Renewable, 'Free' Energy from Nature: Personal Experiences and Net-Energy Analysis

摘要

The following paper was written in 1979, following many years of research by the author into both conventional and renewable energy systems, including a short period of entrepreneurship, in selling and installing residential solar and renewable energy equipment in South Florida. Today, with a growing energy crisis developing once again, it seems pertinent to finally publish the materials. The concept of net energy analysis developed as an outgrowth of computer systems analysis, a form of dynamic modelling of the real world with revolutionary overtones. It can give us a vision into what the world would be like — and also what the world and society could best avoid — if the ordinary person, and their elected representatives, would embrace natural renewable energy sources, or if a genuinely "free" energy was to find its way into the marketplace. The net energy diagrams presented here are basically unchanged from the original 1979 research project, but the text of the paper was lost during many moves across the country since that time. This allowed a revisiting of the issue, with some added background information regarding my own path into this subject area.