New Techonolgy: Solar Thermal. This isn't Your Grandma's Solar Energy!

what i want to point out is the antiquated methodology of the pursuit.

a..... the pursuit of 'heat'

b ..... the conversion to steam

when the best solar performance is the conversion of the wavelengths of the light

the most recognized example is photosynthesis but with graphene the range of usable sunlight increases substantially

Graphene electrodes for organic solar cells
Researchers identify technique that could make a new kind of solar photovoltaic panel practical

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/graphene-solar-0106.html



keep up on the news as the change is hugenormous


I responded to this post because to observe the 'btu' scope within solar (light) energy, just disgusted me. It reminded me of 'steam engines'

 

I would think they would work ok anyplace you have zone 1 or zone 2 solar, large parts of Africa and Australia are in that category.

 

That's how all electricty generation works, other than solar voltaic, hydroelectric power (which turns turbines with moving water, rather than steam), and tidal power. You create a source of heat, run water through a heat exchanger connected to that heat, and let the steam turn a turbine. Coal, natural gas, oil, etc. All of them work the same. The only difference is the heat source. You're talking about yet another type of heat source, and one that isn't very attractive relative to some other options.

Well, strictly speaking the Sun is destined to destroy the Earth. And there's never been much evidence for long-term generational DNA 'distortion' due to nuclear accidents. Radiation can cause cancer, but that doesn't get passed on. The studies on that (and this has been a topic of great interest for decades) are quite clear.

So you've basically taken up several square miles to do a poor job at the task most other forms of conventional energy production can do in smaller areas. And you've done this by creating solar death rays that will fry anything that passes in front of them and pointing them at pressurized tubes filled with evaporated "special chemicals". Yeah, no danger at all there.

Solar concentrators do not avoid basic laws of physics. They do not change the fact that more solar energy hits some portions of the globe more than others due to cloud cover. That means that solar concentrators in most parts of the country would need to be even larger than several square miles.

But not as well. Less energy per square meter. Line losses would make such farming highly impractical.

 

More correctly we have to permanently evacuate tens of thousands of square miles to install your solar death rays... and we have no idea what kind of consequences that could have.

 

dont forget nuclear

the ignorance of the uneducated

nuclear accidents?

there have been over 2800 nuclear detonations on this earth (testing), what accidents were they?

heck that crap has been circling this earth for decades....... by no accident

with that in mind, then note the conflict of lung cancer being genetic

but if a smoker had that tar in their lungs and irradiated mass from nuclear detonations was within the 'dust' circling the earth, could them held particles cause lung cancer?

the laws are being rewritten.

And i am here to tell you!

 

No - nuclear power does not do it in a "relatively compact manner". Have you ever seen the slag heaps and tailings dams at a uranium mine?

You could fit several solar tower generators in that area. Without the toxic by-products:


Olympic Dam S.A

 

Huh?!?!? A mirror is a "solar death ray"?!?!

 

Yes, one day the sun will destroy the earth. In a few billion years our sun will swell to a red giant and it will be larger than the earth's orbit. The earth will be vaporized. Of course that is not of concern to us.

In the short term, sooner or later the sun will hit us with another giant solar flare like it did in 1859. When the sun slaps us that way again we will lose most of our electronics, and lots of our electric transmission lines will be fried. You may wish to Google "Carrington Event".

You are speaking from ignorance. The laws of physics aren't being rewritten. A fresnel lens can't collect what isn't there to collect.

 

Pollution can be mitigated, but there are no true clean sources. There are environmental impacts from any form of energy usage.

 

The magnifying lens needs to be focused to be efficient--. In case you weren't aware, the angle of the sun varies with the time of year (unless you are on the equator).

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3lWzZGEmbE"]AREVA's Kimberlina Solar Thermal Power Plant - YouTube[/ame]
We can sell it to Canada from the American Southwest & Midwest. Bonus. And it is effective. When you measure "effective" by "saving the burning of fossil fuels", then even one hour of solar thermal energy provided is worth it.

But as our friend here says, we get way more than one hour per day even in marginal areas:

In fact what we do get is essentially free energy during the maximum-use hours. The lion's share of energy is used during the day. Just so happens the solar thermal energy is reliable in that using a carbon backup on top of molten salt and you have the smallest carbon/radiation/MW footprint EVER since the industrial revolution AND power 24/7.

Can't beat that with a stick.

And for today's trivia question...

Q: What is "safe" nuclear energy

A: There is none. Nuclear power should not exist. There is no situation where a nuclear accident cannot be predicted to happen. And just one accident is an unmitigatable and irreversible sci-fi nightmare. We have other ways of boiling water to steam.

 

A fresnel mirror that concentrates solar energy to a tiny point? Yes, that's basically a solar death ray. Like aiming a magnifying glass at an ant.

 

http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/n.../21/nuclear-hot-tub-reactors-25-million-each/

http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/09/25...g-first-of-4000-reactor-modules-in-june-2013/

 

You got something against using the sun to boil water?

I don't. It's free. It pays for its own facility within a few years and from there out is pure profit. Investors will crap their pants when they catch onto this. If I had a million bucks I'd sink every cent of it into solar thermal steam stock.

When those profits start pouring in it would be easy street.

There is no safe nuclear because there is no 100% safe human invention. Never has been, never will be. And the only safety record acceptable because of the massive polluting potential of radiation in the environment is 0% failure.

So nuclear in any form is not acceptable. Period.

Like I said, only a madman would use nuclear to boil water when he can do it with the sun instead..

 

A: Nothing is 100% safe, but the risks of nuclear energy are much lower than the risks of other forms of power generation, including solar concentrators. There are many passively safe nuclear reactor designs, which unlike large pressurized water reactors, are not prone to steam or hydrogen explosions, nor do they pose long term hazardous waste problems. These passively safe nuclear reactors are not used because so many people oppose any sort of nuclear power, even if the risks are far lower than even rpessurized water reactors.

There is no situation where a solar concentrator accident cannot be predicted to happen. All forms of power generation have risks associated with them. Measurement and management of risks is important.

Total bull(*)(*)(*)(*). There's nothing about a nuclear accident that cannot be mitigated or reversed with time.

 

At the expense of other options more suitable for providing a basic level of electrical generation? Yes. I do think that using any one form of energy to the exclusion of others is a bad idea. I think that any plan which calls for more coal plants (which solar concentrators do call for) to provide base demand is a plan far less safe than nuclear power. The risks of fossil fuels are much higher than the risk of nuclear power. Fossil fuel plants continually spew dangerous waste--nuclear plants only release dangerous waste if there's an extreme and rare accident. Moreover, that's only an issue with pressurized water reactors. There are reactor designs that literally cannot meltdown because coolant failure causes a loss-of-fuel event as well. Molten salt reactors literally can't melt down, for example, because anything that prevents the reactor from being cooled will also deprive the reactor of the fuel needed to operate.

That's a lie. It has extensive land costs. Only so much solar power hits any particular square meter of land; to generate more power, you have to devote more land to use by solar concentrators. There's no way to scale up electrical production except by using more land. That's a cost. There is no fuel cost, but that doesn't mean there is no cost. With a nuclear plant, it is possible to scale up production on the same plot of land by installing additional reactors or reactor complexes. Most of the infrastructure can be shared relatively easily.

You also have no way of predicting the potential environmental or climactic hazards that may result from very large solar concentrators. What happens to local climate when you introduce hundreds or thousands of square miles of solar concentrators? What happens to regional climate because of that local disruption? What impact would this have on global climate if there are tens or hundreds of such sites? You've got no clue, and neither does anyone else because it's never been done, or even extensively modeled.

Investors want no part in such risky endeavors in an economic climate like this. There's yet to be a solar facility that's actually met the economic claims its proponents have made to gather investment money. They always cost more and produce less than originally anticipated.

Note; this is usually the biggest barrier to nuclear power production as well. The regulatory risks associated with building nuclear plants make them far more expensive than alternatives.

I'm glad you admit that solar concentrators are not 100% safe.

Nonsense. Most nuclear accidents are not massively destructive. They release nuclear material that is marginally above acceptable safe limits--in most cases. Disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima are exceedingly rare, and could be eliminated entirely if we moved to reactor designs that are passively safe. Fault and risk is mainly introduced in systems that require active maintenance--not systems that are passively safe.

Unless he realizes that using the sun means using up arable land.

 

It is questionable that a solar thermal powerplant of any design could be built for less than the cost of a nuclear powerplant with the same energy output and we can calculate what it would require.

Based upon current nuclear reactors the average output is 846 MW/hr or 20,304 MW/day or 69,280,100,000 BTU's.

If we assumed 10 hours of solar energy collection with a net output of 150 btu's/sq ft, a very highly optimistic estimate which I believe is actually unattainable, it would require 1060 acres of collector surface.

