Renewable Energy Tech.

This forum a wide potential for discussion, so let's get an engineering thread going:​

I've been looking into all the possible technologies we are or could be using for a sustainable energy economy, and damn it very few can replace oil very soon. Damn few -- one actually, and though the system has been successfully tested it was never developed for political reasons in the 40s, LFTRs.

But I have come across a few good prototype systems that could be ready in a few decades, that I want to see developed a lot more. Photon-Enhanced Thermionic Emission, for example: a semiconductor coated lightly with Cesium metal (very low electro-negativity, gives away electrons at the slightest extra energy), as a better system for solar energy than solar panels. Potentially usable in new solar collectors since they accept heat and light energy funneled into a laser to make energy, and efficiency increases with higher intensities as opposed to solar panels.​

Other systems I'm interested in seeing develop are the types of free energy generation that have popped up at various times in recent history, the engine that runs on water, the free energy engines apparent in the technology of flying saucers, I'm not ruling anything out.

 

New Arizona Solar Plant Uses Salt To Keep Producing Electricity When The Sun Goes Down | ThinkProgress

This is more realistic than LFTRs in the short term. I liked the concept of LFTRs in the past, but there was something I read about why they aren't necessarily the best. The solar thermal concept is easier to implement in very warm climates.

I have solar panels on my house and have charged an electric Ford C-Max Energi there before. And for under $10,000 (after tax credit) my house is making more electricity than I use. It might need a few more to use an EV car, or I would just need to be in a Sunnier location.

Home design, commercial store/office energy efficiency, and industrial power usage reduction needs to be addressed. I think way too much energy is wasted. Probably close to 60-70% of what the US generates if I was in charge of handing out power...

 

That is HUGE!

 

It is huge. But, there is plenty of land in Southern AZ that is far away from water.
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There is also a giant PV solar array at 32.976 N, and -113.5 W.

 

It looks good on paper, but it requires relatively large amounts of gallium, which is mostly a byproduct of aluminum and zinc mining processes that yield only small quantities of gallium as a byproduct. It's a long term technology that is unable to be used on a large scale in the short term. It's a technology that deserves consideration for future large-scale use, but it's not a magic bullet to stop global warming.

Rule them out. They're fantasies and scams. Conservation of mass and energy still stands as a law of physics and the contrarians have all been cases of delusion or fraud.

 

Sustained nuclear fusion. They've been underfunding research for a long time, but finally, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore labs in California have reported the first stages of success. They have achieved a fusion reaction where the energy produced was slightly more than the energy used to ignite. The margin is still low, and the reaction is not yet self-sustaining. But it's coming. When it does work-- and it will, likely within the next 5-10 years-- this will obviate coal-fired, oil-fired, natural gas-fired, and nuclear fission plants. If the initial ignition energy came from something renewable, like solar and/or wind, this could be the answer we've been waiting for.

 

I don't understand why solar panels are expensive. They cost upwards of 10-15k to install in a house. Is it the technology that's expensive? Like a new cell phone? I see it like this, a light bulb is a seemingly simple item right? A filament threaded through a near vacuum. That's about it, but the technology to actually do that is what people are paying for. This is how I see solar panels and reason their pricing in my mind.

Does anyone have a good reason as to why they are so expensive?

 

I'm surprised there isn't more geothermal.

 

I also think so.

But one of my friends, whose family are into alternative energies, says that the problem is to get sufficient heat to really make power generation in mass quantity worthwhile, you'd have to tap down almost to the mantle, if not actually into it. Which means drilling down between ten kilometers or so (if you're drilling in the ocean floor, which then has other, compounding difficulties), or closer to thirty kilometers anywhere on land. Considering that, at present, the deepest borehole ever drilled (the Kola, near Murmansk, Russia) is only around 12 kilometers, it would be a very tall order to come up with the funding, resources, and technological improvements to safely drill down that far, while enclosing the bore and extending down conduction of some sort, so as to minimize heat loss between the bottom of the hole and the top, where the heat could actually be used to do whatever it would be to push the turbines of the generator to make the power. So I have been told, anyway-- not that I profess to know jack shit about the facts on the ground, if you'll forgive the expression.

I personally tend to think it would be worth the investment. But I can also well imagine that not a lot of companies would be interested in fronting the huge amounts of investment to complete the project, especially when it would likely not become profitable for a number of years to come.

 

There is small scale geothermal for individual houses. It is how people can cool their homes during hot days, and heat them up to 55 F during the winter since the ground is normally around that temp year round. But, it is one of those things that needs to be installed when they are building the house, and it isn't very good if there is an earthquake potential.

But, there should be more research done and a few homes made that are well insulated enough to use geothermal as an air conditioning system.

The semiconductor industry has already figured out how to deal with the chemicals and minerals that are needed. And they don't use very much, and nobody ever talks about rare earths in cell phones, TVs, computers, and other electronics as a problem...

The materials in solar panels can be recycled at the end of their lives too.

 

Each panel costs between $250-$400. = $3000 and mine were made in Ohio.

I went with microinverters that cost around $250 per panel. = $2000

There is an initial inspection and design meeting = $250 (the installer sends someone out to look at if it is possible)

Then there are a bunch of approvals and building codes that are different in each city that have to be abided by. They will need to pull a bunch of permits, and submit technical drawings for what they will plan to do. = $150

Then the power company has to approve of how big the array is, and you have to sign a net metering agreement. You also pay for the new meter and power company inspection = $120

Then there might be questions about the structural integrity of your roof, so you need to get a structural engineer to sign off on it...(I knew it would be fine, even under a snow load)= $300

Then it will get installed using a special aluminum mounting rail bolted into the roof with roof anchors = $1000

It will take two or three guys about 16 hours to install everything, wire it all up, and test it = ~40 labor hours @$25/hr (inc taxes and benefits) = $1000

Then there is the internet monitoring device = $600

Then you pay for the company's operation, energy use, advertisements, accounting staff, technical design staff, troubleshooting personnel, management, and company profits and investor dividends. = ~$3000

Total = $10,500

And this is for a 2kW system, and it makes just over 2 MW a year. ($300/year savings at current rates)

I got a tax credit of $3050 or so. And my house is now worth a little bit more money. I'm not polluting the air with coal emissions and not paying for the pollution. And I'm not giving my money to the coal companies to use to spread their propaganda and continue their mountain top removal and dirty mining operations...

Yes, they might not make economic sense in terms of gambling with that $10,000 in the stock market and what it could be worth if the market goes up, but it could and has gone down very quickly for no apparent reason in the past too. The value of the dollar could plummet as well, and I won't have to worry about my power bill going up in the future. My solar panels won't care, and will continue to produce power as long as the Sun comes up. Plus it is high tech and cool to watch them generate power.

 

Is there any form of renewable energy (for the consumer) that isn't government subsidized?

 

Boat renewable power isn't. And I'm not sure about off-grid solar and wind. I doubt home made wind turbines are either, but they are pretty cool.

 

I have been living off the grid for years now. I've built a car to run on moonshine, and built the legal solar still to make it's fuel. I've built a car to run on Propane. And I am slowly working on an electric car, one that will run on 100 year nickle iron batteries, not this throw away junk inc wants to sell us. And indeed my NudeAutoMall is full of Alt Fuel stuff, because I enjoy it.