Hi, my name is Chase Drum. I am a student at the University of Oregon majoring in physics with a focus on renewable energies. I have been bestowed the honor of writing Competitive Solar’s first Blog entry. In this blog I’m going to go over the most common question people have about solar in Oregon: “is it even possible?”
Renewable Energies are being brought up in conversations everywhere today. Whether I’m listening to NPR or I am walking through the local grocery store people keep coming up to me asking about “Green Energies.” Another fascinating interest about renewable energies is the broad social interest behind it. People, liberal and conservative, want to move off of foreign oil. The untapped sources of power out there are unfathomable. There are hydro, geothermal, tidal, biomass, and more. There are also other sources of energy such as nuclear and the idea of “clean coal” that have received some thought as energy sources to power ourselves in this upcoming century. Nuclear in its defense does deserve some credit. The country of France receives over 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. However, there are two sources of energy that generally come to mind first when people hear the term “renewable energies.” Solar and wind. A great combination of natural resources that are already being used to a great extent internationally. Germany is the world leader in solar. Germany receives over 20% of its power from solar. Europe has been a leader in adopting use of solar and wind.
Solar is starting to match the same growth pattern as of wind in the late 90’s up to today. Although the market is starting to speak for solar I still get the same question from most people: “Well it might work in Germany, but it can’t actually work in the northwest can it?” The answer is it can. The city of Berlin is on about the same latitude line as Vancouver. Astoria has the lowest amount of solar irradiance in the state of Oregon, yet it receives more sunlight than any part of Germany. Oregon also receives more sunlight than Japan which is right behind Germany with the greatest amount of solar installed. Not is it only feasible, but it has some great advantages over wind especially in urban areas. Wind faces problems in urban areas such as less wind exposure and complaints about aesthetics.
