Solar Power Put to Good Use

Current Shunts writes "Teams from all over the U.S. and Canada will be competing this summer over a 2,500 mile course from Austin, Texas in the United States to Calgary Alberta Canada for the 2005 North American Solar Challenge. The purpose of this event is to promote renewable energy technologies, integrate science and engineering disciplines, and give competitors an opportunity to showcase their technical and creative abilities." At the same time, zestyalbino writes "Construction on the world's largest solar tower [RMIT] may begin next year in Mildura, Australia. In a nutshell, "An ever present large mass of air under an expansive transparent collector (seven kilometres in diameter) is heated by solar radiation (greenhouse effect) providing a continuous flow of hot air to drive electricity generating turbines located around the base of the one-kilometre tall central tower." There's also an article on Wired."

Comments

Yes

[pyth]

Let's just ignore the chemical costs of making solar collectors.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

They would have been better off driving SUVs.

Re:Yes

[nyekulturniy]

As long as the cost of the energy obtained is higher than the cost of the chemicals, go for it. Besides, the Australian system looks as if it is more reflectors.

Re:Yes

[trippy]

And replacing them every 7 years.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Monkey]

"The Solar Tower concept operates on a simple rule of physics - hot air rises" The Solar Tower project uses hot air generated in a big green house to spin a wind turbine. It looks like a cool idea if you ask me. Aneway, the point is, not every form of solar power uses photovoltaic cells. But you do have a point, the chemical cost for photovoltaics right now is very high.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope the Solar Tower is sucessfull and proves to be cost effective, something/anything to remove the dependence on fossil fuels...

Re:Yes

[jay-be-em]

Well built solar panels can last quite a bit longer than 7 years. Many consumer grade solar panels have 10 year warranties, and many of the older panels made 40 years ago are still in operation.

Re:Yes

[Eccles]

The Australian system is simply a greenhouse that powers turbines, no solar cells at all.

Given low reserves of oil, relatively remote location, first world technology, and lots of sunshine, Australia seems a country with big incentives and resources to develop solar power.

Re:Yes

[Phanatic1a]

Oh, it's better than that.

So far, the main impediment to building the tower has been the cost, with estimates ranging from $500 million to $750 million. Davey won't say how much the project will ultimately cost but said the company is considering two new engineering innovations that will reduce construction costs and improve efficiency.

Let's assume they don't hit any overruns and go with their minimum estimate of a half billion dollars. That's for 200 megawatts of generation capacity.

That breaks down to 125 acres and $2.5 million dollars per megawatt.

You can build a Westinghouse AP1000 advanced light water reactor at around $1400 per kilowatt, assuming you build 2 at a site. That includes design, engineering, and licensing for the first two plants. Cost for 200 megawatts would be only 280 million, and would take up far far less than 25,000 acres. GE's advanced boiling water reactors, which are already cranking out megawatts in Japan, could be build in the US for $1300/kilowatt, again assuming two per site.

Nobody builds nuclear reactors that small, of course, so those estimates are really for plants of about 1500 megawatts capacity.

The expenditures for this solar tower are *still* way out of line, even assuming their best-case estimates are correct.

Re:Yes

[over_exposed]

If all else fails it can just be turned into the worlds largest sun dial...

Re:Yes

[ErikZ]

Yeah, but all you have to do is build a big greenhouse and put a wind turbine in it. Great for countries with low tech and some useless land.

Re:Yes

[grqb]

The chimny is twice the height of the CN tower...that's huuuuuuuge!

Re:Yes

[Squirmy McPhee]

Let's just ignore the chemical costs of making solar collectors.

What chemical costs might those be? For solar cells, they're quite low -- nothing at all like integrated circuits, if that's what you had in mind. Last I looked, the only chemical waste that the larger plants in the US produced in large enough quantities to report to the EPA was a bit of sodium hydroxide. The plants are larger now than they were then, but the only other chemicals that are commonly used in significant quantities are glycol, sometimes hydrofluoric acid, phosphoric acid (or in some plants POCl3), silane, aluminum, silver, and silicone. Solvents are used only in very small quantities.

Chemical safety specialists generally regard silane as the most problematic chemical in a PV plant, and even then it is more of an occupational safety issue than a pollution or "chemical cost" issue.

Re:Yes

[ArbitraryConstant]

While your arugments are true, nothing like this has ever been built before. I think the next biggest solar tower was a little 20 kW thing. This is a prototype. However much it costs, it's safe to assume they will get cheaper in the future.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

a solar powered sun dial :^P

Re:Yes

[w42w42]

Hot air rises - and it also expands, adding to the effect. It's too bad this type of generator cannot be incorporated into existing structures but on a smaller scale - i.e. office buildings, blacktop streets to heat air, etc.

Re:Yes

[grqb]

These solar towers sound pretty cheap to me. At $2.5-$3.75/watt, they're far cheaper than solar pannels which go for about $8/watt. And, nuclear has had subsidies out of the wazoo. Nobody's subsidizing this thing at all (this is mentioned in the Wired article).

Re:Yes

[Rei]

And I'm sure they'll need a big team of nuclear technicians, fuel produced in a long and expensive refining process, difficult waste disposal regulations, and huge public opposition to deal with.....

Honestly, for first generation tech, and with what one would expect to be minimal upkeep, this isn't bad. Plus, it acts as a greenhouse to the land beneath it.

Re:Yes

[RollingThunder]

How much did the comparable (IE: first) nuclear power plant cost per megawatt?

You can't straight-out compare a mature technology's costs with an experimental prototype's cost.

Re:Yes

[w42w42]

I don't know how much of that initial number is real estate - though in some countries it is obviously easier to come by. I also suspect that when one or two of these things are built, their cost would have to come down relative to the power output as risk decreases. I also agree with the original posters point on the relative cost though - the physical generator is gonig to cost the same whether your Kenya or Japan - you still have to buy from the same vendors.

Where I think this might have interesting possibilities is in those countries that make the international community nervous when they start talking about the need for nuclear power plants.

Re:Yes

[Farmer Tim]

"Besides, the Australian system looks as if it is more reflectors."

If you'd even read the article summary, you'd have noticed that it is in fact a huge greenhouse channelling hot air into a tall funnel with a turbine mounted in it...no reflectors whatsoever, and the ground underneath is still usable.

Re:Yes

[Rei]

Let's just ignore the chemical costs of making solar collectors

Which don't approach the cost of the power that they generate unless you factor in the time for return on profit compared to other forms of power.

Hu and White in 1983 published the results of a study on Solarex panels; energy payback was 6.4 years, with panels that had 12.4% efficiency. This was from 1977 cells. Nowadays, the numbers are generally 1-3 years. Amorphous pay back the fastest - some even under 1 year.

The rest of the time, they're just generating power. Dollar payback time is usually 4-10 years.

Re:Yes

[sketerpot]

Nuclear also has regulations out the wazoo, making the same parts much more expensive. It's gotten to where most of the cost of building a nuclear plant is expended entirely on nuclear-specific red tape.

Did you know that a valve for a nuclear plant will typically cost several times more than the same valve would cost for a coal plant? It's a testament to nuclear power's efficiency that they manage to still be slightly cheaper than coal plants (in the US, where their operating licences are often extended quite a bit).

Re:Yes

[Waffle Iron]

If nuclear power plants didn't get government-subsidized insurance policies and had to buy them at fair market value that would tack a good chunk onto the nuclear plants' costs.

Not to mention the currently unknown costs of waste disposal, since the final plans are still up in the air after 50 years of study. It's hard to actually compare costs with wildcards like that.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, $2.5 million per megawatt is only $2500 per kilowatt. That doesn't sound way out of line to me.
Also, the cost of dealing with the waste isn't insignificant and it probably takes a lot more than 15 people to run a reactor, too.

Re:Yes

[SpaceLifeForm]

I envisioned this design long ago. Here's a possible issue they may have to deal with: Lightning. Beside the fact that the tower is tall, the design can also lead to creating it's own thunderstorms.

Re:Yes

[SidV]

"How much did the comparable (IE: first) nuclear power plant cost per megawatt?"

"That breaks down to 125 acres and $2.5 million dollars per megawatt."

60MW for 72.5 million dollars or about 1.25 million dollars per megawat in 1954-7 in Shippingport PA.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Although they are more expensive (probably $2500/kW, comparable to this solar endeavor), CANDU reactors are probably a better choice than monolithic American designs. Better uptime, lower chance of catastrophic failure, online refueling, a compartmentalized core, and multiple fuel options -- including non-enriched fuel. Granted, I haven't done a head-to-head comparison, and unfortunately no USA utility company has the nerve to seriously consider atomic energy these days. (Yes, I wrote to my local provider, and they said no. Instead they would rather continue to burn coal, and offer "renewable" energy starting at a mere $5/month on top of what I already pay!)

I'm not convinced they can achieve the output with this solar tower. That's a huge collector area. What if some area of the collector is shaded due to clouds? Wouldn't rain severely impact heat retention? What is the power output at night? Isn't this horribly inefficient? I calculate only 0.3% efficiency (assuming 1400 W/m^2 [reference total solar intensity,http://www.acrim.com/] over the entire 7-km [~ 38,000,000 m^2] area...) Also, as with all solar projects, they neglect the environmental impact of construction, and particularly the materials that go into it. Surely a lot of fossil fuels will go into manufacturing and setting up a collector that large!

Re:Yes

[digitalchinky]

It's plastic, metal, an efficient set of blades, and a generator, how on earth could it cost 500 million.

Outback NT, SA, or WA - unused land as far as you can see, thousands of square kilometers of it. Hot as hell, very little cloud, even less rain.

Where do these people get off saying 500 million.

This is not complicated science, people have been theorising about this type of power generation for at least 10 years.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The solar towers greenhouse is also designed to allow for the very efficient production of food crops.

Whereas the nuclear power plant does not assist in the growth of nearby vegetation (and if it did that would probably be a bad thing :P )

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is close to $9 million dollars per megawatt in today's money.

Re:Yes

[SidV]

Accouunting for inflation yes.

But if you factor in the turbine efficiency of 1957 to today it doesn't hold up.

Based upon the differences in simple technology fro then to now it just becomes to complicated.

That is also completed costs, not best case estimates. If you you use the Big Dig cost overides as a multiplier then this solar plant will cost about 2 Billion dollars.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatsie has finally met his match

Re:Yes

[SidV]

I don't know. the 1 Billion (with a "B") + square feet of plastic, and the metal framework to support it, might have something to do with it.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Accouunting for inflation yes.

But if you factor in the turbine efficiency of 1957 to today it doesn't hold up.

Err, what doesn't hold up? The argument that immature technology is going to be less efficient and cost more? Umm....

Based upon the differences in simple technology fro then to now it just becomes to complicated.

You're only trying to make it complicated because your argument got blown out of the water. A few minutes ago, you portrayed it as a very simple matter of $1.25m / MW.

That is also completed costs, not best case estimates. If you you use the Big Dig cost overides as a multiplier then this solar plant will cost about 2 Billion dollars.

Wha? The Big Dig? That's an insane thing to do. You could also factor in superman coming to do all the work for free and halving the construction costs.

Re:Yes

[SidV]

To give a real world approximation, it's the equivalent of putting a roof over the majority of Boston and it surrounding neighborhoods, then building a 1 kilometer tower in the center of it.

A tower twice as tall as the largest building in the world, with a big generator at the top.

Re:Yes

[SidV]

"Err, what doesn't hold up?"

No the arguement that turbines are much more efficient today than the were almost 1/2 a century ago. POwer plants also werent of the 200 Megawatt size in the 50's, Most convential plants were about 10Mw in size. Nuclear plants scale well, they built it at 60Mw because that was way bigger than they ever expected anyone would need, in a day when peoples power consumption was a fraction of what it is today.

