Alain Stewart

Hey, I'm new to forums and this is actually my first post to a forum. By the way Red Alert, just adding to your understanding of the windmill idea, I recently went to a workshop on Sustainability and Urbanisation run by the Singapore Economic Development Board for the BETA competition. During the workshop, the audience was shown a presentation on Singapore's energry requirements. I, as part of the audience was shown the statistics of how much energy Singapore requires to function as it is. Just from recalling my memory that day; if you could measure Singapore's total energry requirements for 1 year in 50 Singapores; if Singapore covered their entire land with solar panels, the total amount of energy the solar panels would be able to harvest from the sun would only account for about 3 Singapores out of 50. On the other hand, if you covered Singapore with wind turbines, the energy harvested from them would only account for about 2 Singapores out of 50. So sadly, it would just not be sufficient enough, so Singapore would be better of investing in other means of renewable energy or into R&D. By the way, I don't mean to de-moralise anyone on their hopes for solar panels and windturbines to save the day, I just want to make an interesting point and ask everyone to take it as a "feasible reality check" because I too was wondering the same; "why not cover Singapore in solar panels or windmills?" However, the reason I came across this forum was out of my own interest, I too thought if there was a way to harvest energy from lightning. It would be interesting if we found the stats on how much energy is generated from a single lighting strike and if that would be sufficient enough to power Singapore over a given period of time. If it is so, and if a way is found to harvest and allocate and utilize the energy, then there may be an end to our search for "alternative energy in a renewable form". My own thought for Singapore to harvest energy; someone please help me out with this: the name of the model for harvesting energy from algae and seawater - I wonder how feasible that would be for Singapore. Alain