the next major power source?

[Falcon2k]

Using the theory that buttered toast always falls buttered side down and cats always land on their feet, you superglue a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat, buttered side up and drop the thing, it should spin faster and faster at an expodential rate until it reaches a appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

Seriously, in the Times magazine, i read about this electricity generator that works with wave power. They put a huge frame with fins all over it to catch the ocean's currents and put it on the bottom of the sea floor. Run an electrical current through the steel frame to stop corrosion and there you have it, extremely cheap electricity.

 

[FrankSchwab]

Thanks for the review, Andy. I was using numbers that I'd picked up from a few articles over the last few months, but hadn't actually done any engineering to figure out "real" numbers. I'm perfectly willing to believe it'll cost a lot more than my numbers suggest, and will generate half as much power. Reality tends to intrude that way on rosy initial projections.

 

[Fencer128]

Originally posted by: FrankSchwab
Thanks for the review, Andy. I was using numbers that I'd picked up from a few articles over the last few months, but hadn't actually done any engineering to figure out "real" numbers. I'm perfectly willing to believe it'll cost a lot more than my numbers suggest, and will generate half as much power. Reality tends to intrude that way on rosy initial projections.

No problem - I just didn't want you paying a lot of money out for something that wasn't going to perform to your expectations.

Good luck,

Andy

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: FrankSchwab
As others have noted, the problem is not generation, it's storage.

7.5KW of solar cells today cost about $12000, and cover about 35 m^2 of area. Living in sunny Phoenix, AZ, it makes great financial sense to shingle my roof with Si rather than normal roofing materials. Half of my roof would be about 120 m^2, meaning I should be able to generate 25kw * 10 hrs = 250 KW-Hrs of electricity a day, at a capital cost of about $35000 (at today's costs). Hell, I could sell half that back to the Electric company, and probably pay back my costs in a few years! The finances go out the window when you start talking banks of batteries to store the daily excess for use at night, however.

The current electrical distribution is simply ridiculous - over 75% of my electrical bill is associated with the cost of getting electricity to my house, not the actual cost of generating the electricity. Wires, lines, substations, etc., all cost money, and cost more than the substance they are transporting. To solve California's electrical woes, a bunch of Natural Gas fired power plants have sprung up in the Arizona desert near the California border. Natural gas is imported from Texas as well as California, transported to Arizona, where it is burned, converted to Electricity, and transported back into California, and can still be sold for a profit. There's just something wrong there.

If our president wanted to leave a lasting legacy (well, ok, how about a Positive lasting legacy), I would love to see him shed his Big Oil background. JFK galvanized the nation to put a man on the moon by giving us a clear, understandable goal, a BIG goal, and by pouring money into the goal. Bush could do the same with Energy - by declaring a goal of making the Middle East irrelevant, by declaring a goal of making the US (and by extension, the world) independent of reliance on fossil fuel deposits, by declaring a goal of cleaning up our air, and by declaring a goal of enabling individuals as well as the nation to be energy independent.

Decide on a form of energy. Hydrogen is great, but difficult to store (I shiver at all those proposals to have vehicles with super-pressurized hydrogen tanks on board). So, store it in a form that we already know how to handle - liquid. Specifically, as Methanol (or Ethanol). We already have a nationwide distribution network for the volatile, hazardous, poisonous liquid called "gasoline", so shipping, storing, pumping methanol into vehicles is a well-understood, SOLVED problem.

Let the market decide how Methanol powered vehicles are gonna be driven - fuel cell, internal comustion, whatever you've got. A fuel cell powered by Methanol is a bit more complex than one powered by pure Hydrogen, but the technology is well understood. For example, NEC and Toshiba are using Methanol for their tiny fuel cells.

Fund the technologies necessary to let me, as a homeowner, generate my own methanol. Solar cells running an electrolytic cell that splits H20 and combines it with a source of Carbon (CO2 is about 0.035% of atmospheric gases, so you might not be able to extract CO2 from the air. Perhaps from my compost heap?) and drips the result into a home storage tank. I can fill my car, run my furnace, run a fuel cell or generator for house electricity. I can be energy-independent, and there is one less vital national infrastructure whose protection requires stripping more rights from the populace.

This won't work in all areas of the county; those of you in the not-so-sunny northwest might be out of luck. The advantage of this, however, is that your lives don't change much - rather than filling up at home like I might be able to do, you would fill up with Methanol at the local gas station. The electrical grid would still be intact, but now there would be a strong market incentive to keep prices down (prices go up, people buy fuel cells/generators to run their homes), an incentive that simply doesn't exist at the moment.

