Solar Power

Tidal is a joke... Literally. Do you or do you not want whales/salmon and other fish etc? IE placement in straight of Juan de Fuca and other tidal rip zones. Hugely expensive with a VERY tiny payback as yes, total energy is gigantic, but you have little velocity(pressure) profile to work with. Meaning Gigantic very very low efficiency turbines.

Likewise the ol' working under salt water environment... Can't even get ships to operate on the top of the stuff for long periods of time and you are contemplated electrical/mechanical parts working for 30 years under? Get serious. Said systems likewise will seriously hamper wildlife. A little common sense here please. Even while European's are contemplating such idiocy, not a single project has been started, as yes, once the fuzzy good feel project gets sold to gullible suckers in government(or royalty in England's case), reality smacks each project in the face, and shocker of shocker, power grid operators actually want to know, RELIABILITY factors, and MTBF of said sea water turbines. Shocker I know, and OOPSIES, no one bothered to mention this little reality fact to those suckers in government who can't find their ass or their elbows with a clue stick.

If there was any justice in this world, said governments would pony up a few million to pay these companies(rabbits coming out of the hats by the 100) for testing of under sea water compatible turbines and see if even one of them actually has a way to get around the salt problem, let alone the barnacle problem... But no, these stupid government pukes put forth these giant glorious "schemes" to create power without even the basis for creating said power to start with. Ai. Yes, you hit a pet peeve of mine.

PS. Thin films... Time marches on. Seems definitions as well. Thin films to me were literally, a film and sorry anything made out of plastic unless its FEP is not durable no matter what they say. UV. Period end of story. That ol' buggaboo about Florine though... Does let more light through than glass on the other hand. Insanely expensive due its need for Florine.

PPS. Wind has a very small niche market, and while it sounds nice, will never be a true power source for the world until 1) Power storage and 2) Super conducting power lines are created.

PPPS. Solar has more applicability than Wind even though its installation cost is vastly more expensive.

PPPPS. The installation of Heat pumps throughout the nation/world would instantly drop the residential electrical usage by 30%-50%. That right there would do more than any amount of solar(not quite), wind or tidal.

RandomGraysuit wrote:You're spot on with the efficiency, but glass on thin-film? Traditional, even thin-profile sure needs it, but membrane integrated thin-film is into applications as small and rugged as electronics-charging backpacks. Drag that stuff through the dirt, bang it around, spray it clean when you're done and it still works. If you do choose to use glass-covered panels, you can get efficiency over 20%.

You either get relatively cheap manufacturing costs and low efficiencies, or you get high efficiencies and higher costs. Thin-film's advantage is that while it's only generating a trickle charge, it can take a hailstorm and shrug it off.

Edit: My personal take on energy is "All of the above". Solar, in whatever form has the lowest long-term costs, in Arizona, New Mexico, California, Texas and Nevada. Tidal in Maine, Washington and Oregon, and look hard in other coastal states. Hydro all over the Rockies and Appalachian mountains. Geothermal up north. Wind in the flyover states. There's no one-stop miracle cure, but there *are* lots of potential solutions that are as cost-effective as fossil fuels and don't have that annoying state terrorism-funding aftertaste.

Saw a good documentary a while back that used wooden pieces to illustrate a pie chart on provision of power. Higher efficiency usage, wind, solar home & solar hot water, solar station using heat or photo, nuclear, geothermal, wave, hydro, lower expectations on appropriate usage, biomass, and more. Solar heat can store energy in molten sodium for the night time.
Each contributes a portion and overall it's doable.
Years ago the idea of geosynchronous large scale power satellites beaming microwaves to collectors in deserts was supposed to be viable as well.

The problem in democracies is that one side will incur the downsides of producing the infrastructure then the other side reaps the benefit as they come on line after an election.

Hey, I would be for tidal power if there was even a shred of evidence that those proposing said infrastructure had even done iota 1) in testing for durability/reliability/fouling. They haven't. They haven't even ponied up their own $$$ to test said stuff. This right there tells me it won't work and those proposing these wishful ideas believe it won't work either, otherwise they would be buying ocean side property and actively testing on their own dime. Hydro power is the best one can get in this world. It is dependable. Yes, huge $$$ upfront, but it also lasts for hundreds of years. Without the testing and science to back something up, its nothing but a fraud.

