Vote for the most promising alternative power source

[Atheus]

Hydrogen fuel cell electric cars filled with fusion power. If we don't develop practical fusion then I guess we'll have to use the sun since that's the only thing actually generating energy in this solar system apart from us.

Originally posted by: Train
Geothermal Energy
meh

As a stopgap it's not bad in certain situations - highly volcanic New Zealand generates a great deal of electicity this way. Imagine how much energy is stored under yellowstone park right now... maybe it's best to do something with that before it does something by itself...

 

[theblackbox]

coal for the win. we have a huge coal powered plant downtown, and the epa reported not a single day of unhealthy air. our air was so clean they had to remove the car emission standards by state law.
so i'm all for coal, i've seen it work, and it works.

much more effective then wind farms, which i think are ruining the california countryside.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
The obvious answer is the hardon collider.

That went limp for a while. They're not going to be able to get it back up until the spring.

 

[BrokenVisage]

This thread isn't poll-powered and that's all I care about.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: CRXican

Originally posted by: Pocatello

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I think wind and solar have a big future. I envision the US becoming the new Middle East for alternative power sources, shipping electricity to other countries. We have so much unused land in the midwest that would be perfect for wind, and the SW's desert areas for solar. Rock on!

Fuel cells are high on the radar as well. We'll probably see these replacing batteries in the next 10 years.

How do we ship electricity, put them in barrels?

tubes silly

like the the tubes that carry the Internet

Super conductors.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Howard
Wait a second, how are these exclusive power sources? Electric cars use electricity... which is provided by everything on that list. I don't get it.

Exactly. Power sources there:
- Coal
- Geothermal energy
- Nuclear power
- Ocean
- Flowing water
- Solar
- Wind

Energy transport methods:
- Biodiesel
- Ethanol
- Hybrid vehicles
- Hydrogen vehicles


For energy generation, if we can get cheap, efficient solar cells, then that would be a good way to meet a very sizable portion of our power requirements. It wouldn't even need to take up any land space, because we've already got lots of unused real estate: Rooftops. Think about something like a Walmart Supercenter, how many square feet of rooftop would be on a building of that size. A residence's house could almost certainly provide enough roof area to power itself, and then have a surplus as well.

To pick up the other part of the power demands, I favor nuclear fission + reprocessing in the short term. (Dumbasses don't legalize reprocessing for stupid reasons.) I think that within 100 years, we will have commercial fusion reactors.



Super conductors were mentioned as well. Two things need doing there:
1) Find a substance that will act as a superconductor close to room temperature. They're only up to somewhere over 200K, which is still damn cold; I think that's using some crazy copper ceramic or something.
2) Make it into cheap wires.

I don't even know what all that could mean. Superconductors do weird things with magnets, which might make for new advances in power generation technology. Superconducting lines would make long-distance power transmission much easier, with almost no losses due to resistance heating. I'd imagine that it could even be possible to shrink traces on circuit boards, since there'd be no need to keep them big enough to avoid overheating due to excessive current.

My own judgment is that cheap, easily-manufactured superconductors would probably be as revolutionary as the introduction of the AC power grid.

 

[JasonSix78]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: PlasmaBomb

Originally posted by: jaredpace
Electric Cars, Win Farms, Home solar = Done.

Math Fail.

I don't know, Win Farms sound pretty awesome.

That seriously made me lol. :laugh:

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Howard
Wait a second, how are these exclusive power sources? Electric cars use electricity... which is provided by everything on that list. I don't get it.

Exactly. Power sources there:
- Coal
- Geothermal energy
- Nuclear power
- Ocean
- Flowing water
- Solar
- Wind

Energy transport methods:
- Biodiesel
- Ethanol
- Hybrid vehicles
- Hydrogen vehicles


For energy generation, if we can get cheap, efficient solar cells, then that would be a good way to meet a very sizable portion of our power requirements. It wouldn't even need to take up any land space, because we've already got lots of unused real estate: Rooftops. Think about something like a Walmart Supercenter, how many square feet of rooftop would be on a building of that size. A residence's house could almost certainly provide enough roof area to power itself, and then have a surplus as well.

To pick up the other part of the power demands, I favor nuclear fission + reprocessing in the short term. (Dumbasses don't legalize reprocessing for stupid reasons.) I think that within 100 years, we will have commercial fusion reactors.

I still think it's hilarious this day that a 2000kg automobile is used to transport a 75kg person! :laugh:

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
I still think it's hilarious this day that a 2000kg automobile is used to transport a 75kg person! :laugh:

*sigh*.....yeah.
It is rather silly though. Made worse by the fact that I'm not close to 75kg.
I'm quite sure my car is <1500kg though.

I'd like something considerably smaller and more efficient. Motorcycles kind of scare me; driving a motorcycle on snowy roads sounds even worse. A very small car can at least offer some protection, like a small crumple zone and a roll cage. And climate control so that I don't freeze off various critical body parts.

It sucks too that the US was built based on individual transportation, without much concern for mass transit systems.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Howard
Wait a second, how are these exclusive power sources? Electric cars use electricity... which is provided by everything on that list. I don't get it.

