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#1
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posted to rec.boats
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This is in an article about the mind blowing technology of the next ten
years. Funny, I didn't see any mention of "drill baby drill" for energy!! http://tinyurl.com/9r6e5xs Solar energy will soon leave fossil fuels and inefficient wind farms in the dust. According to Kurzweil, ?the cost per watt of solar energy is coming down rapidly and the total amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It has in fact been doubling every two years for the past 20 years and is now only eight doublings away from meeting all of the world?s energy needs.? Emerging technology from a company called Sandia is making the reality that much closer: Sandia?s solar cells are made of 100 times less material than the current top solar cells while operating at the same efficiency. Since the biggest hurdle in the path of solar power is the expensive and large nature of solar panels, these new microscopic cells will make a huge difference. For example, current panels are massive and require large motors to move them to track the sun. Sandia?s cells, on the other hand, would only need to be moved a fraction of a millimeter to track the sun efficiently while weighing next to nothing. Even more amazing, they can be suspended in liquids and printed on flexible materials, allowing the cells to be places on any surface. What if your entire car was covered in these powerhouses? Bye bye, Chevron. |
#2
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posted to rec.boats
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On 9/12/2012 3:32 PM, iBoaterer wrote:
This is in an article about the mind blowing technology of the next ten years. Funny, I didn't see any mention of "drill baby drill" for energy!! http://tinyurl.com/9r6e5xs Solar energy will soon leave fossil fuels and inefficient wind farms in the dust. According to Kurzweil, ?the cost per watt of solar energy is coming down rapidly and the total amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It has in fact been doubling every two years for the past 20 years and is now only eight doublings away from meeting all of the world?s energy needs.? Emerging technology from a company called Sandia is making the reality that much closer: Sandia?s solar cells are made of 100 times less material than the current top solar cells while operating at the same efficiency. Since the biggest hurdle in the path of solar power is the expensive and large nature of solar panels, these new microscopic cells will make a huge difference. For example, current panels are massive and require large motors to move them to track the sun. Sandia?s cells, on the other hand, would only need to be moved a fraction of a millimeter to track the sun efficiently while weighing next to nothing. Even more amazing, they can be suspended in liquids and printed on flexible materials, allowing the cells to be places on any surface. What if your entire car was covered in these powerhouses? Bye bye, Chevron. How much $faith$ do you have in this? |
#4
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posted to rec.boats
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On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:32:09 -0400, iBoaterer wrote:
Even more amazing, they can be suspended in liquids and printed on flexible materials, allowing the cells to be places on any surface. What if your entire car was covered in these powerhouses? Bye bye, Chevron. === That's a bit optimistic even though the technology is interesting. One of the credibility problems with solar power is the wildly optimistic press releases that come out periodically. They raise expectations to unrealistic levels which casts doubt on the whole effort. It's always better to under promise and over deliver. That said, with the price of solar panels down to about $1/watt, we will be starting to see a lot more of them. I'm in the preliminary planning stage for a small "proof of concept" project, probably a grid tied system that will help meet our peak power needs in some small way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid-tie_inverter |
#5
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posted to rec.boats
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On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett
wrote: When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. That might be possible right now using energy storage technology. It would not be cost justified at this time however. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. There are some very real issues with nuclear power. Fusion is the big pie in the sky if someone can figure that out. |
#6
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posted to rec.boats
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On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett wrote:
When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. It isn't environmental nutters, it is cost. Nuclear is expensive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nu...ting_costs.png |
#7
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posted to rec.boats
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On 9/12/2012 5:44 PM, thunder wrote:
On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett wrote: When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. It isn't environmental nutters, it is cost. Nuclear is expensive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nu...ting_costs.png Nuclear is expensive because of the environmental nutters?? |
#8
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posted to rec.boats
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On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:44:42 +0000 (UTC), thunder
wrote: On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett wrote: When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. It isn't environmental nutters, it is cost. Nuclear is expensive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nu...ting_costs.png === At some point environmental, safety and cost all morph into one big issue. Today's nuclear plants are safe 99.99999% of the time. It turns out that is not enough however. There are now hundreds of square miles of land in Japan and the former USSR that are totally uninhabitable. There are additional thousands of people who will die prematurely, and/or have their quality of life severely impacted. Both of those accidents are flukes of course, but they are the flukes that prove Murphy's law. |
#9
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posted to rec.boats
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On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:31:43 -0400, JustWait wrote:
On 9/12/2012 5:44 PM, thunder wrote: On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett wrote: When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. It isn't environmental nutters, it is cost. Nuclear is expensive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nu...ting_costs.png Nuclear is expensive because of the environmental nutters?? Of the 104 reactors now operating in the U.S., ground was broken on all of them in 1974 or earlier. There wasn't a large environmental movement pre-1974. Three Mile Island wasn't until 1979. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear..._United_States |
#10
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posted to rec.boats
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![]() "Wayne.B" wrote in message ... On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:14:57 -0400, Sarah Ehrett wrote: When someone can successfully power a medium sized US city 24/7 using solar and wind then I'll be impressed. That might be possible right now using energy storage technology. It would not be cost justified at this time however. Until then we're tied to oil, coal, and natural gas because the environmental nutters are against nuclear power. There are some very real issues with nuclear power. Fusion is the big pie in the sky if someone can figure that out. -------------------------------------------------- I spent a good amount of time during my working career in programs supporting efforts to achieve nuclear fusion from deuterium, highly compressed in enormously high powered, multiple beamed lasers. This technology has been in development for many decades ... going back to the 50's and 60's. Progress has been made, but unity gain was only recently achieved ... meaning as much energy was used as produced. The lasers only fire for a nanosecond before the power supplies that power them have to be recharged. It's technically possible, but still a very long way from any form of commercial applications. It's strictly R&D. Newest program is "NIF" or National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Before NIF, research was also conducted at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester. My company's involvement was building the systems that applied thin-film, high energy laser coatings on the optics used in the laser bays. NIF is a very impressive laser system ... details he https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/about.php |
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