Do you know how many solar panels die after just a few years? Lets not even get into inverter death. Huge numbers. Their failure rate negates their long term viability and therefore their upfront costs are insanely ludicrous. Makes wind look wonderful. Get that reliability up and solar becomes a very reliable, dependable, SMART, OBVIOUS option. Right now I use solar, here in W. Washington(cloud capital of the USA outside of Alaska that is) for my heat pump systems for heating. In same system have Heat pump system in the ground as well. Both combined slash my own heating bills by around 400%. Doesn't generate power, but +75% of my power bill was heating.

Wind: You would have to store said heat for 2 weeks at a time. Take the Columbia Gorge in Washington/Oregon. Best place on earth for wind power density. Problem is that in the winter time one can go an entire month without a single hour of power created. This is not a unique situation. Take Minnesota for instance. The ice age rolled up several nice LONG ridges creating lovely perfect spots for a medium power density wind farm. 2 problems. 1) No where close to civilization and 2) you are guaranteed to have weeks at a time where NO power is generated.

These spots are not unique. Such power schemes leaves the power companies holding the shit end of the stick as they just invested all this $$$ in wind power infrastructure and now you say, "OH BY THE WAY..." you must also keep all of your existing infrastructure and add to it when our fancy new turbines have no wind... Makes wind power vastly worse than their claimed $/Watt. Still generally one can count on 25% availability factor. That only helps for peak load though. Does nothing for base load.

Take a look at how many 2MW turbines one would need. It is over a million and this assumes super conducting power grid distribution and that somewhere the 25% load factor is 0 and 100% elsewhere!

For solar, once again one would literally have to cover the entire states of NM/Arizona/TX/California/Nevada/Utah to obtain the power needs we currently use today.

Renewables are a joke regarding our power needs because of the above. They "help". They certainly do not solve or come even close.

Using solar/geothermal as Heating/Cooling needs would literally cut our power needs by over 30%. Why so little? Because vast amounts of energy are required to produce fertilizer, raw materials of which the average person never sees about. Forcing residential people to use CFL etc lightbulbs is a joke. Besides all the mercury that gets dumped into the house via CFL. FL, tubes produce vastly more lumens/watt than CFL. Will save at best 0.1% of energy usage. Now if one can knock down price of LED, oh yea. Got a couple, but their color rendition is a bit... weird. It is not full spectrum like Halogen. While CFL has its own color cast the color spectrum it represents seems to be well filled out compared to LED. I think we will see prisms and diffusers to make LED viable, but this once again makes them horrifically expensive to produce.

I see that Seattle is forcing new build construction to instal propietary LED fixtures in homes... I have seen their light output. Its low lumens/socket, and weird on the human eye. I feel sorry for anyone operating a hotel or any new office space currently. Hopefully this technology progresses giving better light in the near future.

Gah, rambled myself into oblivion.

Relax, one thing I've always admired about you is that you like to focus on facts. It's disappointing to see you run away from that. With average annual power densities over 7,000 watts/meter in many parts of the Southwest (that means summer + winter), that multi-state power-everything array would be about 200x200 miles. Depending on advances in efficiencies since 2007, it could go as small as 125x125 miles. Big. Huge. Covering all of "NM/Arizona/TX/California/Nevada/Utah"? Not even close.

Regarding CFLs, yes, FL tubes may be more efficient. CFLs have that lovely compatibility advantage going for them. Being able to stick them into every socket in the house without having to replace the bedside lamp with a fluorescent light tube is very convenient. I picked up three dozen CFLs in April for 25 cents each, and instantly dropped my lighting electrical use by over 75%.

