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World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine
An anonymous reader writes "Stirling engines are not a neglected or forgotten technology after all, according to a story at PESN. With 20 years of in-the-field fine-tuning, Stirling Energy Systems is now ready to go big -- real big. They signed a purchase agreement Tuesday with Southern California Edison (SEC), to install a 20,000 dish array that will cover 4,500 acres and will be capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity -- more than all other U.S. solar projects combined -- making this the largest solar installation in the world. Each collector has a 37-foot-diameter array of mirrors to focus the sun's rays on the Stirling engine, which turns the heat into rotational torque for electricity generation. According to a spokesperson for SCE, this purchase will be in their commercial interest, requiring no subsidy in order to compete, implying that the efficiencies of the technology will give them an edge in the market."
I'm glad to see alternative energy sources being developed, I just wish public opinion would change faster so we can get some more nuclear plants as well.
I'm not surprised stirlings are finally profitable.
But those giant dishes look expensive and complicated.
Doesn't anybody have a way to make large parabolic reflectors cheaply? Or isn't there a way to do away with the tracking devices?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
While the solar panel industry would like you to believe Solar Power to be "eco friendly", unlike most "alternative energy" technologies, Solar energy is not a renewable resource. We have a limited amount of sunlight and increased use of commercial solar power would mean less to be used elsewhere, potentially creating an ecological disaster if this happened on a large enough scale. The solar industry likes to throw around statistics about how the entire U.S. could entirely move over to solar power if we created such-and-such amount of solar panels, but what they don't mention is if we did this we would completely exhaust our supply of solar energy by 2150.
Use of solar power should be avoided at all costs. Help promote renewable energy sources instead.
http://nosolar.net/
If anyone is wondering, 500 megawatts can power about 500,000 homes.
Counting or not counting the uranium mines, heavy water refineries, and spent fuel storage facilities?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
4500 acres of solar collectors? This must throw hardcore environmentalists into a infinite loop.
A heck of a lot less than this solar farm, I would imagine.
Sterling engines are pretty cool. They have one huge advantage over silicon solar power: much much less pollution in production. Photovoltaics are basically large chips, they use the same nasty chemicals and lots of electricity. Sterling engines are just machines, and very scalable apparently.
Funny that one solar-dynamic powerplant will double the solar power being utilized.
One of the Sterling engine makers has a deep-space powercell that combines a sterling converter and a big hunk of plutonium oxide. Man, I wish I could get one for the basement...
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The voters here in Colorado were suckered into an initiative requiring the utility companies to get 15% of their power from renewable sources whether it made economic sense or not. Since it looks like this thing actually does then I hope someone from the local utility reads /.
This is taking place in California...
Signed Tuesday, the 20-year power purchase agreement, which is subject to California Public Utilities Commission approval, calls for development of a 500-megawatt (MW) solar project 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles using innovative Stirling dish technology. The agreement includes an option to expand the project to 850 MW. Initially, Stirling would build a one-MW test facility using 40 of the company's 37-foot-diameter dish assemblies. Subsequently, a 20,000-dish array would be constructed near Victorville, Calif., during a four-year period.
Once again, other countries are moving ahead, acquiring tomorrow's technology.
Foreign countries like California?
I mean now that you mention it I guess it is, but...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It sounds a lot smaller when you put it that way.
You know, maybe if this wasn't in California, USofA your comment might be justified. Bush has screwed up plenty of things, but in this particular case you, dear sir, are trolling. As an aside, I am forced to side with Bush and his pro-nuclear power plant stance. He isn't *all* about big oil. *shrug*
Yawn ...
Ummmmm. Stirling is located in Arizona, right? I may have graduated public school, but I am pretty sure this is in the U.S. somewhere.... right above Maine.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The Edison URL should be www.edisonnews.com. Yes, we require you to put the www on the front of it. And yes, I work for them.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Modders: parent is yammering about other countries moving ahead and buying this technology from other countries while it's AN ARTICLE ABOUT CALIFORNIA!
> According to a spokesperson for SCE, this
> purchase will be in their commercial interest,
> requiring no subsidy in order to compete
Sir, in 20 years, the government will be taxing solar electricity generation.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Touche. Which is why I think we should be focusing research and energy on nuclear fuel reuse [waaaay unexploited in the US] and disposal techniques.
Stirling engines certainly aren't forgotten or neglected. Swedish submarines use Stirling engines for propulsion, for instance.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I know some knowledgeable Slashdot reader can help me here. What I want to know is, what is the drawback to such a power system? It sounds like it generates quite a bit of power, and looks like a completely clean source. Are these things super expensive to build? Is it really hard to keep these things lined up with the sun to produce optimal power?
There is the issue of not being able to produce any power at night. But intelligent use of battery stores along with some supplemental traditional powered generators might take care of that, especially since power draw from the grid is (I'm guessing) much less at night.
So - what's the catch? Why aren't fields of these things going up like crazy?
Stirling engines seem legitimate enough, but the linked site describing them seems somewhat crack-potish. They promote cold fusion and zero point energy, as well as a number of "alternative energy sources" I've never even heard of. There's also a page trying to disprove the Peak Oil theory, which should be real popular with the Slashdot crowd. Anyway, I sometimes wish that /. nerds had a greater understanding of the pure sciences, rather than just software engineering. Oh well.
In related news, ants in a 4500 acre area have all mysteriously vanished.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Now that Bush signed the 'Energy Bill' we have this gigantic solar project, underwritten by a big utility. Coincidence?
Come on, it is funny.
A blog about stuff.
All we need now is 1.42 more of these things!
at PESN. With 20 years of in-the-field fine-tuning, Stirling Energy Systems is now ready to go big -- real big. They signed a purchase agreement Tuesday with Southern California Edison (SEC), to install a 20,000 dish array that will cover 4,500 acres and will be capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity -- more than all other U.S. solar projects combined -- making this the largest solar installation in the world.
Thank goodness there will be no environmental impact!
I wonder how large a nuclear plant of equivalent output would be.
