Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Punx0r said:
Looks like microwaves rather than lasers are the preferred option. At least that's what the Chinese and Caltech projects are opting for:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottsnowden/2019/03/12/solar-power-stations-in-space-could-supply-the-world-with-limitless-energy/amp/
CalTech is working on an orbital space based solar electricity scheme using microwaves to transmit the power back to Earth with banks of millions of these 10 cm tiles. I am surprised to hear that most of the research in the USA and in China is still headed in this direction. Microwave power from orbit requires a 1:10 ratio of antenna diameter. To keep the energy levels on the ground to levels that are comparable with what we are exposed to from the sun (in case the aiming goes astray and starts shining on a city before we can shut it down), 0.75 GigaWatt requires a 1 km diameter assembly of these tiles in orbit, all aimed with micro radian precision, onto a 10 km receiving antenna on the ground. After learning about the scale of the antenna requirements versus the total power they could transmit, I was immediately convinced that transmitting via lasers would be much better and would make any future ground based standard solar panel installations forward compatible with just perhaps the inclusion of adjustable tilt and single axis tracking which are beneficial for maximizing sunlight anyway. https://youtu.be/KtNwYweL6hY
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It says right there in the link: 4 mile (6km) diameter receiver net, 2000GW and exposure levels less than that from the sun.

If your analysis finds their research in error you should contact them to let them know why their proposals won't work. If you are correct they would be grateful to hear from you.
 
Punx0r said:
It says right there in the link: 4 mile (6km) diameter receiver net, 2000GW and exposure levels less than that from the sun.

If your analysis finds their research in error you should contact them to let them know why their proposals won't work. If you are correct they would be grateful to hear from you.

Just going by what I read here:
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"Power beaming by microwaves has the difficulty that, for most space applications, the required aperture sizes are very large due to diffraction limiting antenna directionality. For example, the 1978 NASA study of solar power satellites required a 1-kilometre-diameter (0.62 mi) transmitting antenna and a 10-kilometre-diameter (6.2 mi) receiving rectenna for a microwave beam at 2.45 GHz.[71] These sizes can be somewhat decreased by using shorter wavelengths, although short wavelengths may have difficulties with atmospheric absorption and beam blockage by rain or water droplets.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer#Lasers
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And somewhere else but can't find the history now that stated 0.75 GW for 10 km radius receiver to equal normal solar radiation.
 
The original (paywalled) article I read mentioned the reason they were targeting a large, distributed space array was because diffraction effects facilitated a more tightly-focued beam. The reason for the distributed architecture, where each solar module has its own transmitter is to reduce the amount of copper wiring required and save weight.
 
"Capitalism relies for its functioning on a logic of infinite growth, fossil fuel combustion, and colonial resource extraction abroad. The drive for infinite economic growth exhausts the world’s finite resources and creates increasing waste and pollutant by-products which necessarily ends up crossing planetary boundaries and undermining the world’s biosphere. The capitalist economy’s growth imperative relies on the high efficiency of polluting fossil fuels to sustain itself, manifested in the stark rise in carbon emissions and global warming since the industrial revolution. The capitalist economy is historically built on colonial resource extraction abroad and has only survived by these same means. Still today, the fuels and resources for the Global North are obtained by means of gross human rights violations, exploitative work conditions, and localised ecological degradation in the Global South. It is this system of infinite growth that is currently driving the planet to climate breakdown and ecological Armageddon.

However, without this increasing growth, the economy falters and even collapses in recession, putting shops out of business, pushing communities into unemployment, and creating grim economic hardship and social fallout. This creates an impossible dilemma for those running society’s political institutions – they are unable to keep the economy afloat and tackle climate breakdown at the same time"
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-09-03/false-hopes-for-a-green-new-deal/
 
sendler2112 said:
"Capitalism relies for its functioning on a logic of infinite growth, fossil fuel combustion, and colonial resource extraction abroad. The drive for infinite economic growth exhausts the world’s finite resources and creates increasing waste and pollutant by-products which necessarily ends up crossing planetary boundaries and undermining the world’s biosphere.
I would point out that capitalism itself does not require infinite growth, or fossil fuels, or even expansion. Right now that's what we've got, since the only way we create new capital today is through debt - and large debt loads require infinite expansion of an economy.

However, prohibit that (no loans without capital to back them up) and capitalism still functions. It would just be different than what we're used to. We can certainly live as a debit card society rather than a credit card society - we just have to live with a different set of rules.

BTW I noted this in that article:

"The Green New Deal presents so many contradictions and failings that it is possible to read it not as a concrete plan on how to transform society . . ."

The Green New Deal does not have a single "concrete plan on how to transform society." It's a statement of principles. If the author thinks that reading it that was is merely "possible" - it is "possible" he may not have read it.
 
