Green Energy Needs Advanced Surge Protection
The general public has a basic knowledge of the clean energy development debate. They know that there is pollution produced through fossil fuels that has a negative effect on their air and atmosphere. They also know that their electric bills will be lower if they support fossil fuel production, so they will generally weigh the perceived damage vs the costs they pay every month. Environmental damage is not something you can easily observe when looking at the sky, so people will often vote with their wallets and ignore the damage that is being caused. Warnings from environmental scientists are ignored as overhyped or completely false, and consumers go about their daily lives thinking that green energy is not a bad thing, but it is not worth spending extra money on developing because it costs them more. Unfortunately these people are wrong.
The costs associated with green energy production methods vs fossil fuel production methods are not the same. Fossil fuels have to be harvested and mined which comes with a cost that is added to the other production costs in order to determine the amount that a consumer must pay for a unit of electricity. Green energy production fuels like wind, solar and flowing water have no associated costs. The totals that consumers pay for electricity generated through these methods include providing the methods to gather and “harvest” the energy, and the installation, repair and replacement of technologically advanced equipment needed to do so. The areas of the green energy gathering processes that need improvement in order to drive production costs below that of fossil fuels involve the equipment, and overall lifespan. Green energy methods use un-depleatable resources like the sun and wind to turn turbines and generate electricity. Because the fuel source exists within its natural environment instead of being collected and transported to a specific location designed for production, the equipment used is within exposed environments that are subjected to weather patterns. The most damaging weather occurrence is the inevitable lightning strikes to wind turbines and solar panels due to the fact that they must be the tallest or only structures within an open area in order to effectively harness their fuel source. This makes them prime candidates for lightning strikes and the following power surges that occur and damage the circuitry within the control equipment. This equipment is directly connected to the exposed structures through power and data transfer lines, and the excess electricity that is produced by a lightning strike travels along these lines to harm the connected equipment. These repair costs along with losses in production time when systems are knocked offline after a lighting strike inflate the production costs beyond fossil fuel methods at the current time.
Through the development and integration of advanced surge protection devices and other preventative maintenance equipment specifically designed for green energy production systems, much of these costs can be minimized and even eliminated. The systems can be kept online and producing for longer periods of time, increasing supplies of electricity while not increasing fuel costs. The future will eventually see the individual technologies involved in the production systems advance to the point of costs being driven below fossil fuels, creating cleaner and cheaper power for all customers. Raycap is an integral part of this development, and is an advocate of the green energy technologies produced by some of its largest customers.