I almost went with LEDs and even steeper electrical savings, but the up-front costs are still a bit much, and we're seeing efficiency, light quality, lifetime and cost all getting better on a monthly basis right now. When these CFLs die in five or ten years, I'll probably put LEDs in then. When my LED 'dies' in 20 years after that, it will have gone from an 80 watt bulb to a 60 watt bulb, because an LED with a 25% lumen reduction is considered 'dead'. Assuming I'm still around, I'll probably consider replacing them in 30-40 years. There's a decent chance my LED bulbs will outlast my house. And while you obviously have fantastic perception and can see an LED bulb's lumen spikes throughout the spectrum, I've had quite a few people jump when I throw my LED Maglites around- they always expect the bulbs to shatter and get a little confused when they realize there is no 'bulb' inside.

Did dropping my lighting costs by 75% drop my total energy (Gasoline, natural gas, electrical) consumption by 75%? Of course not. Did I see a substantial drop in my next month's electrical bill, in two consecutive months of not using any heating/cooling? Oh yes.

Nothing is going to be a miracle cure. Not even your heat pumps, even if we installed them in every house, apartment building and office. The startup costs for geothermal are insane, especially if you can't find that one honest contractor out there in a sea of "You look stupid, hipster, eco-nut and wealthy, today's my lucky day!" companies.

As you noted, one thing that will certainly help renewables of all types is an updated power grid. The huge Northeast blackout in 2003 was caused by a few overgrown trees in the middle of Bumfuck, Ohio. 55 million people lost power. Using multiple types averages out too- you're not likely to see much solar at 2 AM in Cali, but put a windfarm in Oregon, a concentrating solar plant in New Mexico, an adjustable power dam in the Rockies for leveling, and a power engineer in California would be very happy.

Daryl wrote:Years ago the idea of geosynchronous large scale power satellites beaming microwaves to collectors in deserts was supposed to be viable as well.

The problem in democracies is that one side will incur the downsides of producing the infrastructure then the other side reaps the benefit as they come on line after an election.

Yeah, the powersat idea was really cool, but it assumed we'd be continuously dropping the cost of getting into orbit both from economies of scale (ha!) and increases in space and propulsion technology (ha again!) At this point, building a Saturn 5 would be considered a major achievement for NASA.

Without that sort of heavy lift capacity, powersats are still a science fiction author's pipe dream.

Math..

USA 4TkWh annual

1m^2 panel is 75W today at high noon. Lets call it 4 hours at max, 8 hours at half on average 12 hours at 0. 75W is now 50W/m^2. Lets assume a near perfect storage solution of 50% efficiency,

(75(4) + 75(8)/2 +75(12)/0)/2(24) = 12.5W/hour
Therefore 1km^2 generates 12,500kWh of electricity
Annually 12.5k kWh x 8760h/year = 109,500,000 kWh annually.

4T kWh div 109,000,000 kWh... = 36,500km^2
Sqrt = 190km x 190km... or 120 miles on a side.

Hmm must have slipped a k in my previous calc.



PS. Easiest geothermal is dropping a 400 foot well down, maybe 2 if it is a really large house. It takes a competent driller all of a few hours to at most a day to do this if they aren't using ancient pound and smash obsolete drilling equipment that is. Deeper than this and then one has to start using much more expensive equipment. IE how most ancient "well drillers" are equipped. The equipment has been around and in service for 50 years and it still hasn't worn out so they keep using it and it still takes them forever to pound their wells at their glacial pace, but because there is very little demand to actually be efficient at drilling wells, the end user gets stuck footing the bill at $50/foot for inefficient obsolete garbage drilling equippment. IE how the common joe if they wanted a geothermal well on a standard residential lot. IE Common Joe get the thrill of paying 20k for geothermal power. The payback period on that is horrendous. Everone who lives on larger properties just bury 400 feet of tubing/ton of refrigerant in the ground 5 feet down and all they are out is about $1000-$2000 to rent the backhoe for a week. This is what I have installed. Solar collector on the roof is 8 4x8 sheets of tig welded stainless steel painted jet black. Aluminum would be better, Get to anodize it jet black and therefore never have to paint it again but alas my tig welding skills are not that good and the time I tried it I did not get a vacuum seal.