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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

#61

Post by fryguy »

skittles wrote: post #35

Is there a mistake in the 40 cents per watt cost reported in the article? I work for an energy company and our wind-farm energy is around 4.5 cents per kilowatt .

Presumably, the only cost in solar panels is their construction, so there are no recurring costs (other than amortizing their lifetime). It seems complicated to figure the number of hours it lasts for, and figure out the energy generated in those hours. It's a lot simpler to figure out the amount of power generated for a given surface area (in some standardized amount of light input), and the cost of that surface area to generate. So if you wanted a kilowatt of power generated continuously from the sun, minus overcast and such, it would cost $400. I'm not an expert, but that would be my guess.

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

#62

Post by dctoedt »

polshaw wrote: post #26
saalweachter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... 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.

This isn't true of nuclear power plants; the fission rate, and thus the heat generation rate, can be throttled up and down as needed. In pressurized water reactors this happens automatically as the throttle is opened and closed, thus increasing or decreasing output from the "steam side" of the heat-exchange boilers, a.k.a. steam generators [1]. (In a prior life I was a Navy nuclear engineering officer.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor#Contr...

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

#63

Post by r00fus »

tomkinstinch wrote: post #54
ChuckMcM wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the particle accelerator is pretty cool, of course transporting power around the globe is not as easy as stringing a wire, for every mile of wire you lose power due to the resistance of the wire. This is the problem of 'power transmission'. This is the same reason you can't build nuclear power plants in the middle of a desert 500 miles from anywhere and ship the power out sadly. That being said, at .40/watt y…

We can build power plants in the middle of the desert and ship power out. The technology exists; we just haven't done it yet. Transmission losses are not a concern for superconducting cables (though maintaining the cryostat jacket is). Such cables are currently being proven before being used in larger grid connections. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/superconduc... http://www.htstriax.com/columbus.ht…

Forget supercondictivity, what about HVDC [1]?

HVDC can be as efficient as 97%, compared with the US average of 93%. That 4% "inefficiency tax" would likely pay for long-haul HVDC connectors (as outlined in one of Obama's 2008 energy proposals) within years.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Adv...

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

#64

Post by ippisl »

jpitz wrote: post #42
saalweachter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Or only burning coal at night. Coal power is a base load technology. Spin up time for a coal plant is too long for it to work well for night time use only. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_power_plant

GE recently announced a faster natural gas based generator. 61% efficiency and can ramp up supply at 50mega-watts per minute.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678064/ges-jet-engine-inspired-f...

So there can be a decent enough complement to cheap solar power.

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

#65

Post by schiffern »

robomartin wrote: post #60
ctdonath wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

power output from wind/solar plants is random (depends on things like cloud cover ...) and it causes problems in power grid, where power demand must meet the supply exactly The biggest power cost for us in warmer climates is cooling. When the sun is out, we need lots of power; when it's not, not so much. Solar power sufficient to run A/C from rooftop panels costing less than grid electricity would be wonderful, linin…

I would start with better home design and energy efficiency enhancing improvements before throwing a Carnot-limited solution at the problem. Last summer I ran an experiment. We live in a two story house in California. We usually see low temperatures at night (sub 70deg F) and highs in the range of 105+ degF during the day. At night I opened all of the windows downstairs and used a small industrial fan (about 2000CFM)…

>I'm thinking that some forced ventilation of the attic with a small fan might just do wonders.

Radiative barriers should also be on your list. It's essentially just mylar stapled to the rafters.

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

#66

Post by InclinedPlane »

danmaz74 wrote: post #47
greedo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that solar, wind and geothermal energy can replace nuclear power for electricity generation in my lifetime (the next 35 years) ignores the reality of how much electricity we consume and how it is currently generated. Here's a link to a graph created by the Lawrence Livermore Lab that quickly illustrates the miniscule impact of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the three primary alternative energy sourc…

But renewable energies could replace nuclear (and other sources) for new plants that will be built in the future. Nuclear has a very high initial cost, and shutting down current plants while they're still efficient and safe enough wouldn't be a sound choice, but for replacements of ageing plants and for new constructions cheaper and cheaper renewable energies could realistically displace them in the next decades.

No. It can't.

And pretending it can is a problem.

Solar is nice. It'd be FAN-GODDAMN-TASTIC if we could use solar power as the backbone of our power generation. But we can't, it's just not feasible.

Solar today is half of a power plant. Much like wind Solar generates power when its convenient to its own schedule, not ours, and sometimes that means it generates zero power.

This. Is. A. Problem.

It is, in fact, the problem of solar and wind power. Today we can use solar and wind serendipitously. They run on top of base power and when they provide power they allow us to keep gas powered generators offline. That's nice, but it's an edge solution, and we're already nearing the limits of that strategy. In order to replace base load power we need something that provides power reliably when it's convenient for humans. For solar or wind that means we need to invest in vast power storage plants. Things that do not currently exist even in designs. Things that are likely to be about as expensive to build and maintain as solar plants themselves will be.

We do not have the technology to move to solar or wind power as a base load power source. And it seems likely that if we did have that technology it would put the full cost of those power sources at higher than even fission power plants.

We can no more move to solar or wind power for the majority of our power needs than we could move to Thorium reactors, or fusion power.

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

#67

Post by tsotha »

danielharan wrote: post #45
greedo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that solar, wind and geothermal energy can replace nuclear power for electricity generation in my lifetime (the next 35 years) ignores the reality of how much electricity we consume and how it is currently generated. Here's a link to a graph created by the Lawrence Livermore Lab that quickly illustrates the miniscule impact of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the three primary alternative energy sourc…

Only we're doubling production of wind turbines every 2-3 years. With each doubling, prices come down, as they do with every other manufactured artifact from computers to TVs to washing machines. Look out for 35 years. Is it still minuscule?

In some respects wind is like hydro, in that there are a limited number of good places to site a wind farm. As the number of turbines grows there will be diminishing returns as the new sites are less good because they have less wind, longer distances to existing power infrastructure, more damaging weather incidents, etc.

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

#68

Post by redthrowaway »

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…

>Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology now, it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to happen politically.

I don't see politics as being the primary challenge; the US has allies in almost every time zone that could fairly easily facilitate this. I imagine the greater challenge would come from trying to get all that electricity across oceans. Copper wires thick enough to carry a substantial amount of electricity seem like they would be too think to actually lay, and then you have parasitic losses to contend with should they manage to find a way to do it.

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

#69

Post by abstractbill »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #55

I think I may have misunderstood the manufacturing process. To my reading, it looks like they have 3mm-thick wafers, accumulate a 20mm-thick layer of hydrogen, which then shears off in a furnace, leaving...a 3mm-thick wafer. Which they started with. Thanks in advance to whoever explains how I've misunderstood this. EDIT: Oh, I neglected to pay attention to units. The above should be 3mm, 20- micrometer , and 2.98mm,…

The hydrogen layer accumulates below the current surface of the silicon. When you put it in a furnace, it causes a very thin layer of silicon to shear off from the 3mm wafer.

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

#70

Post by tsotha »

dctoedt wrote: post #62
polshaw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... 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. This isn't true of nuclear power plants; the fission rate, and thus the heat generation rate, can be throttled up and down as needed. In pressurized water reactors this happens automatically as the throttle is opened and closed, thus increasing or decreasing output from the "ste…

That's true, but does this make the fuel last longer, and anyway what are fuel costs as a percentage of total operational costs? My impression is it doesn't make sense to operate a nuclear reactor at less than full power.
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