Currently a LiON system is about 3x the price of a Lead Acid installation. Granted, the LiON has a smaller physical footprint and power spec due to efficiencies in LiON tech. But 3x the cost is 3x the cost. Maybe Tesla can bring that cost down some. Otherwise doing an solar install in locations other than sunny places like Nevada/Arizona don't make economic sense.
There's also the issue of thermal runaway. Granted, current lead-acid batteries have a thermal runaway problem, but LiON is more prone to it due to the higher energy densities involved.
Lead Acid doesn't normally light up when the casing is breached.
Look up Lithium Ion fire or cell phone battery fire online and watch videos of LiON batteries burning VERY vigorously. What happens if a home user's $45,000 worth of LiON goes Kurgan and decides it'd rather burn out than fade away?
No. I'm chastising environmentalists who do sloppy work and write sloppy papers with a definitive bias.
As for bothering to read what they wrote on the subject. How do YOU know that I didn't read?
As for being stereotypical. You OBVIOUSLY don't know me.
I'm all for using clean forms of power generation where they make sense. I'm all for leaving this planet a cleaner (from WHATEVER forms of "pollution") place than I found it when I first popped out.
What I have a VIOLENT bias against is sloppy, yellow-journalism-style publication and coverage. Boldly presenting "facts" for a thing without covering the caveats.
I want to proceed into the future.
I want that future to be a bright, clean and safe one.
I DO NOT want to go stumbling into a future set up for me by a bunch of shysters and snake oil salesmen. Dystopia wouldn't even BEGIN to describe how bad that could be.
While the Doomsday clock is an evocative metaphor, nearly 70 years, and mission drift (was originally only encompassed destruction by nuclear war) have rendered it impotent and corrupted.
[Zombie] Ah dammit! The battery just ran down again! What the fuck? I was just getting to the good part!
[Cornered Victim] Uh. I'm... Doomed?
[Zombie] Oh put a sock in it! Just...just...get out! I'll shuffle you down LATER! Goddamn Glass! I can operate with this six inch hole clear through my torso! *Waggles hand in the hole* And this thing can't last long enough to record a chase and a bit of brain feast! I shoulda just bought a frickin' GoPro!
[Zombie] DAMN! My Google Glass ran the battery down again! Now how am I supposed to document my brain feastage!
[Trapped Victim] ???
[Zombie] Oh just get out dammit! I'll shuffle you down NEXT TIME! Damn tech! I can operate with a six inch hole in my chest! *Waggles a hand in the hole* And this thing can't even record a decently long chase-down and brain feast! Shoulda bought a damn GoPro!
Costa Rica is roughly 20,000 Square Miles. That's about half again the size of the NYC metropolitan area.
Rewrite it to read "Tiny country you can walk across in a couple days...."
Second, they're down on/near the equator. Long days. Mostly great weather. Now compare to Chicago, with roughly 30 days of snowfall a year (mostly in a period of 8 months)
Third, they got helped by high (even for them) rains, allowing their hydro resources to run at a higher capacity.
And, as others have noted, funny that eco-nuts are normally so averse to hydro power because of environmental factors. But when it helps achieve things like this, NOT A FUCKING PEEP.
I'm saying that he's being unrealistic wanting to put it in a crawlspace with no environmental controls.
Even a completely fanless solution in an environment like that will collect dust in megaton quantities. And you can't hard-seal the device away to avoid moisture because it'll overheat in short order. Simply dumping dessicant packets in with it won't offset the moisture issue, as it'll condense out of the air and onto every surface.
Sure, if he wanted to forego his next automotive purchase, he could probably find (and afford) an environmentally hardened unit that would do MOST of what he wants.
His other option would be to convert the crawlspace into a semi-finished, insulated, environmentally controlled room. However there may be monetary or logistical problems there.
But, in the long run, he's better off building an silent or near-silent HTPC and putting it in an environmentally controlled area. Either integrated into his entertainment center, or tucked away in a closet with adequate venting.
Just build yourself an HTPC machine in an HTPC case and hook it to your TV setup. You have ZERO environmental control in a crawlspace. So something like a computer is going to suck up dust by the megaton, and have humidity issues all the time.
