[John Larkin]

Did they give you penicillin for it?

Cipro is my drug of choice.

John

 

[Jamie]

That's interesting.

In 4.5 years, they generated about 16 MWH of electricity, worth around
$1.2 megabucks. And they paid $2.8M for equipment and $1.7M for fuel.

It looks like there was a lot of maintanance costs, too.

John

John, I neglected to leave out the type of fuel cell generator just to
lure someone in on this conversation and it did work.


Actually, from what I was told. They save money compared to what it
would cost if they had to heat the water, facility and generate
electricity separately. And I guess the savings are very
large in that respect.

 

[Jamie]

Jamie wrote:




Try using your BRAIN before talking shit (yet again) will you ?

Graham

You're a gas Mr. Ham... such a fool.

Mr. Ham, there are facts that you'll never be able to
weed out because you're so much out of your element.

Simply put, you assume to much.

btw.
nice talking to you Mr. Ham, It's always a pleasure in deed!

 

[[email protected]]

7 cents a watt would be wonderful, but it's about 30:1 away from what
anybody is doing, even at the research level. And if we had such
power, the first rational use is to dump it into the grid, not convert
it to hydrogen at absurd net efficiency.

Low cost solar would be great, but there's no particular link to
hydrogen. Too many "advanced" energy concepts are predicated on
ultra-cheap solar power, cheap enough to waste prodigiously. That
ain't gonna happen.

John

I am already building panels for $0.07 per peak watt and installing
them in a variety of highly profitable installations. So I am
producing energy at 1/5th cent per kWh in locations that have 1900
hours of sunlight per year or more.

What's the highest best use of this energy.

Well before I answer the following. Focusing on absolute efficiency
and lack of appreciation of the importance of cost per watt reflects
the sort of thinking that makes solar energy so expensive using other
technologies.

Consider your comment about dumping energy on to the grid. It is true
that using electricity directly is the most efficient thing to do.
Its nearly perfectly efficient - this much is absolutely true. But at
what cost?. Is direct connection the most cost-effective thing to
do? Does direct connection make solar energy competitive with other
forms of energy?

The answer is no.

Consider these practical issues;

(1) Lighting conditions change throughout the day, and from day to
day, and no light is available at night. This means that the power
that the solar panels put out vary.

(2) Variable output has to be matched to variable load, otherwise
efficiency drops to zilch. So, loads must vary in response to
available sunlight, not demand.

(3) Variable load that matches variable output tied directly to a
power grid where demand varies independently of lighting conditions,
means that no more than 12% of all grid power can come from sunlight
under ideal weather conditions. Less ideal weather conditions drop
this to 4%

(4) AC power is what the grid uses.

(5) DC power is what solar panels produce

(6) An inverter must be added to the system to allow for this
difference.

(7) Adding an inverter and peak power matching hardware to solar
panels cost $2 per peak watt.


So, our 1/5th cent per kWh panels - with the addition of peak power
matching, and with the addition of inverters - ends up costing 5.7
cents per kWh. Which is competitive, but even so, only 4% of the
total power can be generated this way.


NOW, lets consider my approach of generating hydrogen from sunlight at
$100 per metric ton (1/5th cent per kWh, and 50,000 kWh/ton) using
variable load electrolyzers.

(1) The rate of hydrogen production is continually varied to match
the lighting conditions by varying the exposed electrode area
requiring no peak power matching electronics.

(2) DC electricity from the solar panels is used directly in the DC
powered electrolyzers requiring no inversion.

(3) The cost of producing hydrogen in this way is less than $0.02 per
peak watt, adding $28 per ton of hydrogen gas made in this way.

(4) 1 ton of hydrogen gas has a higher heating value of 141.8
gigajoules. This is equal to;
6.2 tons of coal - at $55 per ton $341 providing $213
profit/ton H
2.5 tons of NG - $400 per ton $1,000 providing $872 profit/
ton H
23.2 bbls of liquid fuel - $80 per bbl $1,859 providing
$1,731 profit/ton H

(5) Hydrogen gas can be stored in gaseous forms in geological
formations until needed so it can be used in 100% of stationary
applications by piping it at high pressure to stationary power plants.

