Energy Harvested From Evaporation Could Power 70% Of The U.S.

ote:

Not true. Wind is at grid parity now, and solar is very close. Neither is d ispatchable, so you have to add dispatchable power sources to your network. In Australia the state of South Australia is getting 100 Megawatt-hour of battery storage (capable of delivering 100MW for an hour, if necessary) fro m Elon Musk. The Federal Government is looking at adding pumped storage to the Snowy Mou ntains hydroelectric scheme.

The cost of solar power is likely to at least halve as it is deployed more widely - loads is going to Africa where it is electrifying individual villa ges. Internationally it generates about 1% of our electric power - up that to 10% and you are pretty much guaranteed to halve the price.

r

ere

Solar power isn't that diffuse. Solar farms are going up all over the place .

Cloud free areas can - and do - use concentrating mirrors to get more light onto expensive high-efficiency solar cells or thermal solar towers.

Gossamer would be nice, but what we've got works fine, even if you aren't w ell-informed enough to have heard about it.

Or maybe you get your solar generation information from denialist web-sites ...

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

the

harvesting, grotty efficiency making the required equipment too large to be practical for a lot of apps.

e s

that

The press release stuff is just junk already known to be junk.

It is funny, but not for the reason NT thinks.

Edison didn't invent the light-bulb. Joseph Swan got there first.

Edison and Swan got together early and Edison's PR machine proclaimed him t o be the inventor, but it wasn't strictly true.

The press release junk about which John Larkin was complaining is the same kind of deceptive public relations junk, but the aim is different - to enco urage speculative investment in a project that probably won't work (but mig ht), when Edison's publicity was aimed at encouraging investment in a new t echnology that did work.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

No, they're certainly not. The only reason they're "growing" is that others are forced to pay for it.

dispatchable, so you have to add dispatchable power sources to your networ k.

making the cost of pv derived energy far above that of coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.

battery storage (capable of delivering 100MW for an hour, if necessary) fr om Elon Musk.

ountains hydroelectric scheme.

e widely - loads is going to Africa where it is electrifying individual vil lages. Internationally it generates about 1% of our electric power - up tha t to 10% and you are pretty much guaranteed to halve the price.

with respect, supplying a house with solar pv power is still far more expen sive than the cost of coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. If you can't even get r eal about that you're as much a time waster as always

mer

where

1kW/m2 x low efficiency of pv panels is diffuse. Only a bull artist would c laim otherwise

it's called subsidy harvesting. Subsidies exist to placate a percentage of voters. None of this makes it economically viable.

ht onto expensive high-efficiency solar cells or thermal solar towers.

a nice idea, but it still isn't competitive

for some weird value of fine that means paying an excessive cost for it

es ...

You're as full of it as always, and as intent to merely waste everyone's ti me as always. Plonk.

r the

y harvesting, grotty efficiency making the required equipment too large to be practical for a lot of apps.

ome

zos

ne that

. The press release stuff is just junk already known to be junk.

to be the inventor, but it wasn't strictly true.

e kind of deceptive public relations junk, but the aim is different - to en courage speculative investment in a project that probably won't work (but m ight), when Edison's publicity was aimed at encouraging investment in a new technology that did work.

In fact the (platinum filament) incandescent lightbulb was invented in 1802 by Humphrey Davy.

If he thinks they're 'affordable', whatever that means, let him work out what it would cost to replace all our current generation with solar PV plus the necesary storage. Funny how some engineers need to learn that numbers are kinda important.

NT

is dispatchable, so you have to add dispatchable power sources to your netw ork.

nd nuclear.

Even the crappiest storage returns at least 80% of the energy put in. That doesn't make for particularly expensive power, and storage is for dealing w ith peak demand. Most of the time the energy goes straight to the user.

of battery storage (capable of delivering 100MW for an hour, if necessary) from Elon Musk.

Mountains hydroelectric scheme.

ore widely - loads is going to Africa where it is electrifying individual v illages. Internationally it generates about 1% of our electric power - up t hat to 10% and you are pretty much guaranteed to halve the price.

ensive than the cost of coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. If you can't even get real about that you're as much a time waster as always.

