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New Solar Cells Can Convert CO2 Into Hydrocarbon Fuel (nextbigfuture.com)
"Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy," reports Next Big Future. Slashdot reader William Robinson writes:
This artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels. The discovery opens up possibilities of clean reusable energy.
"A solar farm of such 'artificial leaves' could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently..." according to the article, which adds that the process could prove useful in the high-carbon atmosphere of Mars. "Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once."
"A solar farm of such 'artificial leaves' could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently..." according to the article, which adds that the process could prove useful in the high-carbon atmosphere of Mars. "Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once."
No word on what they plan to do with the massive amounts of carbon monoxide this will create as a byproduct?
Whether or not this is interesting really depends on the expected power / area and cost (production and operating) of an engineering version. It is better than bio-fuels by those measures?
Because so far most of these carbon removing technologies fall way short of just planting a grove of trees. This seems like one of those problems where maybe nature is handing us a simpler solution. But for the sake of science (and keeping that funding flowing) we go out of our way to make a less efficient, more expensive machine to do the job that a tree will do for free.
And how much energy does it take to extract CO2 from the atmosphere regardless of the conversion process? Are both processes efficient enough to warrant not simply using all the work for ... well work?
We are such in a deep shit, that for a such technology to become a game changer, you must not patent it to be used in such a tremendous scale like Salk did to provide a vaccine that help eradicate the polio virus...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Otherwise, it will be business as usual....
So these leaves also need water (or other hydrogen compounds) from either the air or supply!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Because it was probably bullshit. Researchers consistently make outlandish claims about their revolutionary findings to keep their funding.
There are a few outliers, like the diamond industry working against artificially created diamonds, but most findings are just bullshit.
It doesn't add to the problem
liquid fuel that you can produce form this still has some small advantages, of which one is fueling time, over Musk's batteries.
Because converting CO2 to usable fuel (which is then burned releasing the carbon) is a lot better than using sequestered carbon in the form of fossil fuels.
I'm not sure where you live but I can choose electricity from several providers and no, the state cannot refuse to provide service, the state doesn't own the electricity supply.
The chief reason that this will likely get borked is that control of the energy will shift away from the state and back to the individual like it is now.
Which "individuals" currently control our energy sources? BP, Exon-Moble, Exelon, Duke Energy...corprations one and all not "individuals". From reading the article I can't see how this technology is going to enable Joe Blow living in his 20 story condo building or in suburbia to meet his individual energy needs.
I have a nice way to transform Hydrocarbon fuels into CO2
aaaaaaa
And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
This could also be used as a source for carbon in plastics, which is a form of sequestration.
Yes, so we should make up stuff!
You're a real fucking moron, you know that?
So, how would this be better than photovoltaic cells?
You have a brain, right? Good. Try using it to imagine all of the energy needs in society and how valuable it might be to have a drop in replacement for existing liquid hydrocarbon fuels. You might want to pay particular attention to aviation and the problem of lifting hundreds of tons into the air because only hydrocarbon energy is dense enough to provide that kind of power in a weight ratio suitable for flight with useful payload.
Because if not, I fail to see any significant advantage.
I'm not saying this to be just contradictory to any new development in the energy industry... this is a serious question. If the amount usable energy that can be obtained by the fuel it produces in terms of energy per dollar of investment spent on the technology is not any better than what you can get from modern efficient solar cells then it makes much more sense to use solar power and electricity instead.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Think of it as recycling. Instead of adding more CO2 with every liter of dinosaur remains burned, you only burn what you previously have taken from the atmosphere.
In theory, this means everything that burns some for of gasoline or dieser could suddenly become CO2 neutral.
Ha Ha. It's gonna have nanoflake tungsten diselenide. And where do you think you're going to get that stuff from, Mr. Libertarian?
From the big people.
Of course.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
On mars? Yes much better than a tree.
Yes!
Where you can grow plants and get bio-diesel, plants are in competition with this device.
Where you can't grow plants efficiently or at all - like Mars or my apartment balcony (they keep dying because I keep forgetting to water them), this may be interesting if it's better than other sunlight-to-energy systems.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I smell Unicorn farts.
The lizard people come in and extend patents indefinitely. Duh. Wake up, they are controlling your mind
It is not better than photovoltaic cells. It is just more compatible with our current energy infrastructure. There are billions of cars out there that run on hydrocarbons. It is way easier to give them a clean source of hydrocarbons than to scrap them and build billions of electric cars.
entropy happens
It does solve the storage problem though. Unlike plain solar, you don't need to buy a huge bank of batteries if you want to use it later. Much of the efficiency of solar comes from the fact that you get electricity directly, and electricity is what you use. As soon as you want the energy in a lightweight and portable form, solar loses its efficiency.
So the main competition for this technology is not regular solar, but plants and algae, which are much cheaper to grow.
OK, suppose you can make syngas etc. this way. Then, when the fuel is burnt, the pollution is right back in the atmosphere again. No progress has been made, eh?
Wrong, so very wrong. Progress has been made, the progress is carbon neutral. It is not ***adding*** massive amounts of carbon like the current process.
Liquid fuels have some advantages, are better for some applications. A carbon neutral based system for such liquid fuels would be an enormous benefit.
THERE IS NO OXYGEN ON MARS!
It doesn't add to the problem
Neither do photo-voltaic cells, and I notice that the article carefully avoided any mention of efficiency. I expect that is where this thing goes off the rails. If it can't muster at least 10% efficiency (comparable to an EV powered by solar cells), then whats the point? Photovoltaics would be better.
The whole idea of explosion powered vehicles is pretty stupid when faced with the infrastructure to transmit electrical power in vast quantities. 100 years ago, that infrastructure did not exist, and there was considerable doubt as to its ability to scale. Today, we have a successful, proven system that can scale to any amount needed for relatively cheap. Its time to move on from flammable materials as fuels.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Sometimes the efficiency is not per dollar, but energy per kg of weight. Or the efficiency is in terms of availability irrespective of time, place or weather. Liquid fuels sometimes have advantages. A carbon neutral process would be incredible.
And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
I'm not the poster you are talking to, but I will give a reason why useful patent-unencumbered things may never make it to market, and by extension, why a competitor may want to buy up the rights to promising technology and put it on the shelf, knowing that economic forces alone will keep it from seeing the light of day even after the patents expire:
Many technologies are "partially researched" or "completely researched but still millions of dollars away from going to market for the first time." Maybe the device or drug or whatever requires expensive government approval, or maybe there are other "up front costs" that will be the burden of only the first company that brings it to market.