(6) Hydrogen gas can be liquified and evaporated for use in mobile
applications instead of liquid fuels providing a lower-heating value
of 130.4 MG per kg - equal to about 1.05 gallon of gasoline per kg.
One metric ton of liquid hydrogen is equal to;

1,050 gallons of gas at $1.80 per gallon $1,890 providing $1,762
profit/ton

CONCLUSION

Even though stationary power plants are 38 percent efficient and even
though internal combustion engines, wankel engines, turbine engines,
jet engines, turbo-jet engines are less than 20% efficient, and even
though electrolyzers are 80% efficient, and even though storage of
hydrogen in geological formation is only 95% efficient - making
hydrogen from sunlight and water and selling gaseous hydrogen
delivered bypipeline to stationary power plants, and selling liquid
hydrogen liquified at power plants around the country and delivered at
stations similar to gasoline - can allow us to dispense with 100% of
our oil gas and coal industry and eliminate 100% of our carbon dioxide
emissions with today's power plants, today's heating plants, today's
automobiles, todays, ships, and today's airplanes with only slight
injector and burner changes.

 

[John Larkin]

I am already building panels for $0.07 per peak watt and installing
them in a variety of highly profitable installations. So I am
producing energy at 1/5th cent per kWh in locations that have 1900
hours of sunlight per year or more.

Where? Got links?

(7) Adding an inverter and peak power matching hardware to solar
panels cost $2 per peak watt.

That sounds exhorbitant. I can buy small PF-corrected switching
supplies for 25 cents a watt, and things like this have great economy
of scale.

So, our 1/5th cent per kWh panels - with the addition of peak power
matching, and with the addition of inverters - ends up costing 5.7
cents per kWh. Which is competitive, but even so, only 4% of the
total power can be generated this way.

If you can generate electricity for 0.2 cents per kwh, you could sell
it to utilities for 25x what it costs, so you should be a billionaire
by now. Are you?

John

 

[[email protected]]

To reduce 1 ton of silica to silicon and oxygen using carbon has the
following reaction;

SiO2 + C ---> CO2 + Si

and

Si has an atomic weight of 28
C has an atomic weight of 12
O has an atomic weight of 16

So, 60 tons of silica when reacted with 12 tons of carbon produce 44
tons of carbon dioxide and 28 tons of silicon -

So, each ton of silicon, normalizing everything, requires the
reduction of 2.14 tons of silica using 428 kg of carbon producing 1.57
tons of carbon-dioxide.

The heating value of pure carbon is 32.8 gigajoules per ton. So,
0.428 tonnes is 14.03 gigajoules.

The efficiency of the smelting and refining process is around 30% -
which means the total energy for ultra-pure silica - sliced into
wafers 500 microns thick is 46.8 gigajoules per ton. If the source of
this energy is carbon burning, then the amount of carbon incrases to
4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of silicon processed.

Approximately half the volume of a crystalline wafer is lost during
the slicing operation. So, at 2.33 tons per cubic meter, each square
kilometer of solar collector area contains 1,665 tons of silicon, and
requires the processing of 2,330 tons of silicon.

The total energy used to reduce this silicon from silica is 109,044
gigajoules.

At 18% efficiency, a square kilometer of silicon produces 180 million
watts of electrical energy when the sun shines. Placed in a location
that obtains 1,900 hours per year, this means that in one year a
square kilometer of silicon will produce 1,231,200 gigajoules in a
year. This is an amount 11.29x larger than the energy cost of
refining, purifying, and fabricating the silicon wafers.

In short, 1 month of operation pays for this part of the cost of solar
panels. There are other energy costs, but they unlikely add up to
more than this total computed here. So, even in the worst case
scenario, a solar panels pays for itself in 2 months - in terms of
energy.

A concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system increases this efficiency.
Say sunlight is focused 100x normal intensity onto a photocell. That
means that for a given amount of silicon, 100x the electrical output
is produced. This means payback times are shortened accordingly. So,
instead of payback in 30 days, payback can occur in as short as 8
hours.