To even come close to attaining 150 btu's/sq ft the collectors have to track the sun because a Frensel lens, which it does focus the light would need to be perpendicular to the sun to maintain a constant square footage of sunlight. Or we could double the acreage of collector surface which would possibly provide the same energy during a ten hour time span. Either way the pricetag is huge. Add to that the electical energy has to be stored and used for 14 hours of electrical output when the energy is not being collected. Batteries are very expensive and have a relatively short lifespan. The batteries would have to be replaced somewhere between 5-10 years and batteries contain toxic waste that is expensive to dispose of.

I'm going to use a rough estimate of $200/sq ft to build a solar thermal collector using Frensel lens. To cover 1060 acres would cost about $9 billion which doens't include the cost of the land. From the information I found that is approximately the same cost as building a nuclear powerplant.

So we could say that it's a "wash" but where nuclear power has a huge advantage is in operating costs. 70% of the cost of energy produced by a nuclear powerplant is the pro-rated cost of construction. A solar powerplant has many times the operational costs of a nuclear powerplant. As I noted earlier just keeping the lens clean for a 1060 acre collector surface will require team of employees continuous cleaning the thousands of individual collectors.

There is of course the continued concerns over nuclear powerplant safety but the safety features built into todays nuclear powerplant design are so superior to past reactors it's like comparing the Wright Bros. airplane with a 747.

The amount of low level nuclear waste has been reduced dramatically and the recycling of the fuel rods, the only high level nuclear "waste" in a reactor, eliminates concerns related to long term storage. There have been no failures of any nuclear powerplants designed in the last 20 years. For example the recent tragety in Japan would never have happened today. All cooling systems today are gravity fed so power outages don't effect the cooling of the reactor which was what failed in Japan.

Now some would assume that I oppose solar energy but that is a false assumption. I endorse it and it does fill certain energy requirements but producing large scale electrical power isn't one of them. People would scream bloody murder if their electric bill suddenly doubled and the overall cost of solar energy produced electricity is easily twice that of coal, oil, hydro, or nuclear power generation.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a_nuclear_power_plant

http://www.aqua-calc.com/convert/power/megawatt-to-british-thermal-unit-per-hour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants#Capital_costs

 

One point I will make again is that none of the information on using solar energy concentrators is new. We had the same Frensel lens collectors in the 1970's. What many kept saying then was that the cost of collecting solar energy would go down in the future. This was a false proposition because the primary cost is materials, not technology, and materials become more expensive as opposed to less expensive over time. There have been no techological breakthroughs related to solar energy thermal collection in the last 100 years. It was too expensive in the 1970's for high temperature applications such as generating electricity and it remains cost prohibitive today.

Now there have been advances in photovoltaic electrical generation but it is even more expensive than thermal electrical production. There are situations where it makes sense such as remote locations were the cost of the power transmission lines is expensive and the electrical needs are minimal.

I will also point out that it is relatively cost effective to use solar thermal heat to heat a home. If the home is normally heated with electricity then the home owner is better off and our overall electrical needs are less.

Solar energy, when used in certain situations reduces our need for coal, oil and even nuclear energy production because it is cost effective. If it is not cost effective then it isn't rational to use it. Personally I love hydroelectic powerplants which is where we get our power here in the NW. Unfortunately all of our rivers that can have dams already do and in fact too many dams were built in the past and many are being removed today because of the adverse effect they have on the ecology and enviroment.

 

We must simply explore and/or advance all possible energy source.
As some make sense in one part of the country, others do elsewhere.
The more of these sources are up and functional, the more independence we achieve. The more sense each makes for whichever part of the country, the more feasible it becomes.
Once everything is up and running, we can adjust, replace, or just eliminate what is necessary.
Just lets not phase out what is working, until we have enough alternatives amply available and affordable for all.

 

In other words, this actually is your grandma's solar energy.

 

Nuclear fusion is considered to be safe nuclear energy.

Using hydrogen as the fuel helium is the by-product. We don't yet have sustainable nuclear fusion even though about 60 years of research has gone into it. Current projections on the advancement of the technology seem to indicate that it will be about 2050 before we'll actually achieve operational nuclear fusion powerplants for electrical generation. It ultimately holds the secret of most energy needs for mankind in the future and investments in it are deemed to be cost effective even today.

In the meantime we have nuclear fission and it can also be safe. Current nuclear powerplant designs have numerous redundant safeguards and are considered to be extremely safe. Even with older designs where failures have occurred nuclear power generation is safer than coal powered nuclear generation. Far more people have died related to coal energy production than related to nuclear energy production.

