Mad Like Tesla Book Review? Hell No. This Is Personal.

So I read Mad Like Tesla. (Buy it on Book Depository if you want free shipping worldwide).

Now, if you work in the green energy industry, you may wanna read it as well. Just to get an idea of what may come (if everything goes as planned for the underdog engineers and inventors).

The book is full of easy to read stories. A nice treat for your curious brain, even if you're on on holiday.

That was the review.

This article is not about the book though. It's about my lack of enthusiasm for any of the green energy solutions presented in the book. We'll get to that later.

Why Sustainability Is an Empty Word without Money

Let's say you go shopping to your local supermarket.

You get there. You take a coin out of your wallet and you take your cart. You buy your stuff then you go out in the parking lot. You load the goods into your car trunk.

Then you take the cart back to its place and you take your 1 Euro coin back.

So what's this got to do with sustainability?

Wave Turbine Energy or How To Transform Wave's Motion Force into Green Electricity

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Solar is only a part of the solution.

The funny thing is, even wave energy solutions make use of wind turbines. At least the Voith system.

So how do you produce electricity out of wave's motion force?

How To Store Renewable Energy and What To Do with an Abandoned Coal Mine - Video

Since renewable energy is achieving more ground lately, one of the issues that appears is storing it.

Fossil fuels themselves are a form of stored energy so the only thing we need to do is extract them. Once we have them, storing it's not a problem.

Green energy on the other hand is different and most of the time it isn't stored. It's delivered right into the grid for immediate consumption.

But if you want to build a true energy independent household (or city) you have to store your renewable energy. And how do you do that?

Why Gas Station Owners Should Consider Investing in Green Energy

The guys who are selling us oil now, will be the same guys selling us green power in the following years.

Why?

Green Energy Feed-In Tariff Explained and The Secret of Germany's Renewable Energy Success Story - Video

The secret to Germany's green energy success story lies in the Renewable Energy Act (2004) and the feed in tariff.

So what's with these tariffs?

They provide fixed prices determined by public authorities for a certain period, mostly 20 years, which is to be paid per kilo-watt-hour by electricity companies to producers of green electricity. (Source)

This means that if your solar site or wind farm produces energy that's fed into the national electricity grid, you are entitled to receive a certain price from the utility company which actually buys your energy and resells it to consumers.