Thursday, February 28, 2008

Get your news at Burger King

I went for routine physical on Tuesday around 2:00 pm, and was a little early for my appointment. There was a Burger King across the street and I was hungry so I decided to get a Big Fish value meal. This includes a tasty big fish sandwich, a medium coke, and medium fries. (BTW, this is probably one of the least healthiest meals on BK's menu, or any other menu).

In any case, as I sat there enjoying my food, my eye caught the flashing red "NEWS FLASH" sign going across the BK dinning area plasma screen (Yes, the BK on 35th street and Jefferson has plasma!). The story of the Florida blackout being covered live on CNN. They kept showing live aerial footage from helicopters of what was happening on the street, as cars were trying to get past each other at traffic intersection, and people were aimlessly meandering on the street. They also kept showing some taped footage of a nuclear power plant off the coast.

As I watched the news story and the aerial footage that they were showing I could not stop thinking that if all the roofs that the helicopters kept flying over were covered by solar panels much of mayhem caused by this outage could have been avoided.

Sure there is the issue of, how the traffic lights would work, how xyz could have worked, but if each building was served by a solar panel, and if the power generated was either supplemented by the electrical grid or fed back to the electrical grid, or if the solar panels served as a electrical standby with battery storage and back-up so they could work if there was a problem with the distribution grid or if the problem occurred at night, that would be a good thing.

Any thoughts? About the idea or your experiences at BK.

No comments: