Best Alternative Power System

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by lixluke, Mar 3, 2005.

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  1. boppa Registered Senior Member

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    i just completed my alt energy certification here in .au at tafe(required for installing wind/solar and microhydro off grid systems

    and id say (as do the people who study this- i got a guy called ericson in my tafe notes im looking at here) the figures vary but his study in 2001 for the us had a total of 40000 birdstrikes a year-which equaled a huge 2.19 birds per turbine per year

    and this guy had the worst figures- an earlier study by howell and noone(thats gotta be a joke name lol) only got 0.017 birds per turbine per year

    not exactly condor cuisinearts i would have thought
     
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  3. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    That would go through the shrinking Nebraskan sandhill crane population damn fast. With some of these animals, every individual counts.
     
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  5. cato less hate, more science Registered Senior Member

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    I understand that it is probably impossible to find a place that won’t tax you. I also understand the irony of kicking you out of the "land of the free" because you want to be independent. I think you took my remark too seriously, it’s hard to convey a sense of sarcasm via text.

    Anyway, you seem to prefer a many-weed approach to a big-tree approach, but fixing the problems in our existing big-tree system will be far easier than getting everyone their own power generator. unless you think people should just buy their own power producing systems and the government should stay out of it. in which case poor people would not be able to afford their own system and the gap between rich and poor would grow out of control, and we would end up with a poverty situation rivaling that of any other place on earth. you have to think of the big picture, we can't just throw out the grid system.

    I still don’t understand what you would do about cities. eliminate cities? the energy cost of moving things from one location to another, if people were homogeneously spread out, would probably far outweigh the benefits of the many-weed system.

    I seem to be the one finding problems with other peoples theories. If someone would like to give a credible argument as to why we should not invest in fusion, I would like to hear it.
     
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  7. boppa Registered Senior Member

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    Clockwood
    Mooning the World (3,053 posts)
    Today, 05:59 AM
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    That would go through the shrinking Nebraskan sandhill crane population damn fast. With some of these animals, every individual counts.

    thats why they dont just stick em up and to hell with the birds

    did you see the bit about the per turbine per year ?
    \
    are these nebaskan sandhill cranes present at every wind site in the us?

    appeal to emotions-present the facts and only the facts as someone somewhere said

    the facts

    the average birdkills are according to the worst figures

    once every six months

    once every 25 weeks

    once every 182 days

    once every 4380 hours

    once every 626800 minutes

    once every 15768000 seconds

    so sit down and whacko blood and guts

    now count
    one and two and three and...

    and 15 million 7 hundred and sixty eight thousand and

    whacko

    i rest my case

    ;-) and

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  8. cato less hate, more science Registered Senior Member

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    well, as long as we are using a grid (otherwise you would have to build windmills wherever there are people, including where cranes are) you may as well just use nuclear. I can put up with one more generation of fission plants before fusion gets on its feet.
     
  9. boppa Registered Senior Member

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    funnily enough where i was staying when i did my tafe course was an ongrid solar assisted suburb

    my uncle has the booklet they put out in paper form-try googling newington in sydney,australia-ill wander off and see if i can find out their website

    EVERY house in that suburb has solar assisted gas hws,recycled water for flushing the dunnies and watering the gardens and solar panels on the roof feeding power back into the grid during the day

    that suburb(without the name) became rather famous amongst the greenies and people into alternate power during the 2000 olympics here in australia

    it makes more power than it consumes on the elec grid

    ;-)
     
  10. Maddad Time is a Weighty Problem Registered Senior Member

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    251
    We do not have anti-matter, so any that we use for a fuel has to be made first. The energy that we would get out of using antimatter is the same energy that you would have to first put in. It's worse than that though because there are losses in the system, especially containment losses, so you have to put in even more than you get out.

    The issue with alternative energy is cost. So far, despite recent increases in the price of a barrel of oil, it is still cheaper than the alternatives, so we still use it. As oil prices increase, then these alternatives become more attractive.

    One alternative source that is not being mentioned is Yellowston's caldera. There's a magma plume rising underneath, and three times in the last two million years Yellowstone's released a stupendous blast. If we could tap it, then we could bleed off this energy. There's enough there to meet the entire world's energy needs, and it would stave off a disasterous supervolcanic explosion. Win-win. The energy source would be ultimately centralized, of course, which means that it would only supplement, and not replace, existing energy sources. Still, every little bit helps, even if this one is a big bit. The idea is not to find a single energy source that does it all, but rather marshal together a lot of different sources that together meet all our energy needs.