As was noted no human endeavor is without risk. At a solar generation plant a solar panel could fall on a worker and kill them. Unlikely to be sure but it is far more likely than death caused by a nuclear powerplant built today.

 

That's true. And so technical, the fusion. And cool.

Except we don't need it. We don't need anymore costly research. We know how to boil water with the sun now. [Well, to be fair we've known how to do that for decades now but were "not allowed" to talk about designing power plants from that knowledge...it's a monopoly thing...] We know how to store that heat in molten salt for night generation. We know how to augment a small supply of carbon fuel in case we need it. And we have millions of acres of land to do this on cheaply and effectively.

The Kimberlina demonstration plant went up in seven months. From the overhead shots it looks to be about 20-40 acres for 5 MW of power. With improved fresnel components and tweaking I'm sure this could be raised to at least twice that. And we have MILLIONS of acres in the Southwest to install these quickly, and cheaply. The components for these plants are manufactured in the US right now as we debate this. Their overhead is laughable. It doesn't even register compared to any type of nuclear power, fission or fusion. Safety issues include steam burns and getting bonked on the head if a pipe falls.

I'll take that over Fukushima or Chernobyl any day of the week.

S'cuse me...just looked it up. It's actually only 10 acres for 5MW of power generation. 10 acres! Like I said the design could be improved to 1MW then per acre. Wow. There's a lot of GW's out in the desert there. And don't even get me started on geothermal. Iceland isn't in the desert but they have no shortage of natural steam or heat.

 

One thing that should be noted is that, with localized power sources, regardless of technology, efficiency is increased by lack of a huge grid. The closer to the source of power, the less energy lost through transmission.

The Bloom Box is an on-site power source and the nuclear hot tubs are localized so the grid is smaller. The efficiency gained through a smaller grid means less power has to be generated at the source for service to customers.

 

5 MW/hr is far short of 846 MW/hr that an average nuclear powerplant produces and it only provides that energy during peak solar times (i.e. when the sun is directly overhead). It cannot be increased as that is all of the energy that can be collected. There isn't a magic technological bullet that can produce more energy per acre than the sun actually provides.

As I have previously shown based upon calculations a solar thermal powerplant that is equal to the average nuclear fission powerplant would cost about $9 billion and would at least double the cost of electricity for the customer.

I wish it wasn't so but as an engineer the facts are the fact and they cannot be changed. As I noted where it is cost effective to use solar thermal energy is in low temperature applications such as heating water, heating a home or even heating a swimming pool where either electricity (or natural gas) is commonly used. Every kilowatt of energy that is replaced by solar thermal power in the home is one less kilowatt of electricity that doesn't need to be generated. It is actually a better than one for one swap because electrical energy is lost in the transmission from the power generation station to the home.

Solar energy can be very cost effective in specific applications and can reduce our need for electrical power generation by a significant amount. It just isn't cost effective when we address large scale electrical generation.

 

One fundamental ecological problem. The desert is very sensitive as far as the flora and fauna are concerned. While limite human intrusion doesn't cause harm that isn't true for large scale intrusions into this habitat would completely destroy the ecosystem. It is far more sensitive than any other habitate that I'm aware of as life clings to a very small edge. Do we really want to destroy the deserts and all of the life they contain? The Imperial Valley is an example of what human intrusions cause. Once a very rich desert most of the indiginous plant and wildlife is now gone as the desert was irrigated from the Colorado River. Some does remain but it is only a small reminent of what once thrived there.

And while there is a difference between using Fresnel lens and a mirror the amount of square footage of solar energy does not change. It is still a concentration system to achieve higher temperatures. A Fresnal lens does reduce the requirement to track the sun as accurately as a mirror but they also have their limitations. If they don't track then in the mornings and evenings they collect virtually no energy as the energy is "per square foot of sunlight" and not per square foot of collector. When the sun is at a 45 degree angle to the Fresnel lens it only has 1/2 of the square footage of exposed surface to the sun. Sunlight energy is always measured perpendicular to the where the sun is in the sky. Hold a piece of paper up to the sun and then rotate it and look at the change in the shadow to see a demonstration of this.

Fukushima and Chernobyl were both basically 1960's nuclear powerplant technology. It's now 2011 and 50 years of techological advancements related primarily to safety have been made since then. As I mentioned it's like comparing the Wright brothers airplane to a 747. They both fly but the Wright brothers plane was really a deathtrap.