This does give the German Empire greater reason to invest in Namibia.
Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)
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The drama with Australia is that most of his rich mineral wealth is pretty far off the coast, with today technology is no drama, but in the late XIX early XX is an unnecesary difficult , of course they could use the boiler there are mines closer to the coast
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That would likely mean that Australia wouldn't rich their mineral boom until after they left the British Empire and around like the 1930s and going on from there...The drama with Australia is that most fd his rich mineral welth is prety far of the coast, with today technology is no drama, but in the late XIX early XX is an unnecesary difficult , of course they could use the boiler there are mines closer to the coast
Mongolia has a good bit of red, so maybe they at least won't have to heat their homes with coal.
Better air quality and less respiratory diseases.
Better air quality and less respiratory diseases.
That is presuming WW1 happens as per OTL - we are a long way off that yet.
Good fun latest chapter there @ScorchedLight
Abelino López-Tikuña and Izumi Ichirou - thank you for inventing double glazing!
Well this is more or less what happened IOTL, so yes, but with better, and cheaper, energy sources and tools to her develop, and by extension a better industrial base.
These are small stories designed to be a glimpse into the world's development beyond the main focus of politics, societal change and technical evolution related to Solar energy.
Speaking of which, next update will cover what Poul La Cour is doing in Denmark.
Will colonies be encouraged to industrialize?
On one hand it gives them more value than just resource extraction and could get some actually turning real profits.
On the other hand it may give those colonies ideas about independence, unless real effort is made to get Namibians to consider themselves German or Algerians to think of themselves as French.
And for the British India is mostly yellow with some bits of red in what would be Pakistan.
That will be interesting for both decolonization and any potential partition.
That was a nice little chapter. Sounds like it's time to get snow-shovelling. I wonder though, how bad is the impact on capital cost of having to use two panes of glass rather than 1?
Annex 1890: A Cold Winter II
Askov, Denmark
January, 1890
Poul la Cour had conflicting feelings over his latest development. It wasn't the grand invention that would change the world, but rather another helpful but unremarkable part of a whole.
But it had the potential to be profitable. And, as his correspondence with Dr. Hess in Sicily suggested, it was profitability the key to funding. It was the reason why scientific and technical magazines and journals were slowly moving articles about solar-powered devices from the back to... well, not the cover, but a place of prominence. Why the language describing them had changed from short accounts describing curiousities in remote places like Egypt and Chile, to serious analysis of the sun's potential as an energy source.
And it was the reason why Augustin Mouchot's water heaters were advertised in French magazines, when a decade prior his work was all but forgotten.
And it was that which gave him hope. What his device lacked in ambition (as it was just an adaption of Joule's demonstration of the heat-work equivalence), it made up with practicality. A wind turbine connected to an impeller inside a water tank.
It worked well while the wind blew. Water heated up, then boiled, keeping the house pleasantly warm.
And when the air was still... it was a catastrophe at first. The water reservoir froze solid and once winds blew again, it shattered the turbine. He experimented with oil, which was expensive, and antifrost mixtures, which reduced the machine's efficiency. A centrifugal regulator and a simple electric heating element, powered by the same turbine, were enough for the system to start working again after a stoppage.
Poul was an inventor, and so he knew that investors would only come if they were certain of the machine's capabilities. So he tested the machine for a whole month. He willingly pushed it to its limits, and it proved itself. The reservoir could freeze if the blades stopped, but the heating elements guaranteed a film of liquid water which could lubricate the block of ice, allowing it to move and then melt and boil.
And sure, the machine had its limitations. It would always need a coal boiler to complement it when the winds didn't blow. Or at least until somebody invented a way to store large quantities of heat.
But that was a problem for another time. Today, Poul La Cour had something in his hands that would be profitable. Something that would allow him to fund more ambitious research.
January, 1890
Poul la Cour had conflicting feelings over his latest development. It wasn't the grand invention that would change the world, but rather another helpful but unremarkable part of a whole.
But it had the potential to be profitable. And, as his correspondence with Dr. Hess in Sicily suggested, it was profitability the key to funding. It was the reason why scientific and technical magazines and journals were slowly moving articles about solar-powered devices from the back to... well, not the cover, but a place of prominence. Why the language describing them had changed from short accounts describing curiousities in remote places like Egypt and Chile, to serious analysis of the sun's potential as an energy source.
And it was the reason why Augustin Mouchot's water heaters were advertised in French magazines, when a decade prior his work was all but forgotten.