Without patent protection, it's a hard sell to investors if they know that 1) the first company to bring this to market will have $MILLIONS more in costs than any other company who brings it to market, and 2) without a patent, the "exclusivity window" will be very short: Just the time it takes for some other company to smell money and ramp up production.
This is one reason why some non-FDA-approved or "FDA-listed-as-schedule-1-because-nobody-has-shown-the-FDA-there-is-any-medical-use-for-it" drugs which are off-patent or patent-ineligible never make it to market: The cost of FDA approval is borne by the company that wants to bring it to market first, but once it's approved it can be copied fairly quickly.
Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use) and ibogaine as a treatment for opiate addictions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Then in ten years we will wonder what the fuck happened.
The main reason most of these things don't come to market is that inventions are coming so rapidly that something BETTER comes along and obsoletes them before they reach manufacturing and deployment.
Nevertheless, enough make it that things are improving substantially. For instance: Photovoltaic prices recently "crossed-over" grid power costs for much of the temperate-zone sunny sites - even without further government subsidies on manufacture and installation. That's a BIG change from a decade ago.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Economics are often via indirect routes and technical combinations.
1) This tech plus a fuel cell could remove the need for a battery and allow time shift of solar and use.
2) Photovoltaic cells do no sequestration.
3) Certain fuel cell techs are fairly efficient.
CO2 + photon --> C + O2
We already have a working prototype cell that turns sunlight and CO2 into a burnable fuel.
You might already be familiar with them. They call them "trees."
You convert CO2 in CO. Then you oxidize it to get CO2 back.
No CO2 sequestration at all!
So, how would this be better than photovoltaic cells?
It's better because every time there's a story on photvoltaic cells, a bunch of self-appointed geniuses yell: "I'm the first person to realize that the sun doesn't shine all day! It won't do any good without energy storage!!1!"
Well, here's a solar technology with built-in energy storage.
Energy density (I assume you mean energy produced in a given amount of time with a given surface area, e.g. watts/square centimeter) isn't the only factor that counts.
How you intend to use or store the energy is also a factor.
Pure solar typically produces either heat (sterling engine) or DC power (typical solar cell) as its direct output. Some solar devices include add-ons to convert that energy into battery storage, mechanical energy, AC power, fuel, or some other form of energy.
This device appears to produce useful chemicals (hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide gas) as its direct output.
The decision of which is "better FOR YOU" needs to include the question "what form do you want the energy to be in, and what's the best way to get from sunlight to that form?"
Unless you want one of the "direct outputs" listed above, you are probably looking at using a multi-step process and the "energy density" of the first step is no longer the only factor.
If you do want one of the "direct outputs" listed above (DC power, heat, or CO+H2) , you probably will go with the technology that gives it to you directly unless there's a cheaper, but possibly more-complicated, process to get what you want (maybe you want CO+H2 but your investor or the agency that funds your grants will give you money for "proven technologies" but not for "novel or unproven ones" making the cost of traditional solar much cheaper FOR YOU).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Powering transportation solely on electricity gives the state the ability to decide when, where, and how much you can use because it's a public utility but under the legal control of the state.
Uh, what? Powering transportation solely with electricity is the only way an individual can become energy independent. I can install enough photovoltaic panels to power a Tesla for literally all of my driving needs (I fly when I travel long distances). Those panels are not only not a public utility, but quite specifically my private property. If I lived in the country, I could put up a windmill, either instead of or in addition to photovoltaic panels. Again, private property. Install enough of them, and a battery bank in the basement, and I can disconnect my house from that public utility too.
I certainly can't drill an oil well in my backyard and run an oil refinery in my basement. I can't strip mine my backyard for coal and run a steam-powered car. I can't cut enough trees to burn wood and run a steam-powered car either. I can't even plant enough switchgrass, harvest it, and make enough ethanol. Even if I could strip mine my backyard for coal, it would have to be half a mile thick to handle my transportation needs for the rest of my life, and coal just doesn't come that way.
Neither fossil fuels nor biofuels can fuel my transportation needs. Either I'm not allowed to utilize them (and wouldn't want to, because of the stench), or they literally aren't energy-dense enough, respectively. Biofuels depend on plants, which are lucky to convert even 3% of the sunlight falling on them, and they convert into biomolecules that I have to do something dramatic to in order to utilize their energy (usually at further loss). Commercial off the shelf photovoltaic panels convert sunlight at 22% efficiency, directly into electricity I can use, or can convert into something I can use with well-understood, cheap circuitry.
Powering transportation, and indeed everything else, solely on electricity is the one and only path to personal energy independence that can be pursued by more than a handful of farmers with massive amounts of acreage. And it's physically possible today. Right now. For everybody in the world who lives in low density housing. It's not financially possible for most just yet, but at least physics isn't preventing it.
That train left a long while ago. It's the economy, stupid. And the stupid economy needs to grow. GROW! GROW! More! Exponential functions are grand!
If you'd thrown in
"We need to make the economy HUGE, I tell you HUGE, and trust me folks, it's gonna be HUGE under my plan. I understand the economy, and only my exponential functions can grow it. It's gonna be HUGE I tell you. Trust me."
I would've given you an A.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There's physical limits to PV efficiency and battery energy density.
Solar impulse 2 have kind of proven that pv airliners are impossible.
Solar Impulse 2 has no payload beside itself and one guy. I will agree that commercial flight will be a sound possibility, but not of the kind that does transportation of passengers and air mail.
We do have 1000 mpg cars. They barely fit the definition of a car, and would likely be a death trap on the roads. In fact, you may as well build a bicycle/tricycle in the same shape and reach legal road speeds. But to fit four people and minimal luggage you'll have a lot of trouble reaching even 100 mpg (while not topping out a hybrid's battery on the way)
And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
Some do want encumbered tech -- it allows profit.
Consider Tesla's home storage battery.
It is small dense and profitable for Tesla. It allows of peak slurping
and off peak time delivery to the auto, home or grid.
However there are some quite old and well tested iron chemistry batteries.
They are environmentally safer and can be disposed of in common land fills.
They are heavy as all heck but once installed need never be moved.
They can be installed in man hole covered cylindrical or other vaults in driveways
or under front lawns. Yes, below the frost line in the north if need be.
They endure deep charge-discharge cycles for decades and have a life beyond 20 years.
On the modern side technology allows power control for grid control, charge and use and even
easy conversion to AC if needed.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Converts carbon dioxide into fuel? Take your pick of the problem you want to solve.
a) Reduce Carbon dioxide content in atmosphere -> pump the resulting fuel into underground reservoirs, basically restocking mineral oil.
b) produce fuel
Once you consume the fuel, you don't have a net reduction in carbon dioxide. Choose the problem you want to solve but you don't get both.
Presumably these cells have a different set of requirements and outputs. Also presumably there'll be lots of cases where they aren't an improvement. But it's possible that there will be lots of cases where they *are* an improvement.
Additionally, the outputs generated are different. E.g. there's no mention of synthesizing cellulose. This is both good and bad, depending on your needs.
All that said, it's my guess that the process will require catalysts that aren't cheap, so in most use cases this will be inferior to an appropriately selected plant.
Still, this is RESEARCH. It's not engineering. It's my guess that the main purpose of the research was to understand the exact details involved in photosynthesis, despite the way the summary was written. (I believe that the summary reflected the original article, because it's rather similar to the snippet I saw in Science News. That also took a "Gee-Whiz, New Stuff" approach that I suspect the researchers would have considered unwarranted.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
James May showcased a a solar furnace on one of his documentaries that did this nearly a decade ago but I've still not seen anything happen beyond that.
It was exciting as it had almost no running costs; Just needed the initial money to build the thing and a lot of sunlight, but I haven't heard a peep since
Syngas can be used to synthesize liquid fuels for airplanes, or be used as a reducer in steel production. If you only use this invention for electricity production by burning the syngas it will likely be unable to compete with PV. But this is for applications where the gas is needed and is not just a non-essential step on the way to electricity.
So does this mean solar energy will be used to convert one greenhouse gas (CO2) to a more potent greenhouse gas (CH4)? Now that's progress!
you will NEVER be able to walk into a local Home Depot and buy one. Not tomorrow, not 5 years from now.
I hear about solar panels as clear as glass a few years ago, that you could put on all the windows in your house to generate cheap electricity.. Still don't see them on the market, don't expect I ever will.
For whatever reason, maybe its oil company conspiracy, maybe the ideas were fake to begin with, who knows, we see news about all kinds of new technology concepts, that NEVER COME TO FRUITION.
They claim to have a process to convert sunlight "directly" into synthesized fuel but in the photos and the description we see a common off the shelf photovoltaic cell in the process. Therefore this process is tied to the efficiencies of photovoltaics, and that the process can be driven by other electricity sources, such as wind, hydro, or nuclear.
I've seen something very similar being investigated by the US Navy, the difference is that the Navy powers the process from nuclear power. They might have some new materials, techniques, etc. where they take the electricity to make the synthetic gas but the solar powered half of the process can be trivially replaced with a different electricity source.
IMHO, they used the solar power aspect of this to "greenwash" it so that they can more easily get federal funding. Had they used a more practical and reliable electricity source, like hydro, coal, or nuclear, or had they left the electricity source unmentioned, then they'd not get the publicity they have. Don't get me wrong, I'm hating the game, not the players. They played the game admirably. Now they just need to get the attention of the US Navy and then they can get some real funding.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Good luck on an overcast week in mid winter.
Good luck on an overcast week in mid winter.
Takes a lithium battery bank about the size of a refrigerator. Two, if the house is large or poorly insulated. Expensive, but physically possible, and it will only get cheaper. Photovoltaic panels still generate power on overcast days. Just not as much. Whereas the "hydrocarbon fuel" panels in the linked story probably generate nothing, since their efficiency is so terribly low in the first place. The battery bank gets charged with overcapacity on sunny days. Yes overcapacity costs more. I'm only making assertions about physical possibilities, not financial. And Slashdot keeps claiming that some of the losses from the middle class have moved into the upper class, so hey, it's more financially possible than it was, right?
Perfect is the enemy of good
PV panels generate very little power on an overcast, winter day. In fact, in Germany, even on a good day they average under 1 full sun hour equivalent and that includes sunny days. It varies depending on where you live. You need to calculate the amount of overcapacity ijn panels you'd need to cover a weeks worth of home and car usage first, then you can start talking about battery sizes. A fridge size battery won't keep you going for a week even if you're energy use is half of the average home. A battery can only hold so much energy, you can't carry over for multiple weeks unless you buy a battery that is five or maybe even ten times the size you need just manage daily usage during sunnier seasons.
Saying it sounds easy till you do the math. Calculate the panels and battery capacity required, the cost will be a lot higher than you seem to think. Most people significantly underestimate the cost of such a system until they do the math.
And took 15 months to do it. Magellan circled the world in 1519-1522 in 36 months, also using no fuel, but bringing back 26 tons of spices. The Solar Impulse 2 could barely carry one pilot and nothing else.
Since then, the sailing circumnavigation record has improved to 45 days, and the solo record is 58 days. Makes a sick joke out of the Solar Impulse 2.
Let's see. Very close to 500 years between the two feats. Going in, there was essentially no medicine or surgery, no proper Bessemer steel production, no internal or external combustion engines, no manned flight, no electricity, no radio or any travel or long distance communication faster than horses, no printed newspapers, and so on. 500 years later, and the state of travel without using fuel has not really advanced a bit.
Why on earth would you agree with that? There is absolutely no sign whatsoever that commercial solar powered flight could ever possibly be achieved.
I have done the math. Why do you think I said it would cost little? I said no such thing, and explicitly said it would cost a lot, twice. You're not actually reading my text. Also, first you talk about one week, then you talk about multiple weeks. Since when was multiple weeks an issue? I said nothing about it. That's you. And I don't live in Germany, so their clouds and winter don't concern me. Yes, it requires a much larger battery than just an overnight battery. This is not a shock to any six year old, who can add numbers. Did I say it was going to be small or cheap? No. I said exactly the opposite. It's going to be big and expensive. But I was responding to someone claiming that electric transportation gives power to the state, and I think I've completely made the case that it does not. I'll even name a number. The photovoltaic panels and battery packs required to power personal transportation completely free of state-regulated grid power costs less than one supercar.
He got modded to -1 Flamebait. He should have been modded -1 Not Even Wrong.
No sequestration needed. There is and will be a demand for fuels for a good while into the future. This has the potential to reduce the use of fossil fuels which adds carbon to the system by reusing carbon already in the system.
Here is the basic construction of the device from TFA:
"The UIC artificial leaf consists of two silicon triple-junction photovoltaic cells of 18 square centimeters to harvest light; the tungsten diselenide and ionic liquid co-catalyst system on the cathode side; and cobalt oxide in potassium phosphate electrolyte on the anode side."
So, the cathode is immersed in a combination of water and ethyl-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (from TFA).
The anode is immersed also in an electrolyte.
