So, we'd need to cover 25% of the southwest (not just california) for 100% of current electricity. Unfortunately they don't take into account the instant 25-40% increase in electricity usage that will occur when we all plug in our EVs for the first time.
We need so much land for power generation if we only use solar. However if wind power is added it changes a lot. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to provide all of the 48 continuous states in the US. However the NREL link above lists other places with good wind potential as well. Add Geothermal heating and power along with tidal power then hydrogen produced by algae and the US can be weened from fossil fuels.
So, my question still stands, does the solar tech in the article not scale?
I don't know if it scales or not, but then again I'll turn that on it's head. Why do we need massive centralized power generation when many smaller decentralized power plants, whether geothermal, solar, tidal, or wind will work? I know many/.ers want hugh and massive engineering feats but they aren't needed.
This gov ALREADY spends billions that throw the markets out of line. What is needed is for a couragous president who will set this right. Hopefully the next president will do that.
That's why, for now, I support Ron Paul. I don't like some of his stances, abortion and immigration among them, but he still stands for smaller government than other Republicans and all of the Democrats do. Unless the tables flip over or we get caught up in a tyme warp the next president won't do what's needed.
I'm just saying, I doubt your straight linear math works, I bet it is a whole lot more than 22% of Cali to power the US because apparently this doesn't scale.
SciAm has a good article on this, in "A Solar Grand Plan" they say solar power could provide 69% of the electricity and 35% of the energy the US uses by 2050.
I like it. I can tell my AC to cool the house to 70F, unless it's going to cost more than $x, in which case I'll settle for 72 or 74 or...
I don't know how it works but the power company where I live does something like this. They have monitoring and control equipment they can install that will control your A/C. For allowing them to raise the temp your A/C's set at for peak power usage periods they lower your costs.
is not pushing Alternative or even Nukes to any large degree. But all the VC is abuzz here. And there is LOADS of money flowing there.
Actually that's how it should be. If the government does anything it should be only to encourage private people, NGOs, and businesses to do the research. And a great way to do this is by allowing people to decide for themselves what they want to do with the money they work to earn, ie reduce if not eliminate income taxes.
Instead the point that I was driving at was the idea itself. Applied here (I live in the US), would it not make sense to take a chunk of land within each state, devote it to this, and have that provide the power for that state?
I don't know if it's true but a few weeks ago I read about how a piece of Texas could provide enough power for the US. SciAm has a good article on A Solar Grand Plan though. It says that by 2050 solar power could provide 65% of the USA's electricity and 35% of it's energy.
Seriously, every anti-nuclear person harps on about the baaaaadness of waste storage, while ignoring the mess that coal and oil are currently generating. I'm not saying that nuclear is the be-all and end-all to energy - I'd love to see truly viable wind-, water- and solar-generated power, but until we get the technology to take us all the way there, shouldn't we at least try to use the best available solution?
Just as with solar power a lot of research would need to go into nuclear power before it truly becomes a clean and viable technology.
5. There is also a peak in the evening when everyone turns on lights and TVs
That's true in some places but in others the biggest use of energy is for cooling which is needed the most when the sun is hottest.
Also, winter means a lot less sunlight in many populated areas so more demand for lighting and heating.
Compact florescent lights use 1/5 to 1/4 the energy of incandescent lights whereas LEDs, which aren't yet good for area lighting unfortunately, only use 10%. As for heating, even where I live in Minnesota and it's about 0F now buildings with insulation having a good R value body heat would be enough to keep it warm.
4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
If we, the US, ever does start building more nuclear power plants at least we don't have to be concerned about where the fuel comes from. Both Canada and Australia have vast amounts of uranium.
I just got the January '08 issue today and haven't read it yet. I like the cover though. Thanks for the link, though I have the print edition I saved the online article so I won't need to scan it.
Essentially, proponents of solar power usually like to fantasize about theoretical advances in solar technology, while simultaneously refusing to recognise advances in nuclear technology. As an example, electric cars are usually touted as being CO2 neutral "if the electricity comes from renewables". It is outright obvious that this remains true with nuclear as well, but that is scary and hence rarely mentioned
Except that nuclear power isn't carbon neutral. Mining and processing of nuclear fuel is energy intensive, and where's that energy going to come from? Building the power plant is exceeding energy intensive. Besides all the steel needed, nuclear power plant require tremendous amounts of concrete, yet to produce the cement for concrete can use a lot of energy. Then there's the embodied energy needed to encase a power plant when it's decommissioned.
"Disposal" isn't as big a problem as it's made out to be; reprocessing reduces the amount of waste produced tremendously, and storing a little waste for a time is a whole lot better than *not* storing it and dumping it into the atmosphere, as we're doing with coal.