I just did a quick search to see how much 500 megawatts stacks up to other power plants and it's a doosie. According to the California Energy Commission, of the 966 plants in California generating more than .1MW, 500MW puts the new plant in the top 3%. That's ... amazing! Solar power has always had promise, and it's been getting more and more efficient, but to me, it's always seemed to be a niche thing, not really ready to replace giant oil and coal plants - especially when talking about a solar power plant (of course, decentralized power generation with each house running off of solar panels would be ideal, but that's another post). But this...wow...this is plenty of power, and if successful, could really be the start of a feasible way to get off the oil and coal habit...and least I hope so.
The article said a 1MW pilot used 40 37' reflectors. That sounds ok to me. I wonder how much each one costs to buy and maintain.
So in the hot climate of the American South, these thing ought to start popping up on rooftops. Building a few tens of thousands of the things for Edison ought to help them smooth out the manufacturing process. How many 25KW units will you need to air condition a 100,000 sq. ft building ?
Making power only during the day isn't so bad since the air conditioning load in buildings is higher during the day, of course.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
" Once again, other countries are moving ahead, acquiring tomorrow's technology. Meanwhile, the US remains more dependent than ever on Big Oil.
"
I didn't know California had seceded from the Union. Certainly plenty of people there that would like to.
Vote for Pedro
from the to-melt-even-the-largest-chocolate-bar dept.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, chocolate.
-Scott
My other sig is a Glock
This is the sort of stuff I read Slashdot for. I'm so freaking excited right now. A few days in the past few years I've really sat down and thought about Solar Energy. I thought of ways to make solar powered distillation of pure water by creating heat differentials. I also considered macro heat differential potential of using black tires thrown away into the desert, and harnessing wind. I also thought that if a house has its own batteries, it could last through blackouts, and with solar powers, offset some of the power costs of the house. You could even take battery arrays from your car, and switch them with your house one, so your car gets new power immediately, and the old power pack starts charging. I went through many ideas, but for some reason I never thought Sterling. Now I have a ton to think about. I can't wait to get my hands on some Sterling Engines, and use magnifying glasses and mirrors to harness sunlight. I want to sit down and do the math to figure out what the most optimal configuration you need to have sunlight heat up a material. I want to figure out what the best material to heat up is, and I want to figure out what size and make of sterling engine is best to sit on it. Once you figure out the best way to run a sterling engine, all you need to do is mass produce it and sit it in the desert somewhere for loads of money. To me, this stuff is very exciting, its like an engineering breakthrough.
God spoke to me.
Yeah, parabolic dishes just don't seem to come naturally. (This particular one is made from mirrors with ?5? different circular curvatures arranged parabolically, if recall correctly) Some groups have made test dishes by applying a vacuum to the backside of a thin stainless steel sheet and heating it, then keeping it under a slight vacuum. This doesn't produce a perfect parabola, but it's better than circular, apparently. Some examples are here: http://www.psa.es/webeng/areas/instalaciones/disco s.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe we need XE - Extreme Editing!
Sit down with a buddy and check things out!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I didn't know California had seceded from the Union
No, but they'd like to.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
From the description of the system, the plant will only produce power when the sky is clear during daylight hours. Has anyone seen information regarding how much time the solar plant will be online and how much time it will spend offline due to night or cloud?
Is the only backup to this system the electric grid as a whole, or will the solar plant include some kind of heat sink or other way to store energy which can be drawn on when the sun isn't shining?
A fuctioning pebble bed reactor would take less, of course, but mine and the other poster aboves points still stand, that you have to take all needed inputs (and unexpected outputs) into account.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
And causes rattle snakes to be torpid in the shade. May as well hang it up.
Unconstitutional? Do you say this because the Constitution doesn't address energy needs? If such is the case (and correct me if I'm wrong), then you should read up on constructionism (broad vs. strict).
A large part of our government is built up on things not mentioned in the Constitution, but are instead seen as constitutional due to the elastic clause, which kinda says that if nothing is mentioned, then you just assume the power may have been granted anyway.
But in case you were talking about something else, I just pretty much wasted 2 minutes typing this. Oh well!
A LITTLE-known invention by a Church of Scotland minister almost 200 years ago could help to reduce the world's insatiable and ever-growing appetite for oil.
Fuck - ya know - leave it to a fucking SCOT to design a kick ass stingy engine. Aye - ye bastids!
But then, if it isn't Scottish- IT'S CRAP!!!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
There have already been two big solar projects in Southern California Edison territory, called Solar One and Solar Two. Both were so expensive to operate that they couldn't even cover their operating costs, let alone their construction costs.
Solar Cells are more efficient and that is where the focus should be. Discuss. (Or... flamefest as it were) ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Don't these things require sunlight to operate....I really don't believe California gets sunlight 365 days a year.
I often thought it would be easy to build a sterling engine on a deep mountain lake. Since the tempature would not go very high at the bottom of the lake, it should be possible to pipe cooling fluid to the bottom of the lake. This way it wouldn't need as much of a solar reflector, or a greater amount of energy could be produced, due to the greater difference in tempatures. Just run glycol pumps off the driveshaft, one for hot, one for cold, blow air across a radiator and into the chambers. Any reason it wouldn't work (other than a warming of the bottom of the lake) on Lake Powell or Lake Mead?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Just spit balling but couldn't fresnel lense technology (Giant Fresnel Lense) be used to increase efficieny, or reduce the size of the dish. Then use fly wheel technology to store excess energy for night time use.
...Yes, we require you to put the www on the front of it...
Then you have a brokeass CNAME entry which goes against the RFC's, if I recall.
Do the internet a favor and just say no to worthless CNAME crap. A browser will get to the right place without that dumbass "www" tacked to the front of a domain name.
I've been thinking about the latter--why not just re-use some of the now-abandoned missile silos? Inspect, seal any leaks, and they should be good for radioactive storage... seeing as how they were supposed to be fully shielded in that regard, anyway.
~UP
Eat the Path.
Photovoltaic cells have no moving parts. Anything with moving parts _will_ wear out faster than a solid-state solution. I wonder how competitive the industry will be in the future...
The problem with radioactive waste storage is not the shielding, it's how to prevent groundwater over hundreds or thousands of years from getting into the storage facility and dissolving/carrying off radioactive material into the water table. This is the big concern holding back the real planned waste storage facility, which is in a deep, dry hole in the middle of nowhere. They need to prove first that whatever they put there will stay put for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
Yes they do. But they are not designed for a 24/7 dutycycle. But systems like this will work wonders during peak usage periods during the summer.
what the fuck is a heavy water refinery? .max
Our anti-trust and anti monopoly laws only apply to firms that are based in the United States, OPEC is "The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, it is made up of eleven developing nations, whose economies rely on oil export revenues." Because even if we were to levy fines against OPEC, we would still have to buy their oil to satisfy our countries demand, and when we do buy it from them they will just "pass the cost onto the consumers" ie. back to us.