Exactly. Power sources there:
- Coal
- Geothermal energy
- Nuclear power
- Ocean
- Flowing water
- Solar
- Wind

Energy transport methods:
- Biodiesel
- Ethanol
- Hybrid vehicles
- Hydrogen vehicles

You can call biodiesel and ethanol "transport" or "storage" methods if you want, but the energy they're storing is solar energy, so I think they're worth including along with all of the other forms of solar energy (geothermal, ocean, flowing water, and wind... pretty much every alternative fuel except nuclear is a form of solar power). Hydrogen, on the other hand, is storing energy that may be generated using fossil fuels. Same with plug-in hybrids and even regular hybrids (they're just recapturing energy that they expended). It's an important distinction, because any permanent energy technology is going to need to be a form of solar power.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

*sigh*.....yeah.
It is rather silly though. Made worse by the fact that I'm not close to 75kg.
I'm quite sure my car is <1500kg though.

<- 48kg. :Q

What about an A123 powered snowmobile? I'd imagine that would have some serious eyeball-in acceleration! :laugh:

A123's killacycle

 

[Eli]

I don't think we've discovered it yet.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
<- 48kg. :Q

What about an A123 powered snowmobile? I'd imagine that would have some serious eyeball-in acceleration! :laugh:

A123's killacycle

Amazing, someone who weighs less than me. Surprising. :laugh:


One hell of a vehicle there. Nice "roll cage" on the back there, too.
And it's still quieter than a lot of the things that people drive to campus with. I swear some of those things are designed with maximum volume in mind.
But there's one motorcycle on campus that is quiet. I don't know what brand it is, but it's nice.

Originally posted by: Eli
I don't think we've discovered it yet.

Well first we had molecular bond breaking - fire.
Next came breaking apart heavy atoms with nuclear fission.
After that is combining light atoms with fusion.
The next step is....what, fusing quarks to get protons or neutrons?

But for the next BIG stage in energy transportation, that would have to be antimatter reactors. We can already produce antimatter, but it's done in very small quantities, and it's incredibly inefficient. Plus containment is a little bit of a problem; it needs to be magnetically confined within a vacuum, or else you'll get a big blast of high-energy EM radiation and a very big crater, depending on how much antimatter is present.

If a Sony li-ion battery fails, maybe it'll burn your house down.
If a Sony antimatter storage pod fails with a gram of antimatter in it, that would release, if my calculations are correct, an amount of energy equivalent to about 43,000 tons of TNT.
Yeah, there'd be a lawsuit.

 

[zinfamous]

algae.

and cow farts/pig waste.

 

[Rubycon]

That killacycle sounds like a cordless drill when he does a burnout! :laugh:

A car with an electric motor on each wheel and a controller to power them smartly but with options to let the driver apply full power at will - sounds dangerous and fun. (for daredevils!)

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
....
A car with an electric motor on each wheel and a controller to power them smartly but with options to let the driver apply full power at will - sounds dangerous and fun. (for daredevils!)

No need for spinners on your wheels when the whole car can be made to spin.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: theblackbox
coal for the win. we have a huge coal powered plant downtown, and the epa reported not a single day of unhealthy air. our air was so clean they had to remove the car emission standards by state law.
so i'm all for coal, i've seen it work, and it works.

much more effective then wind farms, which i think are ruining the california countryside.

Ha-Ha very funny.

 

[theblackbox]

Originally posted by: feralkid

Originally posted by: theblackbox
coal for the win. we have a huge coal powered plant downtown, and the epa reported not a single day of unhealthy air. our air was so clean they had to remove the car emission standards by state law.
so i'm all for coal, i've seen it work, and it works.

much more effective then wind farms, which i think are ruining the california countryside.

Ha-Ha very funny.

???

i must have missed it?

i'd love for you to let me in on the joke.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: mugs
Algae-based biodiesel, energy from the ocean, solar and wind can all use land (or water) that is otherwise not productive. We won't be robbing Peter to pay Paul like corn-based ethanol

And they're all renewable. I like nuclear too, but it's not renewable. (apparently that is arguable; if it were renewable, I'd add it to my list)

If you're going to say nuclear is non-renewable, then all energy is non-renewable as it all comes from the sun and that is slowly burning its fuel...

 

[Lurknomore]

Fat fuel cell.
We have plenty of it, we get more every year.
Stick a tube from your stomach to the fuel line- Wheeeh!!!

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: mugs
You can call biodiesel and ethanol "transport" or "storage" methods if you want, but the energy they're storing is solar energy, so I think they're worth including along with all of the other forms of solar energy (geothermal, ocean, flowing water, and wind... pretty much every alternative fuel except nuclear is a form of solar power). Hydrogen, on the other hand, is storing energy that may be generated using fossil fuels. Same with plug-in hybrids and even regular hybrids (they're just recapturing energy that they expended). It's an important distinction, because any permanent energy technology is going to need to be a form of solar power.

Biodiesel and ethanol are being used in mobile vehicles, therefore such things need to have some kind of storage system for energy. Biodiesel and ethanol are storing and transporting energy - yes, solar energy - in the form of chemical bonds, which is released through combustion. Refining the raw materials or harvesting plants requires energy too, most likely provided by fossil fuel combustion.
Hydrogen can be produced by algae, which use sunlight for energy, or by electrolysis powered by solar panels.
I don't especially favor hydrogen if it's going to be produced with energy from fossil fuels; it kind of defeats the purpose, and incurs huge efficiency losses from start to finish.

I think the ideal would be to use electric vehicles in combination with efficient solar panels on most rooftops, with nuclear (fission+reprocessing now, fusion later) power picking up the slack.



And if you want to get picky, everything except nuclear power can trace its origins to solar power.
Nuclear power = atomic bond energy put there by the Big Bang.