and with our "oil will last forever" mentality, we could not justify the expense of solar hardware. Under these condtiions of oscillating interest in solar technology, research has been carried out by a small group of dedicated people who believed in the environmental and long term social benefits that could come from the use of solar energy. Maybe that is why this group of pioneering "eccentrics" has so much in common with the burgeoning group of solar advocates today. Together they know that solar energy needs to be developed for the safety and comfort of future generations.

Many large, well established firms are becoming quite involved with solar energy research and hardware. These firms will be the leaders in many solar energy activities, since they have the capital, momentum, and reputation to carry out successful research and development. Most of us interested in doing-it-ourselves will live off the technological fall-out from these firms. By paying close attention to new patents, government information from the National Technical Information Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, trade journals, and our own research, we can learn how to incorporate the latest engineering achievements in our small scale systems without having to support directly large, centralized industries. An appropriate phrase often heard in the hall at Portola Institute is "keep on livin' in the cracks." This applies to solar energy as much as it does to economics or shelter.

Many of us feel uncomfortable with the higher degree of self-sufficiency that "livin' in the cracks" implies. However, as we try to make clear elsewhere in the Energy Primer, more self-sufficiency and the understanding of our immediate world that this entails are an absolute necessity in our chaotic world.

Self-sufficiency can be expensive. Solar collectors use a lot of metal and glass, they require electronic controls to work efficiently, and maintenance is an ever present reality. We cannot expect large segments of teh population of the United States, much less the other nations of the world, to use solar energy at the same rate they have been using fossil fuel energy. Besides, the "costs" of solar energy resources and hardware might use up more energy than that gleaned from the sun. Who knows? This whole subject of net energy available from the sun, after recovery costs are calculated and subtracted from gross energy input, has barely been touched upon. We need immediate and in-depth study of this subject for small and intermediate systems. I think we will confirm what we've suspected all along - the answer to most of our problems is to use less.

Back to what we can do. First, get out there and try to build some solar hardware. Start with a small solar sill or dryer, for instance, and work up to something you really feel proud of.

Second, take safety precautions. A collector, left to heat in the sun with water in it but not circulating, can generate enough steam to blow the collector up if there is no means of pressure relief. Many commercial antifreezes are poisonous and should not be used where children or animals might drink the water in which they are mixed. A concentrating collector can blind you almost instantly if you deliberately or accidentaly look into it, or it can start a fire if it is carelessly aimed. The addition of collector assemblies can alter a structure's deadweight and wind loading characteristics. In short, consider the safety aspects of what you are doing. Dress appropriately for the work to be done and think through each project you undertake. This all sounds obvious, but the techniques of safe driving are obvious, yet 50,000 people are killed on the road each year in the United States.

Third, keep accurate records of what you are doing and what results you have had. What is your solar hardware cost - in dollars and production of energy? How efficiently has it done its job? What problems have you encountered and how did you solve them? Be methodical and accurate. It sounds like school all over again, but it's the only way we're going to generate information that is worthwhile to share.

Fourth, share with others the results of your research and building. There's no better turn-on to solar energy than to see a cooker cook or a heater heat. Many of us grew up with a generation of "tire kickers," let's become a generation of "flat plate thumpers" or some such thing. We must learn to discuss the attributes and shortcomings of solar assemblies just as well as we've been doing with automobiles and the other "necessities" of our age. Information can be shared through publications such as Alternative Sources of Energy Newsletter, Co-Evolution Quarterly, regional alternative lifestyle newsletters, or the feature pages of your home town newspaper. Be prepared for lots of visitors and small talk if you build something, since this is one way people become comfortable with the ideas and hardware involved with solar energy.

We haven't done much to stress foreign vendors of solar hardware. Excellent equipment is available from Israel, Australia, Japan and elsewhere. However, with present transporation charges and exchange rates, it hardly makes sense to feature these items. In keeping to what is available in the United States, we have tried to review some of the bad with the good to give you an idea of the range of publications and hardware available.

Prices quoted in the Energy Primer are current at the time of publication (Fall 1974). Prices are changing rapidly. Don't be surprised if book and hardware prices are higher on items you order. Also, because solar energy technology is changing so fast, some of the information presented here will soon be obsolete. Read Alternative Sources of Energy Newsletter or Solar Energy Digest for the newest information.

When you send off for "free" information, please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Many of the vendors and authors listed here are small operations that can't service an onslaught of "I'm collecting solar information for my ___ grade physics class" letters. Ask for information judiciously and help pay for it if you need it so badly.

In the following pages of the solar section, reviews and commentary that are not mine are signed by the reviewer.