Solar and Wind advances

[can't sit still]

Mike, the approach now days is to get very high solar concentration with very effecient panels operating at very high temperature.
Here's the manufacturer. http://www.spectrolab.com/prd/terres/cell-main.htm

Here's page 4 of a symposium. http://magnet.consortia.org.il/ConSolar ... cSol4.html

If you want to do mental gymnastics, there's a guy, Hunt, who invented the gravity plane and a super-dooper wind generator. He's working on a wind turbine powered boat. He says that it goes fastest,,,into the wind. I guess it's propellor driven.

The problem with many vertical axis wind generators is that the back side of the blade is pushing into the wind as it rotates around. There are several designs that fold the vane after it does it's pushing job.

[unjonharley]

Bat this around for awhile. Can a battery be built into the earth? Say a large chunck of a desert. May be big enough to attract and store a lighting strike.

[MikeVDS]

It probably can be done, but I'm not sure if it's practical. The problem with earth is that it's "ground" It can take and disperse such a large amount of charge. So much that we usually consider it infinite for calculations. You would need some sort of insulator. It sounds like you're thinking low density static charge storage. Seems like something that would be very hard and inefficient to pull back out. There are ways to build large capicitors, probably better than using playa, that could potentially store charge from a lightning bolt. A problem with capicitors is that they tend to want to discharge all at once. Chemical batteries can have their charge taken much more slowly. I'm not sure how hard it would be to charge a batteries using lightning. Not practical at all but damn cool to have something lightning powered.

[Tiahaar]

Harley, here's your inexpensive blades; http://www.hydrogenappliances.com/bladekits.html

they are nice blades, sharp and strong. also have their permanent magnet alternater on the turbine, it works well but whines much louder than the dc generator that I used to have on there. dollar for dollar though the solar panels are the better deal and give more battery charging as there is much more steady sunshine than constant strong winds on the playa in the years I've been there. that's the rooftop of the Starship Palomino.

[diane o'thirst]

Found this on the Sportsman's Guide:

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=257512

I'm not convinced that the tower mounting kit is worth the $650 price tag, though...

[can't sit still]

Diane, I've found the alt. energy stuff to be way overpriced.
Here's a site that's a good read and also low bucks.
http://www.michaelbradley.info/lowtech/windmotor.html
It also has Barbie and Ken.
I'm actually looking in to doing some manufacturing.
Dan

[can't sit still]

Toolmaker,or anybody else if you were going to build a turbine, which one looks best. This one uses vanes to block the wind from hitting the backside. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3986785.pdf



This one automatically folds the "cup" of the vane so that it only presents an edge going into the wind. http://www.michaelbradley.info/lowtech/windmotor.html

ideas, Dan

[can't sit still]

They say they have a great design. I haven't seen it on the market
http://pesn.com/2005/11/07/9600201_TMA_vertical_axis/

[can't sit still]

This is an interesting concept. The blog thinks it's unworkable.
http://www.fuellessflight.com/windturbine.htm
Dan

[unjonharley]

A lot of clutter.

[can't sit still]

You donnna like clutter. Howsabout wet clutter? http://www.encorecleanenergy.com/default.asp?c=2250

[can't sit still]

This looks like it might make a difference. http://www.enn.com/energy/article/24430
Investors are looking for money to launch geothermal in several places. Geo is good but it adds heat to the bio-sphere. NASA has clearly confirmed global warming,,, mostly from the sun. As things get warmer, we're going to give lots of consideration to wind and solar to avoid cooking ourselves that much faster from GEO.
Dan

[mdmf007]

There are so many technologies available it seems asinin to suck coal and oil out of the earth to burn. Only reason we do is that it is still dirt cheap to suck coal, and oil out of the earth.

Being a consumer driven society where price dominates just abou everything we do I dont see that changing. At 3-7 cents a KWHR for coal - wholesale it cant get any cheaper.

The world demand for electricity can be met by a combination of solar, geothermal, wind, hydro, tidal, etc.

I am glad to see huge projects go up that are green. It all comes down to cost. Make it viable for private industry and it gets done quickly. So when elected President green power will be subsidized by my regime until it is viable enough to stand on its own. Id make oil a niche fuel used by the minority and not the masses.

later

[Dork]

I wonder if something like this could be functional on a small scale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

I'm thinking 80-200 feet diameter base with plastic sheeting instead of glass. It's really intriguing based purely on the fact that it's super simple, with no moving parts other than the turbine, which is inside the structure so it's protected from the elements. Once it's build it would cost very little to maintain. If an 80 foot version were functional I could plop one in my back yard and grow vegetables in it in the winter.