"You're only trying to make it complicated "

No, a question was asked, I answered it, making sure I included the date as well, for comparison. I didn't get into the real world costs from then to today because it would take a team of econmists years of arguing to come up with a wrong answer.

"That's an insane thing to do"

Yeah? I work in capital construction business, incluiding sideline involvement in the big dig. To give a comparison, Taipei 101 cost 1.7 Billion dollars, it's only half the height of that tower, and that cost doesn't inclde the cost of building a roof over a city the size of Naples Florida.

200 - 500 million dollars seems ridiculously low.

Re:Yes

[MAdMaxOr]

Assuming you don't break it, a solar cell (or even one of these collecters) should last for much longer than you need to recoup the initial energy of creation.

Solar cells, in particular, last for quite a while, well taken care of. No moving parts to break.

Re:Yes

[dbIII]

could be build in the US for $1300/kilowatt

Then why aren't they built then? Perhaps the economic figures are as true as the advertising claim of "clean" which defies reality. You don't call any industrial process "clean" unless you are trying to con people. Also, if you think thermal power generation of any kind scales in a linear fashion then you are misinformed - plus it is worth checking whether those numbers include containment, which is a major expense in nuclear power. Anyone who tells you that nuclear power has a small capital cost is lying, the aim was always to save money in the long term with low fuel costs but no-one who knew what they were talking about ever pretended the things were cheap to build.

Nobody builds nuclear reactors that small

Currently pebble bed is the best option, and you want them to be small - I believe you are also confusing the size of half a dozen power generating units with one. This pilot plant is a single unit. There is no way you would want a 1500 MW pebble bed, it defeats the entire purpose of the design.

As for making a big deal about the land area - desert is cheap. Even western Victoria has desert, and that is where they are putting it.

That's for 200 megawatts of generation capacity

It's a pilot plant, funny how for nuclear trolls a small pebble bed pilot plant is serious base capacity, and a slightly larger solar thermal pilot plant is not worth building.

Electricity gets mentioned, so the nuclear trolls appear. This one true energy fanaticism is not realistic for any form of electricity generation.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nuclear also has regulations out the wazoo, making the same parts much more expensive.

Yes, and nuclear has *CONSEQUENCES* out the wazoo if things are done *just* right. Long term consequences... the kind that cause you children to have 2 heads and 17 flanges and take 25,000 years to go away... but hey, if you want to support the heat death of the universe by absorbing it directly into your genetic make up, more power to you! (uh, so to speak).

If you had to buy a solar panel unit (installable in your house-top array) to support every appliance purchase, solar would be affordable... think of it in those terms.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

creating it's own thunderstorms

"its".

Re:Yes

[mr i want to go home]

Ok - it's not solar cells they're using - they're making a big green house.

Currently the best way to make big green houses is with an extruded plastic called ETFE. Sheets of ETFE are welded together to form inflatable pillows. The pillows are clamped together with aluminium extrusions.

Now ETFE and aluminium have extremely high embodied energy (that's the cost of energy used to make the finished material). They are very light materials, which does offset the embodied energy cost somewhat (as you're using less of the material to cover the same area as with steel or concrete for example), but remember we're talking about a 7 square kilometre area here.

Also the foundations to support a 1km high tower are going to be huge. There are some tricks, like tension structures that could be used, but they will still require huge mass footings - better known as concrete. One tonne of concrete will release about one tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere during production and transportation.

I'm not trying to dismiss this project, but people should realise that it's going to be a long way from being "green".

(p.s. If anyone needs a big green house made, let me know. Our company designed the Eden project...we know how to do them!).

Re:Yes

[SJ]

This is all well and good but you left out the rest of the comment.

With the reactor, you still need fuel, and it produces waste. Both of which are radioactive. Then, there is the cost of containing and disposing of that waste.

If there is one thing that Australia has lots of, it's dry, hot generally useless land. 125 acres is nothing. We only have 20 million people (the population of New York State) on a land mass about the size of the continental USA.

Even if it does cost 2.5 million per megawatt, it has little to no running costs and no extremely dangerous waste material.

Re:Yes

[fact0r]

And the problem with that is?

It's an added benefit, something tall enough to really catch lightning has got to be a good place to research ways to capture some of that energy. Coupled with super capacitors we surely are not that far from being able to capture at least a small percentage of the energy from a lightning strike.

Re:Yes

[fact0r]

Indeed, and that is why Australia - even though it is sitting on over 1/3 of the world's known uranium supply - happily sells uranium to other countries but relies on Coal Power for our own electricity needs.

So hey - we can afford to build ridiculous 1KM high towers while we rape all you other shmucks by selling you Uranium.

Re:Yes

[fact0r]

Indeed that would be hugely ridiculously expensive. That is why they put the big heavy generator at the bottom not the top of the tower.

So it ends up only somewhat ridiculously expensive.

Re:Yes

[identity0]

The Big Dig is notorious for its cost overruns, and most of it seems to stem from being in the middle of a major city, with existing roads, bad terrain, and notoriously pork-barreling politicians. I doubt this project will suffer from anywhere near that level of overruns. To give a comparison, they bought all the land for $1 million - a comparable amount of land in downtown Boston would be on the order of billions.

Maybe you're too used to woking on office or residential buildings. This tower is pretty basic - it doesn't have floors, stairs, HVAC, plumbing, telco, windows, etc., things that make an office tower expensive. It's more akin to the CN tower, or even grain elevators and lighthouses in construction, and they don't cost anywhere near as much per height as comparably tall office buildings. It's basically a hollow tube with turbines.

The greenhouse area probobly isn't going to be as expensive as comparable amounts of housing or office space. It'll be more like warehouse or greenhouse space, and those are relatively cheap per square foot or acre. You make it sound as if they're going to build 25,000 acres of houses.

Re:Yes

[Zoyd]

You don't call any industrial process "clean" unless you are trying to con people.
.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wind+power%22+cl ean
(350,000 hits.)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22solar+power%22+c lean
(272,000 hits.)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22tidal+power%22+c lean
(13,400 hits.)

Re:Yes

[1u3hr]

Well built solar panels....

And what has that to do with the solar chimney: greenhouse -> hot air ->wind turbine -> electricity?

Re:Yes

[SidV]

Of course it is, as our most building projects, though the big dig is the extreme.

CN Tower, 57 Million dollars, assuming linear costs, that still put the tower itself at over 1/2 their lowball budget. And while the CN tower doesn't cost as much as high rise office tower, a 1 kilometer tall tower (and the support structures required) costs more than a simple do nothing but look nice tower. The CN tower doesn't have any turbines in it, how many turbines were they proposing (small ones are about 1/3 of a million)

"It'll be more like warehouse or greenhouse space, and those are relatively cheap per square foot or acre."

Hey, you're right, greenhouses are cheap per sq, foot.

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/greenhou/gren cons.htm

At $7.56 per sq foot, this proposed system of 1.089 billion sq feet would cost 8.23 Billion dollars.

Man those overuns are starting early.

Re:Yes

[SidV]

Ooh cost of 8.33 Billion dollars (we'll count the turbines later) is 41.6 MIllion dollars per megawatt.

Re:Yes

[Max von H.]

Does your cost estimate include nuclear waste handling and storage (for the next few million years)? I guess not. Does it account for the cost of nuclear fuel over a period of 40 years? Environmental problems? Nope. Your guesstimate is just about *building* a nuclear reactor, not maintaining it and cleaning up afterwards.

This solar tower will not pollute [b]ever[/b] and will not leave our children and grandchildren (and so on) dealing with lethal byproducts. I think it's worth paying a little more at first for building it and not have to deal with nuclear crap for the next hundreds of years.

Clean energy sure isn't cheap, but who said it'd be cheap to make sure our planet's still there in a few generations? We can't afford ruining our environment with short-term (profit!) visions any longer, we must make choices NOW, no matter the cost.

Re:Yes

[ikkonoishi]

huge greenhouse channelling hot air

Kind of like slashdot.

Re:Yes

[yobbo]

Don't mind him - he's just too good to read a pesky article.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, yep, and what's the cost of getting the (right) uranium for the reactor?
And what about the costs to get rid of it later again?
How much do you spend actually rinning such a thing?

Re:Yes

[HanB]

Yet another natural energy resource to exploit. Two for the price of one, that sounds like an excellent deal. :-)

Re:Yes

[Surur]

How much concrete to entomb a nuclear reactor (or just to make an 747-proof dome?)

If by green you mean built by magical means which uses no energy and resources you are probably right.

I believe green is a relative term however.

Surur

Re:Yes

[TheLink]

Almost.

But Slashdot is closer to an outhouse than a greenhouse.

An outhouse with graffiti and the occasional goatse.cx poster.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

And has radiation levels that can be measured in every major city thanks to the radio active coal that gets burned in them.

Re:Yes

[gl4ss]

all you have to do?

but it's not a 'just'. it's more expensive still.

Re:Yes

[Squirmy McPhee]

Ok - it's not solar cells they're using - they're making a big green house.

That depends on which part of the post you're reading. One project is solar cars that use solar cells, the other is the solar tower to which you refer. While the parent didn't specify, it certainly seemed to be referring to solar cells -- people regularly complain about the "chemical costs" of solar cells, thinking they're made just like ICs.

On the other hand, since only one solar tower of this type has previously been built (and on a much smaller scale at that), and few people know about it, it seemed very unlikely that the tower was what the parent was referring to. Now ETFE and aluminium have extremely high embodied energy ... I'm not trying to dismiss this project, but people should realise that it's going to be a long way from being "green".

AFAIK the designers have not released enough information for an independent analysis, but they claim an energy payback time of 2.5 years and 900,000 tonnes/year less CO2 release than similarly sized fossil fuel plants. I don't know how long they expect the plant to operate, but that has a major effect on the CO2 reduction calculation.

Re:Yes

[Moderation abuser]

"The expenditures for this solar tower are *still* way out of line, even assuming their best-case estimates are correct."

That's what you get for pushing the technical envelope. They could build a solar thermal system for a fraction of the cost using already developed solar thermal power plant technologies.

e.g.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/rec p/solar/

Clearly part of the brief is to develop new technology.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, mr. smartty pants... ...what would the radiation levels be if all those watts had been produced with nuclear energy for the past 50+ years?

Here's a hint: The paths that ore travels from the field to refinement centers around the country can be measured from *SPACE* (and I understand that the radiation levels in space are much higher than on the surface).

Re:Yes

[Doc Ruby]

When you write a program, one of the worst techniques is to optimize too early. You program to get the immediate job done quickly, then return to optimize with the programming time remaining. With solar, while works the same way. While we have ample energy in chemical fuels, we're experimenting with techniques for harnessing energy from the Sun. When we've solved many of the other solar energy problems, we can focus on making the collectors cheaper.

BTW, the Australian greenhouse turbine doesn't use the kind of solar collectors you're referring to (silicon photoreceptors). Exactly the kind of research that targets the chemical costs of making solar collectors, by doing it another way. So you're just another petrofuel junkie, with your foregone conclusion, jumping to FP some irrelevant complaint without even reading the summary. Too bad we have to save your cranky ass along with the rest of the energy economy.

Re:Yes

[sketerpot]

I've got some interesting facts for you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, about nuclear and coal. Coal plants actually release more radioactive material into the air than nuclear plants produce in waste. We could get more energy out of the uranium in coal than we could by burning the coal.

And radiation does not just magically seep out of nuclear plants---at least not in levels that are more than infinitessimally above the background level. Please stop spreading misinformation.

Re:Yes

[BobPaul]

You can build a Westinghouse AP1000 advanced light water reactor at around $1400 per kilowatt, assuming you build 2 at a site. That includes design, engineering, and licensing for the first two plants. Cost for 200 megawatts would be only 280 million, and would take up far far less than 25,000 acres.

