Slashdot Mirror
(Solar) Power to the Masses
D3 writes "This report on a solar power tower (pdf) looks extremely interesting. Maybe one day we can have international power lines where all the countries with lots of sunshine provide power to the rest of the world? How cool would that be?" The NY Times has a good article on solar power in Japan.
Maybe one day we can have international power lines where all the countries with lots of sunshine provide power to the rest of the world?
Great idea, but power simply can't be distributed over that great a distance.
To make up for losses due to resistance in wires, they up the voltage to absurd levels -- decreasing the current level, and, in the process, the voltage drop over a long distance. However, this can only be taken so far, and towers supplying electricity to the rest of the planet is way too far.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that the continental US is too wide for coast-to-coast power sharing (that is, power generated in, say, New York, can only be "shipped" as far west as Indiana, or so).
On the other hand, replace today's wires with some kind of high-current, high-temperature superconductor, and you're golden.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
If governemnts subsidized people to install these instead of new shingles, this would severely cut down energy concerns.
Of course electric companies would complain, but they will still be needed, solar power won't provide enough power.
hmm...actually then my electric company would just charge more for less so they don't lose profits...damn
Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
ok so these people have a 17% electricity bill drop (from what to what in Japan?) after buying an 1100 sq. ft. home that has solar panels...
How much did having the solar panels on the home add to the price of an already expesive home? How much will the 17% save over the life of the home?
Are electric rates in Japan like they are here? 17% of my last electric bill (mind you, it's the summer and I have the A/C on at least 8 hours a day and a box fan in the bedroom on at least 10 hours a day) is $4.20 (granted my apt. is 720 sq. ft. instead of 1100).
International Power Sharing/Leasing/Selling is all well and good. However, I truely doubt that the large scale implied by the poster would ever happen. All cables are lossy. Pushing power along cables has energy lost, dependent mostly on how far you're pumping the juice. (Also, voltage, current, resistance of the wire, local EMFs, and all sorts of minor things too)
While it would rock to have clean energy finally adopted... Carting it across long distances still sucks.
Gimme Wind, Gimme Solar, hell, I'll even take Geothermal, just make it clean, unobtrusive, and if you'd like, I can sell you some good land in my back yard. *me mutters about pretentions NIMBY asses*
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
We don't really need lines carrying solar power from sunny areas to the rest of the world. There are plenty of environment-friendly ways to generate power; solar in the sunny areas, hydro-electric in areas with lots of waterfalls, etc, windmills in the plains...
Availability of methods isn't slowing down alternative fule sources; people just see no reason to invest the necessary capital to change over, when burning dead dinosaurs is working quite happily.
Thomas Galvin
I feel that the key to future demands for power will be more readily met by people praticing self-suffciency than by technologies such as solar, geothermal or fusion. It should be easier for people to purchase and operate a hybrid solar/biofuel generator than to implement large scale non-fossil fuel/non nuclear fission solutions.
Australia is building big convection towers. They are just a big (big!) greenhouse sloping up in the center, so the hot air runs up what amounts to a chimney there, and drives a big windmill -- really, a bunch of them -- in the chimney. It has only a few moving parts, and is easy to build with mature technology.
Simple might not help employ physicists, but it's the right way to build.
all i'm asking is for some prudence and a reality check before ecstatically proclaiming "Maybe one day we can have international power lines where all the countries with lots of sunshine provide power to the rest of the world?"
;-)
i think those sunny countries would rather exist than become giant solar panel farm fields for wasteful cloudy northerners
current power demands versus current solar technology efficiency: wouldn't that necessitate something like covering the whole sahara desert with solar panels?
nevermind the gargantuan investment in time and money to build the infrastructure to set this up... and wouldn't covering vast areas of the earth in solar panels have it's own environmental down side?
i mean, don't get me wrong, hydro/ wind/ solar is wonderful, but isn't the power output from these technolgies miniscule compared to burning hydrocarbons, as environmentally unfriendly as that is?
we need fusion man, pronto. i want my mr. fusion damnit!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, the author of the article would have more crediblity if he quit using phrases like "Berlin Wall of Solar Power" in the article.
Also buried in the article is the fact that this rig is so freakin' expensive to set up and so uneconomic to run, that only nations with massive subsidy programs are the ones looking at it. They are targeting Spain because they signed Kyoto and so the government (read taxpayer) is willing to underwrite the whole thing.