The French, who have come the farthest in reprocessing, are finding out it's not as simple to reprocess as many would have you believe. IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on this: "Nuclear Wasteland". However another/.er brought up the Candu reactor in Canada a few weeks ago. I don't know much about it so I can't say whether there are any problems with the design or waste, or whether its economically feasible. However nuclear power isn't really needed, not in the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to supply the 48 continuous states with electricity. Add OR, CA, AZ, NM, and Texas along with some offshore sites from Cape Cod to the Mid Atlantic and much more can be generated by wind. Also many megawatts of potential power goes up smoke stacks daily as Waste Heat. Combining wind, solar power, cogeneration or waste heat recovery and conservation negates the need for nuclear power. The alternative power sources, both listed above and others, have a distinct advantage over nuclear power, while it can take years and years for a nuclear power plant to be constructed and brought online, these others can be added immediately. Wind generators and solar PVs can be made from raw material and brought online in months, and can be sited closer to many of the placed where the energy is needed. Besides PVs on roofs a farmer in the Adirondack Mountains in New York can provide electricity to NYC. The farmer would then have a second source of income.
The molten salt is there because it's pumpable, so that it can quickly gather up a bunch of energy from the reflectors, and just as quickly dump it through conduction when the heat is used to make steam. Water is king, in terms of storing heat, unfortunately it turns to gas at a relatively low temperature.
However in cases like the Nevada Solar One power plant, it's oil that is circulated through tubes and is heated. Then the heated oil goes through a heat exchanger where the heat is transfered to water which spins the turbines. Only if the heat can't be used right away will the heat be transfered to the salt, which stores the heat for later use.
I don't see the point wasting time on ethanol when a fully electric car is close. Also, I don't see how raising food prices helps us when combating rising fuel prices. The end goal IS to get rid of burning gasoline to move cars. Finding ways to supplement it just means we'll be using oil that much longer.
While fully electric cars may be around soon, that has a range of more than 100 miles and charges rapidly, both biodiesel and ethanol vehicles are here now. Rudolph Diesel, the designer and inventor of the diesel engine, ran his engine on oil made from hemp and peanut among other vegetable oils. Engines have also run on ethanol for years. Henry Ford himself designed and built a car that not only used hemp it the construction but also ran on fuel made from hemp in the 1930s, hemp he grew on his Iron Mountain Estate. And using sugar cane, or better switchgrass, won't raise the price of food. Sugar, refined table sugar, is nothing more than a sweetener but a lot of sweeteners in food is actually high fructose corn syrup. And switchgrass isn't used in human food period. Only by using corn to produce ethanol would the cost of food increase much. And both ethanol and biodiesel can be used by themselves and not as a "supplement" to petroleum.
Please do not send any more clothes. You've already killed off the local textile industry and put all the cotton farmers out of work with your free clothes. Who can compete with free crap? Please stop.
Actually it's cotton subsidies that have harmed Third World cotton farmers. What could really help them though is if instead of growing cotton, which relies on heavy applications of petrochemical inputs, farmers switched to hemp, jute, or other sources of natural fiber that don't require these inputs and are easy to grow.
Wine has been getting very good of late (e.g. runs Photoshop 7 flawlessly, runs Office 2003 with some bugs). In fact, I see Wine's Windows-compatibility over the next few years becoming a major selling point for transitioning to Linux.
While WINE may help peoples transmission to Linux from Windows I also think it can have the disadvantage of discouraging software developers from porting their Windows software to Linux. "Why should we spend the tyme and money creating a Linux port when Linux users can run our software in WINE?" Personally I'd rather run a native Linux port of Photoshop CS3 than run Photoshop 7 in WINE.
Copyright instills a limited supply (and source) onto something that by nature is unlimited
I am glad to say this is wrong. First someone has to write whatever it is, and copyrights give them an incentive to write it. Therefore copyrights are more likely to make sure something is written, and therefore increases the supply, than not having copyrights. As it is now, a writer does not have to copyright something, they can instead put whatever they create into the public domain. And how many books, movies, or songs are released into the public domain as compared to those copyrighted? I know of no such material that has been placed into the public domain but those for whom the copyright has expired. However as I said in a previous post I would shorten copyright terms, I'd only have copyrights last a few years from first publication.
How is the existence of the GPL only necessary because of copyright? I don't get it. If I write some code and I want it to stay open, because it is attributable to me, I use the GPL. How would abolishing copyright keep my code open? Am I missing something obvious here?