I'll assume your numbers are correct, and then that's $1.4 million/megawatt and $1.3 million/megawatt. So it's a roughly twice as expensive as building a standard power plant.

A couple of thoughts I have:
1) There won't be the additional running costs of coal, so over the long haul, this could be cheaper.. unless it gets really expensive to maintain somehow.
2) When you said dollars, are all of your dollar ammounts in US dollars? Or are they all in Au dollars? Or as some in US dollars and some in Au dollars?
3) How does the land use of this compare to other clean power sources? IE, is the watt/sq meter ratio better or worse for this project than standard photovoltaic cells? How about watt/sq meter compared to the average wind farm?

Re:Yes

[onepoint]

But here is a real problem ( lightning can be grounded and become a non issue ).

if the location of this project is near a humid location, the ammount of hot air moving upwards might also create clouds and then rain.

Also, it might create a new envionment within the local area. Rain at night, clear skys in the morning.

Michael

Re:Yes

[timeOday]

if the location of this project is near a humid location, the ammount of hot air moving upwards might also create clouds and then rain.

Well I guess we won't really know until we try, but I don't see why this would happen; from what I can tell this system wouldn't add to the total amount of air heating at all, rather it concentrates the heating on a smaller volume of air in a somewhat confined space, so the energy is easier to harness. But the same amount of sunshine would have been coming down, and the same amount of air going up, in any case. In fact, the turbine will remove some energy from the air (that's the whole point), so if anything it seems there is less hot air rising overall.

Re:Yes

[iminplaya]

I think the older rigid panels don't use any plastics that will deteriorate over time. These glass rigid panels have an indefinite lifetime, I believe, as opposed to the new flexible plastic ones.

Re:Yes

[onepoint]

energy harnessing, that's going to be done, the idea is solid. It just makes sense.

in reference to the volume of air heated is different depending on the location of where it is heated ( don't forget, 2 simular locations, one in shade and the other in sunlight will have different temps even when they are just a few inches apart).

But what I'm wondering is if there will be a change in the local micro climate. ( Palm Springs CA. is an example of local climate change due to the increase of green areas and historically speaking they are currently averaging 3C degrees less than normal over the past 10-20 years.

My point is from personal observation of cloud creation and from getting air into mine shafts.

A trick that is used to get fresh air into a deep mine shaft is to bore a tunnel from the deepest part straight up, then you light a fire, the heat pulls in fresh air to feed the fire and the hot air goes up the airshaft tunnel.

now if the area is highly humid and you are moving a great amount of air, the air is cool and concentrated ( due to shade under those mirrors ), there is going to be one heck of a high volume venting to the sky, and it might be humid.

it might just condense into clouds if there is alot of volume. It would be funny if there was a lake nearby and this tower wicked the water away

Re:Yes

[Bush Pig]

There isn't a lake, but there is the remains of a once-large river (the Murray). It can't lose too much more water by the time it gets to Mildura because all those greedy fuckers growing cotton and rice further up river have already used most of it.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they're building it in Australia...

Good luck to U of C

[Erioll]

Considering I'm alumni at UofC, AND a graduate of their Engineering program, I wish the hosts all the best. I hope they DESTROY everybody else.

=)

Re:Good luck to U of C

[Quasar1999]

And by destroy, do you mean like what happend to the poor UofW student that was driving their solar car last year, just as it veered outta control head on into a minivan killing him? These damned vehicles prove nothing, they're just dangerous...

Re:Good luck to U of C

[geek42]

That's the Engg spirit! Wait... destroy, demolish, win at all cost... you must've been in Mech, then, right?

Zoo Rules!

Re:Good luck to U of C

[miratrix]

It was a University of Toronto student who was involved in the unfortunate accident.

Yes, there are some safety concerns with the solar cars, but the biggest safety concern stems from the simple law of physics - conservation of momentum - the solar cars are just not heavy enough. However, the same safety concerns apply also to any motorcycles on the road, or the those Smart cars.

Solar cars already travel in a convoy consisting of a lead and chase vehicle with amber warning lights. With extensive driver training, good route planning, and some common sense, I think they can be safely raced.

Re:Good luck to U of C

[Erioll]

Nah, Zoo here as well.

=)

And in case anybody is wondering "wtf is zoo?", that's the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. They used to say that we're a bunch of animals in that department, hence "zoo".

=)

Re:Good luck to U of C

[BenTels0]

It's certainly possible. With Delft's NUNA not competing, the field is wide open again. ;-)

Re:Good luck to U of C

[geek42]

Zoo! Zoo! Zoo!

I guess the Mechies and Zoo are actually cooperating on the solar car, and from what I hear, they have a reasonable chance of doing well. One of my buds has volunteered to drive the beast - he thinks it's a sure victory... but then, it's his first solar race.

Keep on representin'!

Re:Good luck to U of C

[fbartho]

Sorry, I have to say that U of M's car is gonna be winning... my roommate is gonna be a driver, and the mechanics of the car are amazing...

What's the point?

[Quasar1999]

They've been doing these races for years... what's the point?

Re:What's the point?

[corngrower]

They get a little better every time. This summer's race will be considerably longer than the usual race. 2500 miles is nothing to snuff at for these vehicles.

Two big factors in determining the leaders in the race are the reliability of the vehicle, and the driving strategy. That reliability is a factor is pretty obvious, you break down, you loose time. In a race of this length teams should design their cars so that things like changing a tire are not major headaches. Strategy is important because the sun doesn't shine all the time, and in all places. Teams need to get all the weather information they can and do a good job of planning. If they know some part of the day's route will be cloudy, they need to plan accordingly.

These aren't the slow cars of years ago, these things can move right along with a good charge and bright sunlight. They still look very uncomfortable to drive, though. No Air conditioning, and the suspensions are not usually very soft.

Re:What's the point?

[TheLink]

It's just another one of those sports. That's all.

It doesn't really advance solar energy technology at all.

AFAIK you only get 1kW to 1.5kW per square meter from sunlight.

So solar powered land vehicles will never be practical.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

In orbit you could get almost 1400 W/m^2, if you had 100% efficient collector. AFAIK there are no such things and 50% is considered to be a pretty high-end goal. On earth the atmosphere reduces this quite a bit. I'd be surprised if more than 800 W/m^2 makes it down.
So realistically, you're probably limited to a collection of less than 400 W/m^2(And that's if you change your cells often enough to degrade little). A conventional automobile typically uses about 35 kW.

So you're absolutely correct, these will never be practical cars.

"put to good use"

[mickyflynn]

as opposed to all those evil uses for solar power?

Re:"put to good use"

[Anonymous Coward]

we needed to power the death ray with SOMETHING, and those goddamn hippies pickited us when we tried to use nuclear.

Re:"put to good use"

[krbvroc1]

as opposed to all those evil uses for solar power?

Insects + Magnifying Glass

Save the world...

[mark0]

... one 7km environmental dead zone at a time.

Re:Save the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it's basically a greenhouse, they should be able to use the land underneath for farming, which is shown in one of their videos.

Re:Save the world...

[Farmer Tim]

"... one 7km environmental dead zone at a time."

The idea is that this operates like a very large greenhouse...you know, the things they grow plants in?

Mildura is in the middle of farming country anyway, affected by soil erosion and salination as it is. A large area like this left fallow will actually improve the environment.

Re:Save the world...

[dbIII]

Mildura is in the middle of farming country anyway

I read it's going furthur west than there - near "little desert" national park - but there are no other large towns between there and the border.

Re:Save the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> "... one 7km environmental dead zone at a time."
>
>The idea is that this operates like a very large
>greenhouse...you know, the things they grow plants
>in?

Yes, but you actually need to have water in order to grow things. They're building this thing in the outback... It's already a 7km environmental dead zone (compaired to, say, 7km of rain forest).

What .au needs to do is building a shitload of these things on the contents prevailing winds leading coast. Pump (hot air rises) super hot air high enough into the atmosphere and you'll have a standing front of thunderstorms. Let the rainforst sprout and the whole thing will spread. Terra-forming on earth, if you'd like.

Re:Save the world...

[Farmer Tim]

"I read it's going furthur west than there - but there are no other large towns between there and the border."

I'm actually Australian, I've been there. Mildura itself isn't a large town. What's that got to do with anything? In the surrounding 50kms, you'll find the townships of Red Cliffs, Nowingi, Hattah*, Buronga, Dareton, Wentworth and Merbein; for Australia (population 20 million on the entire continent), that's relatively dense.

Besides, you didn't say which border: Mildura is situated on the Murray River, which IS the border between New South Wales and Victoria.

*Yes, Homestar Runner fans, there really is a town called Hattah! They changed it in honour of StrongBad Email #60.

Re:Save the world...

[Farmer Tim]

"Yes, but you actually need to have water in order to grow things. They're building this thing in the outback... It's already a 7km environmental dead zone"

Wrong. Mildura is on the Murray River 10 kilometers (6 miles or so) the junction of the Darling River (34.14S, 142.13E); the Murray is Australia's largest river system. It's an orange and grape growing region in a climate very similar to southern California; if you've bought Australian wine in the US recently, chances are it comes from Mildura, and Mildura oranges are sold in California when the US orange growing season is over. Look it up in an atlas, don't assume that because it's near something called a desert that it looks like the Sahara.

Very little of the Australian outback is classic desert: really, only the Great Sandy Desert* qualifies. Most other desert areas are actually covered by low scrub or spinifex (a tufted spiky grass-like plant with pointy ends conveniently at eye height).

"What .au needs to do is building a shitload of these things on the cont[in]ents prevailing winds leading coast."

Which is the west coast, just like in the Northern Hemisphere (coriolis effect? Didn't see that episode of the Simpsons? Oh, well). Apart from the fact that you need moist air, not just hot air, and this would only accellerating the process that caused Australia's salinity problem in the first place (I didn't think rain would carry significant quantities of salt either, but it does!). Another issue is biodiversity - Australia has been arid for a very long time, and most of the wildlife is acclimatised to that. Koalas and kangaroos, for example, do not inhabit the wet sclerephil[sp] rainforests of the north (Daintree, Kakadu), they prefer drier climes. Then there's the fact that Lake Eyre (a salt flat which is an emergency landing site for the shuttle) and much of the surrounding area is below sea level already, but stays bone dry; it would become an inland sea, much like the Dead Sea.

Nice idea if the outback was totally lifeless, but it isn't. I'll keep the mallee scrub and thorny devils, thanks.

*We also have the Great Australian Bite, and the Great Artesian basin...things are just great here, what can I say? And Steve Irwin too, though we nearly managed to palm him off on you seppos**...

**Seppo - term for a citizen of the US. I'm not going to explain it, it's an abreviation of rhyming slang.

Re:Save the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

> **Seppo - term for a citizen of the US. I'm not going to explain it, it's an abreviation of rhyming slang.

Ah, yes... septic tank = yank. How clever.

That's why we invented google, eschelon and american actors who can carry off cockney rhyming slang crypto without missing a beat.

Now, run along and go fuck your sheep.

Re:Save the world...

[Farmer Tim]

"Ah, yes... septic tank = yank. How clever...[snip]...Now, run along and go fuck your sheep."

Thank you for that example of how clever Americans can be. I apologise for the remote hint of subtlety involved in the obfuscatory term, and humbly beg tutelage in this remarkable new form of wit which involves inviting others to fornicate with domesticated ovine, as I wish to converse with more American ACs without losing any of the nuance of communication and make suitable return invitations.

"That's why we invented google, eschelon..."

Now run along, bend over and take it from your government.

American Solar Challenge

[lecithin]

The route is South to North over several days. It should be interesting to see how the milage/day changes as the sunlight amount changes due to their location.

Are we going to run out of oil?

[nmoog]

There seems to be more and more articles of this nature on slashdot these days. Search for "peak oil" and today and you'll get twice as many results as yesterday.

Are we in a bit of a state of emergency, or is just something to fill in the news until the next war/economic crisis/natural disaster?

(p.s. I'm not taking any chances. I'm learning the important survival skillz)

Re:Are we going to run out of oil?

[Will_Malverson]

Has it occured to you that maybe it's already happened? After all, oil prices rose to substantial new highs last year, about twice what they were only a few years ago. Welcome to the post-oil world, where oil costs twice what it did back in the long-long ago.

Not quite as dramatic as you thought it would be, is it?

Re:Are we going to run out of oil?

[SidV]

Unless you adjut for inflation, then you realize that gas costs about what a third it did in the 70's.

Re:Are we going to run out of oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it occured to you that maybe it's already happened?

More oil was produced this year than last year. So we haven't hit the peak yet. Of course we will reach it eventually. It could happen within the next few years, but it's more likely to take one or two decades.

Re:Are we going to run out of oil?

[Shihar]

I would say it is pretty safe to say that we have not hit the peak yet. Yes, prices have gone up, but you need to realize that oil prices do not fluctuate in a normal supply/demand fashion. OPEC is an oil cartel that manipulates oil prices higher. Politics, stability in oil producing nations, and economic fluctuations have a lot more to do with the price of oil then the actual supply.

Further, you also need to realize that right now oil is cheap. Sure, the news makes a big deal out of the price of a barrel of oil, and they like to declare it "the highest it has ever been", but this is really just scare mongering for ratings. Oil does cost more then it ever has... if you blatantly ignore inflation. If you include inflation, you would realize that the price of oil could double and it would still be cheaper then it has been in the past. If you just look at the price without inflation, bread is the most expensive it has ever been, yet that really is not much of a reason to panic.

Oil will eventually run out, but it is going to be a pretty slow and steady thing. Most oil never gets drilled. There is a lot of oil that oil companies simply don't remove from the ground because it is too expensive to remove it. I think I recall the figure as being only 3% of the oil is ever actually removed. The rest is simply left there because it would cost too much to remove it from the ground and process it into something usable. So, when the oil peak is hit, we are not going to suddenly see the price go through the roof. Instead, the price will slowly start to rise as companies get more and more expensive oil. We will never likely run out, the cost will simply get too high for anyone to want to pay.

We should be planning ahead and finding new technologies to deal with our energy needs, but fear mongering isn't the way to do it. There are plenty of good reasons to invest in new energy sources that we shouldn't have lie and make up untrue ones.

Entertainment opurtunity,

[jericho4.0]

The chart on the web site gives a speed of 49 feet p/s, which is too slow to pick someone straight up. I wonder if the speed in the shaft is higher?

If this thing is built, it'll show up in Hollywood movie real quick.

Re:Entertainment opurtunity,

[Tau Zero]

At 49 fps updraft and 70 C (158 F) shaft temperatures, you could have combination sauna sessions and up-and-down parachute rides. Just be careful not to break the glass you come back down on!

Good Use

[Oscar_Wilde]

Solar Power Put to Good Use

Excellent! I was getting tired of all the bad uses it is put to.

Re:Good Use

[identity0]

Speak for yourself, I'm still building the giant orbital magnefying glass to take out those puny hu-man ants.

Re:Good Use

[mnemonic_]

Well, I didn't think my solar powered electric chair was that well known...

Re:Good Use

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar Power Put to Good Use

Excellent! I was getting tired of all the bad uses it is put to.

Right, now it is finally used to move all these tree huggers from the US to Canada (Austin to Calgary) :)

Those Reflectors

[killa62]

That vast span of reflectors should be untouched, perfect hard drive platters that come from Western Digital Harddrives. (Quantum Fireballs not allowed)

Re:Those Reflectors

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Did you mean to reply to the story about the windchimes?

Better panels?

[Grendel Drago]

Wasn't someone going to come out with better solar panels, like five times better? Anyone remember that?

--grendel drago

solar car challenge

[Zapraki]

"The purpose of this event is to promote renewable energy technologies, integrate science and engineering disciplines, and give competitors an opportunity to showcase their technical and creative abilities."

What? I thought the purpose of this event was for the various Engg departments at all the competing schools to have a general good time, fostered by healthy rivalry and no doubt a few unspeakable antics along the way! That is why we have these competitions isn't it? I mean, who really cares about solar power? Especially in Calgary, the Fossil Fuel Capital of Canada.

Hold on, before you mod this post (+5: flamebait) let me continue.

I'm in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, and although I'm not actually on the Solar Car Team (yet... they're recruiting like mad), they did steal our study room to use for their club room. So it's almost like I'm a part of it... sort of. In fact, there's a whole bunch of leftover crap from their wooden prototype crowding the hallways here right now.

But ya, all joking aside, I think it's a really cool challenge and we here at the UofC look forward to competing alongside other great academic institutions. (And having a good time besides! I tell you, if UofC wins this thing, there's gonna be a party in Calgary the likes of which we haven't seen since our precious Flames almost won the Stanley Cup....)

Ok, now feel free to mod this (+5: flamebait) for shamelessly bringing up the NHL.. or lack thereof (sigh)

Re:solar car challenge

[CastrTroy]

This got me thinking. Maybe my school was different, but there wasn't any good software development competitions. Maybe universities should host some software competitions. I'm not talking about the kind where they give you 3 hours, and 10 problems, and see if you can solve them. Have a contest where you turn in a finished product at the end of the year. Program whatever you want. Best program wins. Have different prizes for different categories. This is the reason people aren't that good at programming when they get out of school. They've never done a real software development project from start to finish. My Software Engineering education was different. We had a full year group project. There was 6 of us on a team. You can only learn stuff like this by doing it.

Re:solar car challenge

[ArbitraryConstant]

Now all we need is for them to stop treating undergrads like scum.

Re:solar car challenge

[Intocabile]

Good to see I'm not the only ZOO wasting his time on Slashdot. I was also pretty pissed at the study room being annexed but it was really the only choice.

Re:solar car challenge

[servognome]

but they are :)
now go clean the beakers, I have to just get this experiment to go right just one time out of a thousand, and I'll be able to base my entire thesis on that one data point.

Re:solar car challenge

[TheLink]

Yep you're right. It's not about real technology or advancing Solar Energy. It's not about real world stuff and it's not about solving real world problems.

It's just another of those silly sports. Especially those involving college/uni students ;).

For a dose of reality: you only get 1kW to 1.5kW max per square metre from sunlight on the earth's surface (and I think I'm being very generous).

Car air conditioning probably takes about 2-3kW. Car heating = 1kW.

Where I stay, driving a car without airconditioning in mid afternoon is torture. The more sunlight you have the more airconditioning you need...

Assuming 15% solar cell efficiency, you'd need 12-18 square metres to generate the 2-3kW just for airconditioning. Worse with 15% solar cell efficiency, I sure hope you can reflect/deflect the 85% of the energy you don't use, otherwise you will _really_ need MORE cooling...

Cars are about roughly 1.7 metres wide by 4.5 metres long? (6 feet wide by 15 feet long?). That's only 7.65 square metres.

After you deduct power for heating or airconditioning it sure doesn't look like there's much spare power for accelerating a car to merge safely into a freeway eh? If you have four near-obese passengers plus some luggage, even a carbon fibre chassis isn't going to take the total weight much below 500kg...

So forgive me if I think this solar car stuff is really silly. A waste of time even.

It may be a pleasant waste of time or even fun. I've nothing against that actually.

But the ASC's website claims that it is about:
"A greater understanding of solar energy technology, its environmental benefits and its promise for the future;"

I doubt that solar energy's promise for the future will involve mounting solar cells on a car.

How come ...

[taniwha]

we never hear about the evil uses of solar power?

Re:How come ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because any self respecting evil mastermind puts a nuclear plant in his underground island fortress.

Nothing exciting

[jack_canada]

I saw this stuff on my almost 5 year old science text book, excatly the same car. Why are they still making a big deal out of this? They should stop whoring for attention and get some real progressive done!

Re:Nothing exciting

[Squirmy McPhee]

I saw this stuff on my almost 5 year old science text book, excatly the same car. Why are they still making a big deal out of this?

That's nothing -- my grandpa had a car with an internal combustion engine 70 years ago! Why are they still making a big deal out of those?

The point being, just because the car you saw 5 years ago looks similar to the cars teams are racing now doesn't mean the cars are the same. There is a huge difference in how the cars perform. When this race's predecessor began in 1990, the winning vehicles averaged speeds of about 20 mph. Now they're approaching 55 mph.

And it's still a big deal from an educational standpoint because it allows engineering students to get their hands dirty building a vehicle that has to survive thousands of miles on the road. Instead of learning about suspensions, motors, and circuits in a classroom, and maybe getting to touch one during a summer internship, they actually design and build something from scratch -- and the most successful teams often do so with little intervention from university faculty (who tend to think a bit small for these projects, IMO).

The original patent on solar chimneys

[Brad Lucier]

My father invented and patented this idea; the US patent, granted in 1981, was originally filed in 1975. He never got a dime out of it, and the patents, in Canada, Australia, Israel, and the US, have all expired. I guess he was ahead of his time. More information here.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Stoutlimb]

For some reason they didn't build them back then. I wonder if the patent was part of the reason. Maybe your dad's patent is a wonderful example of why the current intellectual property rights laws don't really help much with innovation.

Either way, kudos to him! I hope his name gets mentioned lots whenever there is a press release about these machines. Some how i doubt it though.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[NanoGator]

"My father invented and patented this idea;"

Whoah.. what just came over me? For a moment, I really hated your dad!

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[bungley]

Whoah.. what just came over me? For a moment, I really hated your dad!

And for good reason; if not for the patent thing, then because the he fathered someone who Linus considered "an evil man" -- and he's proud! (see parent posters homepage)

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe because he patented it which resulted in the idea's publication, people are able to build these things now, instead of having the idea go to waste in some musty old notebook somewhere.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

"For some reason they didn't build them back then. I wonder if the patent was part of the reason. Maybe your dad's patent is a wonderful example of why the current intellectual property rights laws don't really help much with innovation."

Or maybe, just maybe, there's more to an idea than just having one. A principle that was recognized by the founding fathers (What did you think they were promoting? You don't need laws to defend sitting around and daydreaming all day).

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Bios_Hakr]

Just having a patent does not mean riches. And it shouldn't.

If you invent something and sit on the idea, you don't deserve to make money.

Personally, I'd like to see a condition on patents that the idea has to be marketed within 5 years or the patent expires.

Fucking asshats coming up with a good idea then waiting on the world to beat a fucking path. It doesn't happen like that.

If anyone ever had a truly revolutionaly idea that they had faith in, they'd go batshit crazy trying to get the world to listen to them. Just take a look at that crazy Tesla fucker for a good idea of how to market something agianst all odds.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

well boo freakin hoo. fuck patents.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

yur father sucks my cock!

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

"I guess he was ahead of his time."

More like: patents are a convenient way of preventing others from doing something. They expire, the idea can be used without restriction, stuff gets done again.

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like anyone else might come up with the same concept, right?

Re:The original patent on solar chimneys

[Brad Lucier]

OK, I'll reply to some of these "comments". (Now I really know what "Anonymous Coward" means.)

If you look at the timeline, you see that Schlaich Bergermann und Partner probably learned of the device from the patent publication---no patent, no publication, no prototype in Spain in 1981/82. Now Schlaich Bergermann are the consulting engineers on the project.

As someone who works in the academic world, where the currency is credit for ideas, I would have liked to see some credit going to my father, when, for example, Time chose this project as one of its Best Inventions of 2002 (with Joerg Schlaich listed as "inventor"!).

Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[ylikone]

Last summer, up close to where I live, they had one fatality in a solar car crash on the highway.

Re:Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[jay-be-em]

Near where I live there are dozens of fatalities per year involving gas guzzling vehicles. They may be unsafe on highways!