Carbon use can be replaced with hydrogen to produce the following
reaction;

SiO2 + 2 H2 ---> Si + 2 H2O

So, 60 tons of silica plus 4 tons of hydrogen produce 28 tons of
silicon plus 36 tons of water. The water of course can be reduced to
hydrogen and oxygen again using electricity generated from sunlight.

Normalized by the silicon produced, we divide by 28 - 2.14 tons of
silica reacted with 0.14 tons of hydrogen produce 1 ton of silicon and
1.28 tons of water. The water may be captured and used to make 0.14
tons of hydrogen again using sunlight.

A ton of hydrogen has a higher heating value of 141.8 gigajoules.
That's 20.25 gigajoules per ton of silicon. Less efficient than
carbon, but the overall process using hydrogen is more efficient. But
even if we assume not, the increase to 68 gigajoules is easily
sustained, especially if we use concentration ratios of 500 to 1 or
more.

That is an all hydrogen solar hydrogen economy is not only feasible,
but highly profitable as well, absorbing only .4% of the energy it
produces to sustain itself (assuming no CPV and 20 year lifespan) -
less if we assume CPV and 20 year lifespan. By comparison the oil
industry - especially in the refining process - uses 3.5% of the
energy produced to sustain itself and operate the facilities.

Adding hydrogen distribution hydrogen storage, hydrogen retrieval,
systems, to create an integrated hydrogen economy -despite higher
losses for hydrogen compared to hydrocarbons- is about equal overall
in terms of total energy usage, and overall effriciencies are higher -
with zero carbon footprint.

 

[John Larkin]

Tests have been completed on the core design. I'm now putting
together production capabilities.

I'm putting together a several strings of 1,100 panels. Each string
is 4,400 ft long by 8 ft wide - wired together at the factory like
Christmas Tree lights. They are transported on a 52' flatbed trailer
z-folded together.

Where will these be installed? Got links?

John

 

[Eeyore]

Btw.
Our Electric company is building Hydrogen generator facilities.

On the back of 'green' subsidies no doubt.

Graham

 

[JosephKK]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

In sci.physics John Larkin




Rocket engines are continuous.

In internal combustion engines, the fire goes on and off.

I'm just wondering out loud what happens to the metal parts which
will be rather hot when hit with LOX.

Will thermal stress cracks be an issue?

While the LOX will never get to the hot cylinder walls (fairly low
heat of vaporization), there are significant thermal transport
considerations. Especially at startup in very cold weather.

 

[JosephKK]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

39:36 -0700, bill wrote:
[about LOX, H2O2, etc.]
...
I don't know if such a thing would really work, or
what its
effects on an engine would be, but its a kinda cool idea.
I might make tinkering with it a winter project.

You'll never get back the energy it took to liquefy the O2.

Nothing is going to ignite until it is gas; that's what the
intake and compression strokes are for.

Filling a TDC cylinder with liquid fuel and liquid O2, I bet
they'd ignite real good, if the LOX doesn't freeze the fuel; you
might need a lot of energy to make a spark through it, however.

Liquids don't ignite.

If you are so very sure about, that i suggest that you try mixing
unsymmetrical di-methyl hydrazine (UDMH) and red fuming nitric acid
(RFNA) (glacial). Take very serious precautions and read the
relevant MSDS before making the attempt.

Do you understand the difference between combustion and a chemical
reaction?

I thought not.

How about you lookup hypergolic reactions? TWIT! You were given
sufficient to learn better for yourself, but no you just attack.

 

[JosephKK]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Well, I'm an engineer and I like it, especially with a
non-differentiated audience.

If the common vernacular fails, use equations.

This is NOT a non-differentiated audience. Not much of an engineer,
look up the chemicals as i have told you.

 

[[email protected]]

Where? Got links?


That sounds exhorbitant. I can buy small PF-corrected switching
supplies for 25 cents a watt,

Their efficiencies are far less than unity, and this is but one step
in the inversion peak power matching process and then synchronizing
with the AC grid in such a way as to contribute that power
efficiently.