The GPL uses and depends on copyrights, that's what copyleft is about. Without copyrights the GPL means nothing, it allows a person to use GPL code and make modifications to the code. But if the code is distributed the source has to be as well. Copyright laws are responsible for this, as if someone distributing GPL software who doesn't make the source available can be sued.
Have you ever written, say a book or magazine article, for publication? Without copyrights a publisher could take what you wrote and sell it as their own without paying anything for it. Sure you could try to publish yourself but even with today's technology it's still expensive. Try printing just 10,000 copies of a book and distribute it. Vanity publishers can charge you a few dollars a copy, but then you still have to do the marketing yourself. Or you can to print it yourself. At 10 cents a page, for black and white, a 200 page book would cost you $20.
The one thing I would do about copyright law is I'd shorten the copyright term, the length copyrights last. Instead of the life +70 or whatever term, I'd only have them last a few years from first publication. Of course any derivative work would also get a few years.
I agree with you. Beer is totally disgusting. I have no idea why there is such widespread popularity. The only thing I can figure is that most people have a desensitized "bitter taste sense" and they just don't know that it tastes really bad.:)
It's possible to make a sweet beer. First leave out the hops, hops are what give beer it's bitterness. Then add more sugar when brewing but don't allow the yeast to convert it all to alcohol. Actually in Northern Europe beer made from fruits can be found everywhere. Though I haven't tried it yet I'd like to give it a shot at making beer with blueberries as well as strawberries. Many people like bitterness though, whereas some like sweet. Me, I love hot and may use peppers the next tyme I brew some beer.
Except that we can never power cars soley on ethanol, simply because we don't have enough room to grow the required amount of fuel.
AH, another one who wants one solution that fixes everything. What's needed isn't the 1 BIG THING. Instead it will take a number of different sources. Biofuels, whether alcohol or biodiesel, can be used where they are appropriate. In other places hydrogen, at first derived from fossil fuels then later algae produced Biohydrogen. And elsewhere, where appropriate EVs, Electric Vehicles can be used where there's enough sun for solar, where it's windy, or tidal power in coastal areas.
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So, we'd need to cover 25% of the southwest (not just california) for 100% of current electricity. Unfortunately they don't take into account the instant 25-40% increase in electricity usage that will occur when we all plug in our EVs for the first time.
We need so much land for power generation if we only use solar. However if wind power is added it changes a lot. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to provide all of the 48 continuous states in the US. However the NREL link above lists other places with good wind potential as well. Add Geothermal heating and power along with tidal power then hydrogen produced by algae and the US can be weened from fossil fuels.
So, my question still stands, does the solar tech in the article not scale?
I don't know if it scales or not, but then again I'll turn that on it's head. Why do we need massive centralized power generation when many smaller decentralized power plants, whether geothermal, solar, tidal, or wind will work? I know many /.ers want hugh and massive engineering feats but they aren't needed.
FalconThis gov ALREADY spends billions that throw the markets out of line. What is needed is for a couragous president who will set this right. Hopefully the next president will do that.
That's why, for now, I support Ron Paul. I don't like some of his stances, abortion and immigration among them, but he still stands for smaller government than other Republicans and all of the Democrats do. Unless the tables flip over or we get caught up in a tyme warp the next president won't do what's needed.
FalconActually TFA says they are using oil to heat the water not salt. The salt is only used as a means of storage.
FalconI'm just saying, I doubt your straight linear math works, I bet it is a whole lot more than 22% of Cali to power the US because apparently this doesn't scale.
SciAm has a good article on this, in "A Solar Grand Plan" they say solar power could provide 69% of the electricity and 35% of the energy the US uses by 2050.
FalconI like it. I can tell my AC to cool the house to 70F, unless it's going to cost more than $x, in which case I'll settle for 72 or 74 or...
I don't know how it works but the power company where I live does something like this. They have monitoring and control equipment they can install that will control your A/C. For allowing them to raise the temp your A/C's set at for peak power usage periods they lower your costs.
FalconTo which he replied "This is what happens when sodium gets wet," and he threw a chunk of sodium into some water.
That could shock people. I vaguely recall watching sodium dance on water in high school.
Falconis not pushing Alternative or even Nukes to any large degree. But all the VC is abuzz here. And there is LOADS of money flowing there.
Actually that's how it should be. If the government does anything it should be only to encourage private people, NGOs, and businesses to do the research. And a great way to do this is by allowing people to decide for themselves what they want to do with the money they work to earn, ie reduce if not eliminate income taxes.
FalconInstead the point that I was driving at was the idea itself. Applied here (I live in the US), would it not make sense to take a chunk of land within each state, devote it to this, and have that provide the power for that state?