If you can't find links to the real figures - and you obviously can't, othe rwise you wouldn't be claiming "far more expensive" when it isn't - it's yo u that is the time waster.

als-2/

In Australia, grid power costs between $A0.22 and $A0.33 per kilowatt hours (about half of which goes to pay for the cost of the grid rather than the power generated, more in the more expensive states) and the cost of roof-to p solar power varies between $A0.069 to $0.175 per kilowatt hour.

The feed-in tariff - what you'll get from the grid operator for feeding pow er back into the grid is either $A0.08 or $A0.23.

"Far more expensive" is simply false.

samer

claim otherwise

You are the bull artist. A 5kW installation in Australia uses anything from 20 to 40 square metre of roof space, so your 1kW per square metre is a tri fle unrealistic.

f voters. None of this makes it economically viable.

Australia elected a right-wing government sometime ago. Some of the represe ntatives claim that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, and there aren' t any subsidies to be had.

The power generating companies are building wind farms and solar farms rath er than new fossil-fueled generators, and one recent black-out came down to the generating company refusing to fire up it's gas-fired back-up generato r because the price of gas was too high for them to make money on the deal.

ight onto expensive high-efficiency solar cells or thermal solar towers.

And your evidence for this claim is?

No.

ites ...

time as always. Plonk.

Much easier to plonk me that to find the evidence which might prove me wron g, particularly when it doesn't exist.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Not that NT has posted a single number anywhere.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

s.

r is dispatchable, so you have to add dispatchable power sources to your ne twork.

and nuclear.

t doesn't make for particularly expensive power, and storage is for dealing with peak demand. Most of the time the energy goes straight to the user.

Storage ain't cheap. If you only have enough to cover peak demand, you're n ot running on pv power, you're using something else.

r of battery storage (capable of delivering 100MW for an hour, if necessary ) from Elon Musk.

wy Mountains hydroelectric scheme.

more widely - loads is going to Africa where it is electrifying individual villages. Internationally it generates about 1% of our electric power - up that to 10% and you are pretty much guaranteed to halve the price.

xpensive than the cost of coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. If you can't even g et real about that you're as much a time waster as always.

herwise you wouldn't be claiming "far more expensive" when it isn't - it's you that is the time waster.

itals-2/

rs (about half of which goes to pay for the cost of the grid rather than th e power generated, more in the more expensive states)

so you claim 11au cents

kilowatt hour.

ower back into the grid is either $A0.08 or $A0.23.

At the risk of stating the patently obvious, if pv were cheaper no-one woul d be even considering building more nuclear. Even if you get your *peak* wa tts at a bit less per watt, a) most of the time you get nothing or far less b) you've also gotta pay for storage

ossamer

e

ld claim otherwise

om 20 to 40 square metre of roof space, so your 1kW per square metre is a t rifle unrealistic.

Anyone that knows anything about solar power knows that 1kW/m2 is a ballpar k maximum figure for insolation. As I said, multiply that by the low effici ency of pv panels and you see how hopelessly diffuse it is.

of voters. None of this makes it economically viable.

sentatives claim that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, and there are n't any subsidies to be had.

In UK PV is installed to claim subsidies.

ther than new fossil-fueled generators, and one recent black-out came down to the generating company refusing to fire up it's gas-fired back-up genera tor because the price of gas was too high for them to make money on the dea l.

then they're being paid to do it. It just makes no sense as a grid contribu tor

light onto expensive high-efficiency solar cells or thermal solar towers.

you're free to read up on the solar power towers in Ivanpah or Andalucia.

.

-sites ...

s time as always. Plonk.

ong, particularly when it doesn't exist.

99.99999% of the population can understand what's going on instantly. I'm n ot here to waste my time with your trolling and/or retardation. Hint: we do n't run the grid on PV for a reason. See if you can figure out what it is - or maybe I should quit wasting my time with your missing brain cells. I th ink I will. Replonk.

NT

c} You've also gotta pay for spinning reserve d) You've also gotta stabilize the system

ces.

her is dispatchable, so you have to add dispatchable power sources to your network.

ro and nuclear.

hat doesn't make for particularly expensive power, and storage is for deali ng with peak demand. Most of the time the energy goes straight to the user.

not running on pv power, you're using something else.

Nobody runs exclusively on PV power. Wind is just as satisfying to the arde nt greenies, and currently cheaper than PV power (though the next step up i n production volume will almost certainly fix that).

