This is a story form my past, when I was a member of the brand new Capitol Reef Field Station board of directors. Or advisory board. Not sure what our name was. Capitol Reef National Park had given some land to UVU to build a field station, and they got it funded and built. Part of the infrastructure was 14.4 KW solar photovoltaic installation. Seventy-two 200W panels, all running into a utility building where it was controlled to provide electrical power to the Station buildings (main classroom building with dining hall and kitchen) and two bunkhouse buildings) and send the balance to a big set of 48 lead-acid storage batteries.

What I noticed on several stays there by myself during construction was that the buildings had nothing in theme that consumed very much energy, certainly nothing like 20kW. And that was a huge problem. You see, solar voltaic panels are constant-current sources. When the sun shines on them, they produce electrical current that must go somewhere. It will always go somewhere. You can't just "turn off" a solar panel other than darkening the front surface. If you unhook the electrical connections, the panel sill still operate, and turn itself into a large infrared LED light bulb. When I was there I saw where that electricity was going: into a massive bank of 16 lead-acid batteries. Big ones, not the puny ones in your car, these were three feet tall, two feet wide and about 1 foot thick. And they were all hissing. So much power was being delivered that the batteries maintained a fully-charged state all the time, and when more current came in, they were hydrolyzing the water into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. It scared the crap out of me because that's an explosive mixture, and there was but one small fan ventilating the battery space and I wasn't sure that was spark-proof. The next time I want there I saw many bottles of distilled water there, to replace all the water that was electrolyzed daily. A tremendous waste.

I told all this to the Station director at the time, and mentioned that what is needed was a lot more load to draw the current out so the batteries would not destroy themselves, or take out the spare panels (which was all but two). Loads like air conditioners (those buildings were mighty hot in the summer, with only ceiling fans and inadequate ventilation for cooling), or lights, or big motors doing something fun. Motors are great at drawing current. But to my astonishment the Director thought all those suggestions would violate the idea of conservation. And that so baffled me. Let a necessary system destroy itself rather than look wasteful?

That's when I realized there are two working definitions of "conserve." There is my definition, use efficiently the resources available in a sustainable way, and a more liberal definition, one the Director was using, don't use anything, or a minimum at best. I suggested having the physics people make a power generation/power consumption console for the main room of the classroom building, so students could see the generation and consumption of power in a small closed system, but no, the Director wanted to teach non-use.

I left the board after the station was built. I didn't want to be around for whatever happened. The station is still running, but I haven't spoken with the current director to find out how much it cost to fix it. Maybe they put AC in all the rooms. I hope so. AC is good at pulling current. And big electric heaters in the winter. And washers and dryers. Electric stoves and ovens and griddles. It was all propane powered when I was there, another big waste with all that electricity available.

But conservation, for that Director, was destroying the Station.