Tag Archives: Sun Energy

Video: After The Storm

Richard Ha writes:

What a storm! The house shook with intense thunder and lightning last night. This morning, an eleven-mile stretch of Highway 19 was closed, 20 miles north of us, because of the storm.

During the day today we expect no more than 6 mols/meter square of plant-useful sun energy. Ideally, tomatoes need 25 mols/meter square.

Cloud cover and rain are most associated with low sun energy. This low sun energy applies to PV systems on people’s roofs, too. Leaves are another kind of solar radiation collector.

But even though the sun energy is down, our new hydro generator is at max production.

So, if the sun is bright, the plants smile and so do we. If it’s rainy, we generate more electricity.

Either way, we are happy.

Here’s information on waterflow in nearby Honoli‘i Stream as of this afternoon. It’s from the USGS (click to enlarge).

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 8.55.47 PM

Here’s the same information year to date.

Screen Shot 2013-12-31 at 9.29.51 AM

 

Energy On The Farm

Richard Ha writes:

We’ve had two days of rain and Wai‘a‘ama Stream is a raging torrent. Incredible amounts of water running down the flume!

In addition to using the water that’s all around us, we utilize the energy of the sun. Because what drives plant growth? Sun energy in a certain range.

Photosynthetically active radiation
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia

Photosynthetically active radiation, often abbreviated PAR, designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis….

 Read the rest

We use a sensor that measures the sun energy per meter squared and gives a number for the total accumulated in a day. We keep track of the total.

The sun energy total was low these last two days. This is something we expected, because the river has been raging.

Farmers routinely use scientific information. This is why I say farmers have common sense.

Definitions: Food Security vs. Food Self-Sufficiency

At our last Board of Agriculture meeting, Matthew Loke, Chief Economist for the Department of Agriculture, differentiated between “food security” and “food self-sufficiency.”

“Food security” means being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from. These days, it comes from all over the world. We are able to buy food from all over because money comes into our economy from the outside, with military spending and tourism being primary contributors. That provides us with money to pay for general services to our society and to buy our food.

“Food self-sufficiency” is when we grow all the food we need, right here at home.

As long as our economy functions smoothly, we have food security. Just go to your local grocery store and look at the variety of foodstuffs – from fruits to cereal to canned goods.

Food self-sufficiency is desirable as a hedge against when the economic supply lines start being challenged, at which time it’s more desirable to have our food sourced close to home. More and more, it’s looking like that time is coming.

Since we operate mainly as a market economy, we are influenced by the cost of producing that food. The concept “If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm” is a very important aspect of fresh food self-sufficiency.

We have very good resources and we need to use them in a smart, cost-effective way. The main reason we in Hawai‘i are lucky as we move toward self-sufficiency is the abundant sun energy we have. Sun combined with water availability gives us the primary input to growing stuff. And if we produce it close to where it is consumed, we save on transportation costs.

Hawaiians figured all this out many centuries ago. Here we are trying to solve the same problems all over again today.

What works, works.

Forcing Change

On Saturday, I spoke at a workshop on soil-less farming, which was put on by the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at UH Manoa. The core group was made up of aquaculture enthusiasts, and the workshop expanded into hydroponics (the growing of crops in soil-less media). About 170 people attended.

WorkshopParticipants

Fred Lau spoke on the challenges that he has faced while developing his aquaponic operation. Tim Mann and Susan Friend spoke on their Friendly aquaponic operation on the Big Island. They sell modular aquaponic systems with complete, how-to instructions.

Tisha Uyehara spoke about marketing produce. She pointed out the importance of growing what is in demand, and in the quantity and quality that retailers need.

I was asked to speak about Hamakua Springs’ hydroponic tomatoes. I started by asking how many in the audience were new farmers or folks who are interested in farming. Maybe 40 people raised their hands. They looked to be younger folks, in their 20s to 30s. I have noticed that lots of folks are interested in farming; they are just trying to figure out how they can make a living at it. I got the feeling that most of the audience was made up of community folks.

Instead of talking about the technical details of our operation, which they could learn by taking courses or getting information from the internet, I decided to share with them the thought processes that went into developing our farm.

I related how my Pop told us small kids to look for three answers to every problem and then find one more. He also said, “There are a thousand reason why no can; I am only looking for the one reason why Can!”

I told them about being influenced by my experiences in the jungles of Vietnam, where the unwritten rule was that “We all come back or no one comes back.” I liked that attitude of taking care of each other. Although I had flunked out of UH earlier, this time I knew I wanted to go into business and so I decided to major in accounting, in order to keep score.