The solar power plant is not exactly being built on the Amazon rainforest. Why you even bother to make such a weak argument is beyond me.
Neglecting uranium mining, etc., the footprint that a reactor requires can be quite small. We used to have one on the Georgia Tech campus. At the time, the campus itself wasn't even 7 square miles. (They've made a lot of additions recently, but they're probably still not even close to 7 square miles.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Solar cells are not more efficient.
Incident sunlight is ideally around 1000 Watts/Square Meter. This is almost 100 Watts/Square Foot. The best solar cells have efficiencies of 20%. That means 20 Watts/Square Foot for solar cells.
These dishes are 37 Feet wide, 1075 Square Feet total. The article cites 25,000 Watts per unit. That's 23 Watts/Square Foot.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Emplacing periodic dishes on a concrete monopile and burying cable between them has a different environmental impact than covering the entirety of, irradiating, submerging underwater, or intensively mining the same area.
Your neighbor could alternately cover 10 square feet of his yard with a TV satellite dish, or cover 10 square feet of his yeard with a pile of Plutonium - 39. Then we could examine the effect of each on the local environment. True, neither would b e zero, but some land uses are several orders of magnitude more benign than others.
Dammit you Americans always use the stupidist units.
There is about 1 KW of radiant energy that falls on a square meter of ground on a bright sunny day.
So given that this thing covers 18.2x10^6 square meters there is 18.2 GW of sunlight intercepted by this area.
Given that this thing produces 0.5 GW of power it's around 2.7 % efficient at turning land area into electricty.
I need some links to determine the total efficiency of the system but it appears that these things are placed a reasonable distance apart.
I imagine that since they're placed above ground and track the sun, (so their shadows move on the ground, that the environmental impact may not be too big.
This system will no doubt be a useful addition to the electricty GRID but the GRID still needs base-load generators to cover night and cloudy days.
Hydrogen has three common isotopes: protium, deuterium, and tritium. They all have one proton, and zero, one, and two neutrons respectively. Water molecules (H2O) can have any of these isotopes as the hydrogen atoms. When water is made with deuterium and tritium atoms, it is called heavy water. Heavy water is used to regulate fission reactions in nuclear power plants. A heavy water refinery extracts the trace quantities of heavy water molecules from ordinary water.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
There's also a Flash movie of the reflectors tracking the sun here (Their link's busted)
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Bush: Don't mess with Texas!
...that the Swedes have a navy?
A military navy? Come on, stop making crap up.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
The pictures have huge dishes to collect heat, but what about the other end? How do they keep the cool part of the cycle cool?
I was expecting to see the engine behind the dish (receiving light via a secondary mirror) and big radiator fins attached to the engine in the shadow of the dish.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
... and based on a 37ft dia dish, 20,000 count we're talking 21,504,183 sqft of total collector area. Divide that into 500,000,000W, the projected peak output of the installation, and you end up with around 23W per sqft.
Now I could swear I've seen a higher efficiency per sqft specified using a related but different technology: steam turbines. I can't find the link right now, but I was hoping to build one of these things one day myself to take some real world measurements. The projections I read admittedly may have been inaccurate which is why I want to build my own to find out, but the project site was claiming the potential to pull approaximately 3KW of usable power out of a steam turbine from a 6 ft diameter parabolic dish.
There are a few completed collector dishes out there in this size and they are making between 600-1100 deg fahrenheit at the focus where a heat exchanger is placed to boil water into steam pressure which drives a turbine. The only thing that leaves me questioning the accuracy of the projections is that the turbine is a somewhat unconventional one, called a "Tesla Turbine".
Nonetheless, if the figures are remotely accurate, you'll find that a 6ft dish putting out 3KW is worth over 100W per sqft. I believe this possibility alone makes it well worth examining the potential for higher thermal conversion efficiency than the sterling engine model because it could potentially reduce the size of this installation to 25%... or quadruple the output!
Regardless, both approaches are quite fascinating because they're so simple - it's mind numbing that nothing like this is yet operational. It's so technologically unsophisticated that it could be built and installed nearly anywhere. Even the sun tracking circuit can be done on the cheap for about $25US in bits & pieces.
Its interesting that you say about them selling electricity back to the power company during the day. I was considering that or a dynamic system where part of the battery would be used during the night, and recharged during the day. If you stop to think about the algorithm for how much of the battery should be used during the night, it would be quite complex. It could be as easy as: Use 50% of the battery... To as complex as something that uplinks to the weather forecast, and downloads the data for the area to calculate the projected recharge that will happen in the next day...
God spoke to me.
I can't find the reference, but part of the problem is that the US nuclear regulatory regime is designed around the assumption of monolithic, large light-water reactors. The idea of a modular system where you can add another reactor module quickly doesn't fit in with the approval process, removing one of the biggest advantages.
Secondly, US companies aren't developing PBMR designs; South African and Chinese ones are. Funnily enough, the subsidies for nuclear R&D and deployment currently floating around Washington are aimed at the American nuclear power industry, not its foriegn competitors.
Mind you, if Westinghouse's cost estimates on its new AP-1000 power plant design turn out to be it's going to be pretty competitively priced anyway. Pebble beds aren't the be-all and end-all. One concern is whether there'll be enough helium available to run them...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A company in Australia is developing this type of technology for self-contained power generation in remote locations (and 3rd world countries/natural disaster areas). They are using a parabolic dish made from mirror polished bands of stainless steel. Stainless steel (while expensive) stands up to bad weather much better than glass mirrors - and by making the dish with bands (with gaps in between them) you reduce the effect that wind had on the dish.
They are making a dish that isn't affected by wind (except for wind that flattens buildings) doesn't get damaged by hail (unless it's bigger than a cricket ball) and is only 5% less efficient than the same size mirror dish. They don't have a website worth mentioning - but they are developing all this in conjunction with the CSIRO - so you may find something here (CSIRO) http://www.csiro.gov.au/ about it all. Look for Sterling engine power generation. The CSIRO did publish something recently in a subscription only publication about this.
