Solar the smart option
THE letter from Ron Cram ( TB, 12/10) needs a reality check.
The local and daily ephemeral effects from the heating of solar panels are minuscule compared to those imposed on the planet by agriculture and sealed roads and cities.
Take a drive across the Darling Downs or the Liverpool Plains today if you really want to experience heat and drought and impacts on nature.
Get out of your car and feel the cooked soil that has replaced the treed plains hunted on by Aborigines.
We are talking chalk and cheese here in scale.
I bet a lot of the farmers involved wished they had a solar farm on their properties today instead of cooked soils and no income.
My house receives the same amount of radiation each day from the sun regardless of whether it has solar panels.
I am cooler inside during the day. All the home’s heat storage radiates back into space during the day and each night, but with panels installed it is less the power I have generated during the day.
A zero-sum game.
Solar panels are framed in aluminium, not steel, and no coke is consumed in making aluminium.
The majority of new aluminium produced today comes from hydro-electricity.
Eighty-five per cent of the aluminium produced is still in circulation thanks to recycling. The same cannot be said of steel.
Work continues on the development of a battery based on aluminium and its stored electrons.
The day may soon come when an aluminium battery is standard in your phone or computer.
The aluminium for this battery may well come from solar electricity as its price continues to fall. It will not be made using coal or coke. GLENN WHITE,
Kelso.