You don't need electricity to send or receive power quickly. In the second half of the nineteenth century, we commonly used fast-moving ropes. These wire rope transmissions were more efficient than electricity for distances up to 5 kilometres. Even today, a nineteenth-century rope drive would be more efficient than electricity over relatively short distances. If we used modern materials for making ropes and pulleys, we could further improve this forgotten method.
The history of energy use in human civilisation is generally summarised as follows: from Antiquity until the start of the Industrial Revolution, people made use of the manual labour of both animals and humans, as well as biomass, sun, water and wind.
Next, all these renewable energy sources were replaced by fossil fuels: first coal, and later oil and gas. Uranium completed the picture in the second half of the twentieth century.
While this historical summary is basically correct, there were some - rather important - exceptions. Almost all of the leading economies in Western Europe during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.
Most of the talk about renewable energy is aimed at electricity production. However, most of the energy we need is heat, which solar panels and wind turbines cannot produce efficiently. To power industrial processes like the making of chemicals, the smelting of metals or the production of microchips, we need a renewable source of thermal energy. Direct use of solar energy can be the solution, and it creates the possibility to produce renewable energy plants using only renewable energy plants, paving the way for a truly sustainable industrial civilization.
If we boost the research on pedal powered technology - trying to make up for seven decades of lost opportunities - and steer it in the right direction, pedals and cranks could make an important contribution to running a post-carbon society that maintains many of the comforts of a modern life. The possibilities of pedal power largely exceed the use of the bicycle.
Pedalling a modern stationary bicycle to produce electricity might be a great work-out, but in many cases, it is not sustainable. While humans are rather inefficient engines converting food into work, this is not the problem we want to address here; people have to move in order to stay healthy, so we might as well use that energy to operate machinery. The trouble is that the present approach to pedal power results in highly inefficient machines.
The waterwheel was seen as the most important power source in the world, from the Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century. When smaller streams became saturated, medieval engineers turned their attention to larger rivers, eventually leading to the development of the hydropower dams that still exists today. Lesser known are the intermediate steps toward that technology: boat mills, bridge mills and hanging mills. Boat mills had already appeared in 6th century Italy and spread all over the world. Most of them remained in use up until the end of the 1800s, with some of them surviving well into the 1900s.
Increasing the share of renewable energy will not make us any less dependent on fossil fuels as long as total energy consumption keeps rising. Renewable energy sources do not replace coal, oil or gas plants, they only meet (part of) the growing demand.
In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill.
The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?
A real-world test performed by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy place) confirms our earlier analysis that small windmills are a fundamentally flawed technology (test results here, pdf in Dutch). Twelve of these much hyped machines were placed in a row on an open plain (picture above). Their energy yield was measured over a period of one year (April 1, 2008 - March 31, 2009), the average wind velocity during these 12 months was 3.8 meters per second (note: update on the wind speed). Three windmills broke. Find the disappointing results of the others below.
A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.
Hand powered drilling tools and machines The drilling tools that appeared in the late 19th century were not only a vast improvement over earlier tools; they also have many advantages over their present-day successors, the power drills.
Pedal powered farms and factories Pedals and cranks could make an important contribution to running a post-carbon society that maintains many of the comforts of a modern life.
Firewood in the fuel tank Wood gas cars are a not-so-elegant but surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol (gasoline) cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars.
The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s In spite of all the high-tech that has been squeezed into cars since then, the 2CV from 1949 is still more energy-efficient than the smallest model of the French car designer today.
Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain These days, we use them almost exclusively to transport skiers and snowboarders up snow slopes, but before the 1940s, aerial ropeways were a common means of cargo transport.
The bright future of solar powered factories To power industrial processes like the making of chemicals, the smelting of metals or the production of microchips and solar panels, we need a renewable source of thermal energy.
Insulation: first the body, then the home Modern thermal underclothing offers the possibility to turn the thermostat much lower without sacrificing comfort or sex appeal.
The monster footprint of digital technology The embodied energy of the memory chip alone already exceeds the energy consumption of a laptop during its life expectancy of 3 years
The age of speed: how to reduce global fuel consumption by 75 percent Engineers treat velocity as a non-variable, while in fact it is the most powerful factor to save a really huge amount of energy - with just one stroke, at minimal cost, and without the need for new technology.
Ropes and Knots Ropes and knots are among the most ancient and useful technologies ever developed by man, predating the wheel, the axe and probably also the use of fire.
Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph More than 200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an aeroplane – wireless and without need for electricity.
Trolley canal boats For many centuries, canal boats were propelled by men, horses or mules on the towpath beside the water. Before diesel power took over, engineers developed several interesting methods powered by electricity: trolleyboats, floating funiculars and electric mules.
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