The result is that "hydrogen and carbon monoxide gas bubble up from the cathode, while free oxygen and hydrogen ions are produced at the anode." (From TFA)
There's a big piece missing here: how does the CO2 from the atmosphere get to the cathode to be catalyzed, as it is immersed in this ionic fluid? Where does the Hydrogen come from - the electrolyte? It must, because there is no other place for it to come from. This means that the electrolyte is consumed unless it reclaims the Hydrogen, which we've been told is not the point.
So, the questions I have are:
1) How does CO2 get from the atmosphere to the cathode?
2) If the electrolyte is consumed in the process, does the H come from the water in the mix or from the ethyl-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate? (Slightly less bad if all we have to do is add water, but the fact they don't answer this question leads me to believe the H comes from the ethyl-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate)
3) Since we're releasing H and CO from the electrolyte in which the cathode is immersed, then we must also necessarily release Oxygen, both from the CO2, and from the electrolyte if it is the water being electrolyzed. Why do they not mention Oxygen bubbling up from the cathode, as it must?
This only makes sense out of context. The conspiracy theory is that a revolutionary, workable solution gets bought and shelved, to continue reliance on traditional fuels. If it is so revolutionary, why not bring it back?
Also, you are really general, instead of addressing the energy sector specifically. Lots of energy companies are in the toilet now, and are in a good position to revive discarded stuff, even if it just buys then a few years of positive balance sheets.
Sure big business won't look at something that they can't own exclusively. But these are supposed to be cheap and simple and all sorts of things. An established small business in the industry should be able to make waves with this discarded tech, be first to market, and have a killer business. That's the basis of all of these conspiracy nutters' whole argument. Of it hadn't been bought, people would do this in their garages.
Not just happens rarely, but this never happens with these supposedly functional technologies. Ergo, conspiracy nuts are the whackadoodles I always figured they would be.
For the laymen people (like me) this article looks like a few that were published years ago. Can someone tell us the difference between this discovery and the ones that were previously published like: http://m.phys.org/news/2012-06-weizmann-solar-technology-greenhouse-gas.html
Thanks!
okay lets see
1 in theory you could put these plants in locations that don't require huge ships burning just about raw crude to get them to the place they are being used
2 this is a great way to store energy for times when solar does not work
3 if we get enough capacity we could oh store the "extra" in a reserve ---- the reserve amount would be "progress"
4 this can be used to power stuff that can't yet be powered by electric ---- giving time to invent a way
anything short of ZPMs is going to have a downside so hows about we work on keeping the patient "alive" long enough for us to figure out a decent fix??
I can't even plant enough switchgrass, harvest it, and make enough ethanol. Even if I could strip mine my backyard for coal, it would have to be half a mile thick to handle my transportation needs for the rest of my life, and coal just doesn't come that way.
Neither fossil fuels nor biofuels can fuel my transportation needs. Either I'm not allowed to utilize them (and wouldn't want to, because of the stench), or they literally aren't energy-dense enough, respectively.
Growing enough biofuel may be possible with a decently sized swimming pool and suitable algae species, some of which contain 43% of their mass in lipids. Biomass yield in open ponds can reach 5-10 g per m and day or more, bioreactors can increase this even further.
Cost twice of what? I said what would it take to get you through a cloudy mid-winter week, you said you'd store up on the sunny days which means at a best the week before...that means two weeks, one sunny winter week, then then next cloudy one.
If you did that math for this case, then you must have looked up the lowest solar isolation average day of your specific winter. What was that? Nothing you said tells me you appreciate what it would take.
Cost twice of what?
You have serious reading comprehension problems. I said it would cost a lot, twice. Twice I said it would cost a lot. See? I didn't say it would cost double.
And you're a bit confused about how electricity works too. No, not "at best the week before." It depends entirely on how over-provisioned the battery is and how over-provisioned the solar array is. In my area, the average is 4.8 full sun hours per day. A cloudy day cuts that to 15%, so the equivalent of 0.72 full sun hours. If I over-provision the solar array by a factor of 7, I don't have to use any battery power at all, even on a cloudy day. Of course that's a bit silly and takes a lot of space. Similarly, I could have stored the power to use on a cloudy day a month ago, if the battery bank is over-provisioned to the point of being capable of storing a full month of power and the solar array is over-provisioned just enough to provide my daily power plus some charge for the battery. That would actually physically fit in my basement. In fact, it would fit with room to spare. For my worst case month (which is in the summer, not the winter), it's only 20 fridges worth of batteries. That fits with room to spare. On the other hand, the factor of 7 over-provisioning of panels would not fit on my property.
But over-provisioning either one by such a huge amount is unnecessary. As I said, the average for my area is 4.8 full sun hours per day. The base system is provisioned with that in mind, and then over-provisioned by any arbitrary amount I care to hedge. If I fail to provision enough for a worst case number of consecutive cloudy days, then yes, I run out of power and the heat stops. In my region, that's only uncomfortable. Only the coldest of cold snaps make my house so cold that it even endangers the pipes. It certainly doesn't endanger life. I've gone two full winters with no heat but the waste heat from my computer, so a few hundred watts. Uncomfortable, but proven possible. So if I'm foolishly cheap, I can provision no storage at all and seriously under-provision the panels, and still my house is habitable. I don't propose to sacrifice one iota of comfort or convenience, and it is still possible.
Expensive, but possible.
There was a time during the transition from the age of sail to the age of steam where a type of ship called a windjammer proved economical. A windjammer is a large steel hulled cargo sailing ship with as many as five large masts, called a windjammer as it was so fast and efficient it seemed to make the wind stop.
Such a ship was expected to circumnavigate the globe in 8 months, making as many cargo stops along the way as it could. Such ships would often carry bulk commodity goods since they could afford taking the slow boats. They were typically capable of carrying between 2000 and 5000 tons of cargo but the largest were able to carry about 8000 tons.
The ships did have steam engines on board to power the systems that moved the sails and rudder, as well as provide electricity for lights and radios. Without the need for vast coal reserves for fuel to power the ship they could use that space instead for cargo.
A modern windjammer might be feasible, using the wind to propel the ship, solar power for electricity, and quite likely a small diesel engine for emergency power and propulsion. Hybrid ships have been proposed before, with sails augmenting diesel power.
I was on a team in college that built a solar powered car for competition. Calling it a "race" is a misnomer as there was a speed limit for safety of the crew. The car would have to be charged up from sunrise to the start of the "race" and then drive for one hour to four, depending on conditions, and then charge until sunset. This car carried just the driver, at a max speed of 50 miles per hour, without air conditioning or other comforts. The estimated cost of the car would be many hundreds of thousands of dollars with some competitors having donations of money and materials in the millions. These cars had no bumpers. We could not use an off the shelf car horn as those would typically consume more power than the main motor. There were no headlamps since that would drain the battery considerably. LED headlamps did not exist then but even today a solar powered car is not likely to be feasible.
