Slashdot Mirror
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."
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)
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.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
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.
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.
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.
...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.
Blank until