    The other 20% is hot air.
     
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Clockwood is concerned with the number of birds that wind power turbines would kill if they powered a city. Bobba reports some real “facts.“, I put Facts is in quotes because his data is significantly higher than other reports. In any case, it is clear that less than three birds are killed per turbine each year. Most airports do that in an hour. Lets ban airplanes.

    So few birds are killed because the windmills disturb the airflow (it is taking energy out of it). Birds are very sensitive to small changes in the airflow, some are able to glide for hours because they can sense even very small change in the air flow. Personally I think that anyone who loves birds should rejoice if windmills can kill a few of the most stupid, ill adapted, ones and improve the gene pool! Perhaps even if all our power came from windmills, it would not make any significant improvement in their gene pool because man has already deployed a much more effect device for selecting out and killing the more stupid birds - See next paragraph.

    I don’t have any hard data but in a city of 100,000 I am sure that at least 3% of the citizens annually have the experience of a bird trying to fly into their house through what seemed to the bird to be that nice rectangular opening. - The one we call a window. Thus if Clockwood is really concerned about artifacts of man killing birds, and not just opposed to wind power, I suggest that he paint all his windows over with black paint. They are about 1000 times more lethal to birds than even a big windmill that could power 100 houses!

    Cato seems to me to have it just about right. But he disparages the potential of decentralized electric power, he seems to be ignoring my earlier post where I indicate that in less than 25 years, a distributed power system based on generation of both heat and electricity with at least twice current (never to be doubled, because of Carnot limits on conversion of thermal energy into electric power) fuel efficiency of central power will exist in most buildings where natural gas is already available to the building. Even the summer requirements for air condition can easily be supplied from the fuel cell heat, via the old, economical ammonia absorption/ de-absorption process.

    Now a few word about fusion, a field I was a researcher in for more than20 years. I hope we can some day make it work. It has never made net power and many problems remain. My fear is that it will be too expensive to compete with coal for at least 300 years. (Free fuel would reduce the cost of electric power on the average about 10%. That is about the economy of hydropower, where the fuel is already free. Unfortunately superconducting magnets, large vacuum systems, deturium separation, radioactive protecion from the neutron induced radioactivity all cost lot more that the boiler of a conventional power plant. Both need the steam turbine and electrical generator. - Summary: don't expect fusion power to be cheap. Just be thankful that if man can finally make it work it is essentially inexhaustable and we can aford to pay several times what we do for power, and probably will when coal is gone.)

    Thus man will continue to use coal for power, especially if the greens have there way and stop fission, as they have in US and appear to be succeeding in Germany where it will become illegal in a few years. They (the tree lovers etc) are so ignorant that they do not realize coal kills 7000 miners every year, 3000 worker directly envolved in transport and burning of coal, at least 50,000 people via lung related deaths, millions of fish, trees, etc via acid rain, not to mention releasing much more radioactive elements into the air we breath every year than all the world's fission plants have in the history of fission power, Excluding a few plants that were designed more to to produce plutonium rather than power.

    The US does not regulate fission as it should, so I am not saying fision is without faults. But it can be very safe if done correctly. The French do it well. Their plants are few in design, all with identical control rooms so if something starts to become strange, the experts arrive already knowing where each control is and what it does. (Not like three mile island which even with its accident, realesed less radioactivity than Pensilivania’s coal plants do every year. (There is some radioactivity in all coal and the tonnage burnt is huge.) Green's ignorance is killing about 100,000 people every year, but it is only possible to document about half this number.
     
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  12. cato less hate, more science Registered Senior Member

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    Billy T: ahhmen brother!

    Do you think fusion reactors will really be that expensive? I know there will be major up front costs, but is operating them and collecting deuterium really going to make it that expensive? It doesn’t really matter to me; I think we should be using pellet fission for the majority of energy in this country. fucking greens! (hehe)

    p.s. I agree with you on the whole pumping natural gas to one's house, but that is still a centralized system.
     