Then Pop asked me to come and run the family poultry farm. I had no money, but really that was a blessing, because then I could not lose money. Instead, I gained experience. We traded chick manure to get banana keiki, and eventually grew to be the largest banana farm in Hawai‘i.

Along the way, we had to change and adapt constantly, and so change is second nature to us. We just look into the future five to 10 years, and force the changes to get us there. I told the audience that this is the secret to our survival. It isn’t rocket science, but is common sense: Being able to adapt and force change are traits that have served us well over the years.

I could tell from the audience’s reaction that they absolutely got it; that they have the tools, or can get the tools, that are necessary to make a difference.

Six or seven years ago, we realized that input costs to our farm were rising due to the fossil fuel component. I went to the Peak Oil Conference to learn about oil and figure out how we would force change so we could adapt our farm to be relevant in the future.

I learned that the world has been using twice as much oil as it has been finding, and has been doing so for 20 to 30 years. That was clearly not sustainable and we set out to transform our farm. We looked into using the water flowing downstream to generate electricity. Soon we will be completely off the electric grid.

We also downsized our farm, and then made up for the loss of production by leasing land to area farmers. The result is that the productivity of our land has actually increased, and the variety of products has increased as well. Another benefit: It strengthens our community.

I talked about how sun energy gives mainland farmers an edge over Hawai‘i farmers. Long summer days result in high production, and as the production follows the sun around the country, this advantage is kept throughout summer.

But I told the audience that we could get an advantage if we were able to use our natural resources to get cheaper electricity. Quite often folks think that fuel is the highest cost of getting farm-grown food to the table. It is actually the cost of electricity that is more important. Keeping the cold chain from the farm to the home refrigerator is actually more costly than the cost to run the tractors.

When oil is $100 per barrel, which is near today’s price, the cost to make electricity from oil is around 20 cents/kWh. However, the cost to make electricity from geothermal is only about 10 cents/kWh, and it will remain stable.

Lloyds of London warns of $200 per barrel oil by 2013. The cost to generate electricity from that oil will rise to 40 cents/kWh, while geothermal electricity will stay at 10 cents/kWh.

The answer to food and economic security is to force change.

I was struck by people’s reactions to my talk. The way that people expressed their appreciation for what I said makes me think that people are getting very worried for Hawai‘i’s future. I think that people felt hopeful, that common sense was more important to survival than any amount of letters after one’s title.

We are Teaching Our Economics Students Wrong

In economics, we teach everyone that Land, Labor and Capital are the elements of production. Along the line, we forgot that energy from cheap oil is what made deploying Capital so important. We started to believe that growth was automatic. And we taught that to millions of students.

The U.S. Department of Education shows 4,861 colleges and universities with 18,248,128 students in 2007. We are teaching these students wrong. Millions of students are being taught that finite resources are not important.

The cover of the July 4th edition of Barron’s magazine says Get Ready for $150 Oil:

…As oil producers’ spare capacity gradually declines to worrisome levels, the average monthly price could reach a record $150 per barrel by next spring, with spikes to $165 or $170. With this, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline will become the norm. That will put a huge dent in consumer wallets, while ramping up the desirability of fuel-efficient cars.

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Why is this a surprise?

We’ve known about Peak Oil for at least 20 years. How come our whole country was not warned, so we could be preparing?

Maybe this complex society we have built from cheap oil has become too complex to understand?

To look back: In the 1600s, those who owned lots of land were wealthy. The energy that made things grow was the sun. So the more land you had, the more sun energy was working for you. Makes sense.

Then in the 1700s, we started to use metal tools to produce more food and so we had extra people floating around. We organized the extra people in factories, and with steam engines we produced wealth. Okay, that’s understandable. The Industrial Revolution came about and Labor was an important factor of production. So far, so good.

Then in the mid-1800s we started to use cheap oil, and over the next 150 years we built a very complex society. We needed to keep score and deploy resources and so we described that as Capital. And things became very complex.

So what happens as oil starts to decline? It seems to me that the total amount of work the people of the world can do will also decline. Let’s say that instead of a full four quarts of gas, you are sent out to cut down trees with your chainsaw and only three quarts of gas. You will probably produce fewer logs and be less productive.

Hall_murphy_change-in-gdp

I think that is what we can expect to happen to the world economy.

I truly believe that the social science of economics has lost its way.

This is Part One of a three part discussion. See Part Two here.