Free energy surrounds US - problem: "it's not as sexy like wind or solar."
HAASE: I have covered this topic for nearly a decade, but Orion Mag this month draws readers in to view the "free" energy" solutions surrounding the vast majority of cities who complain of high energy cost and have NO wind or solar options....The biggest sources of waste heat are some gas turbines used to generate power, but there are endless other examples. "Let's look at Florida," he says. "Here's a Maxwell House coffee roaster in Duval County. They're roasting beans, so all that heat has to go somewhere. About twelve megawatts' worth of potential electricity is going up the stack." Casten could take the equipment he sells, a "waste-heat recovery boiler," and stick it on top of the stack. "Basically, there's a network of tubes with water in them. The heat would hit one side of it, produce steam, and we'd use that to turn a turbine and generate electricity. It's like any other boiler, just without a flame, because the heat is already there."
Does that sound suspiciously pie-in-the-sky? Casten can drive a few miles from his Chicago office to an East Chicago plant run by Mittal Steel. A few years ago, a predecessor energy-recycling company installed this kind of equipment on the smokestacks of the plant's coke ovens. In 2004, this single steel plant generated roughly the same amount of clean energy as was produced by all of the grid-connected solar collectors throughout the world. Casten's company estimates that recycling waste heat from factories alone could produce 14 percent of the electric power the U.S. now uses. If you took much the same approach to electric generating stations you could, says Casten, conceivably produce the same amount of energy we use now with half the fossil fuel.
"BigPower"... in almost every state it's illegal for anyone but the utility to run wires across a public street. So if Casten's company generates more electricity from the smokestack of the coffee roaster than the factory can use itself, his company can't sell the surplus to the guy making coffee cans across the street. They have to sell it to the utility, which wants to pay the lowest price possible for it.
I wonder if our "city mayors" will be discussing these kind of options?
Also see my energy solution threads about "free" or no cost options surrounding our great nation: