Solar Power

[resisting arrest with violence]

http://www.nader.org/interest/060305.html

[STI]

I'm moving this to Science & Environment.

[codyvo]

I think solar energy is a great idea, but since the two major parties in american politics (Exxon and GM) are opposed to it, it doesn't look like the government will do anything about it soon. Also, I am glad Nader said something, I always kind of liked Nader, although I think he still does support capitalism.

[che's long lost daughter]

Solar Power is definitely better than what we use today but since these two major powers behind US politics is opposed to its development, solar power may never be realised.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Solar Power is an ineffecient source of power, at least on the surface of the Earth which is mostly covered in clouds.

And even then, it's only useful in the inner solar system - the sunlight is too weak outside a certain radius to be useful.

And Nader is a reformist hack.

['Discourse Unlimited']

I think Solar power is a wonderful idea. There are indeed problems with efficiency, but I think scientists are making alot of progress. Hopefully we can expect most of our energy to come from "renewable" sources, or nuclear power, in the next half century or so...

And how about this? (http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/)
Those crazy Aussies! :P
A waste of space, or a great, clean source of energy?

Edit:


Solar Power is ... ineffecient ... And even then, it's only useful in the inner solar system...


Eh? The Earth IS in the inner solar system, isn't it? I'm sure it was last time I checked...

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Eh? The Earth IS in the inner solar system, isn't it? I'm sure it was last time I checked...

If you had actually read my post instead of skimming it, you would have seen why solar powewr is ineffecient on the earth's surface - the damn clouds get in the way, not to mention that in temperate latitudes and above, the amount of daylight in the winter is very short. We need a more concentrated energy source than solar power, which has to be spread out to be effective, and even then that's assuming you have the good weather needed.

One way of providing solar generated power would be to have huge solar arrays in various Lagrange orbits, which beams the gathered solar energy in the form of concetrated microwaves to a surface collector. It would also make a useful weapon.

Besides the fact that such an operation is hideously over-engineered, by the time we're actually capable making this feasable fusion power would be widely available.

In the grand scale of things, it's a case of Nuclear Fusion > Nuclear Fission > Fossil Fuels > Solar Power.

Roof mounted solar cells might be useful in reducing the load on power stations, especially in major cities. But I see no really practical application of solar power beyond specialised or small-scale uses.

A potential application of solar power could be massive mirrors in orbit around earth, reflecting sunlight onto siberia to warm the place up and be able to grow crops there.

['Discourse Unlimited']

If you had actually read my post instead of skimming it, you would have seen why solar powewr is ineffecient on the earth's surface - the damn clouds get in the way...


I did read your post, fool. (How is one meant to "skim" three lines?) You said Solar Power was inefficient on the Earth due to cloud interference. THEN you said: "it's only useful in the inner solar system". I replied: The Earth IS in the inner solar system! :P

[resisting arrest with violence]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 10:32 PM

Eh? The Earth IS in the inner solar system, isn't it? I'm sure it was last time I checked...

If you had actually read my post instead of skimming it, you would have seen why solar powewr is ineffecient on the earth's surface - the damn clouds get in the way, not to mention that in temperate latitudes and above, the amount of daylight in the winter is very short. We need a more concentrated energy source than solar power, which has to be spread out to be effective, and even then that's assuming you have the good weather needed.

One way of providing solar generated power would be to have huge solar arrays in various Lagrange orbits, which beams the gathered solar energy in the form of concetrated microwaves to a surface collector. It would also make a useful weapon.

Besides the fact that such an operation is hideously over-engineered, by the time we're actually capable making this feasable fusion power would be widely available.

In the grand scale of things, it's a case of Nuclear Fusion > Nuclear Fission > Fossil Fuels > Solar Power.

Roof mounted solar cells might be useful in reducing the load on power stations, especially in major cities. But I see no really practical application of solar power beyond specialised or small-scale uses.

A potential application of solar power could be massive mirrors in orbit around earth, reflecting sunlight onto siberia to warm the place up and be able to grow crops there.
Those damn clouds never get in the way when I use my solar power calculator--- it always works.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Those damn clouds never get in the way when I use my solar power calculator--- it always works.

Nice try. Your calculator consumes a piddly amount of energy compared to what the average household consumes. Try running your house solely from solar panels. It'll save your bills but you might have troubling extracting energy from moonlight.

I'd rather not have a power source that's useless for around half the day.

[rocksinger]

I think we sould be thinking about offshore wind farms. The wind blows a night aswell.

[Commie Rat]

A Austrialian guy has created a machine then creates energy from tidal movemnts
it looks like a big converyor blet with paddles - will find more out soon

[Severian]

The unfortunate truth is that none of these "green" power sources are going to be a major source of electricity anytime soon. They are nowhere near cost-effective, and many take a lot of acreage or would have other negative environmental effects if used on a large scale.

http://www.mattisch.com/Earth_at_Night.jpg

Consider all those dark or dimly lit areas on the map, where people can't even read after the sun goes down, or where women walk miles for firewood...contributing to deforestation also.

They have a right to development. And unfortunately, the options are fossil fuels, nuclear, and in some places to some extent, hydroelectric.

[rocksinger]

I have one question for you: What would you rather?
a)No trees, no birds, no life, no hills, no YOU
or
b)Trees, birds, life, hills (ok, they do have winfd farms on them but at least you can still see them) and, of couse, YOU

Take your pick a) or b)

NOTE: In option a) there are no hills because you cant see them because your DEAD

[bed_of_nails]

I moved from Kansas where it is constantly very windy...

I can say that the ability to harvest wind for energy is invaluable and everlasting.

[KC]

Solar panels can be used to store energy as well. So at night you still have light.

[cormacobear]

Everyday the planet earth is hit with enough energy to meet the worlds energy needs for a year. Solar panels have made huge strides forward in the last decade. Soon they will be perfectly practicle. also, just like wind power the energy is stored in batteries untill it is needed. A combination of both is ideal plenty of energy no by product.

The tide generator has been used quite effectively for many years in Japan and Vancouver.The one in Vancouver is small owned by the Univ. Bu there are two Japanese cities that produce much of therir power that way.

within a decade home rooves shingled with solar panels and a stack of pwer cells in the basement beside the furnace is perfectly forseeable, at least everwhere but the states. Where they elect oil men who have an interest in relying on oil till the country goes bankrupt, Oil is now at 60$ a barrel, an all time high his family owns oil interests, tell me what is his motivation for preventing scarcity.

Ours is a shipping tycoon, wich is at least a little better. And batteries are getting better The Univ. Of Alberta, just patented a battery that will power your cell phone for a year without needing to be recharged. The Same school also produced electricity by placing a (top Secret) porous clay in a stream.

So it's not hopless the only thing holding us back is the innefficiency of our economic system. So as you see if any of us want to have a future for our great grandchildren we need to get some changes made in our generation, plenty of work ahead, but we can join lobby groups for these projects, write letters try and raise these goals more into the public debate.

[Clarksist]

On PBS they showed a factory that makes a type of solar panel which can be used as shingles because dents and cracks don't hurt it.

Think if houses had solar panels for shingles. Think of the pollution we'd save.

[rocksinger]

I heard of this thing that wasa solar pannel that was woven, i think it was kinda like PVC and denim mixed together inta a solar panle. the idea was that u couldput the stuff on funny shaped buildings and u could roll it up for easy storage.

Unfortunately, it is not durable enought to use as clothing.

[Xvall]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2005, 05:00 PM
I have one question for you: What would you rather?
a)No trees, no birds, no life, no hills, no YOU
or
b)Trees, birds, life, hills (ok, they do have winfd farms on them but at least you can still see them) and, of couse, YOU

Take your pick a) or b)

NOTE: In option a) there are no hills because you cant see them because your DEAD
.... What?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2005, 10:39 AM
Unfortunately, it is not durable enought to use as clothing.
Pity. Solar clothing would be good for a crunchy fashion statement. Kinda like hemp clothing.

[Xvall]

I would be bulky as hell, and what on earth would you need to "power up" while you were walking to the park? Unless you have a television embeded into your jacket it really just seems flashy.

[A Chemist]

I've checked the "popular topics" thread and the only solar energy thread I found dates back to 2006, so I thought starting a new one wouldn't hurt.

In short, what's your opinion on solar energy? Do you see it as a viable alternative to fossil fuels for the present or near future? If so, how do you think a large scale solar power production system could be implemented in a capitalist society? If not, why?

[pranabjyoti]

With some addition and alterations, solar energy toady can easily outcompete conventional sources today. I have some ideas regarding that.

[Invincible Summer]

So how exactly does solar power work? Does it just harness daytime shortwave radiation as heat, then convert it to electricity? Is there a way to collect the shortwave that we receive at night, as well as longwave radiation (basically, harnessing the entire spectrum for energy)?

[pranabjyoti]

With some little addition and alteration, the necessity of solar reflectors can be reduced to 1/3rd of their present level and so it wouldn't take much area to establish a solar thermal power plant. It would also be possible to increase the efficiency of solar panel a few times with some little addition and alteration.
FOSSIL FUEL, NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT NECESSARY.

[Q]

So how exactly does solar power work? Does it just harness daytime shortwave radiation as heat, then convert it to electricity? Is there a way to collect the shortwave that we receive at night, as well as longwave radiation (basically, harnessing the entire spectrum for energy)?
There are several ways (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power).

[Q]

With some little addition and alteration, the necessity of solar reflectors can be reduced to 1/3rd of their present level and so it wouldn't take much area to establish a solar thermal power plant. It would also be possible to increase the efficiency of solar panel a few times with some little addition and alteration.
FOSSIL FUEL, NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT NECESSARY.
If so, why hasn't this been done before? Be more specific in your ideas.

[Q]

I have merged the two threads on solar power. No need to revive an old thread and start a new one.