So, who wants to take bets on how long before environmentalists scream that we are destroying the planet by planting hundreds of thousands of square miles of mirrors across the Southwestern desert?
Have they figured in the cost of replacing sandblasted mirrors and the cost of trucking water in to clean the mirrors?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I know it was just a joke. But I just wanted to point out that the US has a rather large desert area that rarely sees clouds.
global warming just sucks
Really depends on where you live.
You are anonymous and you are a coward but you are not intellegent.
"We" did not conquer France, we helped the French liberate it. "We" did not single handedly conquer Italy. "We" did not single handedly conquer Germany. The reality is the harsh Russian winter had more to do with it than any thing else.
Why is it that cars from all other countries than ours get better gas milage? Why is it that american cars do NOT sell in other countries. Because they do not have their governemnt and military subsidizing oil.
If sunny countries could provide energy for the rest of the world, Bush would direct the military to take them over and string up sun nets across the country so his friends could continue to sell thier oil to suckers like you.
Hell, even washing machines are now being sold based on being low-power. We're on our way.
It's true that more homeowners should be thinking about solar and/or wind, but that's more easily said than done in this time when money is hard to come by. Sure you save money in the long run, but there's that significant investment. Also, some legislation is needed to force the power companies to buy your power at a reasonable rate if we're going to have this bright new future you're discussing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So quit your US baaaad sheepspeak and get your head out of your ass, mmmmkay?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Hydrogen pipelines are nearly lossless, also hydrogen allows you to timeshift your production and use of electricity.
Hydrogen fuel cells are being oversold by many people, but this is one thing that they would be great for.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
If a normal neighborhood had 2 stationary panels on each home's roof pointed south that backfed to the utility power and they did the storage, it could be a reality right now.
That might work in some areas of the country... it certainly won't work worth a damn in any area of the country that experiences hail or severe winds (like, oh say, virtually the entire southeastern US). Hail utterly destroys solar panels, and it'll happen often enough that it'll ruin your cost return on them. High winds tend to cause tree branches (or entire trees... yes, it happened to my house under a year ago) to fall on houses, which may cause damage to the solar panels as well.
Not to mention that most people with a clue have already shaded their southern facing roof with trees, in order to reduce daylight exposure during summer and thus reduce energy usage.
And it completely ignores the issue that solar and wind power are considerably more expensive, on a KWh basis, than the alternatives. Including nuclear. Roughly twice the cost last time I checked. Yeah, I know... if pollution costs were included then the cost of production for fossil fuels would be considerably higher. Wouldn't significantly change the cost of production for natural gas though, which is a very large percentage of the power grid in the US now. And regardless, you have to compete in the real world, not some world where you get to make up the rules... about the best you can do is petition for new laws to be more strict on coal and oil fired power plants which would have the net effect of raising the production costs. Good luck.
Even if technically feasible (others here think it is not, but cheap 'hot' supraconductors could appear tomorrow), rich countries have enough problems securing their oil supply, to add another dependency with power! It would be "logical" to put solar panels in Sahara to 'feed' Europe, but then Algeria, Lybia & so on would have the power to 'switch off' whole countries. I suppose the US would be solar-self-sufficient anyway, and Japan and Europe could put panels on the sea.
There is enough solar power, and wind power and geothermy, and tidal power, and nuclear (even oil or coal), even in winter, for each continent to provide its own energy. If only we REALLY wanted.
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
Let's see. The article talks about 200 MW plant. At 1kW/m^2 and 17% efficiency this means we need about 300 acres of mirrors. Seems real practical.
But of course it is all far too late. If realistic predictions are anything to go by, world oil production will peak in the next decade and then begin to fall at about 2 percent per year soon afterwards. Even if the US started building wind turbines (the most promising renewable energy source) at a rate of 20,000 a year right now, there would still be major problems. As it is, it looks like everyone is going to carry on as usual until the energy shortages begin, at which point there will not be enough spare energy available to undertake a massive renewable energy building program. Given that more than 4 billion of the worlds 6 billion people are only alive because of the energy subsidy of fossil fuels, which allows chemical fertilizers and mechanised agriculture, the resulting resource wars and famines are likely to be very bad.