Monday, March 18, 2013

Let's Make Greenhouses Pull Double Duty

The initial seed of this idea stems from an article I read 18 months ago highlighting how artificial plant growth can benefit from using light sources that only use the colors that plants actually absorb as opposed to full spectrum lighting, which would invariably waste energy.  Anyways, my ADD being what it is I forget why I was thinking that there should be solar panels associated with green houses, the general concept was to have a semi-transparent solar panel, that is designed to absorb the colors of light that plants normally don't metabolize (I think I remember what started the idea going, I saw an article on a building in Germany powered by algae and I wondered why solar wasn't being used (turns out the design was meant to be algae only from the get go, I just didn't read it thoroughly the first time)).
By developing a solar panel that is transparent to the frequencies of light that plants metabolize, it would be conceivable that we could turn more farmland into usable energy.  Unfortunately I don't know enough about PV technology to even roughly estimate how much energy we could produce with a technology like this, that being said, I am darn curious (gonna keep it PG here).

March 20:  Countries like Dubai, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia would seem like a robust match for a technology like this.  With intense sunlight, low fresh water availability, and with a desire to become financially diverse from their currently oil dependent economy a semi clear solar panel could be incredibly useful.  Vast stretches of coastal desert could be converted into electrically and biologically productive land.  Most likely the majority of the energy produced by the solar panels would go into pumping salt water the algae growth tanks, with the remainder of the electricity going into processing the algae into bio-fuels and food for various food animals.  Another potential investor in this platform would be the US Department of Defense, as their desire to produce a renewable fuel source that doesn't impact food production.  Only at extremely low price points would this technology be viable for converting the American Mid-West.  

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