I think the argument is compelling that, at least for the far future, solar power with an intermediate storage step (batteries, chemical storage, mechanical storage (e.g. pumping water uphill)) is probably the least environmentally damaging power source. Centralized political power-blocks (for example, energy companies) may force a different path - for example, nuclear power generation - because it keeps them in business.

JMHO.

/frank

Webthug's idea about pumping water uphill to be let out for use in hydroelectric generators is interesting; I just wonder about its efficiency. I suppose a scientist with a good computer and some accurate data concerning pumping of water, and hydroelectric dam and windmill efficiency could figure this out better.

The hydrogen cars - from what I've learned, they should be SAFER than gasoline cars. The hydrogen fuel tanks can withstand impacts and fires better than gasoline tanks. I think what I saw said that the hydrogen tanks could survive an impact, and then a stay in a 2000 degree fire without bursting; a gasoline tank probably wouldn't make it through the impact, much less the fire.


I do dislike it as much as many others here though when businesses will not realize that they need to either step aside, or else evolve, to suit the good of the country, and possibly the world. We're consuming the planet, turning raw resources into unusable products, or even dangerous ones. It can not continue indefinitely. We get sunlight every day, which fuels winds, and can also provide us with geothermal energy. There's gravity that's not going away anytime soon, not only from Earth, but also from the Moon (tides). There's just not enough money being put into research for these though - too much goes to the politicians' pockets, and into advertising campaigns, and into new methods of getting more fossil fuels faster, out of the planet.
Ok, I'll stop now, before my writing/ranting gets out of my control.

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: FrankSchwab
As others have noted, the problem is not generation, it's storage.

7.5KW of solar cells today cost about $12000, and cover about 35 m^2 of area. Living in sunny Phoenix, AZ, it makes great financial sense to shingle my roof with Si rather than normal roofing materials. Half of my roof would be about 120 m^2, meaning I should be able to generate 25kw * 10 hrs = 250 KW-Hrs of electricity a day, at a capital cost of about $35000 (at today's costs). Hell, I could sell half that back to the Electric company, and probably pay back my costs in a few years! The finances go out the window when you start talking banks of batteries to store the daily excess for use at night, however.

The current electrical distribution is simply ridiculous - over 75% of my electrical bill is associated with the cost of getting electricity to my house, not the actual cost of generating the electricity. Wires, lines, substations, etc., all cost money, and cost more than the substance they are transporting. To solve California's electrical woes, a bunch of Natural Gas fired power plants have sprung up in the Arizona desert near the California border. Natural gas is imported from Texas as well as California, transported to Arizona, where it is burned, converted to Electricity, and transported back into California, and can still be sold for a profit. There's just something wrong there.

If our president wanted to leave a lasting legacy (well, ok, how about a Positive lasting legacy), I would love to see him shed his Big Oil background. JFK galvanized the nation to put a man on the moon by giving us a clear, understandable goal, a BIG goal, and by pouring money into the goal. Bush could do the same with Energy - by declaring a goal of making the Middle East irrelevant, by declaring a goal of making the US (and by extension, the world) independent of reliance on fossil fuel deposits, by declaring a goal of cleaning up our air, and by declaring a goal of enabling individuals as well as the nation to be energy independent.

Decide on a form of energy. Hydrogen is great, but difficult to store (I shiver at all those proposals to have vehicles with super-pressurized hydrogen tanks on board). So, store it in a form that we already know how to handle - liquid. Specifically, as Methanol (or Ethanol). We already have a nationwide distribution network for the volatile, hazardous, poisonous liquid called "gasoline", so shipping, storing, pumping methanol into vehicles is a well-understood, SOLVED problem.

Let the market decide how Methanol powered vehicles are gonna be driven - fuel cell, internal comustion, whatever you've got. A fuel cell powered by Methanol is a bit more complex than one powered by pure Hydrogen, but the technology is well understood. For example, NEC and Toshiba are using Methanol for their tiny fuel cells.

Fund the technologies necessary to let me, as a homeowner, generate my own methanol. Solar cells running an electrolytic cell that splits H20 and combines it with a source of Carbon (CO2 is about 0.035% of atmospheric gases, so you might not be able to extract CO2 from the air. Perhaps from my compost heap?) and drips the result into a home storage tank. I can fill my car, run my furnace, run a fuel cell or generator for house electricity. I can be energy-independent, and there is one less vital national infrastructure whose protection requires stripping more rights from the populace.

