31–40 of 110 posts
I'm having trouble understanding what the article's title actually means right now. Can HN parse this down for me, please: > Can the teardrops that fall after reading bad science writing generate renewable electricity? Yes, they can.
(But it is not very much energy.)
I looked at this area a few decades ago and two approaches stood out as potential, though not stand out. 1) Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. 2) Piezo electric generating from the roof, though was looking at a…
>Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. the purpose of a gutter is to direct the water to areas where it can seep into the ground without damaging the house (while carrying away leaves and other things that would ro…
I looked at this area a few decades ago and two approaches stood out as potential, though not stand out. 1) Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. 2) Piezo electric generating from the roof, though was looking at a…
There is an interesting series of videos on Youtube about harvesting energy from gutter flow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6oNxckjEiE
I looked at this area a few decades ago and two approaches stood out as potential, though not stand out. 1) Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. 2) Piezo electric generating from the roof, though was looking at a…
>Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. the purpose of a gutter is to direct the water to areas where it can seep into the ground without damaging the house (while carrying away leaves and other things that would ro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A roof is about 200 m^2 (more or less), so at 10 mw/m^2, you could generate a whopping 2 watts. While it's raining. California gets 563 millimeters of rain a year, so you might end up generating an entire 100 watts. For the year.
A watt is a unit of power, not energy —- it represents the rate at which energy is produced (joules per second), not the total amount of energy produced. I’m not sure how you came up with the number 100, but the units for that number should be energy (such as joules or watt-hours).
I looked at this area a few decades ago and two approaches stood out as potential, though not stand out. 1) Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. 2) Piezo electric generating from the roof, though was looking at a…
I absolutely love the gist of the article: interpreting quantitative research is something most of us are fundamentally illiterate on. That's definitely how I feel about it at least. Others might feel differently. That said, how does one actual build skills in this area. It feels like the author is able to do this here because it's a research paper in an area they have knowledge in. How does one build up a general ab…
Anything that is either out of range on scale, or that ducks the question, is worthy of further evaluation and at least some mild skepticism. Theranos promising hundreds of blood tests out of a thimble of blood would be the former. The article referring to Volts of electricity is like a car salesman replying to 'how many seats does it have?' with 'The seats are upholstered in Fine Corinthian Leather' the statement isn't incorrect, it is just useless and, in context, intentionally misleading. Salesmen do it to sell cars, scientists to sell research, journalists to sell papers, and conspiracy theorists for, whatever reasons, I guess.
[0] A few examples: How many piano tuners are in New York City? How many ping pong balls could fit in a school bus?
I looked at this area a few decades ago and two approaches stood out as potential, though not stand out. 1) Roofs already collect a large surface area and funnel into a single point via roof guttering - so tapping the flow from the gutter run off would enable a viable volume of water turn a motor in the drain pipe as it descended and generate power. 2) Piezo electric generating from the roof, though was looking at a…
I'm surprised that tidal energy is not yet a big player. The amount of potential energy is massive, and it's very reliable, unless the moon falls of its orbit.
I have a friend who was very interested in investing in this space, and did some research. TLDR, even though the tech is probably mature enough, the economics just aren’t there for private industry yet. It’s require major state-level funding to get it off the ground at this point, IMO. Very similar to how solar used to be. First, tidal turbines are very specialized pieces of hardware (compared to wind turbines), that…
I'm not bullish on the future of tidal power--there may be some use case for it, but the reality of the engineering challenges associated with putting hardware in a marine tidal zone for years at a time presents serious obstacles with limited advantages over versus a wind turbine or solar array of the same capacity.
I'm curious, do you know if your friend ended up investing?