The real truth of Solar Power?

[John in CR]

Cackalacka,

I hope you signed up for that program. What a great deal, paying you to hopefully also reduce your electric bill. I'm sure in the near future such remote control by the power company to reduce demand peaks will become mandatory for all.

SpinningMagnets,

Thanks for those links. I've had the suspicion that our planet is headed for a cooling trend, which is the norm compared to the age of man. I don't know about Antarctica, but Costa Rica has absolutely cooled in recent years. I guess when the cold comes, the GW believers will start clamoring to spew more CO2 out of the smokestacks. Like that's going to have any effect to stop the cooling. LOL

Regarding to original topic. Since utilities sized projects are already in the works, you better believe the numbers make sense. Unless some breakthrough comes about on the PV front in terms of greater efficiency or reduced cost without losing useful life, I don't see PV making economic sense until energy prices go up. The one I have the most faith in are the solar stirling solar dishes, because they combine high efficiency with low maintenance and long life. Those arrays going up in the desert have a projected construction cost of $2/watt ($50k for a 25kwh dish and sterling engine that outputs AC at 60hz), and the real beauty is that technology is definitely scalable to domestic sizes as long as you have good sun. The issue remains whether the utilities will do like the oil companies and NiMn, and buy out the technology to effectively prevent home sized units, because stirling engines are so far out on the engineering fringe that few experienced experts exist. Most engineers dismiss stirling because rooted in their mind is that something called an "engine" needs to be capable of propelling a vehicle, and stirlings can't be good at that except in the case of submarine use where the quiet operation is a big plus.

John

 

[swbluto]

Yes, but WHY

Uneven velocity and resulting spatial distributions of hydrogen atoms? Just a guess. I think it might be more linked to oscillations near the center of activity where the sun's fusion occurs, which causes a changing density field within the sun, which causes an oscillating rate of fusion and thus light output.

Imagine...

Fusion blasts the atoms away. High fusion activity causes the nearby hydrogen density to decrease whereas low fusion activity tends to coincide with an increase in the nearby hydrogen density, and the amount of fusion is directly related to the nearby hydrogen density - the higher it is, the greater the amount of fusion. So a high level of fusion results in a decreasing hydrogen density which eventually leads to low fusion activity which leads to an increasing hydrogen density which leads to a high level of fusion which leads to... etc.

In an oscillating system, if there's a dampening coefficient, the oscillations should begin to decrease (Friction of the outer hydrogen molecules should've served as a dampening coefficient of some sort, but that's not a constant and depends on velocity, so it wouldn't be a simple oscillation) however there might be some positive feedback loop that results in an ever-present oscillation. I'm willing to bet that at the beginning of the sun's life that it had increased and more variable pulsation. Also, the spinning of the sun would result in a syncopated pattern, methinks.

*just checked the wikipedia link*

Oh, wow, the graph looks remarkably similar to what I predicted from my hypothesis. THAT's some strong support right there. :lol:

 

[MitchJi]

Hi,

The real truth is DMP is either trolling or very gullible.

http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/2787-arizona-solar-power-plant-will-deliver-power-day-a

In 2013 the world will see the real future of solar technology. That's when the world's largest dispatchable power plant, the 290 MW Starwood 1 will start producing power day and night, on cloudy or sunny days.

Starwood 1 will showcase two critical future technologies. The first is power storage. Without storage, you will only have power when the sun is shining. And while that can work to a point, it will never power the whole world. We'll still need something to take care of the base-load, and that something, as of right now, is coal.

Different ideas have been cooked up for storing the power created by solar power plants – batteries, ultracapacitors, hydrogen generation, flywheels – but all of these are far from being affordable enough for large scale power needs. The alternative is to store power as heat before it's converted to thermal energy.

Fortunately, there is a fairly good and relatively inexpensive solution to thermal storage, one which Starwood 1 implements. Starwood 1’s concentrating troughs feed heated liquid in large insulated molten salt tanks at 734 degrees Fahrenheit. When needed, these tanks will release steam, driving turbines at night or during cloudy weather.

The second big technology featured in Starwood 1 is concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP has seen commercial deployments since the 1980s, but has failed to dominate the industry. However, expect that to change as the maximum theoretical efficiencies of concentrated power designs are much higher than those of standard photovoltaics. CSP can be used to enhance thermal (as is done here) or to enhance photovoltaic technologies.

