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How much power can we expect from rainfall?

eighteenthelephant.com

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#81
post #23
post #4

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…

Most of the potential energy of rain is wasted as it falls through the sky. What you really want is a huge funnel held up by enormous hydrogen balloons that catches the rain directly from the cloud, and miles-long hose coming out of the bottom. Then you'll get some real bang for your buck!

Or you could just pile a lot of rock on top of rock, as much as five miles high if you like. Make a wall of this stuff hundreds or even thousands of miles long.

Warm clouds full of evaporated water would hit it, be forced up into colder air, and release the water.

It would then run down the rockpile and freeze, but the ice would flow down to warmer air closer to the surface, where it would melt amd you could harness the energy of the aggregated raindrops as they flow back to the sea.

If “building the wall” is politically unfeasible due to liberal tears, you could find some drifting continent and get it to smash into another continent. Wait a while, and the continents smashing together will make the wall for you.

No need for balloons, just be patient.

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#82
post #64

Before it starts falling, a rain drop of mass m has potential energy of mgh , with g earth’s constant of gravity, and h the height of the drop above ground. Let’s pick a drop height of 1 km (low for cloud cover). That would make the kinetic energy about 10⁴m (where m is the mass of the raindrop) At time of impact, potential energy is gone, and the drop has a kinetic energy of ½mv² . Taking the (high) impact speed of…

>in real life, the alternative way of not letting air take much energy from the falling water is easier to build: make larger “droplets”, and have them tailgate each other really closely (also called a waterfall) To make this "aqua electricity" viable in the real world you would need huge bodies of water penned up and ready to be released at the appropriate time. Like the size of a lake. Pretty ridiculous.

That body of water also needs to be placed high enough for it to release a waterfall. I can’t think of something. Some large geological structures, perhaps? I dunno.

Maybe Elon Musk has a wacky idea to inverse this problem and build tunnels below lakes to make this work.

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#84

The point of science journalism is not to report on great science, or "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism). It is (like all other online publications) to get people to click on titles so they get shown adverts. It's not really got anything to do with how educated the readers are, it's just the business model. I read this after reading the article about banning "persuading" advertising. In my head the two…

> "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism)

I think that might be a bit of wishful thinking. An "investigative journalist" might take that on as a motto, but it certainly isn't true of all journalism as a general goal.

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#85
post #64

Before it starts falling, a rain drop of mass m has potential energy of mgh , with g earth’s constant of gravity, and h the height of the drop above ground. Let’s pick a drop height of 1 km (low for cloud cover). That would make the kinetic energy about 10⁴m (where m is the mass of the raindrop) At time of impact, potential energy is gone, and the drop has a kinetic energy of ½mv² . Taking the (high) impact speed of…

[deleted]

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#86

The point of science journalism is not to report on great science, or "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism). It is (like all other online publications) to get people to click on titles so they get shown adverts. It's not really got anything to do with how educated the readers are, it's just the business model. I read this after reading the article about banning "persuading" advertising. In my head the two…

It looks like the tech they developed is at least scientifically interesting, or at least cool. Doesn't have to be practical to be publication worthy. Still weird that it made it through nature's editors that claim to want importance (which tends to invite p hackers and outrageous claims), but there is a role for fun clever research trying to solve silly problems, the tech developed could be useful elsewhere (under a waterfall on mars?).

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#87
One sentence that should have been elaborate on a bit more to mirror/complete the article’s approach: “For a sense of scale, a solar panel gets around ten thousand times this, or 100 Watts per square meter.”

Solar power has the same problem of terminal optimism as the proposed raindrop energy harvesting: in short, the source 1300W/m^2, all factors considered, becomes a real world 13W/m^2. Better than raindrops falling on my head, but still way less than most people comprehend.

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#88

One sentence that should have been elaborate on a bit more to mirror/complete the article’s approach: “For a sense of scale, a solar panel gets around ten thousand times this, or 100 Watts per square meter.” Solar power has the same problem of terminal optimism as the proposed raindrop energy harvesting: in short, the source 1300W/m^2, all factors considered, becomes a real world 13W/m^2. Better than raindrops fallin…

Do you have a source for 13W/m^2? That looks about an order of magnitude low to me.

Re: How much power can we expect from rainfall?

#90

Wrong. One can harvest power from raindrop. It's called an hydro-dam. Seems to be working pretty well from what I know.

Not sure why the snark is called for - FTA explicitly calls this out: “ (There is, by the way, a very good way to harness rain for renewable electricity: let geography concentrate the water into a river, then build a dam and a hydroelectric plant!)”
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