Tracts and Articles
Apostacy
Divine Love
Come See My Zeal for the LORD!
Faith
Holiness
Mark of the Beast
Materialism
Danger of Increasing Riches-Wesley
Through the Eye of a Needle- The Doctrine of Nonaccumulation
Practical issues
Enjoyment of the Pleasures of the Present Life- Letter of John Newton
Prayer
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood...
Revival
Salvation
Harvesting gravity?
In the last article we looked at storing up the zest of some housebound children on a rainy day. With a step-ladder, a rope, and a barrel full of water-along with a bit of imagination-we lifted 500 pounds twenty feet off the barn floor, to be used when needed.
Poking around on the internet, I found some information on how to convert our 55 gallons of water into foot pounds of potential energy. Falling at a rate of one foot per second, we could generate 7.77 ft/lbs of energy for the duration of the fall, which should be 20 seconds. This same barrel full of water could generate .003 watt hours of electricity per foot. This would be the equivalant of what a mini-solar panel a couple inches square could generate in a day of good sun.
Well, it's a start anyways.
The energy that was stored in that barrel was not "free" energy: somebody had to lift it up there. But there is a free source of energy falling around us all the time-on rainy days at least.
You probably jumped the gun and figured out my next brainstorm: collect all that run-off rain water, store it in a reservoir, and use it on a sunny day if you do not need it immediately.
Sound pretty stupid you think? Ha...gotcha. We do it big time, all the time, every day, all over the world. Its called hydro-electric power, commonly referred to as dams and lakes.
A dam is nothing more than a sophisticated version of a barrel of water hanging from a barn rafter. If you have a dam a hundred feet tall, with thousands or millions of acres of water stored behind it, you have a lot of energy waiting to be used. Practically all of that energy is converted into electricity, which is probably the most efficient way to transfer it a hundred miles away. We could put a big line shaft off all our dams and runs them over to the next town, but copper wires are probably simpler.
Dams with turbines are simply gravity harvesters. Of course, one could get into the philosophical argument over whether they are harvesting gravity or harvesting the energy of the sun, which lifted the water to the top of the mountain. We will let that one to the philosophers for now.
In between generating .06 watt hours from a barrel of water hanging from a barn rafter, and generating megawatts of energy from a major river, are lots of options. Harvesting the energy in rainfall is certainly a more sustainable option than burning fossil fuels. As long as the sun shines and the earth remains intact, we will continue to have energy falling on our heads, free for the using. It is up to us if we want to harvest it or not.
Living here on the side of a Noble County hill, I have to wonder just how much energy goes down the hollow every rainfall. For that matter, just how much runs off my house roof every year?
Maybe a better question for me is, how much energy have I used up trying to figure it all out! Sure, I could run a grandfather clock for X amount of years off every 1" of rain on my house roof. Meanwhile, I could just go pull the weights every now and then and get it over with!
But there is nothing like stimulating our minds to other options, which some day may come to fruit in a way to help the next person. After all, most people think that it is pretty nice to be able to have hot running water in their homes, because someone dammed up a river and ran a wire to their house with the power, so they could sit in their easy chair while their water is pumped and heated. Gravity harvesters are pretty neat, aren't they?
Sustainable Living
Sustainable Living SeriesClick the above link to see all the current listings. The list below may not contain all the articles that are available.
Defining Sustainable Living
Why Sustain?
Sustainability Politics
Fill the Earth
Tilling the Land
Damaged Dirt
Living Dirt
God's Fertilizer Factories
Sustaining Hard Work
Of Mirrors and Millionaires
No-till + No Spray =???
To Be or Not to Be Organic
The Worst Erosion
Icy Dreams
Biomass Gasifiers
The Ultimate Alternative Energy Source
Pedal Power
The "C" Word
Harvesting the Wind
Storing Energy in Weights
Harvesting Gravity