The calculations are beyond me and I couldn't find any convenient formulas.

[Box Burner]

So plop one in your back yard anyway it would be a worthwhile experiment and as you said you could grow vegetables in it anyway. And with that you have hit the nail on the head. Using the greenhouse for a secondary purpose such as growing vegetables in the winter increases the productivity of the structure.

[can't sit still]

007, your correct of course. The US destroys the dollar,,,, OPEC raises prices,,,,alternatives become cost efective. If OPEC doesn't raise prices, they eat shit from the worthless dollar. The per-capita income in Saudi Arabia has gone down from $<20> to $ <7>
So, as alternative energy becomes more competitive, the increase in production capacity brings the price down even more.
China is really gobbling up oil. Supposedly, there will be a 50 million barrel a day shortfall in 2 years. It will become a sellers market. Think that might spike the market price?????
The connundrum for GOV is; they don't want industry to crash for the lack of cheap power, but as more people go to small wind and solar, GOV loses taxes and central control of power distribution.
Worldwide Oil exports are reliably projected to drop dramatically shortly after 2010. Solar and wind will look cheap.
P.S. I wrote twenty thousand and seven thousand in numbers,,,, It printed 20 and 7. I changed it to say twenty K and seven K. It still wouldn't change it,,,wierd
Dan

[Dork]

So plop one in your back yard anyway it would be a worthwhile experiment and as you said you could grow vegetables in it anyway. And with that you have hit the nail on the head. Using the greenhouse for a secondary purpose such as growing vegetables in the winter increases the productivity of the structure.

Believe me, I'm tempted! Solar panels are still too expensive and I don't get wind consistently enough to justify a wind turbine, but I do have an 85'x100' empty spot and clear skies most of the year. I'd like to be able to crunch some numbers first, though. If it's not going to actually generate anything I'll just plop some drought-resistant trees back there like I have been planning.

[Box Burner]

If all you did was get enough power for some of your lights it would decrease your energy bill. I expect that it may take a few tries before you get the best configuration.

[theCryptofishist]

There's a whole lot that can be done with conservation and passive solar building.

[stargeezer]

So plop one in your back yard anyway it would be a worthwhile experiment and as you said you could grow vegetables in it anyway. And with that you have hit the nail on the head. Using the greenhouse for a secondary purpose such as growing vegetables in the winter increases the productivity of the structure.

Believe me, I'm tempted! Solar panels are still too expensive and I don't get wind consistently enough to justify a wind turbine, but I do have an 85'x100' empty spot and clear skies most of the year. I'd like to be able to crunch some numbers first, though. If it's not going to actually generate anything I'll just plop some drought-resistant trees back there like I have been planning.

Whether it is practical or not depends a lot on your expectations. How much power would you like to generate, or what size would you prefer to build? It will take me a few days, but if you give me a desired goal, I will target that in the calculations. I have seen this before, but am personally more interested in other forms of alternative energy, but with the weather changing for the winter, it might be an interesting exercise just to see what is possible.

[Dork]

Whether it is practical or not depends a lot on your expectations. How much power would you like to generate, or what size would you prefer to build? It will take me a few days, but if you give me a desired goal, I will target that in the calculations. I have seen this before, but am personally more interested in other forms of alternative energy, but with the weather changing for the winter, it might be an interesting exercise just to see what is possible.

I'm looking mostly at practical concerns:
Needs to fit in 80'x80' square including guy wires
Tower should be less that 100' tall or so
Needs to be possible to build using cheap and/or salvage materials - plastic sheeting or maybe glass panels from old windows.

If 80' is too small but 200' is workable, it could be a good experiment for someone else.

Not sure about desired power, I'd have to crunch the numbers. I'm really just wondering about orders of magnitude here - would I be able to generate enough updraft to turn a turbine at all? If so, are we talking 10, 100, 1000 watts? All information I find about it talks about the enormous one they're trying to build in Australia. Nothing about building small.

[mdmf007]

Doesnt sound like much but 100 feet is a huge tower to build. Thats ten stories. I saw a formula somewhere that said 2.5:1 height:base was required for a tower.

80 feet across = 200 feet high. thats quite a build. Output formula escapes me, but Ill see if i can find the link again.

sounds like fun - good luck

[stargeezer]

I don't think this is pratical for a backyard operation. Here are my assumptions, and results:

Tower diameter = 50 feet
Temperature rise = 100 deg F
Air velocity = 10 ft/sec

The way that I calculated the output, the height of the tower is not required but the height must be sufficient to sustain the temperature rise and air velocity. I did this as a first cut just to see what to expect and then did not proceed farther when I saw the result.

