Energy Flashes

TAKE YOUR EXISTING HOT WATER SYSTEM, make a few relatively simple pipe connections, and hook on Solar Power Corporation's TK 101 Collector. According to the manufacturer, that's about all there is to converting your home to solar-heated hot water. The product is said to be relatively inexpensive and its main panel is guaranteed for twenty years! For more information, contact Solar Power Corporation, 930 Clock tower Parkway, New Port Richey, Fla. 33552.

PLANS TO HARNESS TIDAL POWER off the coasts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia may eventually mean ocean-produced electricity for all of New England. A proposed five-mile-long dam at the Bay of Fundy would store incoming water at high tide, then direct the impounded liquid into turbine generators at low tide. Similar projects are being studied in Russia, Britain, and France.

INEXPENSIVE SOLAR CELLS may become a reality thanks to Dr. A.I. Mlavsky of Tyco Laboratories in Waltham, Massachusetts. Dr. Mlavsky's new technique for making silicon solar cells requires no handwork, etching, or polishing. Mobil Oil Corporation has joined Tyco Labs in efforts to adapt the process to factory production. It's believed that-in about five years-you'll be able to buy a 1,000-watt solar cell array for about $330 at your local solar energy store.

AN ENGINE POWERED BY TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCES? Yep! Described simply, a wheel-spoked with thin strands of a high expansion/contraction alloy called 55-Nitinol-rotates over baths of solar-warmed and cold water. During the cold half of the cycle, the "spokes" become limp and as they pass into the hot water, the strands attempt to straighten themselves back into their original shape. The resulting spring-like action against the throw of a fixed crankshaft sets the engine in motion. Ridgeway Banks, the inventor, is now working on a model expected to be capable of powering an electrical generator!

THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE'S OFFICE OF ENERGY PROGRAMS says that if current energy consumption trends continue for the next ten years we'll all be mighty hard put to meet the demand. How hard? Well, according to the Office, we'd have to dig the equivalent of 150 Panama Canals to meet the need for coal production. Or-if we were to choose nuclear power as our energy "savior"- we'd have to put at least one 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station into operation each week between now and 1985.