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When you talk about energy generation, perhaps a branch of the discussion might be to incorporate what that energy is being used for - and if there are alternatives to how we are using energy now. Consider weatherization of homes, for example. I'm somewhat familiar with this, and it's one of the most cost-effective things you, personally, can do. More efficient construction methods would reduce the need for air conditioning (thus electric) and heating (various). A supplement to this tangent is solar thermal heating. There are, for example, youtube DIY videos (and commercial versions) of solar thermal panels for the purpose of heating homes and businesses, and they are rather effective. I believe there is also underground air conditioning, but I'm less familiar with that. Would this be an acceptable side discussion for this thread?
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Sep 4, 2012 18:56
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Anosmoman posted:The problem is the battery. Renewables would be a lot more viable if we could just store the energy in a practical and economical way. It doesn't matter if wind mills become 50% cheaper or solar panels 100% more efficient - as long as we don't have The Battery their use will not go beyond supplemental generation. This is one of the big things, yeah. Look at say, Star Wars technology. Pretty sci-fi, but... a lot of the tech in that fictional universe would be possible in the real world if we had equivalent power storage capabilities. Hell, we have ion engine vehicles in space now. That's why gasoline is still king, though - it has superior energy density versus batteries that we have in wide use right now. Ideally, we need to become much more efficient in our consumption of energy while waiting for energy storage tech to catch up.
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Sep 6, 2012 19:14
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I saw this video on Thorium (it's... not the most visually appealing video) and it has some crazy information in it. Like... U.S. nuclear reactors being extremely inefficient based on Navy technology, who didn't care about efficiency. Also, Nixon killing Thorium research in the 1970s.
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May 20, 2014 17:31
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There's a non-powered way to heat homes using passive solar heating. It works pretty well and can help in some areas. Not sure how much it would help in Chicago versus weatherizing.
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May 5, 2015 02:31
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PhazonLink posted:Speaking of solar, anyone hear about France having a small segment of solar road that costs like a million $ for just 50 feet or something. If by a million for 50 feet you mean $5.2 million per kilometer, then yes. Unfortunately, normal asphalt roads are loving expensive anyway. Comparatively speaking (and this info can be found elsewhere than this article): quote:Construct a new 2-lane undivided road – about $2 million to $3 million per mile in rural areas, about $3 million to $5 million in urban areas. 274% of the cost, I suppose. They don't really know how long it will last. Comparatively, asphalt is expected to last around 20 years. I wouldn't say it gets that old before it's poo poo to drive on in Oklahoma, though. Still probably a bad idea: https://twitter.com/percytwits/status/548754743557128192 Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 20:21
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fishmech posted:Uh, dude, according to that article, it's a kilometer long but only 30,000 square feet of solar panels - that means at a full kilometer long it can only be 9 feet wide or about 2.8 meters wide. The pictures in the article support that, it's only actually covering the middle portion of a single lane. That's not even wide enough to count as a full highway lane in most of the US or Europe. If we take that price as a baseline, then at minimum you need to spend $10.4 million per kilometer of actual two direction road with very narrow lanes, more for lanes of a sane width. I don't think it's a good idea anyway, but I had overlooked that it was a (partial) single lane. I was thinking less than 300% the cost seemed low, but didn't really investigate it. So, 548% the cost... really not worth it at all. Looks like a foot or more on either side of the panels in the images, plus the centerline obviously is still asphalt. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 20:33
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