Okay, current solar concentration clocks in at about 100MW steady output and about 300GWh per annum per square mile of facility.
You're talking about covering up about 20,000 square miles, or roughly 12% of the state, in solar concentrator facilities.
Never mind that Nuclear is many times more energy-dense and could support the state, with a more realistic investment in renewables in just a fraction of that land area.
How pessimistic can you get? I don't buy that as a realistic assessment.
And that's why this slow erosion of our rights will continue apace.
Because people, as a large, unified group don't stand up and say "No" to this sort of bullshit, and then back it up with force if necessary.
Because, at the end of the day, all power derives from the application of force, or threat of force.
You can pretend it's all about civility and enlightenment. But people can still choose to be uncivil. And stupidity abounds. And, in the end, naked force, and the willingness to use it pretty much ALWAYS "wins" the argument.
The day will come, when people will have nothing left but their gilded little cages and a vague perception of liberty. The longer we put off that inevitable confrontation, the more people it's going to kill in the end.
If you don't want a tree to fall on your house, you don't plant a tree, and you cut them back before they get big enough to fall on you. You don't just let the tree grow wild, have it fall on the house, then cut it up afterwards and complain about the damage.
Actually, if it's another country, the FBI shouldn't be there at all. Ever. That's what the CIA is for. The FBI's bailiwick is domestic threats. The CIA covers foreign threats.
Years ago, in Basic Training, had a guy tell me he was from "Soccolonna"?
And I was like "Where?"
South Carolina.
I'm fine with taking a certain stylistic convention (such as supposed "proper english") and teaching is the norm (similar to Standard Received Pronunciation used to be in the UK). This ensures that we can still communicate with one another. Without the regional drifts becoming so bad they become an unintelligible dialect to pretty much anyone else. We don't have to declare english a "closed language (see DEAD LANGUAGE)" the way those idiots in France have tried and failed to do.
But using "English is a living, growing language" to justify "Fo shizzle"isms is disingenuous at best, with me leaning more towards "downright idiotic".
The point of a language is to be able to communicate in a standard manner.
Having to decipher pseudorandom grunts and vocalizations defeats that purpose.
The same thing can be said for the written language.
Spelling stuff "just any old way" is just unacceptable.
Try reading medieval English (from the period of Chaucer and before). And I don't mean copies that have been spelling corrected as of today. I mean the originals.
It can be done. But it's a MASSIVE pain in the balls, and in some cases, requires additional schooling.
Now imagine people turning in manuscripts, scientific papers, reports, etc, etc like that TODAY.
Again, you don't have a common point of reference. Therefore you don't have a language.
I really don't know why you decided to run with that idea before thinking it out...
Solar is mainstream these days in the residential sector where practicality has trumped politics.
Because I'm NOT talking about residential low-temperature solar thermal heating. I'm also NOT talking about residential (or even industrial) solar panels.
I'm talking about high temperature molten salt solar thermal installs. Where you basically have a 1 square mile facility concentrating sunlight on a central structure containing substances that can absorb and retain vast quantities of energy.
Also, where, during the industrial revolution, were we generating hot spots in open air, several dozen/hundred feet above the desert floor.
You keep acting as if I'm trying to be political about this. Yet you apparently misread (or did not read) my original posts, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to talk about urban solar panels when they have nothing to do with the question posed. So, who's trying to be political here?
Low IQ AC mouth-breathers in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The ground absorbs and returns heat to the atmosphere at a given rate.
A concentrator tower is roughly 14-16x as hot. And likely produces a prodigious, and very active, thermal plume.
What I want to know is, how does this concentration of energy, and the resultant shift in temperatures and location affect local ecology and climate.
Look at the weather in Canada and the US this year. Disruptions in normal weather patterns in the Arctic have pushed various fronts down into Canada and the US.
Are you trying to tell me that you've got evidence for a paper that shows that introducing a series of hot spots in a uniform pattern across several thousand square miles has zero effect on local or worldwide climate?
Please. Point me at the research.
Until then, I don't have time for you. Go back to trolling your MLP boards.
what starts happening in the region if we start introducing an 800 degree hot point every square mile?
