41–50 of 107 posts
Around 60% of CO2 (see 1) emissions during cement manufacturing are just a byproduct of the chemical process converting calcium carbonate to lime (see 2) - nothing that solar power can help with.
1) https://precast.org/2013/05/concrete-and-co2/ 2) https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_P...
Yes, domestic cats kill orders of magnitudes more birds, but that argument a. depends on relative scale that people don't grok, and b. coming from an energy company reinforces the preconception that they're callous.
Add radar and a sufficiently smart AI, and they could turn a PR problem into a marketing pitch by showing birds flying through unscathed while the mirrors shift to avoid them.
Excerpt: A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet. Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius. ===== The article describes a bit about the role the AI is pl…
Why is AI even needed? It’s not like the sun dances around. Could probably find enough information here [0] what is needed. [0] Practical Astronomy with your Calculator https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521356997/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-v...
> The problem is that in the past concentrated solar couldn't get temperatures hot enough to make cement and steel.
> While other concentrated solar companies attacked this temperature problem by adding steel to make the technology stiffer and sturdier, Heliogen and its team of scientists and engineers turned to artificial intelligence.
> Heliogen said it is generating so much heat that its technology could eventually be used to create clean hydrogen at scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that would depend on how precisely they need to be calibrated, right? IIRC even military GPS is still only accurate to within a few feet.
RTK GPS is 1cm RMS. And I still can't get over how awesome it is. It's magic.
[1] https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-gps-rtk/all
I think the article is overplaying the promise of CO reductions. Around 60% of CO2 (see 1) emissions during cement manufacturing are just a byproduct of the chemical process converting calcium carbonate to lime (see 2) - nothing that solar power can help with. 1) https://precast.org/2013/05/concrete-and-co2/ 2) https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_P...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>or each plant you build you need the exact position of each mirror, the oven chamber and the motion of the sun through the day and year Yeah, depending on the level of precision required, there are _tons_ of variables that could have an impact here. Year to year the angle of the sun changes slightly on any given solar date, as various components of the Earth's orbit "wobble" (axial tilt, eccentricity, precession, et…
The motion of the Earth in space is very well determined and studied; the thermal expansion and deformation of the structure is most likely the dominant source of uncertainty for the pointing.
@elonmusk please work with integrating battery tech with these guys!!
And even if we overcome this, we will need so much solar panel and batteries that we simply don't have enough raw materials to do so (to replace a 1GW nuclear core you need to cover half of Paris with solar panels, source http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/rap-enq/r2195-t1.asp).
In France, 95% of the stored electricity is done using reversible-damns (you pump water up to store, you empty the water and generate electricity when you need it), only 2% using batteries. We basically put damns everywhere we could on the territory. We have 2 days max of storage. How can we now store weeks/months of solar-panel/wind electricity we don't need to use it when we need it?
Batteries are inefficient for grid storage, oversized, heavy and too short term. That's it. We now know for decades that damns are the easiest way to do it and we can't do more than a few days of storage.
At one moment we simply have to face the maths and physics. Trusting the "next big thing" in battery storage/solar production, even if we do 5x more energy, even if we develop long lasting ones, will not work in the end. Our needs are too big and the amount of minerals and other raw materials we need is way too big. That's it.
Another interesting problem this might solve is birds. Yes, domestic cats kill orders of magnitudes more birds, but that argument a. depends on relative scale that people don't grok, and b. coming from an energy company reinforces the preconception that they're callous. Add radar and a sufficiently smart AI, and they could turn a PR problem into a marketing pitch by showing birds flying through unscathed while the mi…