You're not really getting it. Or rather, you are letting your
prejudices dictate to your mind what's possible. Which is why you are
making foolish mistakes.

and things like this have great economy
of scale.

Yet we're not building a switching power supply, we're monitoring
lighting conditions and adjusting load to match it - and efficiently
inverting the DC source, synchronized with the AC source in a way that
efficiently provides power.

If you can do this for less than $2 per watt, you would be a
millionaire. Are you?
..

If you can generate electricity for 0.2 cents per kwh, you could sell
it to utilities for 25x what it costs,

haha.. did you read what I wrote?

To intertie to the grid would increase costs to 6 cents per kWh at
best- and reduce the total demand from solar to about 4% of total
demand. So, you're only making at most 2 cents per kWh. So, a
1,000 MW generator station would need 40 MW on average, which
translates to 240 MW peak solar - at $2 per peak watt - for the
intertie - this is $480 million - for that investment you make 960,000
kWh per day for this plant and earn $0.02 per kWh, or less than
$20,000 per day. You are nearly perfectly efficient, but you are not
making much money, or much of a contribution to the operation of the
facility.

On the other hand, without all the intertie overhead - hydrogen gas is
made to replace the 10,000 tons of coal a day with 1,600 tons of
hydrogen gas each day - 100% of the carbon. This requires 20,000 MW
of solar collectors but at $0.07 per peak watt the cost is $1.400
million - 3x the cost of the solar panels above. And only 38 percent
efficient. However, the value of the coal is $55 per ton, so, that's
$550,000 per day in revenues, and the avoided carbon totals 30,600
tons of avoided carbon dioxide. At $18 per ton that's another
$550,000 per day.

So,head to head comparison of the two processes;

Direct conversion;

efficiency; 98%
peak watts: 240 MW
installation cost:$480 million
revenue $20,000 per day
carbon reduction: 4%

Solar hydrogen

efficiency 38%
peak watts 20,000 MW
installation cost $1,400 million
revenue $1,100,000 per day
carbon reduction 100%


Clearly solar hydrogen, despite its inefficiency, is a better
investment.

so you should be a billionaire
by now. Are you?

Yes, I am. But not by doing something dumb like connecting panels to
power grids, but by making fuels and other energy intensive
commodities with sunlight.

http://www.bni.co.id/Portals/0/Document/Coal.pdf

Check out page 5. There were also a number of local headlines
generated when we signed this deal. I was interviewed by the New York
Times and the Wall Street Journal, but despite extensive interviews,
no stories appeared. No matter, I've since signed a second deal in
Indonesia, one in Australia for coal conversion and water desalination
and one in UAE for oil upgrade.

Repeat, I'm not by selling electricity, I'm preselling fuels water and
other commodities made from by reacting solar hydrogen with products
to produce commodities..

I showed above that by charging the same as coal for hydrogen on a
heat value basis, that I make $300 or so per ton of hydrogen.

Add the carbon credits and you more than double that.

But, what happens if the utility already has a long-term contract for
coal? What happens if they can't break it? They have stranded
coal.

That's okay, I'll take the coal in payment that's 6.2 tons of coal
per ton of hydrogen.

Add another 570 kg of hydrogen to the 6.2 tons of coal by direct
hydrogenation to produce 1,822 gallons of gasoline producing no
emissions in the process. Then sell the gasoline for $1.80 per gallon
making $3,281 from the extra 570 kg of hydrogen. Sell forward
contracts for half price in a rising fuel market, and I raise enough
to build the entire facility without issuing stock or debt.

So, this add on to the primary power business far outweighs the
profits made from converting the coal fired plants to hydrogen, and
well worth the extra $800 million in solar panels as well as the $1.28
billion for the Bergius direct hydrogenation reactors.

The next step is to buy a US coal company and a US oil remarketer to
create a new sort of integrated oil company that makes gasoline from
coal and solar hydrogen, reclaims mined out lands with solar
collectors, and increases the value of the company 25x - more than
enough to pay for the LBO/merger and the technology upgrades to make
it all work. Then expand on success by providing liquid hydrogen at
retail across the nation to supply cars like BMW's hydrogen fueled
vehicle.

