Energy everywhere · sunlight
Not one hectare of bush gets cleared for this. Every roof, carport, water tank, wall and road on the island is a candidate surface, already built, already there, doing nothing with the sun that lands on it every day. Here is the honest inventory of what's already standing.
The mind's eye first
The sun delivers roughly 5 kWh to every square metre of north-facing surface here, most days. A single house roof, panelled properly, covers most of that household's own 16 kWh-a-day habit. Multiply that by every roof on the island and the number gets serious fast, without a single tree coming down.
The catalogue
Every one of these already exists on the island today. None of them needs a single new square metre of cleared land.
The biggest surface on the island by far, and the cheapest power going. This is where every household starts, and where most of the island's own daily habit gets covered.
A carpark canopy earns its keep twice: shade for cars and queuing passengers on a hot day, and a panel roof overhead the whole time. The ferry terminal's car park is the obvious first site.
Every backyard tank has a flat or curved top doing nothing, and often a north-facing wall. Small, but there are a lot of tanks, and every one of them already exists.
Panels don't have to lie flat. Fitted vertically along a north-facing boundary fence, they catch morning and afternoon sun especially well, exactly when household demand peaks.
Specially engineered panels strong enough to be walked or driven over, turning a footpath or a quiet lane into a power surface. This is the still-being-researched one on the list.
Mirrors focusing sunlight onto a small point can reach temperatures hot enough to sinter sand or charge the thermal battery directly, sunlight straight into heat, no electricity in between.
