In an ordinary farm, people plow, cultivate, then harvest. But turning around and look at the so called farms people built to “harvest” renewable energy today, one would have found the odd phenomenon of harvesting without cultivation. Where is the act of cultivation on such a farm?
When looking at a solar farm, it doesn’t seem like anybody is planting “sunshine”. When looking at a wind farm, it doesn’t look like someone is planting “wind”. Even in a good’ol hydro-power station, it’s hard to say someone is intentionally planting the “rain”. Yet, people still use the term “harvest” when talking about converting and storing energy from these various forms. These activities of “harvesting”, “collecting” “hunting” remind people of the prehistorical time, when mankind gathered and stored energy from the wilderness without planting seeds and cultivating soil.
But we no longer live in prehistoric time, and we don’t have to rely on the pure natural cycle to provide energy source before “farming” and “herding” then “harnessing” energy sources. Everybody who works on a farm or in cattle trade would understand, cultivated fields and raised animals would provide much reliable and bountiful source of food, wealth and energy.
Now in our modern civilization, the question has become: can wind, light, and rain be seeded, cultivated, before being harvested? The answer is positive. In the 21st century, we now live in a quantum age. The word “quantum” usually implies discrete, non-continuous and tiny-packaged. Such non-continuous, tiny-packaged small amount of wind, rain or light, can be planted by ordinary farm hands, then cultivated by them before getting ready to be harvested.
First let’s talk about how to seed “wind”. Wind is defined as “air movement”. Moving of air can be caused by pressure gradients in nature. It’s common to see pressure gradients existing in life, such as in “heart”, “lung”, “roots and tree trunk”. Also it is common to see relative vacuum existing in siphon. These devices and confined environments are easy to build, especially in the days when “artificial intelligence system” is becoming such a catchy phrase, the duality of this phrase “robotic cardiopulmonary system” should be just as easy to build. After arranging robotic hearts and lungs like carefully arranged domino cards, we can see a snowball effect or domino effect that will increase the energy density of such devices dramatically. The increase chain of robotic hearts and lungs, can generate energy equivalent of “atomic energy reactor” – to form “quantum energy reactor”. With “cultivation” paired with “harvesting”, a true “farm” is constructed to produce energy from wind in a controllable fashion, avoiding the awkward unpredictability of totally relying on natural wind.
Because the above “breathing” mechanism moves the air through the system, moisture in the air also moves along the wind. Therefore the process of seeding “wind” also brought in “rain” into the power generation devices. Such byproduct of “rain” is the energy source of hydro-power generation. It is common knowledge that wind and rain are inseparable. Wind always bring in rain, barring the fact that it could only be quantum amount of “rain” in this case. But accumulation is an amazing thing. Every small dose of tiny quantum “rain” brought in by breathing of robotic heart and lung, can be added up to have a snowball effect also. And we all know that snowball to avalanche can generate large amount of power. Considering a snowball or rain precipitation can be carefully placed at the top of a tall building, such an controlled avalanche, or interesting domino toppling game can be a well planned cultivation process for “rain”, with its energy readily “harvested”.
While discussing the above planting and cultivation activities, the seeds for photovoltaic energy source – “light” – is already included. Light can be considered as a mass-less wave, a form of electromagnetic wave. When putting together with the equation of atomic energy, the quantum energy equation included the duality of photoelectric effect.
mc2 = E = hv
The second half of this equation depicted in the vector space of the world without mass (wave), as long as there are quantum changes, energy can still be generated. Such energy created from wave can be comparable to those energy generated in the dual vector space with mass (particle). In the 20th century and early part of the 21st century, e=hv has been often regarded as only referring to “sunshine”, to have any real practical economic value. But theoretical physics has never limited the light source to be only “sunshine”. Max Planck derived the equation out of black body radiation, and Stephen Hawking became famous for stating even black hole emits radiation (non visible rays). Therefore quantum theory has extended “light” to be in many different forms.
In some languages, “light” means “relative vacuum”, and in some others, “light” can mean “with little weight”. All the experiences and observations in the history of humanity point us to one conclusion that: when we plant relative vacuum in our surrounding environment, then we can effectively harvest quantum energy, to provide clean water and clean energy, while avoiding the excessive unpredictability of mother nature.
New technology usually brings new socioeconomic relationships to the world. It would be interesting to see what happens when mankind truly starts “farming” wind, rain and light.