What the fuck are you worried about?
I don't know. That's why I'm asking the question.
Do you think these things would set the atmosphere on fire or sumpthin?
Terrible spelling aside, mostly "or something". We basically created (and enlarged) multiple holes in our ozone layer through over-use of various chemicals. I'd like to know what region-scale introduction of a grid of super-hot points will do to a local ecology and climate.
The fact is these "hot points" as you call them pose absolutely no risk or hazard to anyone or anything, other than flying creatures.
And you, Mr. Internet Expert, know this...how? You can handwave it if you like. Until you can actually point me at real research on the subject, I'm going to continue asking the question.
(please don't tell me you think that the concentration towers actually add heat to the earth)
No. As I said earlier, I want to know what the introduction of these hot points (and the thermal plumes they engender) will do to the local ecology and climate.
I'd like to see actual research, as opposed to some fanboy who THINKS they know the technology rah-rah'ing it in response to a legitimate question.
In a couple places I've seen people dismiss RDJ as "a druggie who got lucky".
Sorry, but cleaning up your own life is not LUCK. It's hard fucking work. As hard, or harder, than anything else he's ever done in his life.
But now, he's famous (possibly pigeon holed) for playing a character who makes technology COOL! This opens up the opportunity, in this case, for an important medical technology to be presented in an attractive, funny, approachable way. Incidentally it also gives this kid a thrill and makes his life better simultaneously.
And RDJ CHOOSES to participate in this sort of thing. Furthering the coolness of technology
What math? The Sahara desert is approximately 3.6 million square miles.
Yes, I understand worldwide power consumption could be sated with a fraction of that.
I'm simply saying that, were we to do regional-scale deployment of solar concentration type tech, what soft of environmental impacts will be had from generating intense hot spots over large swaths of land?
You need to go back to school, Solar power doesn't generate heat it collects heat/energy, big difference.
Take a look at Solar Thermal Energy on Wikipedia jackass. You essentially have a large mirror array concentrating sunlight on a tower with a molten payload. It's heat collection. But it's high-temperature heat collection. As noted, a liquid fluoride system can operate at temps between 700-800 degrees Centigrade. Again, while average temps on and above a desert range in the 40-50 degree Centigrade range, what starts happening in the region if we start introducing an 800 degree hot point every square mile? As soon as you can give me a definitive answer on this, then, maybe, I'll go back to school.
Absurd statement because of lack of quantity / perspective,
I believe the lack of perspective is yours my friend.
have you blackened out your windows to prevent bird deaths?
As I'm not living in a high rise or in the concentrator tower of a solar thermal facility. No. Why should I? Please, strawman elsewhere.
Destroying the desert, sounds like a massive exaggeration to me.
Sure it does. Because you're operating on a bias here. "Your" anointed "solution" is "perfect". Never mind that you don't simply stick poles into the ground to hold the mirrors. You put in concrete foundations. Destroying habitat for plants/creatures that live on or under the desert floor.
So solar only requires 3x the ground space of nuclear if you exclude mines, processing plants and nuclear storage. That sounds pretty good to me.
Hey. Maybe YOU have no problem living in a field of such nuclear solar plants.
In terms of overall land use? Yes. It might be even more efficient if there were another method used for storing the cooling reservoir. But that's just how Braidwood is built out.
Slashdot Mirror
Currently a LiON system is about 3x the price of a Lead Acid installation. Granted, the LiON has a smaller physical footprint and power spec due to efficiencies in LiON tech. But 3x the cost is 3x the cost. Maybe Tesla can bring that cost down some. Otherwise doing an solar install in locations other than sunny places like Nevada/Arizona don't make economic sense.
There's also the issue of thermal runaway.
Granted, current lead-acid batteries have a thermal runaway problem, but LiON is more prone to it due to the higher energy densities involved.
Lead Acid doesn't normally light up when the casing is breached.
Look up Lithium Ion fire or cell phone battery fire online and watch videos of LiON batteries burning VERY vigorously.
What happens if a home user's $45,000 worth of LiON goes Kurgan and decides it'd rather burn out than fade away?