This won't work in all areas of the county; those of you in the not-so-sunny northwest might be out of luck. The advantage of this, however, is that your lives don't change much - rather than filling up at home like I might be able to do, you would fill up with Methanol at the local gas station. The electrical grid would still be intact, but now there would be a strong market incentive to keep prices down (prices go up, people buy fuel cells/generators to run their homes), an incentive that simply doesn't exist at the moment.

I think the argument is compelling that, at least for the far future, solar power with an intermediate storage step (batteries, chemical storage, mechanical storage (e.g. pumping water uphill)) is probably the least environmentally damaging power source. Centralized political power-blocks (for example, energy companies) may force a different path - for example, nuclear power generation - because it keeps them in business.

JMHO.

/frank

Actually, this is an awesome idea. As far as us folks in the northwest, we could, like you said, have the methonal delivered like oil is now. I would be all over something like this.

 

[dkozloski]

The University of Alaska has been doing research on the tremendous difference in ground potential between points on the North American landmass during periods of sunspot activity. This difference in potential is sufficient to take down the power grids in the northern US and Canada if not accounted for in design. The hope is that this potential difference is of such a nature that it can be tamed and used as a source of power rather than a nuisance.

 

[Mark R]

Webthug's idea about pumping water uphill to be let out for use in hydroelectric generators is interesting; I just wonder about its efficiency.

Pumped storage electricity is not a new idea - it has been around for decades.

The example closest to home for me, is the Dinorwig plant in Wales. It was built between 2 natural lakes in the mountains.

The working volume of water is 7 million m^3, and the plant is capable of storing about 9 GWh of energy. It's main use is for demand management - for dealing with short-term (or unexpected) surges in demand. Unlike a coal or nuclear station, which can take hours or days to ramp up their ouptut, the Dinorwig plant can go from 0 to 1300 MW in just over 10 seconds. Efficiency for the plant is supposed to be between 70 and 80%, which is good. However, when operating costs are taken into account, the electricity it provides carries a heavy price premium over bulk generation.

 

[zephyrprime]

Assuming you get the best sun levels, I'd estmate that if you used 120m^2 and crystalline silicon you'd *only* generate ~120 kWh per day before any electrical losses - no way on earth you're ever going to get near to 250 kWh per day. Just a bit of trivia - ~40000 kWh per year (which is what you'd generate at peak efficiency with 10 hours sunshine per day using your numbers) is 13x the average household electrical consumption in the UK! You could power over 13 UK houses off yours!

There's something wrong with Frank's numbers. I checked my electrical bill and I'm using only 13KWh/day here in minnesota. Unless Franks's extremely rich and has a huge house, his numbers must to totally wrong. I found on the web that the average in nother california is 17.2kwh/day.

And don't forget, fixed solar panels also have to contend with the fact that the sun moves around. So the average output during daylight is no more than ~0.62 of max output.

 

[Cadaver]

My thoughts-

Alternative power sources (hydroelectric, wind, solar) will become, I think, a bit more common than today. But for the forseeable future I think we're stuck with fosil fuels and nuclear (fission) power.

As for batteries and portable power, I believe fuel cell technology will replace conventional chemical batteries within the next 15-20 years.

 

[JediJeb]

The hydrogen cars - from what I've learned, they should be SAFER than gasoline cars. The hydrogen fuel tanks can withstand impacts and fires better than gasoline tanks. I think what I saw said that the hydrogen tanks could survive an impact, and then a stay in a 2000 degree fire without bursting; a gasoline tank probably wouldn't make it through the impact, much less the fire.

One good thing here would be that if the Hydrogen tanks wouldn't burst and all cars were powered by Hydrogen then there shouldn't be any fires during a collision. I also had one of my college Chemistry professors point out that since Hydrogen is lighter than air any fire would end up above the vehicle doing less damage than that of a gasoline fire which tends to stay on the ground and burn under the car.

One question I have on the cold fusion mentioned much earlier, from my understanding about the only thing you get from cold fusion is Helium, if there is no heat produced then there is no energy produced. Unless the Helium is used to fill baloons and lift a string turning a generator what good is it as a power source. As I am a Chemist and not a Physicist I Haven't studied this much and wonder if anyone can shed a little light on it for me.