Ultimately, all stationary power plants will be supplied hydrogen gas
by pipeline. Liquified hydrogen will be supplied for mobile
applications. And by covering a small percentage of the Sonora desert
between Mexico and the US, the US will generate enough hydrogen to
supply the entire world with alternative to oil.

..

 

[JosephKK]

BradGuth [email protected] posted to sci.electronics.design:

That's true, as I haven't invented or even discovered one damn
thing. It's all old science and much older physics that hasn't
changed nor
will it likely ever change. The hard question is about
accomplishing clean energy alternatives, not about whatever's the
least spendy forms of energy on Earth that disregards human safety
as well as having otherwise pillaged, raped and trashed mother Earth
for all she's worth in the process, not to mention the likes of
collateral spendy, mostly innocent bloody and otherwise extremely
polluting wars that you folks can't seem to ever get enough of.

A sufficient mass production of those 100+ meter towers, along with
their wind turbine driven generators plus whatever extent of the
best available PVs that can also take advantage of each given tower
without devouring or otherwise contaminating precious surface ground
area seems entirely worth our doing, that is unless we surcome to
the ENRON/ ExxonMobil naysay likes of yourself and of other coal
burning and yellowcake polluting bigots for a buck, that are
anything but birth-to- grave efficient or without having traumatised
our frail environment past the point of no return.

Can you say again as to why you folks so hate humanity, and care
less about our environment?
- Brad Guth -

Brad your problem is obvious:

http://www.gambino.com/funstuff/obvious.htm

 

[JosephKK]

Rich Grise [email protected] posted to sci.electronics.design:

Anybody remember when they first started using nuclear, and
electricity was going to be virtually free?

I guess that one didn't pan out either. )-;

Thanks,
Rich

Golly, nuclear power, didn't naysayers, NIMBYs and big oil hornswoggle
the greens to stop it? They are certainly still making political
hash out of the waste disposal issues.

 

[JosephKK]

BradGuth [email protected] posted to sci.electronics.design:

Prototypes plus actual installations that function have been built,
and the likes of William Mook and myself tend to stick within the
regular laws of physics and otherwise put to good use the best
available science, such as those fuel cells running so nicely on
natural gas hasn't polluted the environment or taken a bite out of
our badly overloaded grid that's getting mostly electron pumped via
coal plus h2o and extensively N2 fired, of which that nasty coal
obviously works as long as we don't mind a few thousand dead coal
miners per year, accepting global gigatonnes worth of CO2 and
otherwise butt loads of NOx and many other sorts of nasty elements
contributed down- wind or put back into surface and ground water, as
well as taken such volumes of having outright consumed and/or
vaporised precious fresh water.

Those 4+ MW producing towers have been a done deal in other parts of
this world that are not nearly as all-knowing arrogant and bigoted
as you'll find right here within this usenet cesspool of naysayers
in denial about everything that rocks their status quo good ship
LOLLIPOP, and it's mostly a Jewish ship of fools and/or rusemasters
to boot.
- Brad Guth -

So where are your products? You allege _you_ have built them and that
they work. Where are they? Many of us would like to test them to
verify your claims. Your extraordinary claims require extraordinary
backup, as you have been told before.
Otherwise, see "your problem is obvious".

 

[Eeyore]

Their efficiencies are far less than unity, and this is but one step
in the inversion peak power matching process and then synchronizing
with the AC grid in such a way as to contribute that power
efficiently.

Grid tied inverters here at retail for under $1 a Watt. Around 95% efficiency
too.
http://www.grid-tie.com/Xantrex-GT-Inverters.html

I'd expect larger capacity units to be less expensive and it seems pretty clear
to me that as a very large customer you would be paying no more perhaps than
30-40c a watt

You're not really getting it. Or rather, you are letting your
prejudices dictate to your mind what's possible. Which is why you are
making foolish mistakes.

It seems YOU are the one with prejudices here actually.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

To intertie to the grid would increase costs to 6 cents per kWh at
best

Based on a silly estimate of the cost of grid tied inverters which you have
overestiamted thge cost of by at least 3 times and probably more.

