Catrin and I are movie buffs. While we enjoy contemporary music very much, our true pop culture passion is for modern cinema. The DVD players in our home see a fair amount of use but for us, the ultimate cinematic experience takes place at our local multiplex with 200 or more of our closest friends watching a 70-foot convex screen in unison.
The first Hollywood production which we saw dealing with the rubble of what once was the KGB was the film Terminal Velocity. If not for above-average performances by Nastassja Kinski and Christopher McDonald, this film would belong in the B movie pantheon. Well, it relates to global warming because it features a brief but important sequence in a giant wind power farm in the Mojave Desert. That was the first time I had seen such an array of wind turbines, whether in person or on screen.
A decade later, as I sat in one of the very fascinating break-out sessions of the Solar World Congress in Orlando, I saw a PowerPoint presentation about a design of a large photovoltaic power plant and listened as its merits were explained. As fate would have it, just a few weeks later, I saw the film Sahara which culminates the main story arc at a solar power plant of the same ilk!
I mention all of this because it points to one of the most ingenious aspects in the architecture of the Interstate Traveler. Typically, the design of a large photovoltaic power plant takes into account cloud cover patterns and the path which the sun follows over the panels throughout the year. While clouds and the earth’s tilt affect the Interstate Traveler as well, the overall impact on energy production is minimal because once the system is built along most every mile of multilane highway in North America, a passing shower or early sunset will mean very little.
In the second half of this thought, I will explain how this works. Of course, if you come to the Green Earth Expo, you’ll be able to hear Justin Sutton explain it in his own words.
Sustainable Justice For All!
Corbett Kroehler
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