Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York’s Capital District. Roughly 135 miles (217 km) north of the City of New York, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. The population of the city was 97,856 at the time of the 2010 census.
The Empire Plaza and connected buildings (Alfred E Smith and Capitol) use 111 gigawatt hours of power a year (electricity only, doesn’t include fossil heating or cooling).
To build a solar farm to power the Empire Plaza it would require demolishing 320 acres of buildings in the city of Albany, which is three and third more buildings then had to demolished to build the Empire Plaza itself – figuring 2.8 acres of land needed within the city for every gigawatt hour per year of electricity generated.
That’s roughly the area of the South Mall Arterial to Interstate 787 to the FBI Building to an imaginary line connecting to Eagle Street. 100 percent renewable sounds like a good idea, but it has an enormous environmental impact.
At least that’s what my back of the envelope calculations show.
The big inverter in my truck is rated 800 watts or 6.5 amps which is the same as 6,500 milliamps. It takes roughly 100 miliamps to stop a human heart. Yet, I don’t give much though to my worn electric cords that in some cases have bare wires. Certainly I could get a nasty shock from them but it’s actually fairly unlikely and a fatal shock is quite unlikely. Why not?
While the inverter will stall and go into fault mode, shutting off output upon overload that’s far above the levels needed for a nasty shock. But because the neutral on the inverter is floating – not tied to the ground and is not supposed to be referenced to the frame of the truck if the isolation is proper the shock risk is quite low. Electricity is defined as the difference in electrons between the hot side and the neutral – in alternating current the difference can be either positive or negative.
But for electricity to exist the neutral and the hot must be connected together at the source – either in the battery, the coil of the alternator / generator or the solar panel. No reference between the hot and the neutral and therefore no power exists.
So if I were to touch the hot wire on one of my electrical wires running off the inverter, no power would be transmitted, even though I’m touching the ground as the hot wire on the inverter is not referenced to the ground, it’s simply referenced to the floating neutral. There is no shock potential unless I touch the neutral wire at the same time, and it’s unlikely such a shock would run through both hands or to the ground.
Large electrical systems are referenced to the earth, because the earth has a fairly stable number of electrons across long distances unlike a floating ground. This means the voltage is more stable and also means if a wire touches the ground if it will quickly throw a breaker. If lightening strikes the line, it also will be quickly passed to the ground, avoiding melting many miles of wire. But it also means if you touch a hot wire, you’ll get a very nasty shock if you are touching the ground.
The lumber district of Albany, New York was relatively small in the 1830s with around six wholesale lumber merchants, but by the 1870s Albany was the largest lumber district in the United States by value, though by that time it had recently been outstripped in feet sold by Chicago.
For about a quarter century in the middle of the 19th century the Albany lumber district was considered the largest white pine wholesale market. There were 3,963 sawmills operating in the lumber district in 1865 but by 1900 there were only around 150. A fire ripped through the district in 1908 signalling the decline of the lumber industry for Albany.
