Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by scarmig » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

onemoreact wrote: post #24

derda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree in principle with the idea that carbon-based energy has a ton of negative externalities (megatons, in fact...), so there should exist a relative subsidy between it and green.

The issue is that creates even distortion between the energy sector as a whole and the rest of the economy, since fossil fuels are already subsidized (through not pricing in the negative externality) and we're adding a separate subsidy to green energy.

So we're distorting the market to favor creating green energy over reduced consumption of energy. When what's really needed is simply an effective tax on carbon, and then let people decide the most efficient way to respond.

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

#72

Post by Florin_Andrei » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 5:52 PM UTC

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.

Well, you could build a push-pull Van de Graaff generator, hook it up to a discharge tube, hook the tube to a high vacuum pump, and there ya go, linear accelerator in the 1 MeV range. Totally doable in a garage.

There are people who built a cyclotron at home. You'll need to wind a huge coil, but it's doable.

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

#73

Post by jstalin » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 5:53 PM UTC

From 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).

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

#74

Post by tsotha » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

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

That's true for pulverized coal, but gassified coal could be used like natural gas.

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

#75

Post by cbr » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 5:58 PM UTC

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…

I think the idea is that with nuclear power plants while you can bring down the output you don't want to because it saves you very little money. Most of your costs are huge and fixed.

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

#76

Post by danielharan » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #67

danielharan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're nowhere near that limit. From Wikipedia:

According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the contiguous United States has the potential for 10,459 GW of onshore wind power. The capacity could generate 37 petawatt-hours (PW·h) annually, an amount nine times larger than current total U.S. electricity consumption. The U.S. also has large wind resources in Alaska, and Hawaii. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States

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

#77

Post by cop359 » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

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 about superconductivity.

How about flywheels?

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

#78

Post by rosser » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

cop359 wrote: post #77

tomkinstinch wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

Forget about superconductivity. How about flywheels?

Flywheels are for energy storage, not transmission.

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

#79

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#80

Post by dctoedt » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #70

dctoedt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

> does this make the fuel last longer

Yes. Heat is generated by fission of fissile material such as uranium. Fuel rods have X amount of fissile material in them. Higher power -> faster depletion of the fissile material.

> what are fuel costs as a percentage of total operational costs?

Around 30%, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. This compares with 80% for coal, natural gas, and oil.[2]

> My impression is it doesn't make sense to operate a nuclear reactor at less than full power

I would think that'd be true of almost any machinery, but that's almost a tautology: You design your machinery for an optimized balance of performance versus wear-and-tear, then try to operate at (what you call) "full power" as much as you can, so as to reap maximum value from your investment.

In any event, the original comment was that excess power is inevitably generated by nuclear plants (at least during some time periods) and therefore must be dumped somehow. That's not the case; nuclear plants can be throttled up and down as needed.

[2] http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/cost...