Wind power at sea will always beat solar power in the air for speed and cargo capacity. Solar power for a car is something for college science projects. Solar power in an aircraft will not ever be feasible for passenger service.
It would be fun to see a competition between a solar powered airplane and a sailing ship. Perhaps even leave the competition open, given X dollars and Y months to build create a zero fuel vehicle that can circumnavigate the globe. Give points for fastest time, cargo carry ability, cost savings, and wildcard creativity points just for laughs.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Reading TFA, I noticed an interesting point:
The process doesn't require light. It uses silicon photovoltaics providing power to a "reverse fuel cell" which coverts CO2 and H2O to H2 and CO (which the Fischer-Tropsch process can turn into diesel fuel, light crude, etc.)
This means the process doesn't have to be deployed as solar panels. It could also be run in an enclosed reactor, driven by electricity. This could be used to turn power from fusion, fission, wind, space-collected-and-downlinked solar, or what have you into oil fuels and chemical feedstocks. (Of course if your prime-mover is solar panels, deploying this combined device might be the easiest/cheapest way to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere.)
Even if the electricity-to-syngas is 100%, using it to make liquid fuel means you're burning post-carnot-cycle energy into liquid fuel. If you then burn it in a heat engine you get to pay the carnot cycle tax again. So from an efficiency standpoint, if you use it to drive vehicles with heat-engines (rather than, say, fuel cells) you won't beat battry-electrics. But without deployment of better batteries the total system price and/or efficiency may be better. Or it may be worth the penalty for the extended range, faster refueling, or ability to use electrical energy from any source to fuel liquid-fuel vehicles or produce chemical feedstocks.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems. In the summer I'd have enough electricity to run the house and charge up an electric car for my then short commute. I didn't recalculate since then for my now longer drive to work. In the winter though I'd have enough power for lights, refrigeration, entertainment, and maybe to run some large appliances. I'd have to rely on some sort of fossil fuel for heat and transportation in the winter months, or grid electricity.
I don't recall exactly how large the battery I needed, which is somewhat arbitrary anyway since it depends on how much of a reserve a person is comfortable with. I recall the battery being a meter tall, one meter deep, and five meters long. This was with off the shelf sealed lead acid. The battery alone would cost as much as my house. I believe this gave me a three day reserve of electricity. The cost of the solar panels, battery chargers, etc. was more difficult to calculate since prices for such are rarely advertised outright. I could get a price if I solicited a bid and had someone come for a site survey. Since this was for a curiosity and not a serious effort I made no effort to seek such and estimated as best I could. This gave a price for the panels and electronics that, again, cost about as much as my house.
I found this thought experiment quite enlightening. The cost of the batteries, panels, etc. scale with the size of the house and the cost of the house scales with its size. Therefore the "rule of thumb" I came up with is that going off grid will cost twice as much as the house. This does not, as pointed out before, remove the need for fuel for winter heating and transportation. Some of that will be offset by having excess in summer to power an electric car.
With residential combined heat and power being a thing now it opens up new possibilities. It may be possible to reduce the size of the battery pack, or keep an electric car running for a greater portion of the year, or whatever.
Point is that I do not believe anyone can be truly energy independent and still live anything approximating a modern lifestyle. I live the the US Midwest, which granted does make for some cold winters. People north of me will certainly have greater energy issues. People south of me may be able to live on the sun hitting their property, and still be able to drive an electric car for most or all of their daily commutes. Much of the energy consumed will still come in the form of the products and services we buy, like food, clothing, entertainment, public transportation, and durable goods. The energy consumed in making the solar panels will have to be paid back somehow. That might be more solar power but it comes from somewhere.
Oh, and living in the country so you can put up a windmill may not be wise. The windmill will produce more power but then it will take more power per day to commute. A windmill will also produce power when the sun does not shine but then that is another cost and still will not eliminate the need for fossil fuels for anyone that experiences a real winter. I have a heat pump, as does my sister, and my brother. We all needed a backup. I have a natural gas furnace, my sister has a wood stove, and my brother has a propane furnace.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The installed cost may have 'crossed over' - but as the increasing problems being revealed over maintaining base load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing indicates that this is because the real costs aren't being accounted for.
There would need to be thousands of square miles of these devices to be able to replace the current fuel usage.
Think about the energy used by vehicles vs the amount of energy from the sun per square metre.
Not viable.
I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems.
<snip>
The cost of the solar panels, battery chargers, etc. was more difficult to calculate since prices for such are rarely advertised outright.
Times, they are a-changin'. Costs of panels and inverters are now quite public. 7000 watts of panel capacity will cost you $7700 for a pallet of 25, delivered. Those are 17% efficient, made in America. An inverter to match runs around $1500 plus $70 per panel, give or take. Charge controllers run $1000 or so, often as an added feature on an inverter that includes the charge controller built in. Batteries are indeed a bit arbitrary. Giant sodium ion batteries run 60 cents per watt-hour. Large flooded lead acid run 27 cents per watt-hour. Sealed AGM lead acid run 15 cents per watt hour. And of course the Tesla Powerwall is 47 cents per watt-hour. $3000 for an overnight supply (somewhat arbitrarily), and on up from there depending on personal preference. An approximate minimum for an overnightable off-grid system that puts out an average 35 kWh per day in the Midwest is $15,000 in parts. With a couple of days additional storage, call it $20,000.
Installation prices have not yet faced the new reality of panel prices. Installation is absurdly expensive, running $35,000 for a 25 panel system. Installers were accustomed to that ridiculous labor markup being invisible against a much higher panel and battery price. Those days are over, but panel installers haven't noticed yet. Install it yourself and pay an electrician for the inverter installation and it's $500. Just don't fall off the roof.
35 kWh per day can be enough to go summer and winter without a drop of grid energy, depending on your house. It's certainly enough for the new mostly brick house with a heat pump that my parents occupy in Illinois. Such a system costs 1/8th as much as a house, not twice. Maybe one quarter as much, including the 15 cubic feet of battery you describe. About two fridges worth. If you live in Minnesota, it won't do, but then why the hell would you live in Minnesota? Leave it for the moose and move south. If I spent one quarter as much as my house is worth, I would be very comfortable going off grid with that system.
Of course Magellan used fuel. It's called food and water for the crew.
Can you smartass moderator see any flaming in these replies?
