Posted on 11/10/2006 11:33:50 AM PST by aculeus
Then you just aren't thinking hard enough. First, you wouldn't need "new infrastructure" for such a device. Over unity means just that. It creates more power than is required to set it in motion, whatever form of motion that may be.
You wouldn't be able to give excess away, because everyone will be able to produce their own power according to their own need once this discovery is learned by the masses. Imagine there is no longer any need for electricity. It is now freely abundant.
Energy drives our entire economy the whole world over. Industry will collapse and disappear overnight. Sure, there will still be some consumer industry, but nothing near the scale there is now, all of which is based on petroleum energy and by products, and the cost of producing energy itself.
A cheap clean, alternative renewable energy source would be devastating to our petroleum based industry we have today, and will cause quite a economic downturn and a very long period of adjustment. But it still wouldn't be free.
Completely free energy is another beast all together. We are way too overpopulated for such a thing to become available. You won't die in the cold, but good luck finding a job. They will be very hard to come by.
Sharp shows off its flat lens? Cognitive dissonance....
A free energy source would cripple our economy as we know it.
I'm afraid you are right. Attempts should still be made though.
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Energy costs are a large part of the productivity of the american (or any other) worker. Productivity drives wages.
If the cost of energy went to zero -- wages and employment would go up and not down.
Oh yes we do.
OK, here's my idea.
Manufacture 10-ft dishes that resemble the home satellite receiver dishes of the early 80s. However, the surface would be a mirror.
These dishes would be balanced so that they are able to move and track the sun with very little power required.
At the focal ppoint of the dish, you would mount solar receptor capable of receiving/converting HIGH tempratures into voltage.
This voltage is used to crack the hydrogen out of water. They hydrogen is then used to power fuel cells.
What would they be producing?
What the heck ever happened to the spray on solar stuff that got some press a while back?
I've been hearing this kind of hype about solar cells for about 45 years now, so I don't believe a word of this one. And I did some reearch on photovoltaics......
>>>I expect that any day now Michael J. Fox will be cured of Parkinson's and Christopher Reeve will walk again.
Think they'll bring Reeve back from the dead first or just make his corpse break out of the grave and walk?
There's no risk of free energy, so the argument is moot. The problem is the costs of alternate energy sources are too high, not too low. LOL!
I thought they were Stirling engines, but hey, I didn't go to MIT.
Maybe I'm missing something, they say it takes 4 square miles of sunlight using traditional cells to generate 1 power plant.. with the new refractors you only need about a backyards worth of space of actual cells... which is good.. but if the cells are only twice as effective as current cells, the refractors total input area would need to be 2 square miles, even if the actual cells only took up a backyards worth of space to get the same output?
Not very practicle for replacing the power plant entirely, or maybe I'm just not understanding.
It sounds like its cheapening the expense of them, and doubling the output which isn't bad.. but you still have the diffusion issue. What sort of load can you realistically expect from a typical solar installation today? And if it were doubled would that really make them viable in most areas (Ie Areas that aren't desert or sunny most of the year)?
Gonna need a lot more power I suspect to make that feasible.. 10' of solor energy concentrated makes a lot of heat, but it takes a LOT of energy to crack H2O into its parts... I don't think you are going to get enough H out of this sytem to power a whole lot...
Remember, every conversion costs you energy, doesn't gain you any.. better return on just using the energy the solar conversion gives you directly if you can.
Free energy would give the economy a huge productivity boost. All those resources currently devoted to producing energy would be freed up to make other stuff we want or need, some of which we can't even at the present time forsee wanting.
The only folks harmed would be those in the current energy industry who are too stupid or stubborn to work on something else. As conservatives, our role would be to thwart attempts by those folks to use the political system to stand in the way of change.
Food production. Food packaging. Transportation. Health and medical services. Retail sales. Mechanics. HVAC technician. I could go on and on. Just because insects have unlimited energy for their needs, doesn't stop bees from putting away honey. What makes you think that people will just stop working when energy costs go to near zero? They will never actually reach zero, because you still have to make the equipment, and it doesn't last forever. As long as there is entropy in the universe, work will be needed.
read later
Fresnel lenses are the death rays of the magnifying glass world. My high school A/V supervisor once gave me one off an old overhead projector. It doesn't just burn ants, it makes them explode in flames! A fresnel lens can cut through an anthill like a "laser"...
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