In case you were wondering how I know - my brother works for the small electronics firm that came up with the parabolic dish idea. They have also come up with a sun tracking mechanism that costs $15 to manufacture.
Pity a 5KW generation system costs $25000 all up - but they expect it to last for 25 years or more.
All dollar figures here are Australian Pesos.
Oh yeah - they get around the "How do you generate electricity at night without sunlight light" issue, by using the dish to heat up 300KG (or so) of salt and graphite - which then acts as a heat battery. Apparently they can run the Stirling engine for 3 days or so after the Salt Cell gets to about 900 degrees centigrade.
Some one commented on using a fly wheel to store energy for night time use when the sun sets or I presume for a cloudy day. I would think they use some sort of heated block of something under the water or what ever it is to store heat energy for night and cloudy days. I would like to see more of these types of power plants in the future but whats more pressing is the use of Geothermal energy its not just a power plant but potentialy saving lives... I speak of course of the huge valcano under Yosemite national park. I can imagine that one could put in several power plants there and use all the destructive energy for good. Also releaving nature of some of its visitors but hey im sure if it blows up and half the state dies that might also cut down a little on tourism...
You don't need to have your transit systems nation wide. Canada has much less population density than the US, but still manages to put together a decent public transit system in most of it's larger cities (at least, compared to what I've seen in the US). It takes some work to put up the investment, but it's going to be worth it in the long run. For most commuting needs, Single cars are a waste of energy and time.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Eh, it's not like any other country in the world cares about that particular treaty, why should we?
(Yes, I'm being facetious).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I thought this one is rather interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The problem with the DOE, is that it's not a regulations/law making organization. Of course politicians were aware they couldn't make laws pertaining to energy, however they are allowed to create 'awareness' organizations that make 'suggesstions' to states about energy issues. The other is they are there to fund new forms of energy to be created, which is allowed under the constitution other wise we wouldn't have programs like NASA. However, it does seem like all of their funding seems to be going to oil companies for their "R&D" for new energies.. which is more than likely just a loophole for bush to pocket more of our taxpayer dollars.
~ChibiSkuld~
Hydrogen has three common isotopes: protium, deuterium, and tritium. They all have one proton, and zero, one, and two neutrons respectively. Water molecules (H2O) can have any of these isotopes as the hydrogen atoms. When water is made with deuterium and tritium atoms, it is called heavy water. Heavy water is used to regulate fission reactions in nuclear power plants. A heavy water refinery extracts the trace quantities of heavy water molecules from ordinary water.
Actually, the vast majority of commercial nuclear reactors are so-called "light water reactors" because they use, uh, "normal" water. The exception that comes to mind is the Canadian CANDU reactors. CANDU was originally designed to use unenriched uranium, and thus they needed the lower neutron adsorption cross section of heavy water.
So in a way it's a tradeoff. Either you need an enrichment facility, or you need a heavy water plant. Not both.
For some reason i picture him as wearing a leather jacket and jeans hanging around with high school kids at a place called arnolds drive in and saying Aaaayyyyyy and sit on it.
Cause thats what cool is. At least thats what happy days tv show thought was cool.
One mans "cool" is another mans "tool"
This silos were not designed to last thousands of years. Instead, the best overall site in America was determined to be West Texas (lack of water, lack of earthquakes, etc). Sadly, this admin picked the wrong site and the wrong approach. Any more, I think that burning this up, is probably the best way. Then it is not anybodies back yard.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Preamble -
Let me cut out the unnecessary stuff here -The preamble explains why 'We the People' adopted the Constitution. It has nothing to do with any powers delegated to any branch of government beyond hinting that the power is derived from the people.
While I agree that your interpretation has been used, it is so laughably off from the plain text of the preamble that it should never be given a first thought, let alone a second one.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
"... Bush and his pro-nuclear power plant stance. He isn't *all* about big oil."
Right. Not just big "oil", but big "energy". Especially since it was big energy companies like Enron that were Bush's largest campaign contributors. Most of the neo-Con(artists) in general, and the Dubya regime in particular, are so enamoured of nuclear power and so quick to dismiss its greatest downside -- highly radioactive waste that has the potential to poison the environment for more than 50,000 years. No doubt it is their "rape-and-pillage" attitude, tempered with the belief that the 2nd Coming of Christ will ameliorate this problem.
Long term, the use of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and wave power are far better energy choices. Carbon-based ethanol and biodiesel are good shorter term replacements for coal and nuclear power. The Dubya regime's infatuation with hydrogren power is reliant upon petroleum or coal (stripping hydrogen from hydrocarbons), or nuclear plants (electrolysis of water) -- none of which is good for the environment.
High level nuclear waste cannot continue to be stored onsite at the nuclear power plants, as is done today. The very long term (50 - 100 thousand years) physical security of containment casks, nor of the stability of the geological (salt mine) formations in Nevada proposed for storage cannot be known, or guaranteed.
Perhaps each any every proponent of fission nuclear power, including government officials and energy company shareholders, should be required to a blood oath to task their families subsequent generations to be "keepers of the casks" for the next 50 thousand years.
The Mohawk Indians (NE USA native people) had a saying that no tribal decision should ever be made without the consideration of the next 7 generations. It is a saying I wish our corporate and government leaders would adopt wholeheartedly.
umm... i know. In another life i was a reactor operator. The correct answer is: not relevant to commercial american power generating pwrs .max
account you get 10 hours / day you can halve that number plus, will it be producing 500 every hour of those 10 hours? No.
A nuclear power plant will produce on average 80-85% capacity with 90%+ uptime. Uptime for solar will be at most 50% as you only have sunlight for 10-12 hours. Then, will it be producing 100% capacity for those 10-12 hours? No.
Thre are not all that many people in the US with electric radiant heating - I'd say most would be using gas heaters, so there would not be a big draw of electricity at night in the winter for heating like there is during the day in the summer for cooling.
Still you raise a lot of other interesting points.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah I say we just use the cheapest designs. 30 years ago they had guys sitting at a station monitoring the reactor, Homer Simpson style. From what I've read, both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island could have been prevented with better sensors. Three mile island didn't coolant leak and nobody knew about it or something? Sounds like the reactor designs are perfectly fine, it's just a matter of using the latest technology to make it cheaper and safer at the same time, like Elon Musk is doing with his SpaceX company.
