I would like to work in the field of alternate energy (sell, install, educate). What should I major in?
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at
12:36 pm
My husband and I would like to start a business involving alternate energy. We would like to sell and install wind generators and solar panels in homes, and possibly grow into building eco-friendly homes. My husband wants to do all the business stuff (selling, etc) and I would like to learn more about it from the scientific stand point. The problem is, I’m looking at colleges and I’m not sure what I could major in. I would like to go to Univ. of Oklahoma since I live close by, but looking at their majors, I’m not sure they have anything even close. Anyone have any suggestions?
Filed under: Wind Power
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Are you good with math and sciences? You could go about this two different ways. You could go the more techincal route or you could go the more hands-on route.
If you are more techincal you could look into going into Electrical Engineering. This is not an Easy major so you would have to consider that in most cases this a 4-5 year investment. However you would learn about most of the principles behind how we generate, route, and use electricity. You would also learn the skills needed to design some of your own ideas. If you don’t have 4 years to spend learning. This may not be an option. Electrical Engineering requires you to go through all of the maths… (algebra, trig, Calc 1-3, Differential Equations, etc…) also all of the basic sciences, Chemistry, physics, thermo dynamics, etc.. And then onto your EE courses. Once you have your batchelors degree you can take your EIT (engineer in training) test or equivalent. After a few years experience you can then apply to take the PE (professional Engineer) test which would allow you to design, build, and sign off on projects. (a requirement in most states)
Another route would be to go to a 2 year Tech school for electronics or to be an electrictrian. These would give you a more hands-on knowledge of how physically connect and work on the devices you are interested in. You may not learn how to design a system but you could sure hook one up. This may require you to get an apprenticeship with an established electrician but it would provide good experience.
All of that stuff is so old my grandpa was doing it . I do it for a hobby my kids do it just to make me happy . Allot of people need to understand that that’s all old technology we are going into a new era a totally new alternative energy . If all that old stuff like solar cells wind turbans was the answer to our power need don’t you think you would see it all over the place especially now with the energy crises we are facing . Doesn’t it ever make you wonder why not and why the government isn’t going all out to convert us to that technology.
You need to study fusion . Forget about the past technology its over or about to be obsolete . Your going to have your disbelievers just like you have your disbelievers in global warming we even still have disbelievers that man went to the moon but they did and time changes technology changes and isn’t going to wait until everyone understands it .
Do you and your husband a favor and check out this site http://www.nanodetonator.com go into questions and answers get into the forum and ask questions . I’m don’t know if there still giving out licenses or not but i do know that its about to bust wide open . If you or any of you decide to go that wrought remember dad from yahoo answers ill be there getting rich and helping to change the world for the best . With that kind of energy you cant do anything but good.
I personally wouldn’t recommend electrical engineering.
It is quite complex, requires quite some math and is very theoretical (I studied a lot of it and don’t even remember 1/3).
I also do not see quite frankly the interest since motors and generators already have efficiencies around 98% which leaves little room for improvement !
Much more interesting is the field of passive houses for example which only consume 5% of the energy a normal building would. We even have already created buildings with a "net positive energetic contribution".
I know that in Europe, each of the major countries offers something like 40 MSc in "renewable energies", "sustainability" "energy technologies" and "environmental supply and processes engineering". The number really exploded during the last 5 years.
I personally graduated from a MSc in conventional and renewable energies and I am very happy with it since I learned a lot from insiders in almost all renewable energy generations (+energy efficiency).
It’s all over and done! All that remains is to get the gov off their assets and get this moving!
Go to http://www.uspto.gov and enter patent number 5,430,333.
There you will see pollution free electric power able to be built to be more than 1000 times that of our largest Nuclear Reactor!
Plant Vogtle, our last Nuclear Reactor makes only 930 megawatts.
The first generation “baby” power plants from this new technology makes 1000 megawatts.
Vogtle cost $10 billion, 30 years ago.
These new power plants cost $2.5 billion in today’s money.
Vogtle is about to be retired, as are all our other Nuclear plants.
All the fueled power plants only have about a 30 life span.
The power plant design you will see at patent office site live well 100 years.
They burn NO fuel what so ever!
It costs more to demolish a Nuclear plant than to build one new!
The spent Nuclear fuel has a 25,000 year storage problem with no solution yet, and a tremendous cost that defies accurate estimation due to the very long time frame.
Nuclear power has been estimated to cost more $50.00 per kilowatt hour when the demolition and storage costs are applied.
Guess who gets to foot that bill, the tax payer!
Being fuel-less the design you see at the patent office has a cost of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour.
Coal fired power plants make 8 lbs of air pollution to run 100 watt light bulb for an hour.
There are NO cost estimations for the clean up of all that pollution.
We keep seeing in the news about coal miners dieing in cave-ins.
With the high cost of electric power being hidden for so long by our politicians using their abysmally poor judgment to allow this to happen in the first place. Then compounding the problem with their constant lying about it to all of us, and the problem now coming to light despite their best efforts to lie and hide it. We are now stuck with the costs of their abysmally poor judgment after their being “paid” by big power to lie to us about the scope of this problem for decades.
Call all your elected official state, local, and federal. Tell them you want the pollution free electric power you saw at the patent office web site! Tell them to get off their assets and get moving on making pollution free and cheaper electric power happen ASAP!
Or swallow their lies so more until our nation is so polluted our children die younger than ever before. Cancer is running rampant everywhere, it comes from all the pollution our elected officials are allowing to be spewed into “our” environment every day. It time to put pollution into it’s proper place, “THE PAST”!
We now have the technology, we can build it, it’s 100% clean, and the electric power is cheaper than ANY fueled power plant.