Thought I would post there here since its roughly in the right spot on energy debate.
University student race team is basically killing the petrol race car competition and they have just only begun to start racing.
World’s First: Forze VIII Hydrogen-Electric Race Car Beats the Petrol-Powered Competition
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/worlds-first-hydrogen-electric-race-car-beats-the-petrol-powered-competition/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3acfvp7d8E

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New article from AFR, claims it's clear now that it doesn't matter what state in Australia or what rules they work under, as soon as wind/solar is introduced into the grid the end resulting power bills start going up and is consistent with what we see elsewhere in the world.
Queensland now has a fair amount of utility-scale PV solar now and the market experts have noticed that while it pushes prices down during the day it more then negates the resulting price as the wholesale price snaps higher, the argument is wind/solar just makes a mess of the system.
Solar-induced negative power prices offset by spikes
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/solar-induced-negative-power-prices-offset-by-spikes-20190902-p52n32
 
TheBeastie said:
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Queensland now has a fair amount of utility-scale PV solar now and the market experts have noticed that while it pushes prices down during the day it more then negates the resulting price as the wholesale price snaps higher, the argument is wind/solar just makes a mess of the system.
Solar-induced negative power prices offset by spikes
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/solar-induced-negative-power-prices-offset-by-spikes-20190902-p52n32
Negative prices are inevitable due to the surplus of generation capacity that needs to be kept available to back up the wind /solar intermittent supply
The actual “generation costs”. Are irrelevent, when the market pricing system is as crazy as this
 
billvon said:
Silicon PV cells have a bandgap energy of ~1.11 eV, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 1100nm (near IR.) That would result in a receive efficiency of close to 70% with "standard" PV.
how about Eg=0.65eV 1900nm IR-B wavelength.

germanium substrates have been used extensively in space applications where their smaller size, higher efficiency and greater power output are crucial. Germanium-based PVs are now also being used in terrestrial applications where, combined with optical systems that concentrate solar beams on tiny wafers, they offer much higher efficiencies than silicon-based PVs, outweighing the cost difference. And, while germanium is a rarer material than silicon, considerable reserves exist in coal and zinc-processing waste.
or particularly when combined hetero.

billvon said:
You'd likely need to have a keep-out area of miles with armed sentries, barbed wire fences etc to "protect" the public from red light, all of which would make the project far more costly.
america already has 51 such areas.
kidding; there's only the one area (just like seal team six is the only one) the number is the name not the number.
but it is a big area.

Punx0r said:
Looks like microwaves rather than lasers are the preferred option.
i wonder if this too is done for business reasons rather than sound engineering.
any (near)visible based system would attract PV clad RV's squatting around the perimeter stealing free power.
needing a giant uwave antenna would tend to discourage that.
 
sendler2112 said:
Might just as well pick out a sunny spot that big on Earth and fill it with panels for a small fraction of the price and get many times more capacity right here.
i'm all for that too.
the orbital solution however is to counter the unreliable/intermittent shortcoming of ground based solar.

sendler2112 said:
That is the problem with most of these Star Trek future solutions. They sound really cool. And might make for a fun toy to have a few dozen 1 MW stations to play with. But when you understand scale and do the math, you will see how impractical they are on lift mass and hardware area even if they are not technically impossible.
at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this isn't warp science.
not dismissing that lift cost is a huge hurdle but it's not a fatal one.
would the cost be comparable to a solar sail draped with flexible solar sails?
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c8ee02553c#!divAbstract
my own feeling is that SPS only becomes practical once we've converted to a hydrogen based infrastructure.
which in turn isn't going to happen until all the waterways have become privatized.
 
Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:
how about Eg=0.65eV 1900nm IR-B wavelength.
1900nm is _relatively_ eye safe, so it might be a good alternative to 1100nm. What I would worry about is $/watt and effectiveness (also in $/watt) in sunlight. These would have to be standard cells, not concentrators - and I think germanium has a theoretical efficiency limit of about 20% (about half that of silicon.)
 
