SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEMS

Twice as expensive to install and maintain or twice as expensive per kWHr? There is a reason why they like off shore, the wind is *much* more consistent and higher velocity. Also there is no surrounding population to create complaints about the noise, etc. while being close to much of the population. In other words, everything else about offshore wind is better other than the higher cost of installation and maintenance. The better wind availability likely more than makes up for the higher operating costs.

It is hard to imagine they can drill for oil a mile below the surface of the ocean, yet, not be able to install workable wind turbines in 100 feet of water. I think the industry is still young and ripe for innovation.

That used to be pretty common. It was used in television microwave links, too.

Unless you happen to choose a site off the coast of where the beautiful (lefty) people play.

Yup. My understanding is that the weak point of this approach was that the side-lobes in the pattern were pretty bad... there was enough "edge effect" diffraction at the reflector to splatter a significant amount of power out in unwanted directions. I was told that pressure from the FCC to eliminate these side-lobes (and thus make it easier to re-use the frequencies for other point-to-point links) resulted in most of these corner-shot antenna systems being replaced with direct-fed tower-mounted dishes.

Obviously, beautiful lefties hang around the left coast. The left coast is also the home of NIMBY (not in my back yard). The latest offshore wind project proposed is a pneumatic wind farm to supply power to Smog Angeles: We can't have ugly wind turbines polluting the offshore view of the left coast, so this proposed wind farm will be teleported to Wyoming with storage in Utah. Included in the plan are huge 1000 psi underground compressed air storage facilities, an electric generation plant, and 525 miles of electric power transmission towers to Utah, where they will connect to the grid. The final product will be 1200 MegaWatts of electricity for Smog Angeles.

There are other proposals for offshore wind on the left coast:

These will be floating turbines, which offer an interesting failure mode. How does one right a floating wind turbine that has gone turtle?

Methinks the left coast is safe (for now).

Grunt, I say a graph of onshore wind energy vs offshore for one of those lowland countries in Europe, where they have a lot of both types. Total cost was about twice offshore. The grunt is because I don't have the energy to find it, some wiki page.

Energy has to make economic sense, I really wish we would spend money on making nuclear cheaper. Unfortunately that's pretty much a pipe dream. People are freaked out by anything nuclear.

George H.

Yep, except that there's an electric power plant exemption: (e) Periscope antennas used at an electric power facility plant area will be excluded from the requirements of paragraph (c) of this section on a case-by-case basis where technical considerations or safety preclude the use of other types of antenna systems.

I don't see too many at power plants these days, mostly because the power plants wanted to use their towers for to install other antennas and the periscope antenna just got in the way. Since power plants use dedicated frequencies for their SCADA systems, they are their own worst enemy when it comes to self-interference, so they dumped their periscope antennas as soon as possible.

You can think what ever you like. Here is some data,

(Searching the web for useful information on wind power is almost impossible so much PR and hype. I like wiki.)

George H.

There are plenty of them on both coasts. There was a farm planned off Martha's Vineyard until the residents pitched a fit.

Photos of floating wind turbines, mostly artistic renderings and science fiction, but a few that are real:

List of offshore USA wind farms:

It is more futile because atmospheric extinction takes so much power out of the direct sunlight. The table is elsewhere in this thread.

ITYM At most 7 or 8% of the light that hits it with 4-5% more typical at normal incidence and getting worse at shallower angles.

Clean coated optics are typically down to You can easily tell by the lack of glare and reflections off the

They are playing with surface nanostructures to mimic the moths compound eye surface which has a highly non reflective structure.

Remind me not to cite numbers from memory.

Looking at the graphs, it appears that above about 70 degree angle of incidence, uncoated window glass will reflect about 20% of the lights that hits it. Above 85 degrees, about 70% is reflected. See the graph in the "reflection calculator" section. What that means is that fixed panels turn into mirrors at high (>70 degree) angles of incidence, another justification for trackers.

However, coated glass is much the same and doesn't seem to be any better than uncoated glass. Compare the above graph with SiO2 coated glass at: What am I missing here?

Good plan, but methinks the industry will do better to build a system that either helps the solar cells not lose efficiency at higher temperatures, or runs efficiently when really hot. With high temperature cells, converters, or boilers, it's possible to use concentrators, which solves some of the optical problems by reducing the size of the affected area. My personal favorite is solar steam power, but I don't think that will do well in an urban environment.

On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 07:38:20 -0700, Jeff Liebermann Gave us:

The glass is not coated, it is grit blasted or acid etched for a matte finish.

The best "windows" in front of an array panel would be a fresnel sheet.

Oh wow. Look! The guy tracks too!

The following turret has two servo motor one on the top and the other one is on the bottom. Both can move from 0 to 180 degree.

1. Let's say the azimuth is 294 and Elevation Angle: 19, then which motor will follow the azimuth and which will follow elevation.

1. What would be the angles of the motor at the power up or start up?

Can you give me some direction on doing the math? I am also confused that how will I know that the motors has moved to the desired angles.

erica

AFC (Antennas For Communications) in Ocala used to make those antennas. They still had the molds the last time that I passed their plant.

ATT Longlines had hundreds of those towers. They were built in the days when the RF equipment was all vacuum tube, so it was impractical to put the equipment up top. The old 'White Alice, Over The Horizon' microwave telephone system in Alaska used similar antennas. It was built during W.W.II. Very little of that systems has survived since it was replaced by copper.

OMG you know at some point you need to do your own work. That's the way you learn stuff. You learn even more when it doesn't work as you think it should.

George H.

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The rational basis for wind and solar power is that they don't inject extra CO2 into the atmosphere. Sadly, you can't follow the train of logic that d emonstrates that extra CO2 in the atmosphere isn't a good idea, nor appreci ate that while fracking does access buried fossil carbon that we couldn't g et at before, there's only so much buried fossil carbon in the ground to be dug up, so it isn't a long term solution.

Your idea of what rational reflects the defects of system you use to try an d imitate rational thought - which isn't doing too well.

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ra CO2 into the atmosphere. Sadly, you can't follow the train of logic that demonstrates that extra CO2 in the atmosphere isn't a good idea, nor appre ciate that while fracking does access buried fossil carbon that we couldn't get at before, there's only so much buried fossil carbon in the ground to be dug up, so it isn't a long term solution.

and imitate rational thought - which isn't doing too well.

Burning natural gas is ~1/2 the carbon load... besides all the other stuff ... of almost any other hydrocarbon. Bill I pay extra to get my elec. from wind. Mind you I also burn 1-2 kilo-gallons of oil every year. (driving cars and heating my house.) (Sorry kilo-gallons is a weird unit.) What do you do? To my mind nuclear is the way to go. Sure there are wastes, left overs we don't want. The good thing about nuclear is it's all concentrated in one place. Not spread everywhere. (I'll vote for what ever party comes out for opening Yucca mnt.)

George H.