 

[Webthug]

Originally posted by: JediJeb

The hydrogen cars - from what I've learned, they should be SAFER than gasoline cars. The hydrogen fuel tanks can withstand impacts and fires better than gasoline tanks. I think what I saw said that the hydrogen tanks could survive an impact, and then a stay in a 2000 degree fire without bursting; a gasoline tank probably wouldn't make it through the impact, much less the fire.

One good thing here would be that if the Hydrogen tanks wouldn't burst and all cars were powered by Hydrogen then there shouldn't be any fires during a collision. I also had one of my college Chemistry professors point out that since Hydrogen is lighter than air any fire would end up above the vehicle doing less damage than that of a gasoline fire which tends to stay on the ground and burn under the car.

One question I have on the cold fusion mentioned much earlier, from my understanding about the only thing you get from cold fusion is Helium, if there is no heat produced then there is no energy produced. Unless the Helium is used to fill baloons and lift a string turning a generator what good is it as a power source. As I am a Chemist and not a Physicist I Haven't studied this much and wonder if anyone can shed a little light on it for me.

I'd agree with JediJeb on this one. Despite the awfull reputation given to Hydrogen gas afte he Hindenburg accident, any gas leak would quickly rise up and dicipate into the atmosphere. Secondly as it's name implise COLD fussion, thus it can not give out energy otherwise wt would be called HOT fussion.

 

[Shalmanese]

"cold" fusion refers to the fact that they apparently managed to get fusion happening at room temperatures rather than many millions of degrees. the name cold does not mean it cannot give out energy

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I dunno, the hydrogen fuel cells definatly have merit, we need only find a way to cheaply produce and/or distribute hydrogen, fuel cells are getting smaller and more powerful ever few months. If there were only some kind of inexpensive chemical catalyst that didn't polute and could seperate hydrogen from water, problem solved! I think in the near future we will slowly see fission, and "green" forms of energy overtake coal and lignite power plants, but if the new fusion reactor being built works(without blowing us too pieces) it could be a revolution in power production.

 

[Indolent]

I've always wondered why geothermal wasn't very popular... Is it too expensive for the amount of electricity it creates?

 

[Fencer128]

Originally posted by: Indolent
I've always wondered why geothermal wasn't very popular... Is it too expensive for the amount of electricity it creates?

Hi,

I think it has to do with thermal gradients - some places give you a lrger change in temp. per km depth than others - which makes some places more economically viable to exploit.

Here is a nice little article to help explain.

Cheers,

Andy

 

[Shalmanese]

Geothermal only works in very few places around the world and has a couple of inherent problems as well.

1. You need a large temperature gradient
2. You need a large supply of water (possibly fresh, Im not sure)
3. The water that comes back up is full of minerals which will accumulate on your equipment if you dont prevent it.
4. The environmental effects of geothermal are still sketchy, possible increase in earthquakes/volcanism etc.

 

[themelon]

I dont see how the water used in geothermal comes back up full of minerals. They are closed loop systems that either run in a vertical well or a horizontal trench. The water used in the loop is treated similar to how the water that cools your car engine is treated. Not with the same chemicals, but it is treated. I believe the purpose is to keep anything from growing in the line and to enhance the thermal load the water carries.

As far as being a danger to the ground, not hardly. In essence all we are doing is taking the energy and directing it in a way that is more efficent. The heat/cool is going to eventually escape from the ground anyways, why not use it to our advantage? There is so much thermal capacitance in the first 10-15 feet of earth that I don't think we can make a dent in it in a lifetime.

I personally think a hybrid system that utilizes many different sources is ideal for the home. Use Geothermal to do the bulk of your climate control, solar and wind to generate as much current as you can and store the excess in a vanadium redox flow battery. For emergency purposes have a 10-15 KW natural gas generator with a large fuel storage tank on site(and of course once there is a better viable emergency source than this, replace it with that. Once the battery is full, sell the excess back onto the grid. I believe it is federal law that the power company has to buy your excess at the same rate you buy from them for.

Probibilyby far the most important piece of the pie is to become more conservative with what we use.

Just my 2 un-informed cents.