You do know that solar is one of the most expensive generation methods, right?
sqrt(7.03)=2.65 miles x 2.65 miles
l /Demographics/National/Average_Farm_Size_2003/Aver age_Farm_Size_2003.htm)
That's still quite large. As a comparison a farm is typically in the neighborhood of 500 acres or so, some are in the 1000+ acre size. (see http://www.unl.edu/nac/conservation/atlas/Map_Htm
AccountKiller
This technique is already used to store excess electrical energy in Scotland among other places.
Opt-in Real Big?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Luckily conventional power plants are immune from bombs....not.
A few years back there was a proposal to build a solar plant in outback australia. It worked like a giant inverted funnel, with a large gently sloping transparant outer section feeding into a steep chimney like neck in the center. Greenhouse effects heat the air underneath, pushing it faster and faster towards the chimney where turbines converted the air flow to electricity. I think it covered a few square kilometers at least, so the air flow build up over that area concentrated in the one place would produce some pretty powerful wind flows. Apparantly it would be able to produce enough power to run a number of major cities. The thing with this is that the technology is so simple. Very few moving parts and (in it's simplest form) nothing more advanced than turbines producing electricity... given the knowledge of turbines and electricity something like this could have been built thousands of years ago! I don't know what happened to the proposal or if it's still under consideration... I might do some reasearch to find out. A point that also applies to other forms of solar power... any method that ends up generating rotational motion to produce power could theoretically work 24/7, regardless of day/night cycle. If you use the generated energy to rotate a very heavy flywheel, in theory this could gain enough rotational inertia during the day to keep turning and generating power all night. This would eliminate the need for expensive, inefficient batteries or conventional power stations. Thinking big seems to lead to effective, green power solutions that need a minimum of complex technology to work. So think big :)
If the neighbor had the Plutonium in a secure, radiation-shielded structure I would pick it every time. No NIMBY here, thank you very much. Nuclear power plants are extrememly safe, especially considering the considerable health impacts of coal plants and the like.
Would there be room to build houses in the shade?
Bush was the governer of Texas, not California where this solor project is happening. While he was governer he signed off on energy deregulation that included a RPS (renewable portfolio standard) that helped turn Texas into the #1 creator of wind power in the U.S.
California's deregulation plan, on the other hand, was lacking a RPS, but made up for it by explicity regulating the price of energy. We in Cali call this type of regulation, California-style deregulation.
Trivia: Our wind farms here in Cali are #1 in another catergory though. That of killing birds, due to poor location selections. We have been assured though that more birds die by flying into car windshields, than they do by flying into windfarms. Thank goodness for statistics that put these things in proper perspective.
And the fears over Three Mile Island are just plain ignorance. It was a minor incident that didn't hurt anyone. Don't believe me? Too bad. The Pennsylvania court system does. After years of litigation, the courts ruled there isn't enough evidence anyone was harmed by the accident to support even going to trial.
My favorite quote is, "The court has searched the record for any and all evidence which construed in a light most favorable to Plaintiffs creates a genuine issue of material fact warranting submission of their claims to a jury. This effort has been in vain."
Here's a link to the ruling - Click Me
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
so a stirling engine converts heat into torque. if you tried to mechanically power something directly it wouldnt go too fast but you could stick a clockwork mech on the end and then release the stored energy as and when you like... e.g. for rotating the dish!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
We did an informal survey at the office. Most of us don't expect any changes to our driving habits until near $5 a gallon.
Very much like all those people saying that smoking would drop like a rock at $2 a pack, then $3 a pack, and so on.
People adjust. What will drop off isn't the driving but the luxury expenditures. Maybe one less latte per week, the smaller bouquet of roses for the wive, more beer and less mixed drinks, or buying hamburgers for the weekend cook out.
My current car is 21 +/- in city. I didn't even blink at its mileage when I bought it simply because it still is a non-issue. If I want to save a few bucks I will ride my motorcycle (40mpg) on occasion.
We have already in our past had over $3 gas if you adjust for inflation, what made it worse was the rest of the economy was out of control.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think the solar tower that you are looking for is here
A 188.pdf
A 197.pdf
http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/
Going forward to http://www.enviromission.com.au/
They are talking of a 25MW station
http://www.enviromission.com.au/financial/EVM%20C
and site in the USA ie Arizona
http://www.enviromission.com.au/financial/EVM%20C
Libraries possibly have that issue in some sort of micro-fiche format that hasn't suffered bit-rot yet.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Heh. I have a July 1965 issue of Popular Science that has an article Amazing No-Fuel "Space" Engine You Can Build.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Each collector has a 37-foot-diameter array of mirrors to focus the sun's rays on the Stirling engine, which turns the heat into rotational torque for electricity generation."
As opposed non-rotational torque?
Incidentally, the 37-foot diameter units described in the article generate 25 kW each - I wonder if they'd be suitable for domestic use?
- You can build a 37 foot steeerable dish for $10 grand.
- You can borrow money for this shaky venture at 5% interest.
- The rest of the equipment: heat collector at the focus, flexible piping, insulation, pipes, evaporators, heat sinks, pumps, working fluid, turbines, gears, cogs, lubricants, generators, buildings, staff, land all adds only $5M per 1,000 dishes, $5K per dish. { Note this requires slavery }
- The Stirling cycle runs at 10% efficiency. { Note: most Stirling engines are about 5x less efficient that this}.
- They make a breakthrough and develop an efficient Stiring regenerator, which is simultaneously long and short, conductive and insulating. See : www.tinaja.com/glib/muse116.pdf
- All that stuff cleans and maintains itself at no cost.
So one dish generates 2KW for say an average of a third of a day-- about 3000 hrs/year. That's 6 megawatt-hours. At 5 cents a KWh that's $300 a year of income. But it costs you 15K*.05 or $750 per year just to pay the interest.So even making wildly impossible assumptions, you can't even pay half the interest cost, much less make any headway on the principal.
And don't mention subsidies-- that's just throwing money away, each and every year. Nobody notices the subsidy for a small pilot project. But its not politically feasible for anything on a large scale.
Most of the electricity we produce is used to produce heat or cold; central heating or air conditioning.