If anything that contradicts (or questions) the main topic is flamebait or troll, then you are done with free speach.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Did anyone else read the name as Robin Williams? =(
So there you go, as I said good luck.You have described a ridiculously oversized costly system that makes no sense, yet still need to live for a week in a barely habitable home, just above freezing for a week, and that does not appear to cover driving your Tesla for that period as you originally proposed. Also, you are evidently living in the most optimal solar region if you are averaging 4.8 hrs/day in mid winter, a place like Arizona, you must know that such a solution for a majority of people on the planet would require even a much larger system than what you described.
Like I said, good luck for a week in mid-winter.
Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use)
The FDA is insane. I read their page on importing drugs. They say they can't recommend it at this time, and that the border agent at customs will use his discretion, and won't let packages in with more than a 3-month supply, and might decide to not allow it. They also state that enforcement against individuals is not part of the FDA's regulation plan; they'll go after distributors who try to bulk-import shitloads of foreign drugs. The whole several-page explanation ends with a statement that WHEN YOU RECEIVE YOUR PACKAGE you will need a valid prescription for possession to be legal in your state.
Drugs *rarely* get held at customs. People order Modvigil or Modalert ($180 for a 90-day supply of 200mg pills, vs $2,640 for generic Modafinil here) and never get their package held; it happens so rarely that both suppliers proactively post as policy that packages confiscated by customs are refunded in full or immediately replaced for free. Mind you, a few people have had the pills tested (they contain Modafinil and only Modafinil), but the titration test (how much Modafinil?) is expensive and so we don't know if they're really 200mg, if they're consistent batch-to-batch, how much the dose varies from pill-to-pill in each batch, etc; ensuring this falls within a certain standard is part of maintaining FDA approval.
So, FDA position on importing prescription medication: "We're not allowed to tell you you can *wink* *nudge* *secret handshake*".
and ibogaine as a treatment for opiate addictions.
Salvinorin A (from Salvia Divinorum) shows promise here, too, and is completely legal in most states. It's not FDA-approved for this use, which presents problems: while you can legally self-medicate to clear an addiction if you think the research suggests that'll work, it's *illegal* to prescribe the drug for said use in addiction clinics. That means you don't get the benefit of the medical community determining if this works or not; if it does work, you don't get the benefit of the medical community developing and sharing a great pile of knowledge on how well it works and what complications it may cause; and, as a patient, you don't get the benefit of supervision by an experienced professional who can maximize success and respond to any complications arising from said treatment. FDA approval isn't just for sorting voodoo from legitimate treatment; it opens up access to competent treatment options.
Addiction is a terrifying disease (I assume; I'm immune), and lack of access to anti-addictives under the supervision of an addiction specialist is a major shortcoming of our global capacity to treat it.
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This only makes sense out of context. The conspiracy theory is that a revolutionary, workable solution gets bought and shelved, to continue reliance on traditional fuels. If it is so revolutionary, why not bring it back?
From an economic standpoint, a workable solution may require an insane amount of cost (labor). For example: a few centuries back, a certain amount of human labor (which requires wages) could produce 400 tonnes of iron from ore; the hot-blast furnace allowed you to use the same amount of labor to produce 86,400 tonnes of ore. How expensive do you think a car engine would have been before and after the invention of the hot-blast furnace?
From a business standpoint, there's risk. Something might cost a lot to set up (e.g. a processor fabrication facility), and then run with relatively-low costs. In competitive markets with low demand and high-cost output, this risk is paralyzing: only a protected monopoly can survive, as the competition will repeatedly collapse all contenders before they turn any profit; nobody is putting up the money for a guaranteed loss. With high start-up costs and low-cost output, you still risk it in that initial competitive market; this is more viable because the dust will eventually settle and investors who hedge their bets will recover their costs in the long run (see: 1999 dot-com boom).
People don't understand technical progress, and hence freak out about lay-offs and such. It's why we have so many Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs, failing to understand that the consumer has to pay higher prices to provide the income covering that wage, thus reducing consumer buying power (making everyone poorer). It's also why people immediately think any technology is viable: "expensive" to them is a fancy word for "businesses charge a lot of money", and they don't imagine there's a technical reason something might cost a lot.
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The Solar Impulse 2 is analogous to a go-kart. It's an extremely-light plane carrying one passenger at low speeds using a ridiculously-wide wingspan. You may as well claim on-board wind power is viable for air transit by pointing out that you can fly a kite.
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Indeed, it would be a lot easier to plant trees on Mars and use those to produce fuel rather than use a device like this.
Because "sell a working model" equals "making up stuff". You stupid troll.
Nevertheless, even in very sunny area's there is always a possibility of having a week where there is considerably less sun (and thus energy).
The parent poster was right, thus, that - if you're speaking of being completely self-sufficient - you would need batteries that can span a week or more. The best batteries for home-use gives you about 3 hours of electricity, for an average household. So you'd need 2-3 to cover one full night. That means it would take about 20 battery-packs to cover a week. At an average cost of 3500 dollar, this means 70000 dollar, just for the batteries.
And than you still need to hope one week is the maximum sunlight-poor period it will ever get.
In many countries, during the winter, it can be sunlight-poor for months.
Anyway, it may be that one (especially the rich) can become energy-independent from the state or big companies or whatever, but I doubt it will become economical beneficial any time soon. Ultimately, the state doesn't control it beyond taxing it. But what would keep them from doing the same (aka, taxing it) on, say, solar panels? It's perfectly possible. If they can tax swimming-pools in Greece, looking for them on satellite images, they can surely do the same for solar panels.
Ergo: if the state wants your money, they'll always find a way to do so. There is no such thing as guaranteed independence from the state.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I'll search for my tinfoil-hat right now! Just wait a sec! I'm sure it must be in my drawer somewhere...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
They also have low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture. And, indeed, are very heavy.
They might be worth considering for some specific solutions, but it's clear it won't do for most of them (e.g., car-batteries).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It's why we have so many Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs
While I live in a part of the world with very few " Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs" I do have a word for the Marxists:
Government regulation has its good and bad points. You need balance. Telling companies "you can't lay off people" is the same as telling companies "think twice before hiring people, because you won't be able to shed them quickly without dissolving your company." On the other hand, no regulation of layoffs at all creates an environment which fosters sudden spikes in the unemployment rate and the societal problems that go with it.
Some countries have strong-enough labor unions or somewhat-labor-friendly governments that try to "thread the needle" by not outlawing layoffs completely but by putting in some "friction" that make layoffs somewhat less attractive to businesses and which mitigate some of the social costs, such as by requiring several months' notice and/or several months' severance pay for large-scale layoffs or requiring companies that lay people off to provide them job-retraining or pay into an outside fund that will cover job-retraining costs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is Salvinorin A FDA-approved for any use?