Jason

 

[no0b]

The last major power source that I can think of would be anti matter. But due to the cost of production and the storage of anti matter I will never see it happen in my lifetime nor will my children or even my children's children. According to some fermilab guys 1 cubic centimeter of antimatter is needed to launch the shuttle into orbit but for the past 21 years (and billions of dollars later) fermi has only produced a CC. Also all their antimatter has been used because there is no feasible way to store that much antimatter(IE if they tried or were even able to if there was an accident with a CC of antimatter there would be a huge crater where fermi used to be).

IMO nuclear technology is actualy very promising its just been givin a bad rap. The new nuclear reactors (I think they were called bead reactors) seem considerably safer.

 

[RossGr]

Seems to me that there cannot be a single blanket solution. Each region has unique energy sources, whether it be wind, solar, tidal or geothermal all are potential sources of energy and should be utilized. I favor a distributed power grid with more smaller sources rather then a smaller number of huge plants. Of course this has problems of its own but seems like it would be more stable in the long run.

Here is a link to a pitch for Hydrogen power.

aka Integral

 

[Fencer128]

Originally posted by: RossGr
Seems to me that there cannot be a single blanket solution. Each region has unique energy sources, whether it be wind, solar, tidal or geothermal all are potential sources of energy and should be utilized. I favor a distributed power grid with more smaller sources rather then a smaller number of huge plants. Of course this has problems of its own but seems like it would be more stable in the long run.

Here is a link to a pitch for Hydrogen power.

aka Integral

My philosophy also. Distributed grid networked power (in the long run I'm thinking most people self sufficient on solar at home) with smaller (compared to now) regional power stations - wave, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal. This builds in redeundancy and removes energy transport costs.

Cheers,

Andy

 

[Shalmanese]

Geothermal doesnt quite work like that. Basically, your pumping a lot of water into a crack in the ground and you hope that some steam is going to come up another crack. Typically, up to 66% of the water is lost into the ground and the rest is supersaturated in various minerals such as calcium. If you've ever lived in an area with hard water, you know what lime does to the pipes. This is like that only 100 times worse. And apart from that, the water that goes in the ground can possibly lubricate the tectonic plates leading to more frequent earthquakes. Given that most good geothermal spots are on fault lines, the environmental aspects are still a bit sketchy.

As for anti-matter, its an energy storage mechanism, not ana energy generator. Unless we can find raw anti-matter somewhere in space, the amount of energy used to create it is the same as what we get out of it.

 

[themelon]

I do believe we are both right. There are large scale generation plants that operate in the way that you describe, but the smaller commercial and household "on-site" units do not. They are called geothermal heat pumps and operate on the closed loop system that I described.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geoheatpumps.html

There are two reasons why I would not mention them. First, I actually had no idea that they were doing it that way and second now that I do know I don't feel that the method has any future due to the envronmental issues that you mention. I do however feel that the local distributed method that I speak of has a future due to it's relativily low impact. Essentially the harm is less than digging a well. You scar the earth in the same way but you take no water out, only a relativly small amount of energy.

Originally posted by: Shalmanese
Geothermal doesnt quite work like that. Basically, your pumping a lot of water into a crack in the ground and you hope that some steam is going to come up another crack. Typically, up to 66% of the water is lost into the ground and the rest is supersaturated in various minerals such as calcium. If you've ever lived in an area with hard water, you know what lime does to the pipes. This is like that only 100 times worse. And apart from that, the water that goes in the ground can possibly lubricate the tectonic plates leading to more frequent earthquakes. Given that most good geothermal spots are on fault lines, the environmental aspects are still a bit sketchy.

As for anti-matter, its an energy storage mechanism, not ana energy generator. Unless we can find raw anti-matter somewhere in space, the amount of energy used to create it is the same as what we get out of it.

 

[Finnkc]

Sun, Wind, and Water.

Nuclear is great but still means everyone is dependent on it. Gas blows, Coal Blows.

Solar is great and very customizable. Wind is the same sort of thing. Water (hydro electric) has many great mediums in which power can be generated. Dams and Wave runners produce electricity via turbines however they can be pricey to maintain.

So I would have to say Solar and Wind together would be the next energy source.

Hydrogen is also a possibility..


Cold Fusion is hype.

 

[Shalmanese]

How much of a thermal gradient can you get out of a well? I imagine the efficiencies would be pretty horrible.

 

[f95toli]

Around where I live many people (including some smaller cities) use geothermal energy to heat up their houses, it is not used for producing electricity at all but still saves a LOT of energy and it is cheap. If you have a house the cost of digging the well and installing the equipment is roughly the same as the price for 5-10 years of direct electrical heating.