These things produce 25kW of electricity but as good as the Stirling engines they are using are, they're only about 30% efficient. The rest of the heat is "waste".
Well at 30% efficiency, that's 50kW of heat being "wasted". They could increase the efficiency to around 85%, 90% by storing the "waste" heat and using it to power absorber chillers, central heating and hot water tanks.
Look up "District Heating" and "District Cooling" on Google. Both have been in use for decades in Denmark, Finland and other European countries.
Deleted
Any solar technology that doesn't use silicon is definitely a good thing these days. The Photovoltaic industry is the "poor cousin of the microchip industry", and so microchips get all the good silicon while PV gets the leftover crap that Intel et al. don't want. For this reason, and a general shortage of poly-silicon, there is a huge shortage of PV panels all over the world. Germany and Japan gobble up all they can and at a fair price too, leaving hardly anything for the rest of the world.
It's good to see the Stirling engine being used like this because in my opinion, the PV industry has some serious problems, especially if they have to compete with the Slashdot crowd for silicon!
...for a power plant covering 4500 acres (or approx 7 square miles). In contrast, a typical 500MW standard-fuel (gas, coal, nuke) power plant would typically cover a few acres including parking facilities. :) Solar energy just isn't as efficient as a burn, which is why it needs to be scaled up dramatically and captured through an efficient process (like a Stirling) to work.
:)
Fortunately, as a previous poster said, there is a *lot* of unused land in the US. Fly over the country sometime and look down - most of the land is completely unspoiled, not even a home or farm in sight. There is plenty of room to absorb this energy and convert it.
Who knows, maybe stealing a little of the earth's solar energy will slightly abate global warmimg at the same time.
Will they be able to complain about birds being shot out of the sky or going blind?
That'll teach the little bastards not to crap on the mirrors!
The atmosphere is about 18 ppm neon. That's one resource that's not going to run out.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Nantucket is an island. Think about it.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
linky
More information here that would suggest that the water was pumped out into a field specifically for dealing with and monitoring the waste not simply pumped out of a basement to empty the basement.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The amount of energy in sunligt at noon at the equator is approx. 1 kW/M^2, so the theoretical maximum of energy reflected is somwhere around 100 kW.
Getting 25 kW out of that seems quite good. If the 25 kW is average and not peek, it seems even more fantastic...
--- Henrik
I'm sure my moped would do pretty well
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Has nothing to do with "advertising." PESN is a non-profit and is reporting on cutting edge energy technologies.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
I'm trying to get a feel for the size of a parking lot, but I believe spaces are about 8 feet wide and 15 feet long and lanes are usually around 15 feet wide; a representative area would be 180 square feet per space. If you could tile a lot with collectors similar to these at 1/3 coverage, you'd get 1 unit-equivalent for every 3226 square feet or more than one for every 18 parking spaces. If each one can produce at full power for 8 hours a day, that's 200 kWh/unit/day or more than 11 kWh/space/day.
The median commute is around 22 miles; assuming an electric or plug-in hybrid car that used 350 watt-hours per mile, the median commuter would need 7.7 kWh/day. These solar dishes could recharge the electric cars of the commuters parking beneath them, and have power left over to supply to the office the commuters work in.
Goodbye, grid distribution losses! Hello, green suburban commuter lifestyle!
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I think we would need two.
Always have a backup.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
(I read once that known deposits would supply the world at current power consumption for only a few hundred years)
If we haven't figured out Fusion by 2075, we deserve to be without power. Fission should be a temporary stop gap measure so we can keep the economy going when we hit Peak Oil around 2015-2025.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My point here is that to point to a substance and process that *requires* continuous secuirty and a radiation-shielded structure - and which has a demonstrated capability of destroying all life, for a susbtantial radius around it, should your security guard eever take a break or your concerete contractor not meet spec - as having the same environmental impact as a *steel and glass dish* that *sits on the ground* is ludicrous.
This is not an anti-nuke argument, by the way; giant environmental impacts aside, your average nuclear plant has *much less* giant environmental impacts than even a modest natural gas or coal plant - there's no free lunch in energy, and Co2 is a real issue, so I guess we gotta build nukes. But arguing that a 40 acre nuke plant and a 40 acre solar plant have the same environmental impact is facetious.
I found this yesterday.
p .html
http://www.kineticbooks.com/physics/16835/24027/s
I just moved to Florida and was wondering if an old sat dish (sun heat), stirling engine and swimming pool (cooling) could produce enough power to take me off the grid during daylight hours. Last month I used about 67khw/day.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
I had a similar illustration I created for this device I came up with over 5 years ago. Here's my version I came up with (and it's using a stirling engine fyi...): http://www.lunarstudio.com/images/dynamic/lumagen. html
See the striking similarities??? They stole my idea ...damn I wish I had money to have patented it back then... I'd be retired by now.
Architectural Renderings
They turned the Sydney Opera House into convention center?! The bastards!
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/marketToday.a sp
Seems to disagree with your assumption.
Also remember all the hydro dams most contries have.
Small Rant:
At the moment most run at 100% to maximise investment, but I can imagine that during solar peak times you use solar plants and your reservoirs fill up. During solar downtime (e.g. night) then you use the existing hydro plants but in the meantime have fitted them with more generators so they can now provide all the country's power (even if it is only until they have drained their reservoir).
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
You mean BOTH of them? :)
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
And who the crap makes circular power plants? No, a square with area seven square miles is about 2.64 miles on a side, about 10.5 miles to walk around. Still, a two and a half by two and a half mile square seems awful small to get 500 MW out of. I wonder if we can get one of those out here. (I might as well wonder when the local hydro plants will start generating electricity again...)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I've done quite a bit of research comparing Solar Stirlings to Photovoltaics. It may be surprising, but under most circumstances, the Stirlings are more efficient. The downside is the huge outlay for the giant dish and engine. Not to mention maintenance costs... you know... moving parts...
However, from those of you who remember your physics classes, consider the thermodynamic efficiency of an engine set between 3000K on one end and around 450K on the other. If you do the math, you get well more than 30% input efficiency. Naturally, no engine is perfect, however these Solar Stirlings are very nice. The only friction on the "plunger" is with the working gas.
Compare this to photovoltaics. Under laboratory conditions, the best photovoltaic designs at best only equal thermodynamic efficiency. On the plus side, the outlay is much less, with the caveat that they all wear out in 20-25 years.