The article you reference shows it was a loose brake line; how is this specific to solar technology?

-1 troll.

Re:Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[ylikone]

>Near where I live there are dozens of fatalities per year involving gas guzzling vehicles. They may be unsafe on highways!

Well, yes you could say that if we only drove bicycles on the highway, we'd all be safe... my point was that because of the fact that there are gas powered vehicles on the road, solar cars will be unsafe.

>The article you reference shows it was a loose brake line; how is this specific to solar technology?

It also mentions about possibly banning solar cars from the highway... I think that since the solar cars are not built with the same safety standards and are MUCH lighter than gas cars, in any accident case, the solar car doesn't stand a chance.

Re:Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[Anonymous Coward]

It also mentions about possibly banning solar cars from the highway... I think that since the solar cars are not built with the same safety standards and are MUCH lighter than gas cars, in any accident case, the solar car doesn't stand a chance.

Since the gas-powered cars are the ones responsible for inflicting the damage, maybe they should be the subject of any banning campaigns.

At any rate, I haven't seen anybody proposing banning motorcycles, which also don't have much in the way of safety features.

Re:Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be relivant, at this point, to mention that in some parts of the world where scooters are motorcycles represent about 80% of the traffic on the roads, they do in fact build sperate roads for the primary transportation. In fact cars/trucks are effectively banned from these roads by their inherent size.

I have no problem with driving a motorcycle in asia, but I *refuse* to even consider the idea in North America.

Re:Solar power cars may be unsafe on highways

[Shihar]

Solar cars could never reach the safety standards of a modern car. Period. Yes, the argument could be made that if we were all zipping around in our ultra light weight cars we would be less likely to be flattened by an SUV. However, that ignores the fundamental problem of the fact that if you are plowing along at 100 kph, your tire blows, and you end up eating a tree, guard rail, or anything else solid, you want to be in something with a nice big old engine and sturdy frame to absorb the impact.

Maybe for some people it is practical to get a light weight car that skimps on safety, but for someone like me who has to drive an hour each day, I want to know that if my tire blows and I eat a tree, I am likely going to be okay. The sturdy frame of my Honda Accord, a few air bags, and an engine to eat some kinetic energy as a tree goes through it makes me feel a lot safer.

ObSimpsons

[Skater]

Jesse: "I'm still fighting for the earth. I even got 'em to install a solar-powered electric chair."

Snake: [in the solar electric chair] "Dude, we've been here all morning! Could you at least remoisten my head sponge?"

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/CABF01

Re:ObSimpsons

[Rod Beauvex]

I thought that said 'Jesus' for a minute...

Solar? eh...

[ErikZ]

Honestly? I'd rather build a Windmill. I'm not sure if I'll ever own a house where the neighbors won't be upset by that though.

Re:Solar? eh...

[mrchaotica]

This thing is a windmill! The only difference is that it uses the sun to heat up and accelerate the air first...

Don't underestimate the power of competition...

[pflodo]

People perform and achieve so much more if you give them a challenge. These races are the breeding grounds for new technology that can eventually find its way into future cars.

What I would like to see is an electric Formula 1 type competition, I would bet that it would only be a few years before we would have electric cars with performance and range to match current Formula 1 cars. With developments in electric motors and battery technology that can then flow on into domestic cars, just like disc brakes, seat belts, crumple zones, fuel injection, and the list goes on...

Re:Don't underestimate the power of competition...

[digitalchinky]

Electric formula 1, it'd be faster and more exciting than the current set of demented rules for the petrol based series yes? Might be worth watching until some twit decides they are too fast, then puts a stopper on the entire developement process.

Re:Don't underestimate the power of competition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? What do you have in mind for a > 1000KW/h battery?

Re:Don't underestimate the power of competition...

[drinkypoo]

Disc brakes are from aircraft. Seat belts date back to people strapping themselves to animals - the reason one would be thrown clear of one has changed but the idea is the same - to keep you in your seat.

Re:Don't underestimate the power of competition...

[Shihar]

I would like to watch electric formula 1 too, but then again, I am a sucker for blood sports. I am sure they could get electric cars to go as fast as current race cars, there is just one small little problem, they couldn't even begin to meet the safety requirements. They can either crawl around a track like what you would expect from a massively under powered car stuffed with safety equipment, or they could blitz around the track and disintegrate upon impact with the wall.

Electric car racing might be interesting, especially if you can replace the battery in the pit. Solar powered cars though will never happen. There is a very finite amount of energy you can get per square meter from the sun, and it doesn't even come close to being comparable to what you get form fossil fuels.

Solar Tower

[rokzy]

there was an article in New Scientist about the solar tower months ago. they talked about the possibility of using it as an actual greenhouse too. the main problem was thought to be keeping it clean.

Re:Solar Tower

[drinkypoo]

Seems to me like it would be better to put PV solar underneath it where it would be protected from the elements.

Torrent of Animation

[TorrentNinja]

Here is a 10MB torrent of an Animation from the acticle.

SolarTower-Metric-Short.mpg.torrent

A fun cycle

[Bustback]

renewable energy technologies

So renewable, in fact, that it's entirely possible if all the solar panels in use today were put together, they would probably not even cover the global costs to produce them.

But they still kick ass.

price of solar chimny and solar panels

[grqb]

I'm surpised that the solar chimny is actually cheaper than solar panels. Basic calculations show that the solar chimny costs between $2.5-3.75/watt but solar panels cost about $8/watt. I would have expected the solar chimny to be much more expensive, considering that it's going to be twice the height of the tallest structure today (the CN Tower in Toronto).

One cool thing about the solar chimny though is that apparently it can generate power 24hrs/day, unlike wind that fluctuates. Basically the solar chimny generates electricity from the same type of turbine that a wind turbines use.

Re:price of solar chimny and solar panels

[ArbitraryConstant]

It can continue to generate electricity at night because heat energy is stored at the bottom, and as the environment cools at night (as it does fairly quickly in cloudless environments like that) the stored heat can allow the cooler air to rise.

Re:price of solar chimny and solar panels

[dbIII]

I'm surpised that the solar chimny is actually cheaper than solar panels.

Solar panels don't scale, they have linear costs - thermal solutions can improve with scale. According to trolls nuclear is linear in cost when it suits them, and not when it suits them - but reality should be considered in all cases.

With panels you buy another one when you need it - but it costs. With thermal solutions it is a big engineering project with big capital costs that requires planning - in the end you get cheap electricity in bulk. Build it big and it ends up being cheaper per MW - up to a point. At some point wind loading (in this case) makes bigger ones a lot more expensive, so you go for multiple units. The reality of thermal power plants of all kinds is that some sort of limit is hit and you go for multiple units - some trolls may say this doesn't apply to the magic kettle which is nuclear - but I must remind them that it wasn't all of Chenobyl which failed - just one unit, the other five kept running and are still running today.

Re:price of solar chimny and solar panels

[Zoyd]

but I must remind them that it wasn't all of Chenobyl which failed - just one unit, the other five kept running and are still running today

"The Chernobyl plant was closed in December 2000...."
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Features/Chernobyl- 15/timeline.shtml

Re:price of solar chimny and solar panels

[JesusQuintana]

it wasn't all of Chenobyl which failed - just one unit, the other five kept running and are still running today.

Zoyd pointed out that the Chernobyl plant no longer operates. Additionally, according to this entry, there were only 4 reactors.

In fairness to the original poster, there were two additional reactors under construction at the time of the accident but were not finished. And the reactors did continue to operate for a period of time.

This will never fly

[jimmy page]

Ok.. even if it did save billions of tons of carbon flying into the air every second, think of all the shaded ground underneath that would be *hurting* animals.

Never gonna happen - at least not here in California.

Re:This will never fly

[Bit_Squeezer]

Homeless shelter Big one, Air conditioned

Promote technologies?

[ctr2sprt]

I remember when I was younger first hearing about these races and getting excited. It sounded very high-tech and neat, and plus it was a car race - who doesn't like car races? I was, naturally, very disappointed when I learned how slow these things go. My parents explained to me that they couldn't go faster because they didn't have enough energy to do so. At that point I just thought, "Then why are we wasting time on this?"

So I'm not sure these guys are really promoting anything. I strongly suspect their races are having the exact opposite effect, in fact: convincing people that solar technology is nowhere near ready for prime-time. Instead of showcasing stuff solar tech can do that nothing else can, they're showcasing the stuff it does really, really poorly.

As an academic project, I think this is great. I'd love to be involved in it and I'm sure I'd learn a lot just from following it closely. But as PR? Not even close.

Re:Promote technologies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I don't know how long ago that was but "Gemini", the last solar car built here at Queen's University, is a twin seater and does 125km/h. This year's car is supposed to up that a bit too (mind you half the race is knowing when to use your power.)

Here is a link to the team's cars, http://www.qsvt.ca/index.php?topic=vehicles, be gentle because last time I checked the server is fragile.

Re:Promote technologies?

[f8free]

I see your point. Can't do too much with the energy generated using just the surface area of the car.

Perhaps the focus should be more on getting solar generating capacity plugged into the grid.
If you could charge your vehicle up with a football field's worth of sunlight from the day before you might have enough for day trips... if only the batteries weren't so damn heavy.

Re:Promote technologies?

[alienw]

What are you smoking? The current solar cars can go well over 80 miles per hour. It's done through weight reduction and increases in efficiency. I think at those speeds, it is definitely an interesting race.

Re:Promote technologies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The current solar cars can go well over 80 miles per hour.

The current gasoline cars can go well over 100 miles per hour. Did I mention they can also carry your four friends and a trunk full of groceries? Also they have air conditioning and a spare tire.

It's done through weight reduction and increases in efficiency.

Much the same strategy used on gasoline-powered race cars, which by the way can go well over 200 miles per hour.

So to summarize: The vehicles most people consider "race cars" top out at over 200mph. The vehicles most people consider "family cars" top out at over 100mph. The solar-powered cars top out at over 80mph. "I've created a new highly-powerful vehicle which can travel at -- (pinky to mouth) eighty miles per hour!"

Because it doesn't meet the expectations most people have for a car race, most people are disappointed. This is why I think they ought not to market it as a car race, since even if they were going at half the speed of sound that wouldn't be why it's interesting.

Re:Promote technologies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The solar cars can actually go very fast but the speed is not limited by the technology but by the rules. The cars go over the same roads that every one else travels every day. It would not be safe to have a solar car speeding down a busy interstate at 90MPH.

I was a member of the Iowa State University Solar Car Team and would hear stories of the previous races and how the rules have changed. In the first race the rules did not dictate a maximum speed so the drivers would go as fast as they could. I've heard of drivers waving a handful of speeding tickets as they cross the daily checkpoints. Later rules penalized teams that broke the speed limit. When the 55MPH speed limit on interstate highways was lifted by federal law the rules added a 55MPH limit to the cars regardless of the posted limits. I used to joke that it's the only race I've heard of with a speed limit.

The solar car race is not as much of a race as it is a marathon, a competition, or an experiment. Just getting the car to complete the daily checkpoints can be a challenge if the wind isn't blowing right, or their are too many clouds (or, oddly enough, not enough clouds). I don't know what the rules are like right now but the first person to cross the finish line is not always the winner. Times are tallied up over the days of the race, penalties are added up and then the winner is announced.

One thing that we'd always have to tell people when showing off the car is that is unlikely that anyone would ever drive a solar car as a means of daily conveyance. The power that one can derive from the sun is unreliable, and currently expensive. This is more of a race of electric cars than anything. A solar car is a serial electric hybrid, which means the power train is completely electric but the batteries are charged by photovoltaic cells. The cars are more an engineering challenge than a proof of concept.

If you really want to see electric cars race there are better places to do so. I've heard of electric dragsters that can do as well or better than their internal combustion cousins. Don't expect to be impressed there either, they don't rumble and roar, the don't belch out flames and fumes, they simply get from start to finish in a very short amount of time.

