The Queen Mary - Solar Cells

23^rd June 2021

Dear Mayor Garcia,

Another in my ideas for saving The Queen Mary would be to make the overall property “greener” with solar cells. Partnering with a major company would mean a joint commercial for the ship which would reduce promotional costs. Something along the lines of a commercial saying “The Queen Mary trusts so and so to power dreams. Shouldn’t you?’

Certainly we couldn’t put solar cells on the ship herself but on the parking structure and the gangways. Hit up companies like Tesla and see if we could get the cells donated and the billionaire on the other end of that conversation may just write a check to repair the whole ship.

One of the two big problems with keeping The Queen Mary hotel afloat is that you’re paying not just to keep up a building, but also an ocean liner that is well past its life expectancy. The added maintenance means that in order to make the ship turn a profit some amount of reducing her upkeep will be needed.

The goal would be to get so many solar cells in there that the ship can make some money off selling the power. It would also mean turning up the air in the summer to attract more patrons wouldn’t be out of the question. Making Mary a cool place to beat the heat would attract more people.

This won’t save The Queen Mary in and of itself. This is but one piece of a large puzzle that will take years to assemble. The only real guide we have is that every piece counts.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

Reverse Osmosis

14^th August 2021

Dear Poseidon Water,

After seeing a short documentary on your company and reverse osmosis water I noted two issues with your desalination plant. These being that it uses a good deal of electrical power and that you are forced to dump brine into the ocean which will have an unknown impact on sea life.

Your facility being a large building with a nice flat roof I would have to ask why you don’t offset your power needs with solar cells. It would also make many of your workers happy if you placed a canopy of solar cells over the parking lots to soak up the sun and keep the cars cool. I can’t imagine that it would cover all your power needs, but it would put some criticism to bed regarding what you do.

As far as the brine, or water with a high salt content resulting from your purification works, why not dry it out further and sell the salt? Salt has often been one of the most valuable commodities and were as the water you take in may not be clean enough to make sea salt it would at very least make industrial salt which has a market value. 

Now, I may not be the smartest man in the world, but I do know that we need more water and that’s what you provide. Reducing your cost, carbon footprint, and over all negative impact rings true and supports your business model. The truth is that I have little faith that water conservation can slow climate change. In fact, watering our plants less may even spur it on.  Yet with enough plants like your own we could move our water reclaiming efforts further inland, and make the dry sands of California bloom.

 

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal