Energy, Water & Food

Articles

Energy, Water and Food

by Bill Mollison

Wind power
Wind farms have become fairly common in advanced Countries. In Denmark, one large windmill is built after issuing 800 or so shares, the number of households that can be provided with power from a village machine. These shares, and up to 10m² of solar panels providing hot water and electricity are purchased by middle-aged couples to ensure free energy in their retirement. Most connect to the grid, and buy or sell energy as they have the need, or have surplus energy. They provide for their old age.

Solar Devices
Solar panels as hot water provided to insulated tanks, or as electrical generators, are becoming routine fixtures in modern societies; again, surplus electricity is sold to the local grid, and surplus heat is dumped into hot water systems.

Geothermal
Deep drill-holes, sited over areas of volcanic heat or where the earths crust is thin, convert water into steam for use in the heating of buildings, or in powering steam turbines for electrical production.

The Hydro-electrical devices
From very small to very large, the power of falling water to spin turbines has long been harvested, and supplements other energy systems.

But since ancient times, water has been used to compress and store air (isothermally-compressed). All water that falls carries some air bubbles, and these rise much more slowly than the water falls, so that they can be carried down and released in large storage rooms or plenums some 200 or more metres below ground.

A conical device called a trompe bleeds high levels of air into water, for escape and storage at depth in carefully plastered (sealed) rooms. From there, small diameter pipes leads compressed air to surface work shops, to farm storage tanks, and to households where compressed air operates small electric generators, refrigerators and cool rooms and the whole array of compressed-air tools (presses, vices, spray applicators, sand-blasters etc. etc.)

Given a modest stream and a trompe, or successive trompes, very large quantities of compressed air can be stored. In 1930, all cars, trams, trains, and cool rooms in Paris and Chicago, were supplied by miners with trompes, operated on compressed air. Light motor vehicles with 7 to 10 h.p. slide valve steam engines with a working pressure of 40 p.s.i., could travel 100 or more kilometres on 2 cubic feet of air at 1500 p.s.i. held in a drawn-steel cylinder below the seat.

The exhaust gas was very cold air, directed to a hamper in the boot for the preservation of cold meats, cold drinks, and the like. Unlike electricity, compressed air loses little in transport, and until the fossil fuels displaced it. It has no poisonous fumes or explosive potential.

As well, the trompes are well developed, and the uses of compressed air tools also very sophisticated. Many trompes can be built in one stream, and form many reservoirs of compressed air.

Tidal Energies
The rise and fall of tides, the power tidal current delivers over egg-beater turbines are all little-developed sources of clean energy. In straits running east-west, the tidal flow is constantly to the west, and operates around the clock. Sub-sea egg beaters will provide constant energy for the generation of electricity or for the provision of compressed air.

Powerful currents sweep by reefs and islands at the west end of straits (Bass Strait in Australia is one of many good examples). Only a very little of these energies is harvested to date, but ducks , and compressed-air sausages for wave power are well developed, and it remains to tap the great power of confined currents for national energy grids.

Solar Energy
From modest caravan power for light and computers to very large static arrays of solar collectors on roof areas or as parabolic arrays for steam turbine development, solar devices are numerous; widely used, but at a small scale of the potential.

Areas of mirrors in steerable arrays one to five km. square are needed to supply national grids and state energy systems. We need to break out of the small-scale installations that have previously made all clean power uneconomic .

Clean power is essential for life, and is only uneconomic if money is valued above life! Just as every house can harvest enough clean rainwater to supply the needs of the occupants, so every roof can collect the energy needed to fuel the house and supplement a national grid. It simply remains to make water collection and energy collection a compulsory part of architecture; to develop climate control in building using the air from earth tunnels to cool or heat rooms, and day-night fans to heat or cool the fabric of buildings.

In civilised societies, it is already legislated that buildings should never be permitted western windows, nor can large unshaded areas of car parks be built. Both call for too much summer heat to be offset, needlessly. It is past-time to legislate for domestic and urban energy and water storage.

Water Supply
In most countries, 80% of rainfall runs off or evaporates. Thus only 12% is available for agriculture or domestic needs. We must legislate for the construction of thousand of miles of swales on farms, as large contour ditches that fill in every heavy rain (>10mm/day). In 3 to 6 hours, such water soaks in, and is immune to evaporation or run-off! This water, over years and centuries, feeds tree roots, springs, and valley streams. Swales enable forests, and forests are both passive condenses of night air, and active cloud generators for rainfall. If we clear the ridges, 40% of orographic rain ceases. If we clear the plains, most condensation and clouds fail to form. Thus, swales precede forests. Forests precede precipitation. Again, clearing is a severely anti social act, and we must legislate for forestry, and survival. Every countryman in Australia has, all his life, used tank water from his roof. He suffers no adverse health effects, perhaps needing iodised salt to prevent goitre. It is long past time that architects and builders were required by law to build water self-sufficient houses, and energy self-sufficient houses.

All architecture students must learn the techniques of self-sufficient buildings. It remains to allow 12-14m² of garden (on roofs, or at ground level), and food, water, and energy are provided by buildings! Such a society can last forever, in comfortable and clean surroundings. There is absolutely no reason to tolerate the vandalism of forest clearing, let alone support it by government subsidy. We face global death by neglect. It is not as though we do not have the skills to build to survive, we do!

Or, we could wood-chip our way to death, using present political parties as our bell-wethers, or guides to hell.

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