With a sensible supply of inverters that would be 2 cents / kWh or less.

Graham

 

[[email protected]]

Based on a silly estimate of the cost of grid tied inverters which you have
overestiamted thge cost of by at least 3 times and probably more.

With a sensible supply of inverters that would be 2 cents / kWh or less.

Graham

Graham, you might be right that $2 per peak watt is high. But it is
at the high end of the envelope. Fact is, no one is building DC
intertie at the 50 MW scale and above so no one knows what all the
costs will be. The first one won't be $0.40 per peak watt - which is
what you're suggesting I think. Though with a dedicated effort you
might get down this level. A real first system - for planning
purposes - I think $2 per peak watt is a conservative number (that is
its high - but likely the first go round)

So, ask yourself, at what scale?

It is true economies of scale and leaerning curve effects do reduce
the cost of smaller units, and may reduce initial costs well below the
$2 estimate my detailed engineering analysis came up with.

You by comparison have merely indicated a suspicion of where intertie
might be after a decade or more of large-scale development.

The big question anyone who wants to have solar be an important source
has to ask, is where to start? After 60 years of development far less
than 1/1000th of our total energy supply comes from direct solar.
That means we're doing something wrong.

So, I decided to do something different! And I've described my
reasoning and my approach and my success. To which a blindered and
shuttered community of enthusiasts, stuck in a world where the solar
industry is dominsted by the major oil companies, cannot seem to see
the forest for the trees.

There is adequate reason to believe that when you start engineering
large DC powered interties (much larger than that found on homes) you
will pay more than the $0.70 per peak watt (10 x more than my panel
costs) first time out. More likely $2.00 per watt (3x a mature
market0.

None of this changes the fact that hydrogen can be made with solar
electricity using my system costing $0.07 per peak watt for the panel
and another $0.02 per peak watt for the electrolyzer and hydrogen
system. So, even if I burned hydrogen in a boiler that converted 38
percent of the heat value to electricity, I'd still be under $0.21 per
peak watt. AND I'd have the advantage of being able to replace ALL
the other fuels, without the limitations of direct intertie.

That is, direct intertie will never be more than 12% in the sunniest
places farthest from the supply chain (Hawaii for example) where 100%
of the power will be sunlight part of the day, and peaking generators
(oil fired) the rest of the day. The average utilization of direct
intertie will more likely be in the range of 4% where 40% of the
capacity is shut down during the day (the peaking generators again0

And I agree that this 4% will be absolutely the most efficient way
solar electrons get into our power system! haha.. But it won't be
the cheapest. Because even at 2 cents per kWh, which is your figure,
that 4% will be more expensive than the $128 per metric ton hydrogen -
whose fuel cost is competitive.

Now, having said all of this, I do have a research effort directed
toward direct intertie. haha.. But this will not be rolled out until
I am well established in the fuel biz. And it will be a secondary
market compared to fuel long-term. But it will be an important one.

The two technical innovations here are very low cost batteries that
using the changing electrode area trick, can be variable load variable
rate of discharge - these are variable load sodium sulfur flow
batteries. I hasten to add that this is at present a research topic,
but an important one. Success with this system will mean that part of
the direct intertie cost debate will have been resolved in favor of
intertie. The second technical innovation is a HVDC power
transmission and the all DC home. Putting these two innovations
together will allow the creation of a network of large solar collector
sites that will seamlessly operate with a DC power grid backed by low-
cost long lived flow batteries that respond physically to the needs of
the system at very low cost and very reliably on a vast scale. This
will work in conjunction with a DC powered home that replaces AC and
also replaced natural gas with hydrogen gas.