Re:Promote technologies?

[alienw]

My god you are a fucktard. So, I suppose you consider any race which occurs at less than 200mph boring. How about horse racing? Or the Olympics?

The 2005 World Solar Challange - Sep 25 - Oct 2...

[|>>?]

...runs from Darwin to Adelaide over 3000km in the Australian Outback. http://www.wsc.org.au/

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar Tower my ass.

Where's the rollercoaster built around it with the bungy jumpers streaming to and fro? Where the Rush Limbaugh Ride where you can ride a vent of hot air to the top while sucking down pain killers? Where's the naked acrobat midget dancers? I mean, this is Austraila. Can't we at least put a huge magnifying glass at the top to fry tourists like ants? No? And where's the fucking beer?

Re:Ha!

[dirtyforker]

It's in Australia, dickhead. Of course there will be beer.

These challenges are useless.

[Insanity]

Every year we're subjected to media coverage of a number of these solar-powered races, and with each one, it gets less and less interesting.

It's not a big surprise that you can take thousands of dollars worth of carbon fiber and build an extremely light and impractically fragile vehicle with a design lifespan of a few dozen hours. No real science is being done in these races, just incremental advancements in the application of computational fluid dynamics and power control circuitry. Reduce the drag coefficient by 0.5% over last year's design, cut the weight by two kilograms... it's a complete waste of time.

This will *NEVER* result in a practical vehicle, for the simple reason that the theoretical maximum power you can get out of solar cells is on the order of 1000W/m^2. These solar races are not baby steps toward a future in which we'll all be driving solar cars, they are just a dicksizing event between university engineering departments.

Even as such, they're a waste - there are far more impressive things upon which a group of talented young engineers could focus their efforts.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[swebster]

The incremental advances take a lot of ingenuity to come up with... as you say, it has become difficult to make huge improvements, so you have to think really hard about how to shave off that extra few kilos etc. Definately good mental (and likely physical) exercise.

I guess you could argue that it's not worth bothering, but technologies from this sort of thing do get implemented into real things, like, say, aerodynamic designs of current hybrid vehicles. Sure these cars are pretty advanced and it takes a while for the technology to make it to the mainstream, but that's always the way.

The people working on these projects also learn a lot, and especially due to the small improvements required, they learn that attention to detail is important.

I guess it's hard to know if there are "more impressive" things they could work on, but if they want to do this, I say go for it.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you can build a perfectly useful vehicle with a 1500 Watt engine. The Citroen 2CV, 2CV meaning 2 horsepower.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[solarcardork]

As solarcardork I feel I must reply.

That's all. I agree.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[alienw]

It's not very useful as an everyday car. However, it's a fine example of engineering at its best. That's exactly what, mechanical and electrical engineers are trained to do. A Formula 1 car is not practical for everyday driving, either. But it is an example of advanced engineering. I think you do not exactly understand what engineering is all about.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The incremental advances take a lot of ingenuity to come up with..."

Therein lies the problem, really. A lot of ingenuity for very little gain. I'm tired of seeing projects of incredible complexity, most of which is dedicated to getting the last two percent of performance. It used to be that things were designed to work - you couldn't calculate everything to death so you overengineered things. A side effect of this was reliability, but the main point is that amazing things were built using methods that seem simplistic today. I think the relentless drive toward optimization gets in the way of real innovation.

Why don't we get all those smart young engineers from prestigious universities to start messing around with rockets or jet engines at medium scale? We might actually see some groundbreaking work.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[MemoryAid]

I thought it was the two chevrons used in the logo on the hood. I guess it is kind of silly to name a car after a hood ornament when you could name it after the engine.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[accessdeniednsp]

Is NASCAR not based on the same princpiles? And yet we often gain from the design improvements of the engines, new techniques for oil, better processing of fuel, etc etc.

This will lead to further advancements. But, no, I don't ever expect to see this on my next Saturn.

NB: I am not a NASCAR fan. I find the 'show' to be incessantly boring.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a two horsepower engine pretty much qualifies as a hood ornament.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[BenTels0]

Why don't we get all those smart young engineers from prestigious universities to start messing around with rockets or jet engines at medium scale?

Because they aren't interested. Solar-powered vehicles bring together research from all sorts of different fields of physics and chemistry, from fluid- and gas dynamics to materials research to energy-efficient engineering to, indeed, development of more efficient photovoltaic elements. There is a lot of real science involved in that, despite your best efforts too pooh-pooh it. More than enough science in fact that it fascinates those people working on it and many more waiting in the wings for their turn to work on the problems in these fields. And you cannot simply tell them to go work on rockets -- to them, rocket technology is boring.

We might actually see some groundbreaking work.

Your outsider's idea of "groundbreaking work" does not coincide with the ideas on groundbreaking work held by those who actually have an overview of what is being done at the different universities working on advancing these fields.

Re:These challenges are useless.

[legirons]

"Even as such, they're a waste - there are far more impressive things upon which a group of talented young engineers could focus their efforts."

Like researching autonomous vehicles for the military...

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

After all that evil photosynthesis and lighting up gay marriages.

GO PURDUE!

[Pete Brubaker]

I used to be on that team and I wish them the best!

GO BOILERS!

That depends

[WindBourne]

there have been some very cheap processes recently for doing cells. These are cheap, clean to manufactuer, and supposedly have ~30 % efficiency. Right now, they are doing studies to make sure that cell does not break down quickly.

Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliostats

[pflodo]

Archimedes supposedly set fire to the Roman Navy using an arrangement of mirrors.

And you probably wouldn't want to have this guy as a neighbour, as he used reflected light from 100 mirrors to "cut" the tops off several trees.

solar car fuckers

[mnemonic_]

Here at the University of Michigan, the solar car team (whose corporate donations exceed $1 million) keeps messing with the Human-Powered Helicopter team's table in the Wilson Center. Now we've got to trash that table though, because apparently homemade tables are not allowed in any university buildings.

Interestingly, Michigan Solar Car is basically a small student-run corporation. They've got over 200 members with guys from the business school helping with corporate relations, and an army of engineers of every type. I work across from them every week, but they actually rent their own off-campus building for most of their construction.

Re:solar car fuckers

[Anonymous Coward]

And they were DQ'ed @ ASC2003... HA HA

Only 10 year warranties?

[Tau Zero]

The manufacturers seem to like to hold warranty info close to the vest, but the numbers I've been seeing lately are 25 years.

Re:Only 10 year warranties?

[Rei]

I've seen 40 year old solar panels running fine. They don't get the sort of power that they used to, but they still get power.

I saw this really interesting thing recently on... I think it was the History channel. They showed this giant solar array of which only 1/250th of it was the actual cells (very high efficiency, expensive cells). The rest was cheap plastic lenses around each small cell. The whole thing was mounted on a big heliostat. Sounds like a good idea to me. :)

ive beem watching the solar tower site for...

[distantbody]

many many months now, and i have scanned it thoroughly for construction dates, and its closer to 2~3 years until the design is even finalised, so 1 year sounds pretty optimistic to me. "worlds largest solar tower"? its will also be the worlds first non-prototype solar tower, 1km tall. i'll be travelling down there from Sydney to monitor its progress. -5 Troll modifier, well at least i got my opinion out :P

You kidding? That's small.

[Tau Zero]

Leon O. Billig, in a fact article in _Analog_ titled "Defeating the son of Andrew" (11 years ago this month), proposed convection towers on the order of ten times as tall. I recommend this article to everyone as a mind-stretching exercise.

Improve the environment?

[Tau Zero]

At temperatures up to 70 C beneath the greenhouse, nothing is going to grow there and soil moisture will be lost rapidly. It may be possible to use this land to extract salts for industrial use, but given the rather low height of the tower any water evaporated is not going to re-condense before being exhausted and thus contribute nothing to the power output. From this I gather that, as a first approximation, energy expended to evaporate water will be lost (water vapor is lighter than air and will contribute slightly to buoyancy as a second-order effect).

I doubt that a large expanse of even more highly salinated land is going to contribute much to the local environment.

Re:Improve the environment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that any given erg of solar power that's growing a plant isn't heating the air and generating power. You can't have your photon and eat it, too.

Re:Improve the environment?

[Farmer Tim]

"At temperatures up to 70 C beneath the greenhouse, nothing is going to grow there and soil moisture will be lost rapidly."

The highest temperatures will be in the center of the array, and closest to the ceiling. The temerature at ground level and around the rim will be lower, thanks to the very convective effect that makes the whole proposition feasible, but by how much will depend on the ceiling height. Remember thermal gradients; it may not be possible to use the entire area, but a good portion of it will never come close to70 C. I have to point out that growing plants under it is actually part of the proposal, it isn't my idea. If you don't think it's possible, tell the people planning it, I'm sure they'll appreciate the advice.

"It may be possible to use this land to extract salts for industrial use"

Not really, it's common sodium chloride, and much more readily available in commercially attractive deposits elsewhere; desalination plants along the nearby Murray River, for example.

"From this I gather that, as a first approximation, energy expended to evaporate water will be lost"

Two points: (1) Mildura receives little rainfall (irrigation is vital), so surface water isn't as much of an issue as you might think, and (2) this has probably been included in the effciency calculations.

"I doubt that a large expanse of even more highly salinated land is going to contribute much to the local environment."

You don't understand the mechanism behind land salination (in .au, at least). Salt is carried to the surface by the water table rising. Anything that causes a lowering of the water table prevents further salination, so accellerated surface evaporation is as good as revegitation. Again, this has all been taken into account.

Re:Improve the environment?

[Farmer Tim]

"Not to mention that any given erg of solar power that's growing a plant isn't heating the air and generating power."

Since when does stiking the ground cause all light in the visible part of the spectrum to shift to infra-red? The mere fact that I can see the ground suggests a good portion of it is simply being reflected...

Re:Improve the environment?

[Tau Zero]

The highest temperatures will be in the center of the array, and closest to the ceiling.

To stratify that way, you'd need

1. The sunlight to be absorbed by the air, and
2. The airflow to be laminar rather than turbulent.

Neither of those is true. The ground is both the heat absorber and heat storage medium, and the turbulent airflow will mix it pretty well.

Concentrator systems

[Tau Zero]

Deep Space One used that kind of scheme, with gallium-arsenide cells IIRC.

Re:Concentrator systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Deep Space Nine has a Matter-Antimatt- oh, nevermind.

The Real Solar Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

The real solar challenge is to produce a solar cell that actually produces over its lifetime more energy than it took to make the cell in the first place. We know we will have reached this point when a solar cell plant goes online that uses its own cells to power its own production line.

Depends on the site

[Tau Zero]

Suppose they installed it over the Salton Sea, and floated black plastic over the water to prevent evaporation (but still use the water as a heat reservoir). Still think California wouldn't go for using a small part of its 376 square miles to eliminate some fossil-fuel needs?

Re:Depends on the site

[SidV]

California is only 376 Square miles?

Looks beigger on the map, must be that Mecator distortion they are always talking about.

Never practical? Think again.

[Tau Zero]

... the theoretical maximum power you can get out of solar cells is on the order of 1000W/m^2.

Fine. Suppose that you can get 30%, and that car's effective area is 7 square meters. That's 1000 W/m^2 * 7 * .3 = 2100 W = ~3 HP, which is a fair fraction of a car's cruising requirements and would supply many miles-worth of energy requirements if you charged batteries while the car was parked during the day.

This Just In!

[jim_v2000]

Solar power can be used to create electricity!

Re:Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliosta

[redfiveneo]

Actually, I believe that myth was disproven by the guys on the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters.

Basically, they tried to replicate the experiment, using modern mirrors and tools, and failed. They saw it was pretty much impossible to align the mirrors just right, or to properly aim all the mirrors properly, even with today's tools. They deemed it pretty much impossible for however many years ago it was.

