• 1001 Days Ago
• 08/26/2010

Re: 700 degrees Celcius - Possible CoGen Opportunity

Yes and no.

The down side of using this as a heat source is that whatever energy you take away from the battery to heat a home or industrial site is energy that needs to be replaced to keep the battery at 700 degrees.

I think that you're thinking that the battery heats itself to 700 degrees even though that's not desirable. Although the article isn't crystal clear, it appears to me that they are discussing an operating temperature. In other words, to make the battery work, it is necessary to heat it up first.

So, there needs to be a heat source firing up the battery in addition to whatever power source is feeding it electricity.

That makes it *the opposite* of a cogeneration opportunity. Instead, it's an opportunity to try out underused new insulation technologies.

However, tech like RawSolar ("www.raw-solar.com" not the one without the hyphen) has developed can create both electric energy and heat. By using photovoltaics designed for concentrated sun with the water circulation system already built into the Raw Solar dish, you can use the waste heat from the CSP process to heat the battery. In other words, while the battery isn't a *source* of cogeneration, because it needs both electricity and heat, it is the perfect *recipient* of cogenerated heat & power.

• 995 Days Ago
• 09/01/2010

Re: 700 degrees Celcius - Possible CoGen Opportunity

How about using metals like Gallium + Sodium
for lower temperature operation?

Also, it would be nearly compatible with this
thermostorage mechanism Web Link:
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/index.php?page=storage

• 1001 Days Ago
• 08/26/2010

Re: How many do we need?

While you are right to ask how a tech will handle its weaknesses and to insist that if a government is acting on your behalf it is operating in a responsible way, this question is not actually relevant. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Solar power currently contributes a minute amount of grid power. All of it could disappear and the grid wouldn't miss it except on the days of peak demand.

2. Days of peak demand are actually caused by excess summer heat when electric air conditioning use massively increases. The amount of electricity we would save after a major eruption exceeds the amount that we would fail to generate if all solar went off-line.

3. I don't know about solar "fanatics" but there are people like me who don't own any solar tech (not even solar patio lights or solar calculators) who nonetheless are concerned about industrial greenhouse gases. We wish to cut them dramatically and thus are advocating for a diversified energy portfolio, not hyper-reliance on solar as a replacement for hyper-reliance on fossil fuels. This means that in the wildest dreams of alt-fuel enthusiasts, almost no one imagines that solar will ever amount to more than 20% of grid electricity.

4. The reduction of sunlight needed to cause the effects you are talking about are dramatically less than 3%. I don't have the figures right now, but IIRC the reduction in ground-arriving sunlight from that eruption was on the order of 1/2%. So, take 1/2 of 1% of the 20% of grid that might be powered by sunlight & you end up with little effect on the grid. Now, different techs would feel this differently. Solar-thermal would only feel the 1/2% drop, but increase in cloud cover might reduce photovoltaic techs 10-50% depending on the tech and the amount of cloud cover shift. A worst case would be a net 10% drop in production from solar, or a 2% drop in grid contributions from solar (though there would be a possibility of a drop in wind and wave contributions, the way that these patterns would shift are hard to predict. The total drop from these sources would also be small.

5. This results in a dramatic reduction in the highest summer temperatures, and thus would reduce AC use more than it would reduce energy production even in a 20% solar scenario. The only exception would be if we used cloud-sensitive photovoltaics for a very large fraction of generation. This is unlikely. Industrial generation would be located in places where the volcanic particulates would be unable to form clouds b/c there would be no local moisture. This means that the only reduction would be that direct reduction from reflective particles and no indirect reduction from cloud seeding. We're back to cutting industrial generation by 1/2 of 1% again, and again, that's less lost than would be saved in air conditioning.

6. and this is dramatically important - this shift will take a significant amount of time. by the time we have 20% solar electricity in our grid, energy storage will have advanced even further and it will be even cheaper.

7. Also important: even if you are a total AGW denier. You know for sure in your heart that it's never gonna happen. Say that you've got PhDs in math, computer science, physics, geology, meteorology and climatology and have through your multi-disciplinary insights and general brilliance proven 10k scientists wrong. Even if all that is true, here's the whopper for you:
The rest of the world is just stupid enough to believe those 10k scientists. They are going to spend literally *trillions of dollars* on this tech. The US has had its manufacturing sector - the primary wealth-generator - sucked away. But high-tech manufacturing can still be done as cheaply here as anywhere else. Also, wherever the tech is invented is where the royalty money will go.
therefore, if you cynically pretend to buy in to the AGW boondoggle, you can totally revive the collapsing US economy, turn us from a debtor nation into a creditor nation, and create an environment in which real incomes rise for more than 5% of US citizens for the first time in 40 years.
whether it's because 10k scientists working for 40 years have actually got it right or because 150+ governments around the world are run by idiots, why wouldn't you want to suck trillions away from the rest of the world into the US, where it will ultimately enrich you, if you live here, and your family, assuming the same.

By setting renewable requirements and funding specialized R&D, we spend a lot of money it's true. But by doing that, we create the incentives for some of the most innovative people and companies in the world to invent and manufacture the products that will bring far more wealth into the country than we will spend.

we are 300 million of 6+ billion. We are 1/20th of the world. Thus, if we can capture 10% of the world market for these techs, we will earn twice as much as we spend.

and, here's the cruddy part. If you don't have 8 PhDs and haven't figured out the weakness that 10k scientists missed, then when we don't encourage this R&D, we not only *don't* grab that 10% of the market, we'll end up having to send our money overseas for the tech that everyone else will invent while we sit on our hands.

You might think that's a small risk, but when we stand to gain money by saying it's a real crisis whether we're right or just cynically pretending it's a real crisis and stand to lose money only if we don't act like it's a crisis...I'll take the guaranteed profit any day of the week.

Why is it that AGW deniers only think about the money spent and never about the money earned? Every buck spent by someone is earned by someone else. Why not rake it in?

• 999 Days Ago
• 08/28/2010

Re: How many do we need?

Dude, a few percent change in the climate induced by we sapiens will have fairly huge bad consequences.  But I'm with you in that I do not see any viable alternative to developing nuclear breeder reactor technology to scale to our energy needs (also to power us at sea and in space). I hope that technology is thorium thermal breeders but also wish Bill Gate's effort luck.

But, I don't see how this conflicts or is at odds with developing solar power and efficient ways to store energy. In fact, if solar power proves me wrong, that it can in fact scale to our needs and we somehow don't mind covering half our ecology in panels, then I'm all for it (but highly dubious that its a solution, though it makes sense that building generate some of their power this way).