* not sure how X-Rays convert lithium to tritium...
And this is why you're a know-nothing AC on Slashdot and not a nuclear scientist!
No. I'm chastising environmentalists who do sloppy work and write sloppy papers with a definitive bias.
As for bothering to read what they wrote on the subject. How do YOU know that I didn't read?
As for being stereotypical. You OBVIOUSLY don't know me.
I'm all for using clean forms of power generation where they make sense.
I'm all for leaving this planet a cleaner (from WHATEVER forms of "pollution") place than I found it when I first popped out.
What I have a VIOLENT bias against is sloppy, yellow-journalism-style publication and coverage. Boldly presenting "facts" for a thing without covering the caveats.
I want to proceed into the future.
I want that future to be a bright, clean and safe one.
I DO NOT want to go stumbling into a future set up for me by a bunch of shysters and snake oil salesmen. Dystopia wouldn't even BEGIN to describe how bad that could be.
*Klaxon*
Oops!
While the Doomsday clock is an evocative metaphor, nearly 70 years, and mission drift (was originally only encompassed destruction by nuclear war) have rendered it impotent and corrupted.
[Zombie] Rrrh. Brains. Rrrh. Brains.
[Cornered Victim] Ah! I'm doomed!
*VEEOOOP!*
[Zombie] Ah dammit! The battery just ran down again! What the fuck? I was just getting to the good part!
[Cornered Victim] Uh. I'm... Doomed?
[Zombie] Oh put a sock in it! Just...just...get out! I'll shuffle you down LATER! Goddamn Glass! I can operate with this six inch hole clear through my torso! *Waggles hand in the hole* And this thing can't last long enough to record a chase and a bit of brain feast! I shoulda just bought a frickin' GoPro!
[Zombie] Rrrh! Brains...
[Trapped victim] AGH! I'm DOOMED!
*VOOP!*
[Zombie] DAMN! My Google Glass ran the battery down again! Now how am I supposed to document my brain feastage!
[Trapped Victim] ???
[Zombie] Oh just get out dammit! I'll shuffle you down NEXT TIME! Damn tech! I can operate with a six inch hole in my chest! *Waggles a hand in the hole* And this thing can't even record a decently long chase-down and brain feast! Shoulda bought a damn GoPro!
Costa Rica is roughly 20,000 Square Miles.
That's about half again the size of the NYC metropolitan area.
Rewrite it to read "Tiny country you can walk across in a couple days...."
Second, they're down on/near the equator. Long days. Mostly great weather. Now compare to Chicago, with roughly 30 days of snowfall a year (mostly in a period of 8 months)
Third, they got helped by high (even for them) rains, allowing their hydro resources to run at a higher capacity.
And, as others have noted, funny that eco-nuts are normally so averse to hydro power because of environmental factors.
But when it helps achieve things like this, NOT A FUCKING PEEP.
Yes. Insuring condensation. Assuming there's even a cold air return in that crawlspace.
Sorry AC.
I READ the original post.
I'm saying that he's being unrealistic wanting to put it in a crawlspace with no environmental controls.
Even a completely fanless solution in an environment like that will collect dust in megaton quantities. And you can't hard-seal the device away to avoid moisture because it'll overheat in short order. Simply dumping dessicant packets in with it won't offset the moisture issue, as it'll condense out of the air and onto every surface.
Sure, if he wanted to forego his next automotive purchase, he could probably find (and afford) an environmentally hardened unit that would do MOST of what he wants.
His other option would be to convert the crawlspace into a semi-finished, insulated, environmentally controlled room. However there may be monetary or logistical problems there.
But, in the long run, he's better off building an silent or near-silent HTPC and putting it in an environmentally controlled area. Either integrated into his entertainment center, or tucked away in a closet with adequate venting.
Just build yourself an HTPC machine in an HTPC case and hook it to your TV setup. You have ZERO environmental control in a crawlspace. So something like a computer is going to suck up dust by the megaton, and have humidity issues all the time.
Talking like that would get me assassinated before the first ballot was ever cast.
Moreover, I don't have the patience to "play the game" the way all these incumbents would force me to.