[Ovi]

If you had actually read my post instead of skimming it, you would have seen why solar powewr is ineffecient on the earth's surface - the damn clouds get in the way, not to mention that in temperate latitudes and above, the amount of daylight in the winter is very short. We need a more concentrated energy source than solar power, which has to be spread out to be effective, and even then that's assuming you have the good weather needed.

Damn clouds? Where? In Alaska?


One way of providing solar generated power would be to have huge solar arrays in various Lagrange orbits, which beams the gathered solar energy in the form of concetrated microwaves to a surface collector. It would also make a useful weapon.

Besides the fact that such an operation is hideously over-engineered, by the time we're actually capable making this feasable fusion power would be widely available.

In the grand scale of things, it's a case of Nuclear Fusion > Nuclear Fission > Fossil Fuels > Solar Power.

Roof mounted solar cells might be useful in reducing the load on power stations, especially in major cities. But I see no really practical application of solar power beyond specialised or small-scale uses.

A potential application of solar power could be massive mirrors in orbit around earth, reflecting sunlight onto siberia to warm the place up and be able to grow crops there.
Why would you think that? A 15-25 m2 solar panel would be enough to satisfy all the energy needs of a person in my country. I don't find that impossible nor incredibly difficult to achieve. Of course we do need to get rid of the cadmium in some of these panels and also to use things like concentrated solar power to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

[Atrus]

In future plans, solar power out of our atmosphere would certainly be an efficent energy source, perhaps on the moon or another planet. No atmosphere deflection of solar energy, so it's much more intense, and a "day" is much longer. Although this means a night is also much longer, then having stations around the moon means that at any given time at least half of the stations are in full sunlight. This also means that no area on Earth is taken up. And with the recent findings of water on the Moon and Nasa saying that a permanent manned station on the moon is a future objective, it seems reasonable and efficient.
What I don't know, though, it how possible it is to store this energy/get it to Earth.

[pranabjyoti]

If so, why hasn't this been done before? Be more specific in your ideas.
The Sun may set, but the residue of its radiation remained as heat in the atmosphere and into the oceans of our planet. By extracting atmospheric heat and converting that into electricity, we can produce as much electricity as we need. A very effective way of extracting atmospheric heat is vacuum evaporation of water withe the help from a vacuum pump in a metallic container. During evaporation, the evaporated water collects its latent heat of vaporization from the leftover water and it becomes colder. But, heat from outisde atmosphere will enter into the colder water inside from warmer atmosphere. After sometime, an equilibrium can be reached when the amount of heat entering into the container from external atmosphere will be equal to the amount of latent heat necessary to evaporate the amount of water, that is evaporated. IN EXPERIMENTS OF OPEN-CYCLE OTEC, IT HAS BEEN FOUND THAT TO GET A 1 KG/SEC FLOW OF VAPOR, JUST 3 KW IS ENOUGH TO MAINTAIN THE VACUUM PUMP. WHILE THE AMOUNT OF HEAT EMBEDDED IN THE 1 KG/SEC VAPOR FLOW IS 2.31 MW.
In the next phase, we just have to heat the vapor with solar reflector panels. By this process, we can get rid of supplying the latent heat of vaporization of water by the solar collectors, which is 2/3rd of the amount of heat embedded in the hot steam necessary to produce electricity.

[black magick hustla]

People have to remember that this things dont only depend on the "physics". Phyicists deem possible to to make starships with "solar sails" that are pushed by the pressure of electromagnetic radiation, but the engineering behind it is hella crazy. Thermodynamically, is possible to convert a good chunk of solar heat into energy but the engineering behind it lags behind. A solar panel can convert around thirty percent of the solar energy it receives, and they are hella expensive.

[Ovi]

People have to remember that this things dont only depend on the "physics". Phyicists deem possible to to make starships with "solar sails" that are pushed by the pressure of electromagnetic radiation, but the engineering behind it is hella crazy. Thermodynamically, is possible to convert a good chunk of solar heat into energy but the engineering behind it lags behind. A solar panel can convert around thirty percent of the solar energy it receives, and they are hella expensive.
Compared to 20% for an internal combustion engine, that's quite efficient. Concentrated solar power are even more efficient. Plus you can place the solar panels on roofs (or even build new houses with rotating roofs) so you don't waste land.

Anyway I don't think the problem we face today is how to produce more energy (such as using fusion), but how to consume less.

[pranabjyoti]

People have to remember that this things dont only depend on the "physics". Phyicists deem possible to to make starships with "solar sails" that are pushed by the pressure of electromagnetic radiation, but the engineering behind it is hella crazy. Thermodynamically, is possible to convert a good chunk of solar heat into energy but the engineering behind it lags behind. A solar panel can convert around thirty percent of the solar energy it receives, and they are hella expensive.
If something is possible according to physics, that means it should be possible to be engineered in a real world. Actually, the proposal like my own lags behind is due to criminal negligence on behalf of the capitalist governments. How tough is the engineering problem to combine two existing processes together.