The important point here is that theoretical PV efficiency is 100%. In fact, if you look at nature, you'll find deep-ocean organisms that convert light at efficiencies well above that of current PV technology.
So for now, thermodynamics. However, assuming PV keeps getting better (quantum dots?), the future will belong to PV.
I wish folks wouldn't always figure out how many of whatever new tech we're talking about it would take to power the whole country. Future energy will come from a variety of sources, none of which will be able to power everything at once. Saying "to power the whole country, we'd have to cover a twentieth of Texas in these gizmos!" isn't particularly relevant or helpful.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dude, you'll just have to ditch that dinky Toyota and get a bigger S.U.V...
*ducks*
High Voltage Direct Current over superconducting lines.
Way easier than making hydrogen, transporting hydrogen, and then converting
back to electricy. More efficient, too. Since it's DC, there's no
syncronization problems with the recipient grid and ince it's over
superconductors, the only loss is the energy required to keep the
superconductors cold enough to superconduct.
*sigh* back to work...
Maybe I'm missing the point of this... but wouldn't that be better?
I mean, I'd rather start to feel warm or get a bit sunburned and then say "whoa... a bit toasty here... better step back from the "ultrahot-megafocussing-sundish" than accidentally step in front of the ol' microwave blaster and be rendered infertile with nicely-nuked insides within a few moments...
Increasingly unconfortable heat is a natural way of saying "don't go here, pain ahead" (plus any larger birds such as ducks/geese that do stray into the heat area would be nicely precooked for dinner)
I believe that your $5/gallon of gas in Europe is your own fault. I saw that $4 of that is taxes. Much of the US only has about $1 tax per gallon. If we taxed at that rate we too would have $5/gallon gas.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
500 Megawatts... that's kind of a lot, as long as you dont need 1.21 Gigawatts to charge up your flux capacitor.
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
It's not like we're Luxembourg. Ever driven across the US? There's plenty of land to go around. Use some of those imminent domain rights, set up the panels in Nevada... (it's nothing but surface-of-the-moon-dirt there anyway), and we're done.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
Actually, just for curiousity's sake, how much would it take to have such a thing in space used as a weapon? How much heat would be absorbed by the environment? Having a bunch of smaller focussing reflectors firing at a primary aiming reflector might make an awfully powerful beam...
Conspicuously absent in TFA (TFPR?) are any mentions of energy cost to construct, energy break-even point, ongoing maintenance requirements, and useful lifespan. These things are made of some delicate looking stuff, mirrors get dirty and can be broken, the Stirling engines have seals that will degrade, and there are squillions of moving parts to wear out. Who's got the answers? Miracle cure or mammoth boondoggle?
/. peeve #274: The word is neither "walla" nor "whala", it's voila. Phonics is a tool of the devil.
How much approx would it cost to build a smaller-scale home-based solar energy source that could, say, power some small pumps or a few energy-sources in the house? Anyknow know of instructions for something like this?
(5*10^8)/(5*10^5) = 1000 watts per home. As long as everyone uses no more than 10 bright lightbulbs simultaneously, your estimate is reasonable. Throw in a few stoves, air conditioners, and home computers and that number drops very quickly. Anybody know what the average usage per household is in America?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Can the waste heat be used to heat water? That would improve the energe
equation some.
*sigh* back to work...
OPEC was 2/3s of the world's oil in the 70s. Then they decided to go on a 3 decade decadence run, which caused their production growth to stall. The rest of the world chased profits, and now OPEC is only 1/3 the market.
:)
In addition, at $60+ a barrel, nobody is sitting on production. Everyone in OPEC but the Saudis tends to pump at full production, the quota system has been a joke for a while. Even the Saudis are at or near their max capacity... Now, if instead of building palaces they built more wells, they might get more oil, but hey. Getting Iraq back to full pumping would help tremendously... if this was a war for oil it was a sloppy war for oil...
The problems right now: Iraq is underproducing, and everyone is overbuying to build up inventory BECAUSE of the belief that some terrorist hit is going to happen and oil is going to shoot to $100/barrel. As a result, everyone is building up stocks, which causes price to rise.
Right now, we can't pump enough oil, and refineries are at over 95% capacity. The bottleneck for gas is refineries. Also, since gas demand is inelastic (a 1% increase in price causes LESS than a 1% decrease in consumption), to curb demand by a few percent, the prices SHOOT up. The refinery limitation is a REAL problem, as we want refined oil, not barrels.
There are a lot of warping factors in the oil market, but the Arab Cartel is only a small part of it. Environmental lunacy (the politics of environmentalism has resulted in two entrenched sides fighting for votes, NOT improving the environment -- there are lots of low hanging fruits that could be harvested with a reasonable pollution credit system... but that doesn't help fundraising... also, fundraising to BUY the credits on the open market is a lot less of a bang-for-your-buck then lobbying congress to outlaw the other side).
The oil problem will resolve itself in a few years... Sustainable $50+ barrels of oil will cause lots of production to come online, and for all its faults, the energy bill should increase refinery capacity...
The asinine thing is that we needed to increase production for a while, and people stalled the energy bill for 5 years because it had a 5-10 year payoff... well, if dealt with 5 years ago, we'd be in payoff land... on the other hand, the next President will get credit, which I'm sure the Democrats think will be one of their own.
Alex
The company that makes these dishes claims that they can make electricity for
around 6 cents per kwh. If true, that's competative with the natural gas
powered generators used for peak power production.
*sigh* back to work...
If our use of solar gathering devices increases to the point where some small, but statistically significant, portion of the earth's surface is covered by solar gathering and harnessing, thereby reducing the amount of solar energy reflected and converted to heat, do we actually have a net improvement in the global warming situation?
I'm genuinely curious. I just have no idea of the math involved, so I'm sure my estimation of the impact is wildly off, but I thought someone here must know, and I was curious.
7 square miles is a lot of land, I hope it's in the desert or some other place where land is cheap.
I wonder how "space-efficient" this is compared to solar cells, at 111 kW/acre.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I still don't see how this could be more effecient than a solar cell. What kind of fuel does it use? How does it compare with a solar cell?