Also assuming about a 50% efficiency which is pretty standard for electrical generation, this tower would produce a whopping 200 watts!! With that little ouput, I doubt anyone would be interested in building one of these things, and I lost interest in determining the height requirement real quick. Unless I am missing something, the only way to make this worthwhile is to make it REAL BIG!!!

As a secondary note, there was talk about using this as a green-house to make it multipurpose. There are two obvious problems to start, probably more if I were to think about it for a while. First, the temperature needed to generate power would not be conducive to any plants that I am aware of. Also, power generation requires the air inside the tower to be lighter than the air outside, but plants would require moisture and the added humidity makes the air heavier which would require an even larger temperature gain.

Just for comparison purposes, a human on an exercise cycle that is configured to generate power can produce about 175 watts.

If anyone is still interested, all I can say is good luck.

[unjonharley]

this is the same principle i used to draw hot air off the van on the playa..

I used black stove pipe surrounded with a clear plastic.. the plastic held the heat to the stove pipe.. the heat entered through the pipe that was open to the van at the top of the window.. the hotter air go's up drawing air from the van.. keep the van closed so only the expanded/hot air escapes.. heat is it's own one way valve

i have plans to put one of these rigs on my new shop this summer.. or my living room.. it's glass on three sides..

the roof design would be a mirrored box of down spout covered with double glass..

[stargeezer]

Yes, this is great to generate air flow, and in fact this is the basicly the same way household attics are vented. The question was could it generate electricity. The thermal convection is a natural cooling system, but there is very little energy stored in the flowing air itself. While I expected the numbers to be small, for a structure of that size I did expect something significantly larger and was both surprised and disappointed.

[cowboyangel]

so when the sun farts that's a solar wind?

[can't sit still]

Yep, the sun farts!! http://rense.com/general79/elec.htm
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/CPG.html
http://www.mikamar.biz/predictions.htm
This is what Velicovscy wrote about in the '30s "Worlds in Collision" The part that I find interesting is that our magnetosphere reaches just short of Mars. This is true for the other planets that have a magnetosphere. It stops just short of the adjoining planet.
The theory goes that each planet has it's own charge. If the magnetosphere elongates enough to touch the adjoining planet, there is an equalisation of charges. Lightning shoots from 1 planet to another. If Sol farts hard enough, it could make the magnetosphere elongate to where it discharges to Mars. That would make quite a light show.

[diane o'thirst]

Got this off Digg.com...

SOLAR POWER FOR 30¢/WATT

Their mission: to deliver cost-efficient solar electricity. The Nanosolar company was founded in 2002 and is working to build the world’s largest solar cell factory in California and the world’s largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.

These coatings are as thin as a layer of paint and can transfer sunlight to power at amazing efficiency. Although the underlying technology has been around for years, Nanosolar has created the actual technology to manufacture and mass produce the solar sheets. The Nanosolar plant in San Jose, once in full production in 2008, will be capable of producing 430 megawatts per year. This is more than the combined total of every other solar manufacturer in the U.S.

Imagine a solar array the size of your car's roof, powering your house for less than the cost of coal. And better yet — China ain't involved. Go here for the whole article:

http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/nanos ... than-coal/

[can't sit still]

Diane, the article is great news. When I first read it, the thing that occurred to me is that we need to sell them to China. China is bringing online 3-4 coal plants a week. Their soot, heavy metal and CO2 is spread worldwide. I don't believe that they use stack scrubbers so I imagine that they produce electricity very cheaply. 1/4 of the smog in LA is from China.
We use a lot of natural gas and oil,,, which is much cleaner. Cheap power is great but if you want to get the most "green" effect, we should send the cells to China.

[mdmf007]

Chinas thirst for the western lifestyle is going to doom the planet. They are in the unique position to build an infrastructure that can be a model of efficiency and be green at the same time.

Coal - is ancient technology, dirt cheap and simple to convert to power. Unfortunately the US loses on average 16 coal miners a year to injury. China averages 19 A DAY. Thats a great reason in itself to get away from coal. Chinas coal is also filthy - full of sulphur, mercury, lead... with the prevailing winds bringing the ash / and smoke east it falls into the north pacific polluting fish, and north america

Me - id like to see solar plants on a mega scale, nuclear plants, tidal energy, wind turbines, and a continents sized grid that can move power from where it isnt needed to where it is.

All this costs money - China is flush in currency and can do it IMHO.

when I am made chancellor of the global empire I will see it done.