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.

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?

In article m,
says...

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?

I have a lot of faith in emerging technology.

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

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.

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

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??

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.

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

"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