Energy sources - the good, the bad and the funny

Nice Tutorial! I just wanted to add Electrochemical or Battery Power to your list. One of the most fun projects to get kids started with electronics is to build a battery with a lemon and penny.

thank you for the suggestion, will make an update soon

People need to get over their fear of Nuclear energy. If managed correctly, it can be environmentally friendly and far more cost effective than solar, wind or water turbines, especially for the scale of electricity that we need to power our ever growing cities.

Citing Chernobyl as an example of why we should never use nuclear power is retarded. Chernobyl was of poor design, miss-managed, and under funded. It was doomed from the start.

but considering the costs involved , and the fact that renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, water are far more reliable and with no consequences over the nature WHY USE IT?

No no no. Dont start thinking that solar, wind and water energy is some magical solution without any costs.

Solar energy rakes a lot of space but otherwise fine. But the rest... phew.... Have you actually seen a wind turbine farm? Thousands of towers streching miles. There is a great amount of damage caused by wind warming. And water energy is not some easy peasy thing to create. Dams take a lot of space and cause great destruction.

I live close to one in Iceland. And I'd feel better living to a nuclear plant. Yeah I know there were some problems in the first ones. A combination of human mistakes and bad early designs.

what is wind warming? Also how is water energy taking up some much space? (in oceans???) and nuclear is fine??? this will be a heck of an controversy here but if you say that alternative energy sources are bad and we'd better go with ones that have taken so many lives in the past you'd better come with better arguments ..

Solar energy is expensive today, BUT it has future. Maybe tomorrow scientists will make discover and the price for watt will be 10 cents… ok may be not tomorrow, maybe after 10 years, but that will happen.

I like the idea behind solar panels and wind turbines. Both these technologies use renewable energy sources to generate electricity. To be honest, I have even tried to build my own solar panel using Earth4Energy guide, however, my attempt was unsuccessful.

Thanks for the post :) I love the Human powered devices LOL! Anyways it is for sure something to think about. If we all do a little we can change a lot!

This gives us a lot to think about and I think that we as human beings should be more educated in the way things are powered. If everyone really knew just how harmful things like nuclear energy and fossil fuels are, we would maybe be just a little more eco-friendly. The human-powered methods are great.

in egypt now they are thinking to have atom energy

really good blog

great read

jen xx

If only we could use the hamsters for all our energy but I think we would have to genetically modify them into a giant variety for that to work. Until then I think renewable energy is the way forward and we are getting there slowly but surely like the tortoise.

solar energy, eolian, geothermal, are, in my opinion the best solutions for us and for our planet.

nuclear and fossiles are only interests of big organizations.

This is a great article and it should interest everyone on this planet, at least we should all get more earth friendly.

This is great - The pictures on here are amazing, and I hope this helps out the environment!!

Thank for sharing.

this is great and u have great pics on here thanks for sharing,

thanks for the interesting blog.

Agree with the list of bad first then the funny and lastly the good. When the good ones will start to be used for all energy generation uses, we would have a clean and clear environment to live in.

It'd be nice if even some of the funnier one's were implemented. That would mean a greater number of people are taking positive steps toward improving their energy sources instead of just falling back on the easier to use fossil fuels. The bad sources may be all companies wish to use for the benefit of their profit margins but there will come a time when they'll be force to change and it may be to late.

I use to work at a nuclear power plant. It's not bad for the environment because the only gas it gives off is water vapor.

Daniel

Kewl stuff, but you left out Ocean thermal energy conversion, peizoelectric generation and maybe the thermo electric effect... Also I think that a grey hound would be better to use to run a bigger wheel or tread mill than a large hamster, just dangle a fake rabbit in front of it and you are good to go, might be good for training it too :P.

Great article! Any kind of energy that we can reuse or renew is great! You should also look into any type of rebates your electric company offers if you install a new hvac system or solar paneling.

Wind energy is really taking off because it is aproaching cost competitiveness with coal an other traditional forms of energy. It's currently way cheaper than solar; hopefully solar energy will advance in the coming years and give us more options for different climates.

The Vin Diesel joke was gold, but seriously on my locality there is a Geothermal plant, but i think we are wasting so much resources, here is a place knowing that one of the hottest cities on teh worl, and there is not a solar energy plant, a proyect to start building one begins next year, this could be a big proyect to feed 4 cities or more, the Eolian energy it is a good alternative here, 45km hrs winds produce a lot of energy, in a January to April periode, but we do not have a Eolian plant. And if im not wrong, there is a little Hydro power plant someplace near. When all this alternatives i cant believe we still let's keep on seeing enormous cauldrons smoking non-stop, that sadness...

really good info...thank you!

all the info is really nice and specially the topic line, the good, bad and funny sources, as matter of fact i dont know much about energy but i thing wind energy is best. :)

good afternoon, thanks for the info.

people are realizing that something has to change...

Climate change is inevitable, we as humans are not powerful enough to change this.
Could we stop the ice age if it was to happen again? These are natural forms of climate change.
1500 years ago Co2 levels in the atmosphere were higher they they are today because of a volcano that erupted at the time.
Could we stop this? No

What? I've always used hamster energy when available. Sometimes they're just plain pooped out, though.

wow that looks really cool ilove the picture

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

I think i'm going to install a giant hamster-wheel in my back yard so I don't need to worry about electricity anymore =)).

No but the wind and solar panel energy looks like a great alternative!

Enjoyed reading this and was highly informative, I wish I would get the hamster energy thing going in my house..lol..

thanks again

I think the next step in the development of energy industry is thermonuclear synthesis. In future we'll be using thermonuclear power for sure. Yes, it's extremely dangerous but it's nature friendly. And the main reason to use it is that sun, water, wind and so on won't provide us enough energy to continue our development. As I remember such power plant is already being constucted somewhere in France.

That is soooo coool. I wish that we would have had those now instead of cars. I bet alot more of us would be more in shape and less obese.

These pics are so cool. I really enjoyed your post.

This is one of the first blog posts on energy sources that was actually fun to read - the pictures made it great and I had no idea that hamsters could produce energy. Very great breakdown and I will direct my readers over here as you have some great information. Dave from Energy Efficient Home

Thanks for this I like the hamster energy.

This is one of the first blog posts on energy sources that was actually fun to read - the pictures made it great and I had no idea that hamsters could produce energy. Very great breakdown and I will direct my readers over here as you have some great information. Dave from Energy Efficient Home

I was unaware of some of the sources mentioned. Thanks for the information.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is awsome thank you!

REally enjoyed reading you bog cant wait to return and read some more great source of information

Very interesting information...I enjoyed reading about all the science stuff. thanks.

I need to know if we should or should not keep on using geothermal energy? Thank you for your time and for your advice!

Renewable, alternative energy like the one derived from nontraditional sources such as sunlight, wind, or geothermal heat, that can replace traditional fossil-fuel sources, as coal, oil, and natural gas is the kind of energy we should all consider as the only alternative for the future.

(http://goo.gl/R8Ir)