That's part of the problem right here. All the favor mongering and "quid pro quo or I obstruct you" bullshit that goes on.
I'd probably be the first elected official to run berserk with a gun and execute numerous colleagues.
Okay, current solar concentration clocks in at about 100MW steady output and about 300GWh per annum per square mile of facility.
You're talking about covering up about 20,000 square miles, or roughly 12% of the state, in solar concentrator facilities.
Never mind that Nuclear is many times more energy-dense and could support the state, with a more realistic investment in renewables in just a fraction of that land area.
How pessimistic can you get? I don't buy that as a realistic assessment.
And that's why this slow erosion of our rights will continue apace.
Because people, as a large, unified group don't stand up and say "No" to this sort of bullshit, and then back it up with force if necessary.
Because, at the end of the day, all power derives from the application of force, or threat of force.
You can pretend it's all about civility and enlightenment. But people can still choose to be uncivil. And stupidity abounds. And, in the end, naked force, and the willingness to use it pretty much ALWAYS "wins" the argument.
The day will come, when people will have nothing left but their gilded little cages and a vague perception of liberty. The longer we put off that inevitable confrontation, the more people it's going to kill in the end.
If you don't want a tree to fall on your house, you don't plant a tree, and you cut them back before they get big enough to fall on you.
You don't just let the tree grow wild, have it fall on the house, then cut it up afterwards and complain about the damage.
Actually, if it's another country, the FBI shouldn't be there at all. Ever.
That's what the CIA is for.
The FBI's bailiwick is domestic threats.
The CIA covers foreign threats.
Years ago, in Basic Training, had a guy tell me he was from "Soccolonna"?
And I was like "Where?"
South Carolina.
I'm fine with taking a certain stylistic convention (such as supposed "proper english") and teaching is the norm (similar to Standard Received Pronunciation used to be in the UK).
This ensures that we can still communicate with one another. Without the regional drifts becoming so bad they become an unintelligible dialect to pretty much anyone else.
We don't have to declare english a "closed language (see DEAD LANGUAGE)" the way those idiots in France have tried and failed to do.
But using "English is a living, growing language" to justify "Fo shizzle"isms is disingenuous at best, with me leaning more towards "downright idiotic".
The point of a language is to be able to communicate in a standard manner.
Having to decipher pseudorandom grunts and vocalizations defeats that purpose.
The same thing can be said for the written language.
Spelling stuff "just any old way" is just unacceptable.
Try reading medieval English (from the period of Chaucer and before). And I don't mean copies that have been spelling corrected as of today. I mean the originals.
It can be done. But it's a MASSIVE pain in the balls, and in some cases, requires additional schooling.
Now imagine people turning in manuscripts, scientific papers, reports, etc, etc like that TODAY.
Again, you don't have a common point of reference. Therefore you don't have a language.
Uhm. No. A pair of decently large handgun bullets to the brain snuff you like a candle. There's no need to blow the head off completely.
Seriously. If you want to execute someone and be SURE about it without untoward cruelty?
Two bullets to the head, of the largest possible caliber to fit in a handgun, in rapid succession.
If you want to feel more "humane" about it, drug person to sleep first.
*POW!*POW!*
End of story.
Heheheh.
I really don't know why you decided to run with that idea before thinking it out...
Solar is mainstream these days in the residential sector where practicality has trumped politics.
Because I'm NOT talking about residential low-temperature solar thermal heating.
I'm also NOT talking about residential (or even industrial) solar panels.
I'm talking about high temperature molten salt solar thermal installs. Where you basically have a 1 square mile facility concentrating sunlight on a central structure containing substances that can absorb and retain vast quantities of energy.
Also, where, during the industrial revolution, were we generating hot spots in open air, several dozen/hundred feet above the desert floor.
You keep acting as if I'm trying to be political about this. Yet you apparently misread (or did not read) my original posts, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to talk about urban solar panels when they have nothing to do with the question posed. So, who's trying to be political here?
you moron
Low IQ AC mouth-breathers in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The ground absorbs and returns heat to the atmosphere at a given rate.