If you listen to financial news on the radio, you'll hear a daily report on economic growth, with dire predictions if it has slowed, and cheerful tones if growth appears to be rising.
Yet we know that endless economic growth is incompatible with life on a finite planet.
Jason Hickel's article on the promise and potential of degrowth is academic, and not easy reading, but important.
Here's a snippet:
"The core feature of degrowth economics is that it requires a progressive distribution of existing income. This inverts the usual political logic of growth. In their pursuit of improvements in human welfare, economists and policymakers often regard growth as a substitute for equality: it is politically easier to grow total income and expect that enough will trickle down to improve the lives of ordinary people than it is to distribute existing income more fairly, as this requires an attack on the interests of the dominant class. But if growth is a substitute for equality, then by the same logic equality can be a substitute for growth (Dietzand O’Neill, 2013)."
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https://mronline.org/2019/08/30/degrowth-a-theory-of-radical-abundance/?fbclid=IwAR1uCSaeJUWst594xf1fsQNgGsNavAVHgO6eZUtl0Qd_NSQF1ovFN7-8-kE
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"economists and policymakers often regard growth as a substitute for equality: it is politically easier to grow total income and expect that enough will trickle down to improve the lives of ordinary people than it is to distribute existing income more fairly, as this requires an attack on the interests of the dominant class. But if growth is a substitute for equality, then by the same logic equality can be a substitute for growth (Dietzand O’Neill, 2013). By distributing existing income more fairly we can improve human welfare and accomplish social objectives without growth–and therefore without additional material and energy throughput. A shorter working week plus a job guarantee and a living wage policy, as described above, are central mechanisms for accomplishing this. So too is investment in public services. By expanding access to high-quality, generous public healthcare, education, affordable housing, transportation, utilities and recreation facilities, it is possible to enable people to access the goods they need to live well without needing high levels of income to do so."
 
Yes negative interest rates are the obvious conclusion to stagnant wages and reduced cash flow in the economy. When wealthy folks buy apartment blocks as a means to park money, they prevent it from being of benefit to more people. Stuff gets more expensive, people buy less stuff, less money to go around. In the end, banks can't lend you money if you have no means to pay it off, so they lower rates until you do. We're at the point now where interest rates are going negative.

Perhaps this is a sign we've hit our limits to (economic) growth?
 
On the other hand...
Low and negative interest rates encourage more people to park their money in property which can help folk on lower income by increasing the rental property stocks and hence putting downward pressure on rents.
At the same time that stimulates the building industry, generating jobs and the economy.
Banks are just a parasite service that use interest rates to suck money out of the economy.
 
In January 2005, NOAA began recording temperatures at its newly built U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). USCRN includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states.
NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.
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Despite, CO2 levels continuing to increase “alarmingly” during the same period ?
 
Central and Eastern USA are some of the few spots on Earth that have actually cooled over the last decade due to the new instability of the Polar Vortex which allows Arctic air to dip down over the continent due to a much warmer Arctic region.
 
The traditional NOAA data sets for that period show a different picture... 0.41F per decade warming.
anh2PT.jpg


The difference is the effect from “Urban Heat Islands” where most of the original temperature stations now find themselves due to urban development over the last 100+ years.
The same effect has been highlighted across Europe.
Urban temperatures have been shown to be up to 2.0C warmer than equivalent local rural temperatures.
Urban development represents less than 2% of the earths land surface, but contains the vast majority of long term temperature monitoring stations
 
Hillhater said:
The difference is the effect from “Urban Heat Islands” where most of the original temperature stations now find themselves due to urban development over the last 100+ years.

If that is the case, then why is the warming trend even greater in the arctic and polar regions? No big cities up there. Urban heat island effect is well understood and regional temperature trends take this into consideration and adjust for it. But then, when they adjust for it, you denier-bots accuse them of tampering with the data. I can show you data from rural areas all around the U.S. that have the same trend. Give me a link to the page where you got that supposedly NOAA USCRN graph. Curious how they didn't include a trend line. I guarantee it's one of your denier sites.
 
jimw1960 said:
Give me a link to the page where you got that supposedly NOAA USCRN graph......
...... I guarantee it's one of your denier sites.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2017&month=12
But, you could have seen that from the NOAA logo on the chart !.. :roll: :roll:
 
Like all organised groups of scientists, NOAA are a bunch of crooks so I relied on my uneducated armchair analysis to reveal the true trend in their data - shocking warming trend!!!

Capture.JPG

1.5°C per leap year means we'll see the oceans boiling in ~50 years. Better get prepping! Open your eyes, sheeple!
 
Hillhater said:
jimw1960 said:
Give me a link to the page where you got that supposedly NOAA USCRN graph......
...... I guarantee it's one of your denier sites.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2017&month=12
But, you could have seen that from the NOAA logo on the chart !.. :roll: :roll:

I'm pretty sure the commentary on that chart about "absolutely no warming" did not come from NOAA. So, I downloaded that data (all of the data!) and plotted a trend line myself. It shows a trend of 0.56 degrees F per decade. You think that's insignificant? And that's just CONUS. The poles are warming at 4 times that rate. No urban heat islands at the poles.
 
Punx0r said:
Like all organised groups of scientists, NOAA are a bunch of crooks so I relied on my uneducated armchair analysis to reveal the true trend in their data - shocking warming trend!!!

Capture.JPG

1.5°C per leap year means we'll see the oceans boiling in ~50 years. Better get prepping! Open your eyes, sheeple!

I see what you did there. Good example of how to cherry pick a subset of the data to show any trend you want. That's the kind of tomfoolery hillhater might fall for.
 
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