Today's speaker, Alec Mesdag from AEL&P, is an energy specialist who has worked on various renewable energy projects from the design side to the consumer end, helping individual homeowners make better energy use decisions. Please reflect on today's talk, post a link to a related article, and comment on the article as well.
As always, post by Monday morning at 8:00 AM.
I found Juneau's hydropower very fascinating. I enjoyed how visual Alec's presentation was with pictures, graphs, and site plans. I feel I understand how Juneau's hydropower works as well as an insiders view on AEL&P. And I am glad that AEL&P have people like Alec who are very knowledgeable in renewable energy, it makes me feel like they are going in the right direction towards more environmentally friendly ways to get energy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/08/14/renewable-energy-fair-explores-alaskas-options/
The article i found is about Alaska potential for renewable energy. They talk about how Alaska has potential for wind, solar, tidal, and using methane from our land fill to power Alaska's cities. Chugach electric has already started to harness the winds around Anchorage by placing wind turbines on Fire Island, as well as using methane from Anchorage's land fill to provide energy for Elmendorf/Richardson Bases. They also talk about Alaska's potential in Tidal power. Alaska alone can power 60% of our countries energy just from our tides. I recently read a book written by Callum Roberts a conservational biologist who suggests if we can harness the woulds potential tidal power we could provide 1/6th of the worlds energy, while providing new habitats for the oceans many organisms. Renewable energy is the future, or you might say the present. Its up to us to make the change, to better our future and to preserve the environment.
During Alec's presentation I was very interested in where our energy comes from. I was very interested into how they got energy from lakes and went to certain facilities at which the energy is transferred to our houses. It interested me to find out that we do not receive too much energy from the local generated power. It made me think of other ways to produce energy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/all-alaska_gas_pipeline_will_spike_americas_energy_boom.html
I chose to read an article called All-Alaska Gas Pipeline Will Spike America's Energy Boom. It was about the State of Alaska approving $50 billion All-Alaskan Gas Pipeline. There is about 35.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the four existing North Slope Oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, Point Thomson, Lisburne, and Kuparak. It is believed that it could supply up to 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Overall, I am not too sure what to think of this due to the idea of the problem of using up natural gas as energy. It will bring it a great amount of revenue and energy but I want to know what would be the environmental impact.
It was an interesting presentation Alec gave us. He seems very knowledgeable about his job and about Alaska's renewable energy. I enjoyed the various pictures and graphs he presented during class and the things he was able to tell us about how people were using energy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/04/alaska-brewery-plans-to-use-beer-as-source-green-energy/
This interesting article talks about how the brewing company plans on going green, but not by "solar or wind energy", but with beer. The article talks about using spent grain, "the waste accumulated from the brewing process", as the article states it, into a sole energy source for an energy recovery system. This article was written a couple weeks ago, and it stated that energy recovery system, a boiler system, and should be working within a month.