If so, then a doctor should be able to prescribe it for off-label use. Insurance companies and government-funded clinics may not be able to pay for the drugs and it's possible that government-paid medical professionals may not be allowed to talk about off-label use of medications on pain of being fired (I say "may" because I don't know if this is the case or not), but as long as it's been through the FDA approval process for some use, most doctors should be able to prescribe it for just about any use.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Of course, it must be said that by now we also have an infrastructure to power those explosion-powered vehicles.
Contrary, say, to the claims of some that hydrogen would be the new way to go. And insisting the infrastructure is already there, so it would be cheap to implement. Alas, our infrastructure for gasoline is NOT suited for hydrogen, and all the pipelines and storages would need a complete overhaul, making it prohibitively expensive for little added benefit.
On the other hand, artificial gasoline or syngas *CAN* use exactly the same infrastructure we already have.
You're last sentence, thus, seems rather to come forth from personal ideological preferences, rather than objective reasons. When looking at it economically, it does not follow one should move on, provided the efficiency of the system is high enough. Looking at it environmentally, it is not clear one should move on, since with this system, it would be CO2 neutral. Looking at it technically, there is no reason to move on, since the infrastructure is already there and poses no technical problems.
Not to say electricity won't trump every other energy/system out there in the end - it did with streetlights that used to be all on gas - but it foremost will only transplant those systems, where the advantages are most clear. There were the alternative systems are not inferior (in certain situations), they won't (rapidly) get replaced. The main argument and reason to go for electric cars, for instance, is the environmental issue. But if that were to disappear (with syngas or artificial petrol that re-uses the CO2) an important reason in favour of electric cars would disappear as well. For airplanes, which need light weight, high-density energy, it's even more clear that gasoline won't go away for batteries for a long time... And even Musk agreed that rockets will never fly on battery-packs. ;-)
There are whole industries needing, and revolving around petrol. This won't change any time soon. It would be a good thing if technologies like these would take care of the major disadvantages it has, in the meantime.
That said, being realistic: it all depends on the efficiency, and I don't see anywhere mentioned in the article what the de facto efficiency was of the system - which is always a bad sign.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The Marxist comment was more for emphasis than technical accuracy. Marx did suggest, at a point, that reducing employment by making things more-efficient was bad; this wasn't really the thrust of Marx's philosophies, and is often criticized as being wildly out-of-context by broadly-read economists if you bring it up. Still, we have a lot of left-wing capitalists criticizing trickle-down economics as Republican-conservative bullshit (because of tax cuts for the rich) while simultaneously arguing that businesses should pay more wages and hire more people to create jobs (as if the money trickles down from rich people pockets and business magic infinite money, rather than from revenues pried out of consumer pockets).
not outlawing layoffs completely but by putting in some "friction" that make layoffs somewhat less attractive to businesses and which mitigate some of the social costs, such as by requiring several months' notice and/or several months' severance pay for large-scale layoffs or requiring companies that lay people off to provide them job-retraining or pay into an outside fund that will cover job-retraining costs.
This is not necessarily a bad approach. Strong social support structures (e.g. Universal Social Security) help to spread out layoffs from technical progress (e.g. the machines become cheaper than humans, but if we wait it out for X years they'll be even cheaper, so we're better-positioned if we hold off or do a multi-year roll-out); and hard approaches to force that spread are less-probabilistic and more-direct. Hard approaches also create economic drag, slowing growth and thus leaving us slightly-poorer; they have the advantage of not failing if someone invents a revolutionary new technology that cuts out 80% of the cost of 50% of the labor, thus immediately creating 50%-80% unemployment anyway.
Most people are interested in a humanitarian ideal of job security, where the big evil company isn't allowed to fire 17,000 workers and must find something for them to do. That's ludicrous.
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I think the solar impulse 2 exactly proved how infeasible commercial airplanes would be, if they had to rely purely on solarpower/batteries.
The weight/power ratio was atrocious, with the solar impulse. Extrapolate this to a modern airplane which needs to carry 100 people, and you'd get something that wouldn't fit even the biggest airports, would weigh thousands of tons, and wingspans that would be mind-boggling long and thus made of impossible strong materials, rivalling carbyne. It would never be economically viable, even if you could manage it.
And this won't change until the batteries are a hundredfold more powerful and more lightweight.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
No dude, it's a hallucinogenic drug used recreationally. It's going through research and some phama cos are trying to make a more-effective derivative (e.g. better anti-addictive properties, less hallucination). The drug has approximately zero toxicity (extreme overdose is safe), no addictive potential, and little penetration into the recreational use market, and is thus not worth scheduling; if it were scheduled, it'd have to be Schedule-1 (no medical use), and then getting it FDA approved requires shitloads of money, while research requires enormous permits. The FDA doesn't bother because enforcement would be futile and the potential harm to society is essentially nil (from a more complete perspective: the potential harm of scheduling and enforcement is higher than the potential harm of uncontrolled recreational use at this time).
If it were approved for any use, it would be prescribable off-label, as you say; this carries a lot of risk (if it doesn't work, the doctor can be hit for malpractice; a robust basis of medical literature showing current-practice recognition of safety and potential effectiveness is the best defense here, so yeah, good luck not getting your dick sued off).
Again: it shows potential. It's not used in the field and isn't well-studied for this purpose. My point was more to highlight some serious problems with lack of access to potential treatment--notably the lack of research into anti-addictives, the impact on addiction clinics (theoretical or real), and the loss of an important resource if self-medicating (seriously, having experienced medical professionals guide your spirit-journey back to sobriety or whatever is incredibly-valuable; smoking up on something that *might* help you get rid of your meth-cocaine-heroin addiction without medical counsel gives you nowhere to turn if it doesn't immediately, perfectly solve your problems).
I don't spend a lot of time with doctors, but I get why they're useful and important, even when you have figured out all the answers yourself. Thousands of hours of googling can't compete with asking someone who deals with this stuff every day and has a million friends who *also* deal with this stuff every day.
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Wind PPAs in central US were even cheaper, some 2-2.5 cnt/kWh last year (although it may go up few years later when 2.3 cnt/kWh subsidy will expire).
PV is still useless for grid above certain share point. The best it can do is displace fuel certain natural gas electric plants but at 20% capacity factor it is not much. Hydro capacity is way too small to help significantly. Fossil fuel electric plants are still needed to be ready to provide peak power at the same level as without PV. Not to mention thermal energy needs that are higher than electricity needs. Energy that can be stored at large scale (hydrocarbons or hydrogen) over winter are much more useful than netmetered PV sandbox game.