I don't know if it's true but a few weeks ago I read about how a piece of Texas could provide enough power for the US. SciAm has a good article on A Solar Grand Plan though. It says that by 2050 solar power could provide 65% of the USA's electricity and 35% of it's energy.
FalconSeriously, every anti-nuclear person harps on about the baaaaadness of waste storage, while ignoring the mess that coal and oil are currently generating. I'm not saying that nuclear is the be-all and end-all to energy - I'd love to see truly viable wind-, water- and solar-generated power, but until we get the technology to take us all the way there, shouldn't we at least try to use the best available solution?
Just as with solar power a lot of research would need to go into nuclear power before it truly becomes a clean and viable technology.
Falconjust because the United States has an aversion to reprocessing fuel doesn't mean it's not a good idea. France seems to do just fine.
France doesn't seem to be doing so well with reprocessing as some think. Seems there may be a Nuclear Wasteland in France.
Falcon5. There is also a peak in the evening when everyone turns on lights and TVs
That's true in some places but in others the biggest use of energy is for cooling which is needed the most when the sun is hottest.
Also, winter means a lot less sunlight in many populated areas so more demand for lighting and heating.
Compact florescent lights use 1/5 to 1/4 the energy of incandescent lights whereas LEDs, which aren't yet good for area lighting unfortunately, only use 10%. As for heating, even where I live in Minnesota and it's about 0F now buildings with insulation having a good R value body heat would be enough to keep it warm.
Falcon4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
If we, the US, ever does start building more nuclear power plants at least we don't have to be concerned about where the fuel comes from. Both Canada and Australia have vast amounts of uranium.
FalconI just got the January '08 issue today and haven't read it yet. I like the cover though. Thanks for the link, though I have the print edition I saved the online article so I won't need to scan it.
FalconEssentially, proponents of solar power usually like to fantasize about theoretical advances in solar technology, while simultaneously refusing to recognise advances in nuclear technology. As an example, electric cars are usually touted as being CO2 neutral "if the electricity comes from renewables". It is outright obvious that this remains true with nuclear as well, but that is scary and hence rarely mentioned
Except that nuclear power isn't carbon neutral. Mining and processing of nuclear fuel is energy intensive, and where's that energy going to come from? Building the power plant is exceeding energy intensive. Besides all the steel needed, nuclear power plant require tremendous amounts of concrete, yet to produce the cement for concrete can use a lot of energy. Then there's the embodied energy needed to encase a power plant when it's decommissioned.
Falcon"Disposal" isn't as big a problem as it's made out to be; reprocessing reduces the amount of waste produced tremendously, and storing a little waste for a time is a whole lot better than *not* storing it and dumping it into the atmosphere, as we're doing with coal.
The French, who have come the farthest in reprocessing, are finding out it's not as simple to reprocess as many would have you believe. IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on this: "Nuclear Wasteland". However another /.er brought up the Candu reactor in Canada a few weeks ago. I don't know much about it so I can't say whether there are any problems with the design or waste, or whether its economically feasible. However nuclear power isn't really needed, not in the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to supply the 48 continuous states with electricity. Add OR, CA, AZ, NM, and Texas along with some offshore sites from Cape Cod to the Mid Atlantic and much more can be generated by wind. Also many megawatts of potential power goes up smoke stacks daily as Waste Heat. Combining wind, solar power, cogeneration or waste heat recovery and conservation negates the need for nuclear power. The alternative power sources, both listed above and others, have a distinct advantage over nuclear power, while it can take years and years for a nuclear power plant to be constructed and brought online, these others can be added immediately. Wind generators and solar PVs can be made from raw material and brought online in months, and can be sited closer to many of the placed where the energy is needed. Besides PVs on roofs a farmer in the Adirondack Mountains in New York can provide electricity to NYC. The farmer would then have a second source of income.
FalconThe molten salt is there because it's pumpable, so that it can quickly gather up a bunch of energy from the reflectors, and just as quickly dump it through conduction when the heat is used to make steam. Water is king, in terms of storing heat, unfortunately it turns to gas at a relatively low temperature.
However in cases like the Nevada Solar One power plant, it's oil that is circulated through tubes and is heated. Then the heated oil goes through a heat exchanger where the heat is transfered to water which spins the turbines. Only if the heat can't be used right away will the heat be transfered to the salt, which stores the heat for later use.
FalconI don't see the point wasting time on ethanol when a fully electric car is close. Also, I don't see how raising food prices helps us when combating rising fuel prices. The end goal IS to get rid of burning gasoline to move cars. Finding ways to supplement it just means we'll be using oil that much longer.
