Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Know any place thats SUNNY AND HOT?
Strap a Sterling Engine to a collector dish and you get:
"The Stirling engine makes solar power so much more efficiently than photovoltaic solar cells can," said Robert Liden, chief administrative officer at Stirling Energy Systems Inc. (Phoenix). "That's because the Stirling solar dish directly converts solar heat into mechanical energy, which turns an ac electrical generator." The bottom line, he said, "is that large farms of Stirling solar dishes — say, 20,000-dish farms — could deliver cheap solar electricity that rivals what we pay for electricity today."Eventually, according to DOE estimates, an 11-square-mile farm of Stirling solar dishes could generate as much electricity as the Hoover Dam, and a 100 x 100-mile farm could supply all the daytime needs for electricity in the United States. By storing the energy in hydrogen fuel cells during the day, Stirling solar-dish farms could supply U.S. electrical-energy needs at night too, as well as enough juice for future fuel-cell-powered automobiles, the DOE believes.
Power today costs from about 3 cents to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the customer's location and the time of day. The average is 6.6 cents/kW-hr for the industrial sector in 2004, according to DOE. In contrast, the Stirling solar-powered substations operate only during peak hours (daytime) but at potentially the same or less than the peak rates paid today — or "about 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour during peak periods," said Liden of Stirling Energy Systems.
A Sound Way to Turn Heat into Electricity
"We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. “It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat."
In the above photo, Symko demonstrates how heat can be converted into sound by using a blowtorch to heat a metallic screen inside a plastic tube, which then produces a loud tone, similar to when air is blown into a flute. Symko and his students are developing much smaller devices that not only convert heat to sound, but then use the sound to generate electricity.
Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university's hot-water-generating plant.
Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. The heat engines also could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat as their electronics grow more complex. And Symko foresees using the devices to generate electricity from heat that now is released from nuclear
power plant cooling towers.
reposted from : The Energy BlogMonday, June 11, 2007
Roe V Wade for the Environment?
Supreme Court Ruling FOR a Mass. vs. The Crooney stacked EPA
EPA’s steadfast refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions presents a risk of harm to Massachusetts that is both“actual” and “imminent,”
EPA’s steadfast refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions presents a risk of harm to Massachusetts that is both“actual” and “imminent,”
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Carbon Cost = Instant Price relevancy for Alt.Techs
I need to find avenues into the political/regulation structures
Peak Oil Blog Post
"'Any reasonable form of cost for carbon dioxide would immediately make a whole suite of alternative generating technologies competitive to our very cost-effective fossil fuels,' the Government's adviser on the nuclear industry, Ziggy Switkowski, said in an interview this week. 'And so nuclear would become more competitive, wind, solar, eventually geothermal … and then the market will decide where the investment funds should flow,' he said.
'The higher the price of carbon, the larger the 'swing' towards no or low-carbon intensity sources of electricity generation and, more importantly, away from coal-fired generation,' says CommSec utilities analyst, Paul Johnston. ..."
Peak Oil Blog Post
"'Any reasonable form of cost for carbon dioxide would immediately make a whole suite of alternative generating technologies competitive to our very cost-effective fossil fuels,' the Government's adviser on the nuclear industry, Ziggy Switkowski, said in an interview this week. 'And so nuclear would become more competitive, wind, solar, eventually geothermal … and then the market will decide where the investment funds should flow,' he said.
'The higher the price of carbon, the larger the 'swing' towards no or low-carbon intensity sources of electricity generation and, more importantly, away from coal-fired generation,' says CommSec utilities analyst, Paul Johnston. ..."
Like I was saying.
It's all going to be about real-world economics.
Alt. energy price comes down by leaps and bounds, demand goes through the roof.
The real crux point will come as production costs and efficencies for these actually out-strip the cost-effectiveness of coal, while demand stays high because of increasing costs of getting power from the grid, public awareness and perceptions that global warming is real, and the beautiful fact that consumption is NOT going to see a sizeable or even significant decrease. In fact, my bet is that it will continue to grow steaduly and quickly for the forsee-able future. Gotta make it cleaner! And there's so many options!
::
Customers to weigh bills against alternatives
from Alternative Energy News
'And as utility rates end up being whatever they are, they'll make some forms of technology more available.'
As power bills rose across the state this year, southern Illinois solar-panel technician Aur Beck fielded more calls than usual from people wanting to generate their own electricity at home. via Quad-City Times"
Alt. energy price comes down by leaps and bounds, demand goes through the roof.
The real crux point will come as production costs and efficencies for these actually out-strip the cost-effectiveness of coal, while demand stays high because of increasing costs of getting power from the grid, public awareness and perceptions that global warming is real, and the beautiful fact that consumption is NOT going to see a sizeable or even significant decrease. In fact, my bet is that it will continue to grow steaduly and quickly for the forsee-able future. Gotta make it cleaner! And there's so many options!
::
Customers to weigh bills against alternatives
from Alternative Energy News
'And as utility rates end up being whatever they are, they'll make some forms of technology more available.'
As power bills rose across the state this year, southern Illinois solar-panel technician Aur Beck fielded more calls than usual from people wanting to generate their own electricity at home. via Quad-City Times"
Ths Inaugural Post
What better way to start a mastermind conversation about why its going to be all about getting rich AND saving the planet, then a recent post from Business 2.0 laying it for me.
This is the way of the future. And its not your hippie-minded, all talk no solution, wailing-wall complaining that some people have associated with the movement towards green technolgies.
It's going to happen, everything is going to green, and sooner than later there will be a trend towards home moving off the grid or becoming contributors to it!! (more on that soon)
Business 2.0
percent of all greenhouse gases. More than a quarter of that CO2 comes from electrical power plants.
The solution: Wind power, thanks to recent breakthroughs in turbine and transmission technology; it's also 70 percent cheaper than solar power. In May, Dublin-based Airtricity, the world's fastest-growing wind developer, announced plans for a European supergrid - a network of 2,000 offshore wind turbines in the North Atlantic. The grid would initially supply 10,000 megawatts to 8 million homes.
The payoff: Founded just seven years ago, Airtricity is on track to bring in $657 million in revenue by 2010. The company operates 16 wind farms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
The opportunity: Airtricity is already lobbying for government approvals. But there's opportunity for other wind producers to start banding together, since scale is what's needed most to lift wind out of the "alternative" market.
This is the way of the future. And its not your hippie-minded, all talk no solution, wailing-wall complaining that some people have associated with the movement towards green technolgies.
It's going to happen, everything is going to green, and sooner than later there will be a trend towards home moving off the grid or becoming contributors to it!! (more on that soon)
Business 2.0
Problem #1: Global Warming
The background: Carbon dioxide makes up nearly 80
percent of all greenhouse gases. More than a quarter of that CO2 comes from electrical power plants.The solution: Wind power, thanks to recent breakthroughs in turbine and transmission technology; it's also 70 percent cheaper than solar power. In May, Dublin-based Airtricity, the world's fastest-growing wind developer, announced plans for a European supergrid - a network of 2,000 offshore wind turbines in the North Atlantic. The grid would initially supply 10,000 megawatts to 8 million homes.
The payoff: Founded just seven years ago, Airtricity is on track to bring in $657 million in revenue by 2010. The company operates 16 wind farms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
The opportunity: Airtricity is already lobbying for government approvals. But there's opportunity for other wind producers to start banding together, since scale is what's needed most to lift wind out of the "alternative" market.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)