I too was intrigued by the solar tower project when I first saw it, but the thing is truly a monstrosity of an eye sore and a MAJOR technological hurdle in terms of contstruction and maintenance - and for the amount of square footage it covers and materials that go into its makeup, these Stirling Engines with collector dishes are a MUCH more attractive alternative that maximizes the land and construction resource utilization.
I also found an amateur's theoretical "solar tower "degisn that doesn't use a tower to generate the up-draft. It requires a significant amount of additional land area, but doesn't require ANY advanced construction techniques. The concept uses a LARGE area of land covered in black sands that collect and radiate solar energy as heat. Surrounding this space with white sands causes the outside air to be of a lower temperature, so when heated air rises in the center, cooler air is drawn in from the sides. On a massive scale (several square miles in the center section) this creates a powerful up-draft. By placing a shaft right in the center with a buried conduit leading to the perimeter, the up-draft will use the venturi effect to draw air through the conduit. The guy proposed putting a 40-ft diameter wind turbine within the conduit. I think it sounds like a great idea, personally. Now all I need are a few square miles of flat, vacant desert land that I can cover with dissimilar sands to radiate and reflect solar heat and dig a BIG tunnel for my million-dollar turbine to be installed into... but if you think about it, it does make a lot of sense for locations that have a lot of hot, otherwise useless, arid land (Mexico? Northern Africa?) to dispose of.
... but it always seems to end up with people saying, "You can't supply all of our energy needs unto all eternity with it? Well, then what good is it, you fuckin' hippie?"
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
My question is, with 21.5m square feet (493.669 acres) of reflective surfaces, what happens when dust collects on the mirrors? Dust is bound to build up and cut significantly into their operating efficiency.
And with four-story high reflectors, the best solution is most likely hosing them down from the ground, probably several times per year. With L.A. right next door, and rivers like the Colorado not reaching the Pacific even now, where will the water come from to wash down 20,000 37-ft dishes in the middle of the desert?
Why aren't they putting things like this on top of buildings? I'm seriously asking.
It would reduce the power loss by keeping runs short as well as not taking up space that could be used for something else.
Anybody? Bueller?
"Bah!" - Dogbert
There is no "elastic clause" as such in the Constitution. The closest thing to it is the Commerce Clause, which has been expanded in interpretation far beyond what the Framers had in mind. The Commander-in-Chief authority has also been extended to the point that the exclusive power of Congress to declare war has been rendered effectively meaningless.
In any case, the courts have held that the preamble is not binding at all. I wish it were - then one could challenge any law or policy which did not effect the purposes laid out in the preamble. Even if the preamble were a binding limitation on government power, its excercise of that power would be limited to the explicit powers granted in the rest of the Constitution as constrained by the rights guaranteed in the Amendments.
Energy is essential for all commerce, is itself a class of articles of commerce, and is also essential for the common defense, so none of this affects the power of the US Government to create the DOE.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
What kind of fuel does it use?
It uses hydrogen in a fusion process.
FRA: STFU GTFO
4500 acres to make 500 MW? Using a figure of 1000 W per m^2, the peak solar radiation on 4500 acres should be over eighteen billion watts. Gee, three percent efficiency - woo, hoo.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Wasn't there a car powered entirely by flywheels? ...this is close linky
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
AP-1000
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Other countries use reformulated rods to cut down on waste. While the USA set a notable example for trying to cut down on proliferation, the rest of the world ignored it in favor of reducing the amount of nuclear waste it had in their nuclear programs.
This is my sig.
I hand-built a comparable solar reflector back in the 1970's. The construction procedure (based on lofting) is now on the Web (Goggle "Solar Forge Woodware"). With Hubbert's Peak just around the corner, it is time to get out all our old alternate energy projects, dust them off, and get them on the Web. The Solar Forge would make a good student project. It can also be used as a power source in developing countries and as a horrendous light bucket in amateur astronomy.
I've cited two sources that said there was no release you've cited on that says there was.
Did you find other detailed descriptions of this sort? My information digging hasn't been able to turn one up except by that author.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Wasn't there a car powered entirely by flywheels?
Irrelavent to this. The power required to move a car is much less than the power required to turn on the lights in a half a million homes by several orders of magnitude. The amount of power required (in electrical terms) to move a car is only a few kilo-watts at most. For this we are talking mega-watts. Also, they would have to last for several hours straight to last the night.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It seems there would have to be a "useful" amount of energy (in the form of heat) uselessly dissipated into my home from all these sources!
All that "stray heat" is fine in the winter, even if poorly dispersed thru the living space. But it'd be great if any percentage of that heat could actually be used in the summer as electricity to help run the air conditioner that's needed to offset the presence of all these "stray heat" sources.
So what is the prospect for light weight/ulta compact Stirling Engines for wide (imaginary) deployment like this?
If the dish is aimed off-axis enough for the light to fall outside the receiver, you start losing focus (due to foreshortening of perspective). Essentially, it gets astigmatism.
Last, flash-fried pigeons, starlings and English sparrows would be excellent. They are non-native species and would make great soil amendments. If the system came with a detector for parasitic species like brown spotted cowbirds and fried them too, it would be a great benefit for the songbirds they're driving down.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Somewhere on another thread, it was stated that (roughly) 1 gallon of gasoline = 34 Kwh of electricity. US Motor Gasoline consumption is (as of 2004) about 9 Million barrels/day. 1 Barrel = 42 gallons...
c .html
So the total energy consumption in the US used by gasoline powered vehicles is the equivalent of 12,852,000,000 Kwh/day (9 million bbl/day * 42 gal/bbl * 34kwh/bbl) - that's 12 Billion Kwh/day or 4,690 Billion Kwh per year. In 2003, the total electric production of the United States was 3,891 billion Khw / year.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electri
In 2002, Nuclear made up 780 billion Kwh of that total...
So that means if we wanted to create only nuclear power to replace all gasoline powered vehicles, we need about 7x the current installed capacity of nuclear plants added.
I feel confident the ball park number above is off by a factor of 2 or 3, but how long would it take to build that kind of additional capacity? How much would demand increase during that period due to population growth?
(of course, the numbers above don't include diesel)
Looks like it's time for a JFK-like commitment to major investment and regulatory reform if this is going to happen. People are always whining about how there is so much partisanship in Washington. Perhaps this could be the issue to break the us-them mentality.
How much is it worth to us to tell the Saudis and Venezuela that we hope they enjoy drinking their oil..?
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0