According to the DC website, it was episode 16--sadly, they only have a teaser, no synopsis.

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/ep is ode/episode_03.html

Repricing at Kwh

[jmichaelg]

It may be cheaper than solar panels but it's not cheaper than a gas-powered plant. The price of a gas turbine powerplant runs between $500/Kwh to $1000/Kwh. The chiminey's $2.5/watt figure works out to $2500/Kwh, at a minimum, to build the tower and associated infrastructure.

"But," you say, "the energy is free..."

But it's not. Just because the incoming energy is free, it's not free to capture and convert it to electricity. There's a maintenance expense to account for. Remember, this tower is huge, the collector is even bigger. Cracks will form and have to be sealed. On a tower that big, that's a job for a large crew that will never end. They'll no sooner get to the top than it's time to start over and do it again.

A windstorm comes through and blows out panels, they've got to be replaced. Sandstorm blasts through scratchs the clear panels, reduces their efficiency - got to replace em. Hailstorm comes through, fractures lots of panels and causes them to leak which reduces collecting efficiency. Got to trim the weeds under the collector so they don't play havoc with the airstreams. I could keep going but I think you get the point...maintenance is going to be a bitch on something that big and it's not free. I don't know what the numbers are but the installation in Spain wasn't self sustaining which doesn't make me confident that simply scaling the sucker is going to make the costs drop enough. I get even less confident when the website starts talking about needing government subsidies.

Re:Repricing at Kwh

[grqb]

Sure, there are other costs...but everything has other costs. Can you put a price on the fact that coal spits out 100 times the amount of radioactive material into the air than a similar sized nuclear plant? How do you even clean that up? Also, everything in the energy sector is subsidized. No nuclear power station has EVER broken even in North America...but still our energy bills are cheap...why? Because our energy is subsidized. Maybe you don't need a subsidy to build a coal power plant, but your tax dollars sure do go to paying for environmental damages, health damages and other things associated with the coal power plant.

Re:Repricing at Kwh

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you put a price on the fact that coal spits out 100 times the amount of radioactive material into the air than a similar sized nuclear plant?

Yep. $0 because nobody really cares. Its not an opinion; it is a fact. Cost is what you pull out of your pocket, and for the moment, polluters (most of them) do not have to pay a penality.

I agree with you that there is a health "cost" for society, but for producers, there is no cost. That is why we continue burning coal.

seng projects

[Zapraki]

Ya, I'm actually in my 3rd year of Software Engineering at the UofC, which is under Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Right now, I'm in a semester-long group project with 8 other guys to make a hotel management system using PHP and mySQL. In 4th year we have a full-year team project in small groups, under direction of a prof who gets to choose the project topic.

I totally agree that it's really important to have some team stuff under our belts before we get out there in the "real world". Because (like it or not), you can't just go off and do something all by yourself in most companies. Unless of course you are the company, but how many of us can simply start our own business straight out of university (and expect to survive)?

Moderators on crack again

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh-huh. Parent is a troll for wondering if the world's supply of oil is finite and providing a perfectly worksafe link.

You twits can moderate these posts "Troll" all you want. It won't create a single additional drop of oil in the world.

Wouldn't a solar tower mess up the atmosphere?

[Anonymous Coward]

It just doesn't seem like heating up a bunch of air and blasting it out the top of a 1km high tower can be good for the atmosphere...

Wouldn't this possibly cause some some kind of weather effect?

Good maths...

[Farmer Tim]

...but you're only looking at the inital costs, not total cost of operation. A nuclear reactor is far more expensive to run and maintain, contains more moving and pressurized parts requiring higher standards of engineering expertise, reactors produce nuclear waste which is expensive to transport and store (and the waste from the tiny, 45 year old research reactor we have in Sydney is politically volatile enough, thank you), and at the end of the working life there's still the problem of decommissioning with the associated clean-up and disposal costs.

By comparison, this takes a lot of land (but considering Australia is a largely arid continent with a population not much more than 20 million mostly living on the coastal fringe, appropriate land isn't hard to come by), but requires relatively little maintenance, no expensive and hazardous fuel, little to no full-time supervision, and can be repaired by glaziers rather than expensive nuclear technicians; an entire installation could be run by a staff you could count on one hand. It also wouldn't require the same degree of security, which is another saving.

Oh, and $1,300 per kW = $1.3 million per MW...slightly more than 50% of what this tower is projected to cost (hardly WAY out of line, nice try at slewing the figures though), so with the overall savings in operational and maintenance costs over an average lifespan of (conservatively) 30 years, the solar tower *still* comes out in front.

Offtopic - not silicon cells

[dbIII]

But you do have a point, the chemical cost for photovoltaics right now is very high.I cannot understand how anyone on the net can keep pointing this out - the process to purify silicon for the wafers that make CPUs is the same as that for the silicon solar cells - and other techniques have been developed over the past twenty years that allow us to use multicrystalline silicon and other materials. Industrial processes have a cost, and in the case of the silicon cells that people rant about it is a large energy cost and not a "chemical cost" - the stuff is made out of silicon dioxide guys - it's not like extracting gold or copper.

Anyway, the topic is about solar thermal, which can only boil you rice or purify your water on a small scale but gives you megawatts on a large scale. Solar cells don't scale at all, the best you can do is buy another one and get an additive effect - but they have been the darling of governments and energy companies that want to look green because they don't require planning. The place for solar cells is somewhere that is not on the grid - in the trivial example you don't need to plug your pocket calculator into the wall and in the non-trivial example you can set up a marine navigation beacon and not have to change the batteries for years.

the solar tower in Mildura

[thephydes]

A better site for it would be over Canberra...... thats where most of the hot air is produced - by politicians that wont support innovative technologies.

Re:the solar tower in Mildura

[KeensMustard]

Voted in by who again? Oh, that's right, by you! Way to denigrate a whole city of 300000 people because of a problem you created!

Tidbit

[notthe9]

IIRC, my step-mom's company, Terion provides tracking for this.

Re:Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliosta

[fact0r]

Hmm - Mythbusters - those two guys don't seem like the most intelligent guys on the planet, even though I don't rate stuff from ancient mythology as highly likely I certainly do rate Archimedes as somewhat brighter than these two knuckle-draggers.

Certainly they seem somewhat more interested in making things go bang than any form of scientific rigour. They tell us about their experience in the special effects industry but seem to forget to mention any scientific experience ...

Having said that - I quite like the show - but only because I like seeing things go bang. Definitely not because I put any stock in their results.

Re:solar car

[rvogti]

It is my understanding that, to date, the Human-Powered Helicopter team has not been able to successfully lift off the ground. The Solar Car Team has won 3 of 7 national races, and has placed 3rd internationally several times. We have also built 7 functional solar-powered cars. We have to raise all of our money in-house (the University does not provide us with significant funding), and we have put in the time and effort to recruit a large group of members to meet that challenge. A bit more effort in recruiting and organization and your student group can also be successful. Thanks.

http://www.umsolar.com/

hmm not scalable..

[pavera]

Um, you have to have 25,000 acres to produce 200MW with that thing. You would have to sacrifice the entire SW US to produce enough energy for California alone.

I'm sure this 25,000 acres has to be relatively flat as well, making the SW US impossible to use as it is spotted with all sorts of mountains, and the bottom of the tube has to be the highest point under that skirt of solar panels to maximize air flow, so in most places you're talking about a tube sitting at least 200 or 300 feet above the ground.

I can't think off-hand of a single place where there are 25,000 acres between Salt lake City and Las Vegas that meet those criteria... anyway 25,000 acres for 200MW is bizarre.

Re:hmm not scalable..

[Ulric]

25000 acres should be something like 10 kilometers squared, if I have my unit conversions in order. Surely they have enough empty space in Australia for a whole bunch of these towers.

I'm more concerned with what happens to the climate of they start blasting all that hot air high into the atmosphere.

Re:hmm not scalable..

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quick fact check shows your argument to be rather spurious.

25 000 acres ~ 100 km2 (http://www.google.se/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=2500 0+acres+to+square+kilometers&spell=1)

size of 4 biggest deserts in usa toghether 535 000 miles2(http://www.desertusa.com/glossary.html) ~1 400 000 km2

Toghether this means that you cam fit 14 000 of these plants in the US deserts. With 200 mw per plant, that gives 2800 gigawatt of electricity.
For comparison, the total energy production capacity in USA is 735 gigawatt (http://www.eece.ksu.edu/~pahwa/School/Element.htm l)

It's IS a very big project though, I give you that.

Re:hmm not scalable..

[onepoint]

25000 acres = 39.0625 miles sq. ~ 10117 Hectares = 101.17 square kilometers.

Re:hmm not scalable..

[potat0man]

I'm sure this 25,000 acres has to be relatively flat as well, making the SW US impossible to use as it is spotted with all sorts of mountains

***WAVES FRANTICLY***
ummm, yeah, all sorts of mountains and, ummm, ME!

From the Wired article

[Ulric]

Originally slated to be operational this year, construction of the massive project won't begin until 2006 at the earliest, said Roger Davey, chairman of EnviroMission Limited, the Melbourne, Australia, company behind the venture.

Watch an animation of what EnviroMission's Solar Tower will look like.

But the purchase of the farm, which cost $1 million, near Mildura, Victoria, is a "very big step" in getting the project built, Davey said.

So far, the main impediment to building the tower has been the cost, with estimates ranging from $500 million to $750 million.

So they basically bought a sheep farm and made an animated movie.

Solar power is unsustainable unless ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... you sign up to Kyoto like Old Europe FB!!!

but at least you won't get invaded by the USA ;-)

[fantomas]

... but at least the US won't accuse you of getting ready to build nuclear weapons and hence have to invade you. Only very bad people and the very righteous have nuclear weapons and all the righteous god-chosen seats have been taken... ;-)

New radical powerplant powered by rainwater!

[Dreamszz]

Here in the Netherlands, that solar plant would never work (real well).
However, having a 7 km in diameter plastic shield out somewhere in a flat field, could potentially collect so much rainwater that it would be enough to power miniature generators!
The water falling down through holes in the shield could drive small generator blades which should yield massive amounts of energy from the ever falling rain! :)
I think Seattle might be the first licensee for the technology! Not to mention Asian countries!

Energy security & economics for glass houses

[harvey the nerd]

Just watch out for dust/hail storms near many desert areas (call RoboWipe?), Osma or Cristalnacht Adolf with a Piper Cub full of high density stones (call laser pointers plus?). ;->

Re:You kidding? That's small.

[Anonymous Coward]

10km up. Let's shoot tonnes of earth's atmosphere right into space shall we. That's a mighty good idea!

It's still a greenhouse...

[quarkscat]

so there really isn't any reason why that
greenhouse can't be put to good use, for
growing crops (especially with a somewhat
shorter growing season in Canada).

Lettuce and tomatoes in October, plus power.
It sounds like an expensive, but doubly useful
(and green) experiment. The biggest problem
with the comparison to nuclear power is that
only the contruction costs are quoted. Once
spent fuel rod disposal, low & medium grade
radioactive waste, and plant de-commissioning
after 30 years of use are all taken into account,
that greenhouse doesn't look so bad. And I'll
wager that the high tech & deadly security force
needed to protect that nuke plant hasn't been
factored in, either. All of this pushes the
nuclear plant's TCO way off the top of the charts.

apparently "incremental" = 30%

[jpellino]

Or that would be the difference in the 1987 World Solar Challenge and the Sunraycer performance compared to the rest of the world.

In 1990 the Tour De Sol here in the NE US - a local girls' private school finished the race when a certain Boston area geek haven failed to complete. I'd pay a lot for what you just saw happen to the potential of a few dozen women in technology. The ubergeeks got over it and did better too.