  13. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Well, I guess I should fuck any environmental leanings and go straight Repubican like I am normally. No problem.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Few people realize that at least 2/3 perhaps 3/4 or even more if not much problem with line damage by ice and wind etc. of the cost of electric power is the capital cost. Even the size of the wire used in the transmission lines is determined by the cost of capital at the time the line was designed. (1)They make a calculation of the current value of the energy that will be lost during the life of the line. (2)They consider how much more the next size larger wire (or another wire in larger geometry if corona loss is significant) will cost. (They don't really care about the price - that will be added to the capital base on which the public service commission allows them to charge the customer so in some sense, they like to pay for more capital items!) The cost that they worry about when building a line is the interest cost on the money they borrow. As the wire gets bigger, item (1) gets less and item (2) gets more. they set the design size such that the next wire size step increase item (2) more than it would reduce item (1).

    Thus if the line is designed in a time like now when interest cost are lower than normal, the wire is bigger {see PS below} than if it is designed when the cost of money (interest) is higher. Fundamentaly economics is at the bottom of everything, even how to design a power transimsion line. In this regard (and probably only in this regard) Carl Marks was right.

    PS -I did not note that the "present value" is also a strong function of the interest rate (although in these calculations it is called the "discount rate" and they are not exactly the same.) That is, in periods when the discount rae is low, the present value of the future losses is higher. Thus, low interest rates are a "double whammie" increasing (1) and reducing (2)and really strongly control the line design. The financial officer is more critical in line design than the engineer!
     
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  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for concurring. Not all central systmes are to be avoided. I like public water and sewer systems, don't you?
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I could not help but note the your photo relflects less intelligence than Cato's

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    , so I am not am not surprized by your political choice. Before irreversibly going "straight Republican" you might look at what change has been made in the national debt in last four years (going for Clinton's very significant surplus budgets to Bush's record setting deficits). That is take the total increase and divide by the US population to learn your shair. You may be surprized to see that it is much more than your daily cost of food etc. Of course it is actually much worse, All those "wellfair bumbs" won't pay their share nor will the recently born, nor will us old guys who are living on our Social Security (It goes a long way in Brazil where I live. Since I get essentially the max possible it is several times the local average wage!)

    To correct for the wellfair bumbs, us old parasites, the too young to earn enough to pay taxes, the retiring "baby boomers" and the accumulation interest, which will soon rise dramatically to finance the debt as lenders become scared of dollar collapse, etc. multiply the cost calculated above by about 5. But don't worry, Bush's deficits in trade and foreign adventures are as big as his domestic ones, so the dollars you will pay won't be worth much!

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    When oil is no longer priced in low value value greenbacks, (probably not worthless until japan is forced to drop its dollar hoard by lesser central banks like Korea and Russia etc getting out of dollars, as they now are) and you can not afford gas for your car, or oil for generation of your electric or heating house, etc, perhaps you will switch parties and even become a supporter of alternate power sources.

    Unfortunately it will be too late, but if you give me your address when you are really in bad shape, I will see if I can send you a "care package" from Brazil. I tend to think ahead, so I am already setting up an organization, tentive name is "Help the starving Americans" but it is not getting off the ground. - Bush has made most of the people here hate American arrogance and all they say when I try is: "Good, let the bastards starve." (but in portugese, of course.) Don't know what I can do

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    , but like the "greens", my heart is in the right place.I do differ from most "greens" and "tree lovers" etc. in one important anatomic detail: My head is on my shoulders, not inserted deep inside a cavity of the body. Thus I can understand what is happening and I can see what is coming.
     
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  17. slotty Colostomy-its not my bag Registered Senior Member

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    Geo-thermal is not really that viable on a massive scale apart from Iceland i can't think of anywhere else its used. In Iceland its a small borehole that has water pumped down it and returned to the surface hot, and then sent to communities around the area for heating. a giant central heating system if you like. I would imagine there being quite a row erupting ( pardon pun

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    if a geo-thermal plant of any description arrived on top of Yellowstone Park :m:
     
  18. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    "what I meant was: if you don’t like our government taxing you for a centralized power system you can move to another country. and my saying "cheap fusion power" implied that he would have to pay a lot more to run an alternative power source."

    No because moving to another countr doesn't stop governments from taxing people to use a less efficient system.
    The object is to create a more efficient/cost effective system, and to use such a system practically.
    It is impractical to a less efficient system when a more efficient one is available or can be made available.
    who cares if people prefer a less efficient system. For the sake of the environment, humanity, and therefore, my own individual happiness, I would rather impose a more efficient system. Such that it produces more energy, with less emissions, in a more convenient method of delivery, that is more cost effective to all involved.