While fully electric cars may be around soon, that has a range of more than 100 miles and charges rapidly, both biodiesel and ethanol vehicles are here now. Rudolph Diesel, the designer and inventor of the diesel engine, ran his engine on oil made from hemp and peanut among other vegetable oils. Engines have also run on ethanol for years. Henry Ford himself designed and built a car that not only used hemp it the construction but also ran on fuel made from hemp in the 1930s, hemp he grew on his Iron Mountain Estate. And using sugar cane, or better switchgrass, won't raise the price of food. Sugar, refined table sugar, is nothing more than a sweetener but a lot of sweeteners in food is actually high fructose corn syrup. And switchgrass isn't used in human food period. Only by using corn to produce ethanol would the cost of food increase much. And both ethanol and biodiesel can be used by themselves and not as a "supplement" to petroleum.
FalconPlease do not send any more clothes. You've already killed off the local textile industry and put all the cotton farmers out of work with your free clothes. Who can compete with free crap? Please stop.
Actually it's cotton subsidies that have harmed Third World cotton farmers. What could really help them though is if instead of growing cotton, which relies on heavy applications of petrochemical inputs, farmers switched to hemp, jute, or other sources of natural fiber that don't require these inputs and are easy to grow.
FalconWine has been getting very good of late (e.g. runs Photoshop 7 flawlessly, runs Office 2003 with some bugs). In fact, I see Wine's Windows-compatibility over the next few years becoming a major selling point for transitioning to Linux.
While WINE may help peoples transmission to Linux from Windows I also think it can have the disadvantage of discouraging software developers from porting their Windows software to Linux. "Why should we spend the tyme and money creating a Linux port when Linux users can run our software in WINE?" Personally I'd rather run a native Linux port of Photoshop CS3 than run Photoshop 7 in WINE.
FalconCopyright instills a limited supply (and source) onto something that by nature is unlimited
I am glad to say this is wrong. First someone has to write whatever it is, and copyrights give them an incentive to write it. Therefore copyrights are more likely to make sure something is written, and therefore increases the supply, than not having copyrights. As it is now, a writer does not have to copyright something, they can instead put whatever they create into the public domain. And how many books, movies, or songs are released into the public domain as compared to those copyrighted? I know of no such material that has been placed into the public domain but those for whom the copyright has expired. However as I said in a previous post I would shorten copyright terms, I'd only have copyrights last a few years from first publication.
FalconHow is the existence of the GPL only necessary because of copyright? I don't get it. If I write some code and I want it to stay open, because it is attributable to me, I use the GPL. How would abolishing copyright keep my code open? Am I missing something obvious here?
The GPL uses and depends on copyrights, that's what copyleft is about. Without copyrights the GPL means nothing, it allows a person to use GPL code and make modifications to the code. But if the code is distributed the source has to be as well. Copyright laws are responsible for this, as if someone distributing GPL software who doesn't make the source available can be sued.
FalconHave you ever written, say a book or magazine article, for publication? Without copyrights a publisher could take what you wrote and sell it as their own without paying anything for it. Sure you could try to publish yourself but even with today's technology it's still expensive. Try printing just 10,000 copies of a book and distribute it. Vanity publishers can charge you a few dollars a copy, but then you still have to do the marketing yourself. Or you can to print it yourself. At 10 cents a page, for black and white, a 200 page book would cost you $20.
The one thing I would do about copyright law is I'd shorten the copyright term, the length copyrights last. Instead of the life +70 or whatever term, I'd only have them last a few years from first publication. Of course any derivative work would also get a few years.
FalconI agree with you. Beer is totally disgusting. I have no idea why there is such widespread popularity. The only thing I can figure is that most people have a desensitized "bitter taste sense" and they just don't know that it tastes really bad. :)
It's possible to make a sweet beer. First leave out the hops, hops are what give beer it's bitterness. Then add more sugar when brewing but don't allow the yeast to convert it all to alcohol. Actually in Northern Europe beer made from fruits can be found everywhere. Though I haven't tried it yet I'd like to give it a shot at making beer with blueberries as well as strawberries. Many people like bitterness though, whereas some like sweet. Me, I love hot and may use peppers the next tyme I brew some beer.
FalconExcept that we can never power cars soley on ethanol, simply because we don't have enough room to grow the required amount of fuel.
AH, another one who wants one solution that fixes everything. What's needed isn't the 1 BIG THING. Instead it will take a number of different sources. Biofuels, whether alcohol or biodiesel, can be used where they are appropriate. In other places hydrogen, at first derived from fossil fuels then later algae produced Biohydrogen. And elsewhere, where appropriate EVs, Electric Vehicles can be used where there's enough sun for solar, where it's windy, or tidal power in coastal areas.
FalconHot enough to burn books.
Falcon