New energy ideas

[Steam]

There's no point in discussing any of this, other than to make you feel better about yourself.
China is opening a new coal-fired power station every FOUR DAYS.
And that's not one of these new-fangled high tech jobbies, they are the old style 1950's low-tech smoke-belching variety.
Till China cleans up its act there's just no point. We may as well open a couple of our own coal-fired power stations here, we have enough coal to last a thousand years at our current rate of consumption.
"Lead by example" you say? Ahahahaha, like they are paying any attention.

[ManDownUnder]

...turn everything off in the house and hook up a clean 230V supply to it, (NOT and extension cord from next door though eh?) the liddle wheels should go backwards.

I assume you mean a synchronised supply...?

[Finn]

Try it, turn everything off in the house and hook up a clean 230V supply to it, (NOT and extension cord from next door though eh?) the liddle wheels should go backwards.

Cool, I'll try it tonight. Thats the meter with the gas pipes connected to it right?

[ManDownUnder]

Cool, I'll try it tonight. Thats the meter with the gas pipes connected to it right?

LOL yeah!

... and Finn was never from again...

[Finn]

China is opening a new coal-fired power station every FOUR DAYS.

Excellent. My investment in coal mining should produce some good returns then.

It's bullshit by they way. One every 4 days. Hahahahahaha.

[Usarka]

solar energy is not the answer. look at the situation we are in after 100 years of consuming oil - its almost gone. we'd be nuts to do the same thing to the sun....

[avgas]

i think it should be compulsory for new housing developments to produce 20% of their power. Its not as expensive as people think.
How about this for an energy idea.....decrease consumption?
Too often i see shit that stirs me up, greenies complaining about stuff and not fixing it on their end.
Classic is Greenpeace HQ - lights on all the time, no sensor lights, no one around.
Un-insulated houses.
In-efficent designs.
Never mind free energy, if we cant look after energy we currently use.

[Ocean1]

The orbital towers don't make inter solar flight almost free but.
They get the atmosphere out of the equation, which surely reduces the cost big time.

You also get the Van Allen belt largely out of the equasion.

You still have the planet's gravity well to contend with.
However, with low orbit speeds circa 18,000 mph (pardon the units) and escape velocity at 24,000, the last 6000 is a whole heap easier to deal with than the first.

No you don't, the tower extends beyond geosync orbit, it has to, to stay in tension. That puts the top not only way past escape velocity but well into viable planetary cruise speeds. If you need to get anywhere further, (beyond "local" planets) you can make another completely disconnected tower, free-floating but spun end for end and synchronising every half turn with the fixed one. Possible velocity is limited only by the length of the secondary tower, which is liminted only by the tensile strength of the materials used to make it. If you need to go in another direction you just swing around the moon / Mars / Venus etc.
There are some serious physical issues with the towers but I can't remember exactly what. I think it has to do with the coriolis forces on an elevator ascending and descending. I THINK that when you calculate them they are high enough to require tower stiffening that is right on the edge of our materials technology.

Structural requirements are beyond arimid fibre technology, but by far less than an order of magnitude. Monofilliment carbon fibre would do, but at the moment we can only make that in zero gravity... chicken, egg. Bizzarly the only possible viable material on the planet is a particular spiderweb.

[Finn]

Too often i see shit that stirs me up, greenies complaining about stuff and not fixing it on their end.
Classic is Greenpeace HQ - lights on all the time, no sensor lights, no one around.
Un-insulated houses.
In-efficent designs.

True. I was tying up my boat at Westhaven a few years back and a team of professional protesters from Codpeace tuned up with 3 Ribs. They all had very old two stroke engines blowing more black smoke than Oprah Winfrey. I gave them an ear full I did.

[Ocean1]

I assume you mean a synchronised supply...?

Cool, I'll try it tonight. Thats the meter with the gas pipes connected to it right?

there'll be safety and systems compatibility concerns under duscussion

...........

[davereid]

Petrol powered power plant right next to the refinery - can supply electricity to the grid and also to the refinery to offset the electrical costs of refining it.

One fucking great finely-tuned engine (or a battery of engines) running constantly at optimum output to drive a fixed-load generator would be a lot more efficient than transporting petrol around the countryside in diesel-powered trucks and then burning it in a large number of variably tuned engines at varying outputs under varying loads.

The electricity pumped into the grid could then power electric vehicles - personal and public transport.

Strict emission management of the power plant (and more efficient burning of the fuel) would be an improvement over the emissions from all the aforementioned smaller engines.

Crude oil will still eventually run out but it will run out slower if used efficiently than it would the way it is being used at present.

Lots of things can be combusted and used to power generators - biofuels, diesel, oils, methane - some of which (like methane or ethanol produced from whey) are waste products and could be pressed into service to fuel power stations.

Oh Noes! Burning things, CO2-monster etc. CO2 is less of a "greenhouse gas" than methane. Burn nasty methane (sewerage treatment plants could become power stations), make less-nasty CO2, pass it through some serious scrubbers to render CO2 inert (an exhaust system that would bring a car to an abrupt halt from sheer weight).

Electric train systems (main trunk line, Wellington's "Unit"), electric trams (Wellington), and some of the new generation high-performance electric cars fitted with the latest and greatest batteries.

Yep, there are some very efficint prime movers out there. Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wärtsilä-Sulzer_RTA96-C. at over 50% efficiency and http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/pro...stem/index.htm at 60 %.

And if you use waste heat for heating homes etc, real efficiencies are even higher.

But power networks aren't much good.

Most networks run losses of between 7-10%.

About half of that is the powerline, losses at high voltage are about 3-4% per 1000km of line. The balance is lost at the lower voltage used to distribute power locally, and in the transformers that do the voltage change.

These figures are actually getting worse.

This is because overhead power lines have lower losses than buried cables. In a buried cable the conductors are very close to each other, and reactive losses become very significant.

We can distribute power using DC to help reduce some of these losses, but then we can't easily transform it back to AC - its an expensive and lossy operation.

So in fact, putting your power station near the load is generally the best idea if you can do it.

[ManDownUnder]

solar energy is not the answer. look at the situation we are in after 100 years of consuming oil - its almost gone. we'd be nuts to do the same thing to the sun....

LOL good point - me and my shortsighted ideas...

[Wolf]

Jerry Pournelle's "One Step Further Out" has ideas on "surviving with style" - solar arrays in geosynch orbit always in direct sunlight with no atmospheric interference, beaming power down to a receptor on Earth using a MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) - "clouds? what fucking clouds?". OK, any plane that overflies the area is toast but as Pournelle says: "call it 'evolution in action'".

Thermocouples - plenty of places with huge temperature differentials in reasonably close proximity - depths of ocean cf the surface, sink holes in geothermal areas etc. Every little bit helps.

[avgas]

They actually spent a fair amount to install metres that won't work backwards exactly to avoid smart bastards like you pumping extrenal supply peak surplus back into the grid.

Never mind the fact of harmonics and shit flushing back into the system when people do it wrong.

[Bass]

Structural requirements are beyond arimid fibre technology, but by far less than an order of magnitude. Monofilliment carbon fibre would do, but at the moment we can only make that in zero gravity... chicken, egg. Bizzarly the only possible viable material on the planet is a particular spiderweb.

Whoa!!!
Thats way taller than I was thinking! Lets see.....speed at earth surface at equator about 1000mph, radius about 4000 miles.
We want 24000 mph, so tower needs to be about 96,000 miles tall absolute minimum.


Consider this - if we are going to use the Earth's rotational momentum to fire off spaceships, if we do it enough, will we slow the Earth down? Sort of permanent daylight saving.