My mom and I just got back from our annual vacation together.  This year, we headed north instead of south, to South Dakota.  This required a drive through Wyoming.  I’ve lived 45 minutes from Wyoming for the last four years, and have never managed to visit.

The high plains we drove through rolled on before us, with interesting rock outcroppings, bison ranches, and windmills to break up the monotony.  It is some beautiful countryside.  And what always strikes me about areas like this is how much energy could be harnessed from the sun or wind, yet we see only a few power-producing windmills, and virtually no solar capturing.  That seems so wasteful.

Once in Wyoming and past Cheyenne, we stopped at a small rest area.  All I could think about was using the bathroom, so wasn’t paying a lot of attention until I was sitting on the toilet looking up.  One wall of the room slanted at a 45-degree angle toward the ceiling, and was covered in metal panels on a cantilevered mechanism that told me they opened like shutters.  They were closed, but I could see light around the edges.  This intrigued me, so once I was back outside, I walked the perimeter of the building, looking for these giant shutters.

I didn’t find shutters, but I found a complete solar system in place on that same wall.  It turns out, the entire rest area is powered by solar.  There was the passive solar of the shutters, and a more active system of panels.  The solar power collected into batteries was being used to heat water, heat the buildings, and provide the power to lights and other electric needs in the building.  They even had a large panel displaying exactly how they were using solar to power everything the rest stop needed.

This part of Wyoming is virtually tree-less, and the long sunny days provide more solar than any small setup would ever need.  And in places like this, and places like where I live, solar should be the way to go.  Yet there are only a handful of places in town where solar is being used.  There is, I guess, no incentive to use solar, so it doesn’t happen.

I have long thought that there should be a requirement that all new construction, whether it is residential or commercial, contain solar energy collection methods.  There is no reason a big roof just needs to be shingles.  So much energy falls out of the sky, we should be taking advantage of it.

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