Going forward I am building 60 GW to 100 GW per year solar panel
factories. All these are presently going to solar synfuel facilities
in nations that have signed the Kyoto Protocol. To merely fill the
growing gap between oil production and oil consumption in the world, I
will need 14 of these factories to be built over the next 28 years.
And they will all churn out panels at a prodigious rate. But within
five years I will expect that with a successful development of a
sodium sulfur variable load flow battery, that an increasing portion
of these panels will be used to supply a growing national HVDC grid -
that will supply electrical power at a substantial profit - sold at 2
cents per kWh. I will then introduce the DC/Hydrogen home (with
hydrogen powered car) - attached directly to the grid, and for remote
applications, independent of any grid. In this way, I see direct DC
intertie through variable load sodium sulfur flow batteries -
ultimately being 20% of our total installs, and remote independent
installs (in the developed world) being 4%. In LDCs things are quite
different. There I see DC powered tramways and roadways attached to
the HVDC grid running low cost ($500,000 per lane mile) trans and
ppersonal rapid transit systems, in those countries, that implement
unpiloted instant package delivery as well as transport of persons,
combined with low-cost advanced technology DC powered homes. Again at
low cost. In developing countries, like Bangladesh, the percentages
will be different, but total demand (due to inefficient older systems)
will be far larger in the developed countries for quite some time.

Before major changes take place in upgrading legacy power systems,
newer uses and power systems will displace all these first generation
solar networks. That is, my planning foresees beamed energy from
space first augmenting large centralized collector sites, and then
later beaming power directly to users from space. Here we see the
entire world using energy at a far larger rate than today as we pass
from ground transport to VTOL based aerial transport and from a group
of regional and continental political powers to an integrated global
community.

 

[Eeyore]

Graham, you might be right that $2 per peak watt is high. But it is
at the high end of the envelope. Fact is, no one is building DC
intertie at the 50 MW scale and above so no one knows what all the
costs will be.

You need to talk to someone like ABB.

The first one won't be $0.40 per peak watt - which is
what you're suggesting I think. Though with a dedicated effort you
might get down this level. A real first system - for planning
purposes - I think $2 per peak watt is a conservative number (that is
its high - but likely the first go round)

Very high if I can readily find grid-tied inverters on sale today at the 3kW
level for < $1 a watt.

You still have the problem of storing energy outside of the 'solar hours' of
course.

Graham

 

[John Larkin]

Graham, you might be right that $2 per peak watt is high. But it is
at the high end of the envelope. Fact is, no one is building DC
intertie at the 50 MW scale and above so no one knows what all the
costs will be. The first one won't be $0.40 per peak watt - which is
what you're suggesting I think. Though with a dedicated effort you
might get down this level. A real first system - for planning
purposes - I think $2 per peak watt is a conservative number (that is
its high - but likely the first go round)

So, ask yourself, at what scale?

It is true economies of scale and leaerning curve effects do reduce
the cost of smaller units, and may reduce initial costs well below the
$2 estimate my detailed engineering analysis came up with.

You by comparison have merely indicated a suspicion of where intertie
might be after a decade or more of large-scale development.

Hogwash. In 90 seconds of research, you can discover that UPS systems
- charger, batteries, inverter, enclosure, line cord, LED dislays -
are going for 10 to 15 cents per watt RETAIL.

Utilities have been shipping interstate power using DC for decades.
It's worth it to them to convert from AC to DC, transport the power,
and convert back to AC on the other end. Worth it on thr basis of
efficiency, at acceptable capital expense.

You're cooking the numbers to push the hydrogen thing. If you actually
has solar power at 1/5 cents per kwh, there would be no reason to not
sell it to the grid.

The big question anyone who wants to have solar be an important source
has to ask, is where to start? After 60 years of development far less
than 1/1000th of our total energy supply comes from direct solar.
That means we're doing something wrong.

It means that sunlight is a very low-density power source. And always
will be.

John

So, I decided to do something different! And I've described my
reasoning and my approach and my success. To which a blindered and
shuttered community of enthusiasts, stuck in a world where the solar
industry is dominsted by the major oil companies, cannot seem to see
the forest for the trees.

Tell us about your success. Show us links to working systems.

There is adequate reason to believe that when you start engineering
large DC powered interties (much larger than that found on homes) you
will pay more than the $0.70 per peak watt (10 x more than my panel
costs) first time out. More likely $2.00 per watt (3x a mature
market0.

Absurd. Utilities do gigawatt DC links all the time, and they don't
pay multiple gigabucks for them.

This is totally bogus.


John