Posted on 02/13/2008 10:33:02 PM PST by newbie2008
The most sensibile course must surely be to build smaller numbers of both. I don’t think solar power is going to solve all energy problems and I think this guy is being too optimistic as to what it can achieve, but at the same time, locally it could be significant.
Five bucks a watt and they are talking thousands of gigawatts!!
Build me some Nuke Plants... NOW!!!
Nuclear, on the other hand, is a clean, relatively cheap, and dramatically underused technology.
Oh boy, what a goofball! Once more proof that 'expertise' and wisdom do not ever have to cross paths...
It isn’t, but it’s getting better all the time. To a certain extent, it’s a chicken and egg question. Solar isnt economical so no one uses it, but because no one uses it, its not economical.
Solar has a lot of advantages - its clean, its low maintainance (not many moving parts) its relatively unobtrusive (stick a couple on your roof - who can tell?) The main problem is that it doesnt generate enough raw power to be anything other than a supplement. To my mind, that’s probably what it should best be used for - a supplement.
Yep. The Libs only want to protect critters if it suites their adgenda. I've built a few dozen cellular telephone sites along the interstate in southern California and Arizona. You would not believe the hoops we were forced to jump through to protect the "fringe toed lizard" or some such critter. Special fencing to keep them from getting run over on the driveway to the sites etc. I spent about 8 months working out there, day and night, and never saw one, either.... guess that's why they're "endangered." Plenty of tarantulas, though.....
And you would be right. I've installed a few "off grid" cell sites, but not a single one was solar only because it is not a constant, reliable power source. I also have a few friends with off grid houses. You have to have backup generators or spend a lot of money on back up batteries. Then, there is the cost and energy needed to produce the PV arrays versus the amount of power they produce over their lifetime. Add it up and it's a less than one to one exchange, so the net energy is actually a loss, not a gain. Then, there are the batteries themselves and their cost to manufacture, maintain and dispose of at the end of their lives.
Solar does make sense to power small remote devices, but unless there is a significant leap in efficiency and/or in the amount of energy it takes to produce them, this "major replacement of fossil fuels is hogwash.....then again, never misunderestimate the propensity for gubmint to throw untold tax dollars down rat holes like this.....
Fossil fuel is stored solar energy.
Those satellites would make a great space-based weapons system too. Just re-aim the microwave beam away from its collector and at your chosen target and WOW!
Lol, yeah, they'll eventually 'get there'.
"Today we introduce a breakthrough in transportable fuel technology which is of a lighter weight and more transferable than existing electric batteries. By taking carbon out of the atmosphere and using solar power to bind hydrogen to it we have constructed complex carbon-hydrogen molecules which release immense amounts of stored energy with exposure to an ignition source....."
Even if they only provided 10% of your electriciy, if everyone had them on their roofs it would all add up. That might mean 1-2 less nuclear power plants having to be built, which would be a good thing.
Having said that, the sums are quite clear. Solar power - useful. Wind, wave, geothermal...all good and helpfull, but if we are to maintain civilisation as it now stands, there is no real alternative other than nuclear. Everyone “in the know” knows this (even the “greens”), but no-one wants to take the decision to build because it will be so controversial. Moral cowardice really.
With the current technology, it would be an overall net loss of energy, though.
I agree that nuclear power is the future and we'll eventually drag the greenies to it kicking and screaming because there is no real, viable alternative unless somebody gets cold fusion to work or unless there is an order of magnitude decrease in the cost of production of PV's and an order of magnitude increase in efficiency of PV's, not to mention energy storage mediums.
To me, in regard to solar, what makes more sense in certain areas is solar heating of water and living space. Using a hydronic radiant floor heat system coupled to a mass tank and solar collectors, most houses could easily be heated, even during cloudy periods. I designed and installed an LP fired hydronic radiant floor heat system in my house and in my hangar. I'm currently investigating putting collectors on the roof of my hangar to ease the costs of heating a 6000 sq ft building with 14' ceilings. So far, the cost/benefit analysis I've done looks very promising just using the floor slab as the storage mass. Radiant floor heat is the nicest heat there is, too. It's like the Sun shinning out of the floor. Toasty toes!
Passive solar is another alternative. I designed my house with a lot of south facing glass that is appropriately shaded in the summer months by a roof overhang that designed to shade the glass in the hot months when the sun is high in the sky to ease the sun load on the house during hot weather. In the winter when the sun is lower, the overhang does not come into play. In winter, here at 2300' msl, where temps can easily dip below zero in the winter (currently 14.4F), my house will stay 70F on a bright, sunny winter day with no other heat source on. This is just with south facing glass. Include a thermal mass in the form of a "trombe" wall and it really starts to work well, even on cloudy days. Cheap to build, too. If everybody would look at passive solar designs we could save one hell of a lot of energy.
What about after a few days, weeks or months worth of dust settles on these things. Will that not seriously degrade their efficiency?
There are plenty of illegals available to do the dusting that Americans don't want to do and the desert southwest is close to Mexico, so the transportation costs for these dusting crews would be minimal (especially if you don't factor in the burden they put on our health care system).....
Outstanding. Now we need to start 90 new plants in the rest of the USA.
desert ecosystem - yeah, hundreds of square miles of solar arrays that block all the sun from hitting the ground are somehow OK compared to drilling on a postage stamp in ANWAR.
Another thing - it is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE (duh), to extract more energy from the solar rays that hit the ground than what they actually contain. There is a finite, fixed amount of energy per square foot.
Are they new stations, or new reactors in existing stations?
Why do they call it “fossil fuel”? I believe this is a blatant misnomer for one simple fact: how could all of the petroleum reserves on earth derive from once-living animals? How many animals would it take to produce all of the oil we have either used or can verify?
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