Making Something Out Of Nothing

By Tom Poland

 

About a thousand years ago I ran across the word “alchemy.” The word fascinated me because it hinted that medieval magicians could turn ordinary metals into gold. That’s what Dad used to refer to as “making something out of nothing.” Well, men still try to make something from nothing, and though they’ve yet to make gold from ordinary metals, they’re getting closer. As evidence I present Exhibit A, solar farms.

Solar energy has long fascinated me. As I write, a solar-powered keyboard powers my writing. Right now it is at 84 percent capacity. When I run errands, I place the keyboard near a window where a goodly amount of sunlight pours in and it recharges. According to Logitech, its manufacturer, if the world goes black, a fully charged keyboard can last six months. Never mind that planet Earth will be in chaos.

Solar power has also been the domain of the con man and hucksters. One day in the 1980s, that decade of great music, big hair, and “Miami Vice,” a catalog arrived in my mailbox. In it was an ad for a solar-powered fan you could place on the dash of your car. “Just crack your windows and this fan will circulate the air, keeping your car as cool as a cucumber on a sweltering day.” Well, that bit of ad copy got to me and I ordered the fan.

It arrived, a diminutive black and blue fan. I placed it on my dash and sure enough the little fan began to whir. I cracked the windows and locked the car knowing the blistering heat of summer wouldn’t turn my car into a furnace. Well, how wrong I was. It didn’t work. As my brother-in-law, Joe Willis, said, “Boy a gnat’s wings put out more air than that fan does.”

He was right. The weak motor just didn’t have the muscle to make a difference. Into the trashcan went the fan.

For a summer I used those rather tacky solar-powered patio lights to give my yards a bit of brightness come nightfall. One by one they failed. Into the recycle bin they went.

Two summers ago, I bought a solar-powered umbrella. A solar panel sits atop the umbrella and 22 LEDs run down the ribs. Guess what? It worked! Come evening a fine blue light illuminated my deck. But trouble soon arrived. The lights got weaker and weaker until the day arrived when they didn’t work at all. A baked slurry of dust and water had covered the solar panel with a paste of dirt. I scrubbed it clean and the lights returned to their full glory. For a day. Then they went dark again. I had to buy a new set of solar batteries and they weren’t cheap, about $9. They lasted a month and now I am back to weaker and weaker lights. It’s not worth the fuss. So, solar power in my life, at least, has a ways to go, other than that keyboard, which I love.

 

 

I see solar-powered road signs along the interstates now and then. Those seem to work … so far. And have you noticed that all solar panels look alike? A grid of wires runs through that dark blue substance that works miracles with sunlight. What’s up with the dark blue stuff? Well, a bit of research uncovered this explanation. “No solar cell is 100 percent efficient in absorbing all visible light, mostly because some of the light is reflected by the surface of the active material. It is this weak reflection that gives rise to the effective blue color of common solar cell panels.”

There, now you know.

You can find a lot of solar-powered gadgets out there. Cell phone chargers. Flashlights. And you can find solar-powered toys, but man dreams big. He is intent on making something from nothing on a grand scale and now we have solar farms where the crop to be harvested is sunlight. I am no scientist. Neither am I an energy expert but it just makes sense that the energy of the future is sunlight. Each day it rains down, drenching Earth in free energy. The solar energy that falls on the earth’s surface in 40 minutes equals the total annual energy consumption of everyone in the world. Look at it this way. One day’s worth of solar energy can provide 27 years’ worth of worldwide energy consumption.

We’ve got to find a way to put all that energy to work. Solar farms possess great potential but they’re nothing new. Planet Earth has long had solar farms that convert sunlight into all manner of riches. You see them everyday. We call them plants. Food, timber, textiles, and more enrich our lives because plants evolved with a truly efficient and effective way to make something from nothing. And now man is trying to duplicate what plants do.

I’ve seen two solar farms so far. There’s a massively big one across from the Rockingham Raceway in, where else, Rockingham, North Carolina, and there’s one in Lincolnton, Georgia. I am glad to see my home county get a high-tech industry. When I was home recently, I drove over to the solar farm. It’s pretty cool. Every two seconds or so you hear a pneumatic pop sort of like the noise air brakes make. I didn’t know what to make of it at first but then it hit me. Some kind of system is adjusting the solar panels so that they track the sun and face it full strength throughout the day.

I read that the farm can produce enough electricity to power about 110 aver­age homes and will last for 25-plus years. The plan is for Georgia Power to buy the power. All that sounds great. I just have one question.

What’s going to keep dust off those big solar panels? Cleaning things that make something out of nothing seems like a good and important job to me.

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”