When completed Starwood 1 will cover 1900 acres of desert land. Unlike wind turbines there’s a low risk of bird strikes, and the construction team is working to minimize the impact on ground-based local wildlife. Flash from the plant (burst of bright light when viewed from certain angles) is a concern, but given the remote location, this shouldn’t prove a problem.

Locate approximately 75 miles west of Phoenix, the plant will produce enough power for 73,000 customers. The construction will also create 7700 jobs. The construction won’t be cheap – the plant will cost $2.7B USD, but it should pay for itself and then some. If it can live up to its promise, which seems likely, expect more CSP plants and thermal storage installations to pop up across sunny remote areas of the U.S. southwest in the near future.

 

[Cackalacka]

I hope you signed up for that program.

John, why the heck would I want to allow a monopoly (who routinely acts counter to my economic interests) manipulate the climate control in my house for twenty-five lousy bucks?

 

[dnmun]

the reason to restrict the consumption of power during peak periods is to reduce the chance of power outages for all the users on the grid. pretty simple actually with modern metering technology.

it really should be mandated, along with fixed rationing of power.

maybe allow each and every person the right to use $150 electricity, $200 natural gas every year, and $250 in gasoline each year. then let people have the FREEDOM to choose how they meet those goals.

let people drive fat cars all they want but they have to buy the extra gas from the poor people who can't afford a car. then let the market decide what price the fat cat pays the common people for gas for his fat truck or car. if you need air conditioning to cool your fat ass, then buy it from the poor people who can't afford to pay their electric bills.

that would be fair and equitable.

jmho.

 

[swbluto]

the reason to restrict the consumption of power during peak periods is to reduce the chance of power outages for all the users on the grid. pretty simple actually with modern metering technology.

it really should be mandated, along with fixed rationing of power.

maybe allow each and every person the right to use $150 electricity, $200 natural gas every year, and $250 in gasoline each year. then let people have the FREEDOM to choose how they meet those goals.

let people drive fat cars all they want but they have to buy the extra gas from the poor people who can't afford a car. then let the market decide what price the fat cat pays the common people for gas for his fat truck or car. if you need air conditioning to cool your fat ass, then buy it from the poor people who can't afford to pay their electric bills.

that would be fair and equitable.

jmho.

If system overload is a common recurring problem, that'd make sense, but I believe they have economic mechanisms to discourage over-use called tiered rates. When I last heard that the base rate is 10 cents/kwh and the highest rate was 25 cents/kwh, that sounded like strong disincentive! (Local rates around Spokane, the place for cheap hydroelectric power, supposedly.)

 

[dnmun]

what you call disincentive is really just a function of the distribution of wealth and property in this country. my point is that social justice should distribute equal amounts of energy to each and every citizen equally and then let the rich people buy the right to use that energy from the poor people who have no home or fat car or air conditioning for their wine cellars.

if the rich wanna gobble everything up for themselves as they think they are entitled to do, then just let them pay the poor people they take it from and let the poor people decide how much they charge the fat people to waste their energy too.

it is really fair, just not acceptable to rich white fat people who think the rest of the world should give up their oil and copper and iron ore and everything else so we can make more fat cars and fat houses and fat people with fat heads.

but the chinese already have called us on it. premier hu jingta has now made a new international reserve currency a matter of first importance at the summit. no more free ride for the US since we bankrupted the world economy.

the ride of the fat cats is over, like dylan once said "the times they are a changin".

 

[Cackalacka]

To be clear, dmnun, I'm not against tiered rates or peak-time energy rationing (in fact I used the $25 per week to attempt to illustrate to moped that the utlity provider has surplus demand during hot days, which by coincidence occur when the sun is out and the day is long; i.e. days when locally based solar generation has the highest potential impact.) Capacity is capacity, and as long as folks need to cool their empty spaces, brownouts (planned or not) have always been a way of life.

What I object to is having a government-subsidized monopoly, known for being hostile (understatement) to sustainable energy practices offer me baby carrots in exchange for the ability to raise my thermostat at whim. They are offering this carrot under the guise of 'being green.'

Realize that this carrot comes less than a decade after Enron manipulated energy markets, literally placing millions of people's lives in jeopardy, to extort money from folks and communities.

Your rationing idea has some merit, but in order for it to work, society needs an honest accounting of what resources are available and at what cost.

As long as there are folks in the world (for some reason) carrying water for the utlity industries, that will never happen.