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Yes, but just how costly and efficient is it then to get the power to us?
Do you know how far away that orbit is?
One of the more fascinating ideas along that line is to use a fleet of robotic asteroid miners to haul asteriods (extremely high metal content) to solar planel factories in orbit (la Grange point) to build giant power stations, some tens of miles across and beaming the power back to earth.
24/7 power generation from PV panels over a massive area would produce a LOT of power.
Yes, but just how costly and efficient is it then to get the power to us?
Do you know how far away that orbit is?
The orbital factories are at the La Grange point, not the power station.
(edit)
More information on the specifics is wandering around this fairly old website:
http://www.permanent.com/
Solar voltaic does have the disadvantage of a non-SV backup.
But non-SV plants have backups of more non-SV systems for load shedding/sharing.
Solar thermal's backup is built into the design: radiation collectors heat a liquid that heats reservoirs of salts that are used to boil water and drive generators. The big advantage is that the stored energy can be large enough to drive the generators through in dips and absences of solar energy.
"Heat storage
Heat storage allows a solar thermal plant to produce electricity at night and on overcast days. This allows the use of solar power for baseload generation as well as peak power generation, with the potential of displacing both coal and natural gas fired power plants. Additionally, the utilization of the generator is higher which reduces cost.
Heat is transferred to a thermal storage medium in an insulated reservoir during the day, and withdrawn for power generation at night. Thermal storage media include pressurized steam, concrete, a variety of phase change materials, and molten salts such as sodium and potassium nitrate.[58][59]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/bigsolar/
From San Antonio to San Diego, aka the Southwestern desert, is pretty much barrenness that is perfect for large-scale solar thermal plants.
This would have helped the discussion a bit.
We still don't know the limits of efficiency though. I see this train of thought every day in medical imaging applications. We'll never be able to detect this or that....... then viola! A new technology or technique arrives which allows for better resolution, counting efficiency, etc.
As it stands today solar is relegated to a secondary role. As others have pointed out however, its a poor excuse for dismissing it altogether.
One of the best things about Solar is minimized transmission distance. A building with a roof full of panels isn't going to lose the majority of that energy in sending it somewhere else. Furthermore, this is also why density isn't nearly as big an issue as its made out: Roofs. We have a lot of the space to use already. Its not like we need to build plants.
The future in solar is in localized generation not centralized generation like we have now.
My Italian is a bit rusty.....I meant it as in a break from the normal rules.
I think this is a pretty promising technology, all things considered.
Voila is French
Pretty much. Given that 25% of electrical power is lost in transmission, that gives you a built in "boost" from making power closer to where it is needed.
Again, texas and the southwest would be just about the perfect place for such schemes.
Wind generators are starting to provide a lot of electricity for isolated communities in Alaska along similar lines. Watch a few episodes of some of those reality TV shows based in Alaska where they visit such places.
OK, I read that too fast. That's been a scientific dream for years. when I first saw the concept in the 70's, they talked about using solar for powering aluminum reduction plants on the moon, then using linear accelerators to put it in orbit for building foundry stations at a lagrangian point. The concept was for mining and lunar resources. The foundry itself would be in orbit for zero G to make alloys that cannot be made in gravity. This is actually a real nice idea for the future.
Still... beaming the power has issues. We have discussed this before. To do such projects, we would want terrawatts, or at least multiple gigawatts. Now do some power densities per square meter with various sizes of receiver stations. Also remember the inefficiencies involved.
If we use a 100 square kilometer receiver station, that is 100,000,000 sq meters. the power density would be 10,000 watts per square meter for receiving 1 terrawatt. Also consider things like the Fresnel effect, transmitter side lobes, etc. In an atmosphere, there is also scattering. How far away from a receiver station would all life have to be to be safe?
Now we can consider a pair of power cables. How much voltage would they need to have and at what current. then to super-cool it... We are a long ways away from building such structures.
Yep. As solar efficiencies go up and costs come down, the timeframe in which it will take an average homeowner to break even on an investment in rooftop solar will come down. There's going to be a tipping point in there somewhere and once we hit that I don't think there's any doubt that the majority of investments in solar energy will be being made by individuals on their own property instead of by utilities on major facilities.
It's also Italian. I explained as much when I gave you the definition. I have no idea what it means in French.Voila is French
I thought it was a stringed instrument like the violin.Voila is French
no, it's used even in France-hating America, maybe in Italy, etc, but it's origin is French
voila
1739, from Fr., imperative of voir "to see" + la "there."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=voila
Voila is certainly French... C'est la vie...
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