And it was that which gave him hope. What his device lacked in ambition (as it was just an adaption of Joule's demonstration of the heat-work equivalence), it made up with practicality. A wind turbine connected to an impeller inside a water tank.
It worked well while the wind blew. Water heated up, then boiled, keeping the house pleasantly warm.
And when the air was still... it was a catastrophe at first. The water reservoir froze solid and once winds blew again, it shattered the turbine. He experimented with oil, which was expensive, and antifrost mixtures, which reduced the machine's efficiency. A centrifugal regulator and a simple electric heating element, powered by the same turbine, were enough for the system to start working again after a stoppage.
Poul was an inventor, and so he knew that investors would only come if they were certain of the machine's capabilities. So he tested the machine for a whole month. He willingly pushed it to its limits, and it proved itself. The reservoir could freeze if the blades stopped, but the heating elements guaranteed a film of liquid water which could lubricate the block of ice, allowing it to move and then melt and boil.
And sure, the machine had its limitations. It would always need a coal boiler to complement it when the winds didn't blow. Or at least until somebody invented a way to store large quantities of heat.
But that was a problem for another time. Today, Poul La Cour had something in his hands that would be profitable. Something that would allow him to fund more ambitious research.
Yup. That's the long and short of it. And Africa will become a lot more comfortable for colonizers once Stirling coolers become mainstream.
Africa will suffer extensive changes in this timeline.
It's more expensive, but the energy savings it generates is enough to quickly offset the costs, and are a sound investment. Wallipinis operate in cold environments, and thus any increase in heating efficiency will be put to good use.
Although out of focus of the main story, sunken greenhouses will have a massive economic and cultural impact in the next century.
Economical theory dictates that a reduction in the cost of industrialization will result in higher industrialization. This is as much as can be said with certainty, as politics are also involved which can encourage or suppress development in the colonies.
Huh, never thought the O.G. demonstration of work/heat equivalence could be used as a practical heat source. Seems La Cour is a pretty cool guy, I wonder if TTL will see something resembling a modern wind turbine well ahead of schedule? (Plus if there is increased interest in propeller aerodynamics, that could accelerate aircraft development... but perhaps you'd want to cage that butterfly to avoid the scope going out of control). Is there any documented case of 'impeller heating' being used to outright bring water to boil OTL?
Friction heating is a pain to manage so you're not getting high temperatures out of it, but still a method of heating buildings by renewable energy that works in areas with much less sunlight will further normalize not being dependent on fossil fuels.
Friction heating is a pain to manage so you're not getting high temperatures out of it, but still a method of heating buildings by renewable energy that works in areas with much less sunlight will further normalize not being dependent on fossil fuels.
The machine described is based on this article in Low Tech Magazine.
Indeed, that site is an inspiration for a lot of elements in this TL, and is one of my favourite parts of the internet.
As for Poul la Cour, he is similar to Augustin Mouchot in that both advocated for alternative energies and had practical designs for large scale energy production when it wasn't direly needed.
Thus, it makes sense if he approaches the problem from a small scale ITTL.
Apologies if sounding rude, but I will have to note that may be not be wholly plausible.
Even if Stirling coolers become more mainstream, I don't see many people actually settling into Africa. I imagine many more would rather go to the United States, Canada or possibly Mexico if they're Catholic.
While the coolers may make it easier, main reason I don't think is because of appeal. Honestly, I think at most, it's gonna be like a scaled down version of what happened with France and Algeria. While it is still your timeline, I just wanted to give some advice because here, I kinda feel we need to cultural factors and other things into consideration here.
Might help Brazil, though, or the American South and Southwest. Perhaps Australia too. Anywhere air conditioners made a big difference in settlement patterns, obviously earlier access to air conditioning is useful. I was going to say something about refrigeration, but that's already commercially available for shipping...but, on the other hand, commercial refrigeration at this time faced a lot of challenges in becoming useful for consumers (as opposed to businesses), some of which Stirling coolers might be able to help with.
Feedback is always welcome, and doesn't come off as rude at all.
Most of the timeline is made as it goes (with some events I have thought from the beginning), but in this timeline sun irradiated areas will have competitive advantages that will make them more valuable for exploitation.
Again, this doesn't mean that Africa will become European. Just that more parts of Africa will be colonized and the proportion of colonizers will be larger than OTL.
True, but I would imagine not enough to make significant historical changes if because of other reasons they may not want to settle there. Though the increasing pushback and hostilities will make things interesting.
I am now wondering about Liberia in particular and Ethiopia. The former for US connection and the latter for remaining uncolonized (and ExtraHistory starting a series on Ethiopia)