Well, the original article puts a lot of emphasis on the sequestration process and I am saying that those statements make no sense.
Electricity that's not produced by burning stuff (photovoltaic panels, windmills, nuclear plants) is much better as there is no CO2 emission at all.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
That's correct. What's wrong is all the mentioning about CO2 sequestration.
Otherwise you can revert to natural wood/bamboo growing as energy source: it sequestrates CO2, stores energy for later use, produces O2 and food...
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
That's a completely different point.
I agree with you about the car scrapping and using that technology (provided that it really works as advised).
But the point here is the energy source in general: there are not just cars that need energy.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I don't see your point.
entropy happens
"converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once"
Solving a problem, assuming this means removing CO2 from atmosphere. This sounds like a zero sum game, remove but burning the fuel places back into the atmosphere. Unless the process can create other hydrocarbon based products like plastics.
On a positive side, if this means burning less fossil fuels then hopefully slow additional CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.
My cousins are hooked up to the grid, but I believe they generate more total electricity than they use. This isn't a complete solution, but it helps.
If a solar installation produces liquid fuel, it can be stored, so it doesn't matter much whether it produces none this week and a lot the next.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It seems to me that you're a bit confused about trickle-down economics vs. businesses providing jobs. Taxing the rich less doesn't create jobs, but well-running businesses do. It seemed to me that cutting taxes and raising interest rates was hurting business and hence job creation, since new jobs require new activity or expanding old activity, which is easiest done by borrowing money.
What I'm interested in, as far as job protection goes, is what happens to the worker. Currently, a company can lay off thousands of workers and the area can be economically devastated. I'm much more interested in the second clause than the first. At-will employment is efficient for large companies, and if we can make it so mass layoffs aren't that bad we can let them do it with no problems. I think we're probably better off with tax-supported government safety nets that allow businesses to be closer to laissez-faire.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It seems to me that you're a bit confused about trickle-down economics vs. businesses providing jobs. Taxing the rich less doesn't create jobs, but well-running businesses do.
People have an ideal in which businesses should make jobs, and in which raising wages means the business opens its money accounts and pays more money. They say that we should make the businesses pay. They don't connect wages to prices; they imagine that the money comes down from the business, not out of revenue. That's supply-side economics: the supply (businesses) provides the income (somehow), and money trickles down.
Demand-side economics suggests that consumers have a limited amount of income in a time frame. That income is incidental: maybe rich people are investing like crazy and the money is trickling down right now (see: 1999 dot-com boom); maybe the Fed has created more money and the banks are loaning even more into existence (fractional reserve); in any case, there is so much money out there to be spent. When money is spent, it isn't spendable again in that time frame (across a year, you get paid from spending that happened; across that year, a total amount of spending will happen--that dollar might move from hand to hand to hand, but if it does so 26 times, that's $26 of income, not a penny more, available in one year's time frame). That spending supports the wages of the worker, and thus creates jobs.
When you consider demand-side economics, you realize that businesses compete for income. They compete for that available demand; one business's success comes from either economic growth (more available demand) or from another business's loss, and the available jobs are allocated. Businesses produce jobs in the same way refineries produce iron: mined ore isn't going to smelt itself, and you're not going to smelt more iron than the available ore can produce. You can't just open up a new refinery and magically have more iron come out unless the mines are also delivering more ore.
I think we're probably better off with tax-supported government safety nets that allow businesses to be closer to laissez-faire.
My Universal Social Security plan addresses this by avoiding (minimum) wage raises in favor of passing out additional money. At the low-wage level (unemployment, minimum wage, poverty households), you get income without your employer paying extra for having you versus not having you (i.e. having any other method of doing your job, such as a machine). At higher wage levels, your tax burden is effectively decreased by the same level. Given the choice between reducing employment and waiting until a later date in hopes of getting a better ROI for reducing employment, there's less pressure to reduce employment now (less money flowing out into employee's hands versus replacing them with newer technical solutions); because of differences in risk methodology between businesses, this spreads employment reduction (some businesses will make the change earlier, some later, and some will have long, incremental roll-outs), thus reducing the amount of consequential unemployment at any given time.
The total displacement is about $1 trillion dollars less than current social safety nets, and is more effective for HUD, unemployment, and retirement; that means most of the money taken to support it goes right back to the taxpayers who paid it in, immediately, thus reducing their effective tax rate. An upper-middle-class family receiving an extra $4,000 of spendable income per year in this plan is actually paying for lower-class families; they're just paying *less*.
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For such things as pseudo-satellites, agricultural survey, or people flying for the sake of it?
I have no good idea if the plane can be made cheap enough, or if it's otherwise too impractical but I find it interesting. Again, with little to no payload.
The main reason most of these things don't come to market is that inventions are coming so rapidly that something BETTER comes along and obsoletes them before they reach manufacturing and deployment.
Ok... so when will I have a flying saucer?
Just kidding. Someone has to get behind it and sell it. There are lots of pitfalls here, mostly due to people that hate companies. They put up all kinds of regulations. If the gasoline car were introduced today, they'd squash it. Oh it's terrible, the fuel can explode and kill millions! Think of the children. We'd probably never be able to park a car in a garage.
I say that because I've seen some of the BS with hydrogen.
Here's hoping! Maybe we can get something sustainable in my lifetime.
Plants and algae have nowhere near the efficiency of solar sells at converting light into usable power. Even very cheap solar cells are more than ten times more efficient than plants.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They also have low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture. And, indeed, are very heavy.
They might be worth considering for some specific solutions, but it's clear it won't do for most of them (e.g., car-batteries).
Exactly so.
Not portable that is sure however as a local to home storage filled from roof/ carport solar
or charged off peak at a discount off peak rate.
The high cost of manufacture could be resolved with demand and manufacturing patents.
The very heavy aspect makes them less desirable for theft especially when installed in an underground vault.
There does seem to be a need for distributed storage on the grid and there does
seem to be a need for better host to host cross sectional distributed routing for networking.
The notion of centralized everything is driven by cash and greed of those owning component
parts of the infrastructure. These components are coveted and need to be challenged.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Here's hoping! Maybe we can get something sustainable in my lifetime.
The sooner the better! I have some more bad news on our bet. Last month was the hottest July on record. In fact, every month this year has set a record. Take a look at the current peak compared to the previous one in 2010. We've had about 0.25C warming just over the last 6 years!
You were quite confident that 2016 would be cooler than 2015. Any thoughts on why things are turning out so much different than you had anticipated?