#alternative power

[artfoxtail]

Old idea about reversed powers.

Amy Dallon aka Courage. Part II

[pointandshooter]

West Virginia

photo: David Castenson

[tendie-defender]

Michigan based electric car company Rivian will be releasing a electric truck in 2021 to compete with Tesla. The truck will be around $70K and their SUV will be around $72K.

[uneco]

Silent rooftop wind turbines could generate half of a household’s energy needs

The best part is, that when the Liam F1 is matched with solar panels, it can generate enough power for an entire household. This way you can alternate between the use of solar power and wind power, having a backup in case the weather conditions are not suitable for you.

[reasonandempathy]

For some actual numbers:

The total world energy usage (coal+oil+hydroelectric+nuclear+renewable) in 2015 was 13,000 Million Ton Oil Equivalent (13,000 MTOE) - see World Energy Consumption & Stats. This translates to 17.3 Terawatts continuous power during the year.

Now, if we cover an area of the Earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today, it will provide more than 17,4 TW power. This area is 43,000 square miles. The Great Saharan Desert in Africa is 3.6 million square miles and is prime for solar power (more than twelve hours per day). That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy. There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal or nuclear can compete with this. The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars, one time cost at today's prices without any economy of scale savings. That is less than the bail out cost of banks by Obama in the last recession. Easier to imagine the cost is 1/4 of US national debt, and equal to 10% of world one year GDP. So this cost is rather small compared to other spending in the world. There is no future in other energy forms. In twenty to thirty years solar will replace everything. There will still be need for liquid fuels but likely it will be hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water and that powered by solar. Then tankers and pipelines will haul that hydrogen around the world. One can also envision zirconium or titanium batteries that store large quantities of hydrogen.

Question: What required to achieve the solar capacity factors discussed in this proposal?

Answer: You might have heard a capacity factor of 25% mentioned for solar panels. The 25% factor essentially means that a two hundred Watt panel only produces fifty Watts when averaged over twenty-four hours. In fact this low number is an artificial byproduct of the choice of installation site. Most small installations are done on roof tops in Europe (Germany in particular) and United States. The distribution of solar flux has a strong dependence on Latitude. In the equatorisk region (latitude around zero) the sun shines near normal and the power density can be as high as fourteen hundred Watts per square meter. At a latitude of forty-five degrees the power density drops by at least a factor of two. Major cities in United States are around thirty-seven North Latitude and Europe is even higher. On top of that, in these regions, a significant portion of the year has cloudy and rainy days further reducing net available power. It is conceivable a major undertaking in solar industrial-scale production will take advantage of vast available equatorial lands. The site proposed here as an example in African Sahara is on the Equator and there are very few if any cloudy days per year. The Saharan desert land is inexpensive and mostly unused and as such readily available for utilization. In this proposal, an average annual power density of one hundred and fifty-five Watts per square meter is assumed that compared to peak values of one thousand three hundred and fifty to one thousand three hundred and seventy Watts/m2 represents a mere 11% capacity factor. Given twelve hour days at Sahara and current efficiencies of greater than 22% for solar panels, this average value is certainly achievable.

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

the power of wind.

[myanimethought]

What If Luffy Never Developed Gear Fourth?

What if Luffy never developed Gear Fourth? Discover how the absence of Boundman changes his battles and the fate of the One Piece world. Read the full story here!

[etakeh]

So I got this little solar generator setup last year, forward to see purposes. But I started thinking how stupid it was to keep it in the closet when I could actually just use it now.

It's not huge, it really was just supposed to be for emergency cell phone charging and things like that, but I am going to try using it to power the bee fountain and the cat fountain.

I get good sunlight first thing in the morning, and it's been charging about 10% a day just with that morning sun, so now it'll just depend on how much the fountains suck up.

**bonus** spotted towhee calls in the background if you have the sound on.