Most countries have some hydroelectric component, and the more ardent green ies compost garbage into methane (which ideologically okay, even if it does dump CO2 into the atmosphere). The methane can be stored, and burnt in pea k-load covering gas-turbines.

our of battery storage (capable of delivering 100MW for an hour, if necessa ry) from Elon Musk.

nowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme.

ed more widely - loads is going to Africa where it is electrifying individu al villages. Internationally it generates about 1% of our electric power - up that to 10% and you are pretty much guaranteed to halve the price.

expensive than the cost of coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. If you can't even get real about that you're as much a time waster as always.

otherwise you wouldn't be claiming "far more expensive" when it isn't - it' s you that is the time waster.

apitals-2/

ours (about half of which goes to pay for the cost of the grid rather than the power generated, more in the more expensive states)

I don't. That is a number that has been filtered through any number of poli ticians.

It's the relative numbers that tel the story.

er kilowatt hour.

power back into the grid is either $A0.08 or $A0.23.

uld be even considering building more nuclear. Even if you get your *peak* watts at a bit less per watt,

Nobody is seriously considering building more nuclear. The nuclear enthusia sts are churning out numbers (none of which include realistic estimates of the cost of dealing with nuclear waste in a way that keeps the neighbours h appy) but actual investment doesn't seem to be happening.

Storage facilities do cost money, but they don't have to cover your total o utput. For some reason we do tend to use more power when the sun is shining .

e,

ould claim otherwise

from 20 to 40 square metre of roof space, so your 1kW per square metre is a trifle unrealistic.

ark maximum figure for insolation. As I said, multiply that by the low effi ciency of pv panels and you see how hopelessly diffuse it is.

It may be "diffuse", whatever that may mean, but since we get 1% of out tot al power from photovoltaic solar, it's clearly not "hopelessly diffuse".

What's hopeless is your grasp of reality.

ge of voters. None of this makes it economically viable.

resentatives claim that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, and there a ren't any subsidies to be had.

I haven't lived there since 1993.

rather than new fossil-fueled generators, and one recent black-out came dow n to the generating company refusing to fire up it's gas-fired back-up gene rator because the price of gas was too high for them to make money on the d eal.

butor.

Actually, it did. The Australian electricity spot market is a recent innova tion, and I heard a lecture from the guy who set it up (as part of a small committee of experts). He was particularly unhappy that the market worked i n half-hour chunks - his committee had wanted five minute chunks, and hadn' t been able to persuade the politicians involved that this was necessary to generate the very high peak prices that made gas-fired back-up generators worth turning on.

I can't say I understand the economics involved, but he wasn't the only exp ert who has pointed out that the spot market has to generate occasional ver y high prices to keep the less utilised generators profitable.

re light onto expensive high-efficiency solar cells or thermal solar towers .

Done that. Both are more proof-of-principle systems than pre-production pro totypes. The Spanish system is much too small to offer useful energy storag e, and the Ivanpah system didn't bother (which is odd).

it.

But no supporting evidence. My claim is based on the fact that there's a lo t of photovoltaic solar generation capacity in operation around the world, yours on the proposition that it's all Potemkin villages, which doesn't fit the African market model at all.

eb-sites ...

e's time as always. Plonk.

wrong, particularly when it doesn't exist.

not here to waste my time with your trolling and/or retardation. Hint: we don't run the grid on PV for a reason. See if you can figure out what it is - or maybe I should quit wasting my time with your missing brain cells. I think I will. Replonk.

We don't run the grid on photovoltaic generation because it has only just s tarted getting as cheap as burning fossil carbon. If we tooled up to manufa cture photo-voltaic generators on a scale that could generate 10% of our po wer needs (as opposed to the current 1%) we'd - incidentally halve the pric e per unit.

The capital we'd have to spend on that tooling up is a lot of money, and wo uld divert manufacturing capacity that is currently used for other purposes . So it isn't going to happen quickly.

That's my reason, which happens to be a whole lot better founded that your claim that it doesn't work.

There's also the point that every country that is heavily into solar power generation is also heavily into wind power generation. The wind does blow a t night - not everywhere, nor every night, but often enough to help cover t he night-time load (which is lower than the peak day-time load).

I'm afraid that it looks as if the missing brains cells are more in your br ain than mine.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

If you've got battery storage, you don't have to pay for spinning reserve. You can get a gas-turbine generator up to full output in a few minutes, and battery storage can cover those few minutes.