A concentrator tower is roughly 14-16x as hot. And likely produces a prodigious, and very active, thermal plume.
What I want to know is, how does this concentration of energy, and the resultant shift in temperatures and location affect local ecology and climate.
Look at the weather in Canada and the US this year. Disruptions in normal weather patterns in the Arctic have pushed various fronts down into Canada and the US.
Are you trying to tell me that you've got evidence for a paper that shows that introducing a series of hot spots in a uniform pattern across several thousand square miles has zero effect on local or worldwide climate?
Please. Point me at the research.
Until then, I don't have time for you. Go back to trolling your MLP boards.
what starts happening in the region if we start introducing an 800 degree hot point every square mile?
What the fuck are you worried about?
I don't know. That's why I'm asking the question.
Do you think these things would set the atmosphere on fire or sumpthin?
Terrible spelling aside, mostly "or something". We basically created (and enlarged) multiple holes in our ozone layer through over-use of various chemicals.
I'd like to know what region-scale introduction of a grid of super-hot points will do to a local ecology and climate.
The fact is these "hot points" as you call them pose absolutely no risk or hazard to anyone or anything, other than flying creatures.
And you, Mr. Internet Expert, know this...how? You can handwave it if you like. Until you can actually point me at real research on the subject, I'm going to continue asking the question.
(please don't tell me you think that the concentration towers actually add heat to the earth)
No. As I said earlier, I want to know what the introduction of these hot points (and the thermal plumes they engender) will do to the local ecology and climate.
I'd like to see actual research, as opposed to some fanboy who THINKS they know the technology rah-rah'ing it in response to a legitimate question.
In a couple places I've seen people dismiss RDJ as "a druggie who got lucky".
Sorry, but cleaning up your own life is not LUCK. It's hard fucking work. As hard, or harder, than anything else he's ever done in his life.
But now, he's famous (possibly pigeon holed) for playing a character who makes technology COOL!
This opens up the opportunity, in this case, for an important medical technology to be presented in an attractive, funny, approachable way.
Incidentally it also gives this kid a thrill and makes his life better simultaneously.
And RDJ CHOOSES to participate in this sort of thing. Furthering the coolness of technology
That, right there, is "class act".
Check your math!
What math? The Sahara desert is approximately 3.6 million square miles.
Yes, I understand worldwide power consumption could be sated with a fraction of that.
I'm simply saying that, were we to do regional-scale deployment of solar concentration type tech, what soft of environmental impacts will be had from generating intense hot spots over large swaths of land?
You need to go back to school, Solar power doesn't generate heat it collects heat/energy, big difference.
Take a look at Solar Thermal Energy on Wikipedia jackass.
You essentially have a large mirror array concentrating sunlight on a tower with a molten payload.
It's heat collection. But it's high-temperature heat collection. As noted, a liquid fluoride system can operate at temps between 700-800 degrees Centigrade.
Again, while average temps on and above a desert range in the 40-50 degree Centigrade range, what starts happening in the region if we start introducing an 800 degree hot point every square mile?
As soon as you can give me a definitive answer on this, then, maybe, I'll go back to school.
Absurd statement because of lack of quantity / perspective,
I believe the lack of perspective is yours my friend.
have you blackened out your windows to prevent bird deaths?
As I'm not living in a high rise or in the concentrator tower of a solar thermal facility. No. Why should I? Please, strawman elsewhere.
Destroying the desert, sounds like a massive exaggeration to me.
Sure it does. Because you're operating on a bias here. "Your" anointed "solution" is "perfect".
Never mind that you don't simply stick poles into the ground to hold the mirrors. You put in concrete foundations. Destroying habitat for plants/creatures that live on or under the desert floor.
So solar only requires 3x the ground space of nuclear if you exclude mines, processing plants and nuclear storage. That sounds pretty good to me.
Hey. Maybe YOU have no problem living in a field of such nuclear solar plants.
I prefer more compact solutions.
In terms of overall land use? Yes. It might be even more efficient if there were another method used for storing the cooling reservoir. But that's just how Braidwood is built out.
With heat pollution. You sort of have to weigh the effects of chosen power type against the effects of the CO2 output over a given period.