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Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

extremetech.com

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Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#21

Post by mbarkhau »

jsilence wrote: post #9
ck2 wrote: post #4

That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…

Transportation of electricity around the globe is not neccessary. Electricity usage is considerably lower during nighttime. Thus solar and wind fit in with our natural rhythm quite nicely. And it is also produced near the place there it is being consumed. Another plus. But still the author is right, we need ways to store electricity and we will also need a much more flexible grid than the one we have today. The neo l…

To be fair, one could equally frame what they're doing as removing the subsidy to people who put photovoltaic systems on their roof. Arguably that same money would have been better invested in research of improved solar technology such as this.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#22

Post by derda »

jsilence wrote: post #9
ck2 wrote: post #4

That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…

Transportation of electricity around the globe is not neccessary. Electricity usage is considerably lower during nighttime. Thus solar and wind fit in with our natural rhythm quite nicely. And it is also produced near the place there it is being consumed. Another plus. But still the author is right, we need ways to store electricity and we will also need a much more flexible grid than the one we have today. The neo l…

The reduction of the solar subsidy is right. It is not killing the solar market at all, but your new solar-panels on the roof of your house won't give returns as nice as 10% anymore. Also those returns are paid by every electricity consumer in the country which at the current rate isn't fair at all.

Also the adaption of solar panels on homes went far faster, then most people expected. The grids in single-family home neighborhoods simply are not designed to handle much power being fed into the system at this point. The problem is that at daytime, when the sun shines there is not much power needed in residential neighborhoods, since everyone is at work. This is why self-consumption is the desired use-case for solar-energy on family homes. That's why I think there is a market for home-control right there. -> "Start washing machine WHEN solar energy > X"

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#23

Post by nextparadigms »

This is why I welcomed the backlash and even some of the sensationalism regarding the nuclear explosion in Japan. Even if I realize that nuclear energy could be safe and it's good to have an alternative that is cheap enough to compete with coal, I'd still wish we'd spend all those billions switching from nuclear and putting most of them into renewable energy technologies, which should be the future.

The arguments against solar were that the tech is "not there yet", so then it's better to just focus on nuclear. I disagree with that. I believe that if the energy industry changed focus to solar panels and other renewable energy technologies, we would get there a lot faster. We would have a lot more companies exploring different ideas that make them more efficient and cheaper.

Nuclear technology will probably never be gone, or at least not within the next century. But I just don't want it to be the holy grail of the energy industry and see the vast majority of investments go into that. I want renewable energy technologies to be that.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#24

Post by onemoreact »

derda wrote: post #22
jsilence wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transportation of electricity around the globe is not neccessary. Electricity usage is considerably lower during nighttime. Thus solar and wind fit in with our natural rhythm quite nicely. And it is also produced near the place there it is being consumed. Another plus. But still the author is right, we need ways to store electricity and we will also need a much more flexible grid than the one we have today. The neo l…

The reduction of the solar subsidy is right. It is not killing the solar market at all, but your new solar-panels on the roof of your house won't give returns as nice as 10% anymore. Also those returns are paid by every electricity consumer in the country which at the current rate isn't fair at all. Also the adaption of solar panels on homes went far faster, then most people expected. The grids in single-family home…

IMO, as long as the tax is inline with the actual external costs it of other forms of energy generation it's not a bad thing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality) It's basically renaming a sin tax as a green subsidy but there is value in having that tax even if it's revenue is mostly wasted.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#25

Post by dmoo »

jsilence wrote: post #9
ck2 wrote: post #4

That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…

Transportation of electricity around the globe is not neccessary. Electricity usage is considerably lower during nighttime. Thus solar and wind fit in with our natural rhythm quite nicely. And it is also produced near the place there it is being consumed. Another plus. But still the author is right, we need ways to store electricity and we will also need a much more flexible grid than the one we have today. The neo l…

Store electricity like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlough_Hill - pump the water uphill during daylight and let it flow down when needed.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#26

Post by polshaw »

saalweachter wrote: post #10
brlewis wrote: post #3

The article says we still need better battery technology, and there's truth to that. But even without batteries, just providing power on days when air conditioners run continuously, solar could make a huge difference in the energy picture.

Or only burning coal at night. Once solar is significantly cheaper than coal and demand pricing kicks in, a lot of time-shifting of energy use could occur. Right now, night-time electricity is cheaper because demand is lower at night, but if the supply of daylight electricity increases dramatically, any activity which currently benefits from cheap nighttime electricity could be shifted back to the daylight hours. Dat…

To be clear-- the reason energy is cheap at night is not JUST because it is used less-- it is also because there are certain continuous energy sources. Nuclear power, geothermal, tidal, wave and wind power are all producing energy round the clock and if you don't harvest it, it's lost.

We are not heading towards a world where we have a single power source (solar), and most of our power uses cannot be rescheduled. As fossil fuels are one of the few sources which can be turned on and off at our choosing, I would expect they will function to fill in temporary gaps between supply and demand once renewables capacity is large enough to take the average load. I don't see these gaps occurring predominantly at night.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#27

Post by siculars »

And this is a beautiful example of manufacturing innovation and advancement, evolution and revolution, coming from those that actually make things. When you make things you find a way to make them better. This is why I believe we in the USA need to maintain a strong industrial/manufacturing culture. Not simply to employ people but rather to be at the epicenter of where innovation happens.

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#29

Post by RK »

ck2 wrote: post #4

That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…

And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era.

I actually worked at a startup from about 2007-2009 that was designing particle accelerators for another company pursuing what appears to be the exact same technology (possibly some of the same people).

http://www.sigen.net/solar_technology.html

No idea what came of the project. Very high current ion accelerators in the +1 MeV range is quite the trick without a huge budget. Our company was full of people from Los Alamos. We were actually focusing on a different application that needed higher output.

There is a quite sizeable commercial accelerator market for medical, industrial imaging, and radiation sterilization use (and of course various "homeland security uses".

Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

#30

Post by [deleted] »

brlewis wrote: post #8
ck2 wrote: post #4

That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…

We're already buying energy from nations that aren't very peaceful, so the political issues may be solveable. I think, though, that transmitting energy halfway around the world would present engineering problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

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