With decent sized batter storage, that's easy - though perhaps not trivial.

Krw is a great source of what conventional wisdom was a generation ago. Pity he doesn't have an update option.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

for the

rgy harvesting, grotty efficiency making the required equipment too large t o be practical for a lot of apps.

some

iezos

is

one that

n"

ng. The press release stuff is just junk already known to be junk.

im to be the inventor, but it wasn't strictly true.

ame kind of deceptive public relations junk, but the aim is different - to encourage speculative investment in a project that probably won't work (but might), when Edison's publicity was aimed at encouraging investment in a n ew technology that did work.

02 by Humphrey Davy.

And was an instant commercial success, like the Davy Safety Lamp?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Dominion is! They have spend I think $600,000,000 over the last decade or more to finally receive approval for a third reactor at North Anna. Of course that's not the same as building it, but they clearly want to keep their options open.

He is wedded to the idea that power has to be highly focused. That blind spot prevents him from ever seeing potential in many types of power that will be used in the coming decades.

Doesn't that make sense? If you want power to be provided from a plant just one or two hours a day, that power has to cost more. So pay more and charge more. Here utility rates are regulated so there is no way to pass variable costs on to the consumer on an hourly basis. If they did, it would change a lot of power usage patterns.

I bet it would promote a lot of new devices too. Rather than starting a load of wash when you get home in the evening and paying a lot more for your electricity, you could set the machines to run after the rates come down and it will do that by *monitoring* the rates.

With solar pumping out maximum power at mid-day that would be a new low price point that your car could charge from, or any of your mobile appliances. After letting your empty house get hot/cold all morning it can start using power again in the afternoon while solar is still pumping out lots of juice and rates are better. Get the house comfortable again and less power is used in the peak time later in the day. I actually programmed my cooling to stop between 3 PM and 6 PM and usually don't notice.

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

Georgia Power is in the construction phase of two nukes.

As krw persistently reminds us, people with serious brain damage can think that they are performing properly long after they've stopped acquiring new knowledge.

Trump and John Larkin are even more obvious examples of the same problem.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

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ss you have

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a huge area without a high price tag. If you have a realistic answer a usef ul chunk of the world's energy problem will be solved.

and

The particular example I just looked at - photovoltaic panels on single hou sehold roof-tops in Australia - are bought by the individual households. No body else pays for them. In two states, the feed-in tariffs that the grid o perators pay for the spare power that the house-holders get for the power t hey feed back into the grid are higher than the grid operators would like t o pay, but still no more than the grid operators charge for the power when they sell it to somebody else.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

One of the truly bizarre things of the energy sector is that it is regulated and costs can only be recovered from consumers if the regulators approve it. The generating portion though is supposed to be free market, which is where nuclear comes in. Somehow the money spent investing in the permit process (as I said, $600 millions for Dominion so far) is allowed to be recovered from consumers *even if the plant is never built*!!! Clearly this is under the regulators approval since they were asked. So why do consumers have to spend their money on speculation by the power company which is in pursuit of increased profits?

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

llpark maximum figure for insolation. As I said, multiply that by the low e fficiency of pv panels and you see how hopelessly diffuse it is.

total power from photovoltaic solar, it's clearly not "hopelessly diffuse" .

I'm not wasting my time reading Sloman any more, but your reply on that poi nt is no less stupid.

OK I'll state the obvious. As time goes by we will find ever cheaper ways t o harvest & store diffuse power, and it will thus be used more. That does n ot mean it's ready to replace nuclear, coal, gas etc.

expert who has pointed out that the spot market has to generate occasional very high prices to keep the less utilised generators profitable.

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If you ran the numbers you'd see why that approach to solar car charging is n't viable.

I'm not here to waste my time with your trolling and/or retardation. Hint: we don't run the grid on PV for a reason. See if you can figure out what it is - or maybe I should quit wasting my time with your missing brain cells. I think I will. Replonk.

st started getting as cheap as burning fossil carbon. If we tooled up to ma nufacture photo-voltaic generators on a scale that could generate 10% of ou r power needs (as opposed to the current 1%) we'd - incidentally halve the price per unit.

d would divert manufacturing capacity that is currently used for other purp oses.. So it isn't going to happen quickly.

our claim that it doesn't work.

of course that DOES mean it doesn't fly on cost grounds. What's wrong with this guy?