    As for fixtures and structures. It takes far more materials, manpower, time, effort, resources in general to create, maintain, and regulate centralized power.
    If there already is or hopefully will be a method of energy that does not use a centralized power system, it would likely be far more cost effective. Mass producing and distributing independent power systems that fit into a corner of your home could well take up far less materials, manpower, energy, and so forth to create.



    "whatever costs me the least money will be the winner."
    ----------
    I can think of no way that a centralized power sytem would cost less to the individual or the environment.
     
  19. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    "I still don’t understand what you would do about cities. eliminate cities?"
    --------------------
    For the most part, yes.
    It is called reforestation.
    You can have states that are pretty much all natural land such as is shown in section 7 of the city structure page: http://www.caliditta.com/citydesign/citystructure.htm

    Or in the case of the tower city, you may have a single tower act as a state in the middle of hundreds of miles of surrounding natural land and forest area.


    I don't know what you look at as more cost effective. To me the focus is always on the individual and the environment. I define cost effective as the least amount of manpower/labor/time, energy, and natural resources to manifest and sustain in reality.
     
  20. weed_eater_guy It ain't broke, don't fix it! Registered Senior Member

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    1,516
    BillyT: "My fear is that it will be too expensive to compete with coal for at least 300 years."

    I'm not understanding how you think this. Sure, fusion energy will be hellishly expensive when it comes out at first, brand new equipment, brand new technology, new training, new facilities, etc. But after the money is invested into this, and the components of the systems are more and more perfected and efficiently built, the price should drop considerably, which would only be a few decades after the development of a reactor that generates excess power.

    But then again, I havn't been a researcher for over 20 years like you mentioned. I'm in high school, a dreamer, a noob, seemingly a stereotype on these boards... So why wouldn't fusion be viable for at least 300 years? Wouldn't the ITER, the decline in oil production, the environmental impact of coal, be enough to kick fusion into gear once a practical reactor is built? Please enlighten me.

    cool skill: about that site, the "no-car concept" makes sence but is unrealistic, some people need to go places an efficient public transportation system wouldn't go. Oh, and on the list of "no-car" cities is Zermatt, Switzerland. Been there. They use cars. They're electric, but nevertheless, they are cars. Environmental impact is one thing, but personal motor vehicles, however, are essential in society, as has been proven by the natural outcome of the free market system, which adopts the concept nicely today. Too bad they're not the cleanest things man has ever made...
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I tried to mention some of expensive items required, as we now understand the nature of a controlled fusion device. superconducting magnets, High vaccum systems, neutron induced radioactivity contol, monitioring. etc all very sophisticated and expensive equipment compared to a simple furnace that burns coal.

    Perhapse an analogy will help you understand that systems that are inherently sophisticated, in comparison to an economic competitor, need some form of government support to be economically viable. Consider two modes of transport: Airplane vs horse drawn cart. The one is much more to be desired than the other if you want to go from Boston to Washington, but if you let the horse stop and eat gress on the side of the road, it will cost less. That is, the capital cost of a sophisticated high tech system is not going to come down even in many years to ecomonically compete with a simple system the uses firebricks instead of superconductors etc. Hope I am wrong.
     
  22. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    9,072
    "some people need to go places an efficient public transportation system wouldn't go. Oh, and on the list of "no-car" cities is Zermatt, Switzerland. Been there. They use cars. They're electric, but nevertheless, they are cars. Environmental impact is one thing, but personal motor vehicles, however, are essential in society, as has been proven by the natural outcome of the free market system, which adopts the concept nicely today. Too bad they're not the cleanest things man has ever made"
    --------------------
    Supposedly, the cities on the list do not use motor vehicles with little exception including those places in Switzerland.

    I don't know if you have seen the structure page, but there really is no need for motor vehicles on a consumer level or in most industrial levels.http://www.caliditta.com/citydesign/citystructure.htm
    The exceptions of course would be terrain vehicles that allow travel through wilderness, and vehicles for other industrial use. Hopefully though, they would use a better, more friendly technology.
     
  23. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    "The one is much more to be desired than the other if you want to go from Boston to Washington, but if you let the horse stop and eat gress on the side of the road, it will cost less.
    --------------------
    The horse analogy does not cost less. It is far more efficient to construct and regulate a flying vehicle system that can routinely transport a large number of people. Compared to continueing to use a horses.
    The purpose of efficiency in itself is ultimitely to lower the cost. In other words, lower the time, energy, resources, energy, manpower. Not for one person. Not for a particular business or industry. For civilization period.
     
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