It's R&D and sometimes someone figures out how to blow the roof off the place.

Since you're on Slashdot, I'm going to go out on a limb and figure that you have something to do with pushing the envelope on silicon and electrons. So do the new car folks. New as in never been built before by people who weren't sure they could. Like race car driving. Your Honda Accord would suck wind if there were no Honda Racing. Race car driving is incrementalism at it's grandest - but it pushes the envelope and makes people scream and pushes reliability moreso than sheer speed.

There would be no (insert your favorite box / processor / speed here) if it weren't for (to use your quaint term) "dicksizing" among processor labs / R&D / U labs / plain old people / uberheeks.

I take care of a Twike for our tech school - it's an odd duck, but the kids go gaga over it and IT GETS THEM THINKING. That's pure gold. Too many kids today think they're high tech if they got the latest Halo before anyone else and if they've memorized every StrongBad line.

I want the thinkers and pushers of envelopes. I want the race engineers, and I'll take them jazzed on petrol or photons or perl.

Re:apparently "incremental" = 30%

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, you are the most worthless turd I have ever had the utter pleasure of reading.

Or that would be the difference in the 1987 World Solar Challenge and the Sunraycer performance compared to the rest of the world.

Are you even capable of feeding yourself?

In 1990 the Tour De Sol here in the NE US - a local girls' private school finished the race when a certain Boston area geek haven failed to complete.

What's your point limpdick? That a certain local girls' school was bankrolled and had real engineers helping them out? Yeah, that's what I thouht shitbag.

I'd pay a lot for what you just saw happen to the potential of a few dozen women in technology. The ubergeeks got over it and did better too.

Two points: a) of course you'd pay a lot for that, you're a fucking idiot. Either that or you're the typical cheap software communist and only actually say you might pay for something like that. In the end upstanding corporations such as Microsoft end up being the ones that "pay a lot to see that", not you. b) Ubergeeks, you fucking retard, isn't even a word. You didn't even use an umlaut. With an umlaut this wouldn't be a real world and wouldn't even mean what you think it does. Shut the fuck up, moron.

It's R&D and sometimes someone figures out how to blow the roof off the place.

No, you fucking idiot, it's not "R&D", it's the same old shit every year since this retarded concept of solar races was invented decades ago. It's wholly impractical and never resulted in any useful technological progress or new processes.

Since you're on Slashdot, I'm going to go out on a limb and figure that you have something to do with pushing the envelope on silicon and electrons.

Hahahaha, idiot. Spewing buzzwords and not knowing jack shit about anything, including the petualantly arrogant shitheap website that you dwell upon. Slashdot is filled by thousands of other hack pseudo-intellectualists and scientism-worshipping mysticist douchebags and you're no different from the rest, programmer.

So do the new car folks. New as in never been built before by people who weren't sure they could. Like race car driving. Your Honda Accord would suck wind if there were no Honda Racing. Race car driving is incrementalism at it's grandest - but it pushes the envelope and makes people scream and pushes reliability moreso than sheer speed.

Yeah but also, you fucking idiot, Honda Racing doesn't waste its capital on completely obsolte and useless shit like solar races. It invests in investigating technology with potential.

There would be no (insert your favorite box / processor / speed here) if it weren't for (to use your quaint term) "dicksizing" among processor labs / R&D / U labs / plain old people / uberheeks.

Now, there would be no (insert your favorite....) without corporate capitalism and people that actually "push the silicon envelope" (ugh, you disgust me), not morons that build solar cars and other lame bullshit because they have too little sack to do something useful. Solar cars are not useful. Building lighter solar cars is not useful.

I take care of a Twike for our tech school - it's an odd duck, but the kids go gaga over it and IT GETS THEM THINKING. That's pure gold. Too many kids today think they're high tech if they got the latest Halo before anyone else and if they've memorized every StrongBad line.

Uh, okay whatever you say there chief.

I want the thinkers and pushers of envelopes. I want the race engineers, and I'll take them jazzed on petrol or photons or perl.

This is the absolute icing on the cake. Idiot.

Re:Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliosta

[mickyflynn]

yeah, but they failed to take into account the difference in latitude, i believe. The sun kept moving around in a much different way than it would have in the mediteranian.

Heh

[Tau Zero]

You don't understand
I meant not California
But the Salton Sea.

Re:Good luck to U of C -mod down

[Anonymous Coward]

that was U of Toronto dumbass

How many towres to fulfill 100% of world needs ??

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the solar tower produces 200 MW of power.
200 MW of power x 24 hours per day x 365 days per year means 1752000 MWh = 1,75 TWh of energy produces in one year.
Assuming a 50 % efficency ( the site http://www.enviromission.com.au/index1.htm assumes that the plant will work 24h per day but I assume 200 MW is the peak output not the average during the day / year ), so let's assume the yearly energy output for the plant as 0,9 TWh.
According to this site http://www.centreforenergy.com/silos/thermal/gener ator.asp?xml=/silos/thermal/thermalOverview02XML.a sp&template=1,5, world total energy produced from oil, coal and natural gas in year 2000 was about 10000 TWh, so to replace these sources of energy we would need about 10000/0,9 = 11000 solar towers located all over the world.
Since the estimate cost of the Australian tower is about 600 million ( link: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66694, 00.html ), the total cost of building 11000 solar towers would be of about 3 Trillion dollars = 600 million x 11000 x 50 % ( due to saved costs for scaling )

Purdue Solar

[Anonymous Coward]

Purdue Solar

Re:Never practical? Think again.

[MindStalker]

I always wanted to buy a hybrid and try to rig solar power panels to the roof and hood. Unfortunatly I havn't been able to figure out a way to modify the programming to take advantage of this additional electricity, as the current models tend to like to keep the battery pretty full, leaving no room for solar cells to add to the system.

South Texas to North Texas

[Citizen of Earth]

from Austin, Texas in the United States to Calgary Alberta Canada

Hmmm, from South Texas to North Texas. You'll swear they are exactly the same pickup-truck gun racks!

To those that think these races are pointless.

[andyclements]

Being on the U of MN Solar Vehicle Project, I can agree that in it's current state, you will never see a car that is powered completely by the sun. Also being a driver, I will say that the cars are uncomfortable to ride in, hot, noisy, and the suspensions are very stiff to make it more efficient.

That being said, the project is a way for engineers to learn about many different technologies that they would never be exposed to in the classroom. Companies love to hire those that have worked on these cars because they have experience in not just concept to production, but also in management and taking responsibility.

After racing or so many years, the cars have reached a point where they are all very light and collect approximately the same amount of solar energy. The callenge is to create a reliable car, which is more difficult than one may think. Teams spend two years designing and building a car, and in the end, there is inevitably still work to do the night before the race. An additional challenge this year is that the cars will be headng north to Canada, where much less light is available.

And it is still awesome to see the looks on faces of people (especially kids) as that funny looking car pulls into a stop. Everyone that sees it is amazed and has tons of questions, so you can;t really say it gets boring (unless you never get a chance to actually see it).

{Begin shameless plug}
U of MN Solar Vehicle Project

There is a better way

[bitango]

The calculations I came out with show this to be way less effective in every way compared to other proven solar technologies. Something that would be ~30X more efficient with >40X cost per KW/h improvement would be a solar power trough and solar power tower (molten salt based storage) solution. So instead of 200 MW continuous for >$500 Million you would have ~6 GW continuous for ~$400 Million. Here it is by the numbers:

1 acre = 4,074 m2.
Solar radiation at earth's orbit = 1376 W/m2.
Solar radiation hitting southern US ~= 1,000 W/m2.

So 25,000 acre * (4,074 m2 / 1 acre) * (~1,000 W/m2) ~= 100,000,000,000 Watts (100 GW).

If 8 hours usable peek sunlight and 200 MW daily average then peek collection is 600 MW so (600 MW / 100,000 MW) = 0.006 or 0.6% efficient. (Terrible!)

A combination of solar power troughs (for day light and some evening power) and solar power towers utilizing cheep molten salt storage (for round the clock power) utilizing some of the more effective power conversion technologies should be able to achieve something in the ball park of 20% efficient. (Very practicle.) The real kicker are these things will be using relatively simple, mass producable parts making them a lot easier and cheeper to build and maintain than giant monolithic towers.

If you want examples go to sandia.gov and look up solar power troughs and solar power towers or just wander out to Cramer Jnct., CA and Barstow, CA. Unfortunately in 2001 with a change in political powers Solar 2 got dismantled, but the solar power troughs at Cramer Jnct. were still there and in use the last I checked.

Wow.

[jpellino]

Dear Anonymous Coward,

Good points all, and well stated. But also consider:

Of course the girls were bankrolled and had real engineers helping. Give them the tools and let them take on the role of professionals. Have some professionals to model the things they need to know and do. It seems to work well.

I'm not a programmer - I'm an educator. I hang out here to see what's new and cool and use the assembled wisdom to learn new things and see how innovation can make a difference.

Slashdot is useful for getting ideas out and finding the range of opinions and insights. You've certainly pushed that envelope here. Buzzwords, profanity, to each his own. By the way, what "something useful" have you had the "sack" to do?

Solar challenges aren't about getting everyone to drive solar cars. The design constraints force the engineers to develop other innovations - more efficient motors, better chargers & inverters, etc. These get used in other things like hybrid cars, electric cars, fuel cell cars. Those are valued.

Honda does indeed spend money on solar challenges: http://www.speedace.info/honda.htm

Language evolves. English doubly so. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ube rgeek

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Hybrid car and solar panels

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always surprise that hybrid car doesnt have an outlet to let user plug a solar panel connector to. Just imagine, park and recharge your car batteries.

Dear faggot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in R&D at a company that designs passive components that 75% of internet traffic propagates through. What have you done with your shitty educator career that gives you the authority to speak about such things? Get bent you worthless flaming pile of shit and rot in hell.

Thanks again,

[jpellino]

Ah. you make fiber optics.

I'd be glad to send you a list of my students' accomplishments.

All the best,

So where's the list, homo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you type in just a few if they're so remarkable, and what guarantees do you have to show that your influence had even some weak correlation with their success? Oh that's right, you don't do you, you self-aggrandised fuck.

Re:Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliosta

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Next time you go to a football game and the ref makes a bad call, pull a mirror out of your pocket and reflect the sun right into his eyes. Get everyone in the stadium to join along. Vaporize the ref. Oops.

Ah.

[jpellino]

Dear Anonymous Coward,

Thanks for adding that they're remarkable. I'm sure they'd be flattered by your kind words. Remember, *you* asked what I've done in education so I'll indulge you, but it's not my contribution that finally matters, but theirs.

For starters, there's a couple of instruments on Mars as we speak responsible for some pretty decent discoveries - that engineer thanked me personally for my guidance, so I can safely assume there was some influence, but of course as you wisely pointed out, no guarantees. A couple dozen engineers who discovered mechanical and electrical engineering in part due of the breaks I helped give them, a pioneer in quantum computing, one in a top robotics lab... it's the thanks I get from them from time to time, the notes, the visits, the 200-mile side trips to stop by the office that let me make a little leap that I may have helped. But again, as you so eloquently pointed out, no guarantees.

Remember, education is how you got where you are too - unless you sprang fully formed and educated in fiber transmission from the womb, someone helped you get there.

Thanks for the feedback.

Solar tower report

[smoker2]

Here is an old Beyond 2000 video report on the solar tower project. (sorry it's a crappy windows media file)

Re:Archimedes and his Burning Mirrors and Heliosta

[RM6f9]

Thank you for the post about the "tree-burning neighbor" - I now have something to do with the south-facing steep-sloped portion of my property.

How ever did I get in this nutshell?

[Spunk]

In a nutshell, an ever present large mass of air under an expansive transparent collector (seven kilometres in diameter)

So the nutshell must also be at least seven kilometres in diameter. Imagine the size of the tree!