Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget about superconductivity. How about flywheels?
Flywheels are for energy storage , not transmission.
just let them roll to their destination!
Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
81–90 of 161 posts
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#82A case in which building your hammer to build your desk does actually add value.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#83Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#84For traditional wafer processes, you consume a great deal more feedstock than goes into the active portion of a wafer, and even then you may end up grinding away much of the material such as in the case of backlit imaging sensors.
This 'exfoliation' approach in some ways plays into the concept Elon Musk floated about SpaceX - the actual atoms in a booster are relatively simple, they just need to be arranged in the right way.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#85Earlier 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)…
That only works in desert type environments (i.e. little to no cloud cover) where the temperature goes up and down each day.
Where I live if it gets hot it says hot, day and night. And most of the country is the same.
Although, obviously, incremental improvements are great even if only some people can use them.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#86From the literature I've seen, the realistic maximum amount of solar energy that can be produced through photovoltaic cells is about 40-50 watts per square meter. Although solar is exciting, there's just no way it can be used to replace fossil fuels, no matter how cheap it gets to manufacture. It'll have to be a combination of renewables (why not more hydroelectric power) and greater efficiency (like LED's).
Not really a big crisis; we could shut down every nuclear plant in the US today if people switched from drying clothes in an electric dryer to hanging them outside. We live in a time of absolute plenty.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#87This 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 aga…
currently the vast majority of power comes from fossile sources (coal, gas, petrol). just imagine what amounts of gasoline are used every day for transportation. there's no way in the near future, that we're gonna replace this amount of energy with solar energy. no way. we either switch to a nuclear powered, hydrogen based economy (once we run out of gasoline) or we say goodbye to mobility. and by the way, this isnt a really a question of price. solar energy is highly dependent on current daylight, we would have to rethink our entire energy distribution, building either much cheaper batteries, to provide a constant level of energy on the grid or create some sort of highly efficient global energy grid. those problems are far from solved. at least not at an affordable rate.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#88And if the solar panels don't work out, they can take four of those ion cannons and use them as blinged-out wheels on their Escalade.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Wow, those are pretty cool. Hate to be around when they lost cooling (dropping out of superconductivity would be a pretty energetic event :-). But its good news on that front. If you've ever seen the insulator jacket in an underground HVDC cable it is huge.
Most of these systems both carry power and sit in a pool of coolant so they rarely experience such an 'energetic event'. AKA, if they lose power they don't need to keep things cool AND it usually takes a few hours for things to warm up anyway.