Assignment 2

São Paulo Power Plant Trip

Today we visited a power plant, and they say that seeing is believing. I would truly agree with this. I think that learning about something in a textbook is vastly different from actualizing it in real life. I believe that when one reads, they don't necessarily visualize and actualize the whole story. Seeing the solar power plant helped me comprehend what we are actually learning about. 

I was able to see how the energy is harvested from the sun as DC current, and then inverted into AC current. I found it quite impressive to be able to see something I had never seen before, something new, and something that I believe is in the direction of the future in terms of our energy usage. I think we still have a long way to go, and although solar may not be the perfect solution, seeing a bunch of panels is certainly more comforting than a bunch of SOx & NOx being released in the atmosphere.

I also found the command center quite interesting to look at. I think a lot of the time for so many things we fail to consider all the infrastructure that needs to be put in place in order for things to function. I found the fact that everything could be monitored remotely and a lot of things detected and repaired remotely was quite cool, and that by being able to more greatly monitor the energy we can better understand how it is being used, and perhaps learn to curb our excess use, and become more conservative with what we use.

I had a fair amount of discussion with the employees at this power plant and I found it very comforting to hear the direction in which things were moving. I am glad that technology is improving to increase solar energy and hopefully we can further reduce our use of fossil fuels as a society. As human beings, we have made a huge environmental impact on our planet, and I think that this is particularly evident in Brazil. Being home to such a vast rainforest and much other nature, I think it is important that we protect what still exists and to minimize our polluting to the earth.