Sparko, John Reece: solar power not good enough! I: psss!

[Leonhard]

Did you just want to joke? If so Did you just want to put my post down? Go ahead, consider it put down. However, it could be possible that you didn't know it's possible to generate electricity directly from temperature gradients. Thermoelectricity, I think. Let me consult Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator Ah, good ol' Thomas Johann Seebeck. Not necessarily the only way to generate electricity from temperature differences, though.

Great, you've now got a solar cell with a barely measurable effect, or if built out of expensive and exotic materials 1-3% efficient. Thermoelectric generators are good for a few rare generator situations: The army wants them because they can be made entirely silent. And NASA wants when because if the heatsource is an orange hot lump of plutonium, then its a very lightweight way to generate 1-2kW for long endurance space probes like Voyager.

[Truthseeker]

Truthseeker has commenced news article dumping like he did to kill the Peak Oil thread on the original forum.

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I don't know if your opinion is close to the consensus. But certainly a moderator can close this thread if it has no more than 3 readers, counting me. Not counting Leonhard, of course.

[Truthseeker]

Thermoelectric generation isn't the most efficient way to produce electrical energy TS. If it was, why do power plants prefer a turbine set up vs a thermoelectric generator set up?

If Lil and Leonhard are close to being correct, then scratch the Seebeck-effect generator. However, I wasn't thinking of it specifically. No other thermoelectric way? Any other way other than thermoelectricity? We have a classic thermodynamics set up: a hot reservoir (hot air exiting the panel out of its top) and a cold reservoir (air going up inside into the panel at its bottom or better, the floor or ground), yes? Hmmm I wonder how small turbines can be? Unfortunately perhaps costly, unless one could print parts out of heat-resistant plastic starting material? Still need paramagnetic metal parts, though. OK, critics, whack away.

[One Bad Pig]

Truthseeker has commenced news article dumping like he did to kill the Peak Oil thread on the original forum.

It's okay. This is his thread.

[Sparko]

Oh, wow, electronics! That should enable you to say whether table-top fusion that is safe and powerful is possible. Maybe you can even say how soon ("Impossible until 2020.")

It is impossible unless some really big break through happens. No indication of that. Not that fusion is electronics, but I have studied fission and fusion also.

Seriously, what is the most efficient way to generate thermoelectricity inside a small room?

Seeback devices. But their efficiency is only about 8% at best.

You may have overlooked the electricity that the heater saves by keeping the main-house furnace off, if it is electrical, as mine is. Besides, you seem like you want everything to be electrical.

I never said it would not save energy. YOU said it was a thermalelectric generator, it isn't. It's a solar heater. I just corrected you on another one of your mistakes. You don't understand the science or physics behind any of the crap you spew out, yet you expect others to believe your claims. It is as bad as your conspiracy theories. You start with a grain of an idea and build an entire fantasy around it.

[Truthseeker]

It is impossible unless some really big break through happens. No indication of that.

Easy to say that something is impossible when it is not yet a success.

Seeback devices. But their efficiency is only about 8% at best.

I'm not sure I understand. Lil said turbines were better!? Let me see . . . hot air rises, so if for instance one mounted a turbine in a chimney, it can generate electrical power?? Oh, maybe Lil didn't mean that a turbine stuck in a chimney is as efficient as Seebeck generators.

Efficiency doesn't really matter much if generating power in a certain way doesn't require expensive equipment. I have been trying to price Seebeck generators.

YOU said it was a thermalelectric generator, it isn't.

Here's what I wrote:

diy solar thermal panel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLNViUsRCVU Lots of work, but if it's diy, then the panel is mighty cheap.

Please point out in that quotation where I wrote "electric."

It is as bad as your conspiracy theories. You start with a grain of an idea and build an entire fantasy around it

Outside this thread, can you show that?

[Truthseeker]

Pricing seebeck generators:

A fan for circulating the air in a room requires about 140 watts. Looking at this web site http://www.customthermoelectric.com I could not find a Seebeck generator single module that can generate that much power. I guess about 14 modules would be necessary at a total cost of around $900. That is more than the fan would cost, around $30. I guess the savings from keeping the furnace off longer would not make the pay-back period any less than 9 years. I think that is not acceptable. It's even worse if the savings are just the fan's power requirement.

Maybe Lil can save the day by showing that small turbines are much cheaper (payback less than 6 years).

[Sparko]

World's largest solar plant applying for federal grant to pay off federal loan

...the plant has not lived up to its clean energy promise. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the plant produced only about a quarter of the power it's supposed to, a disappointing 254,263 megawatt-hours of electricity from January through August, not the million megawatt-hours it promised.

A NRG spokesman blamed the weather, saying the sun didn't shine as often as years of studies predicted.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...cmp=latestnews

[Truthseeker]

World's largest solar plant applying for federal grant to pay off federal loan

...the plant has not lived up to its clean energy promise. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the plant produced only about a quarter of the power it's supposed to, a disappointing 254,263 megawatt-hours of electricity from January through August, not the million megawatt-hours it promised.

A NRG spokesman blamed the weather, saying the sun didn't shine as often as years of studies predicted.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...cmp=latestnews

Grid parity means NO government assistance including subsidies and loans. I don't know, but I strongly suspect that is a project that should never have been attempted in the first place. The Obama Administration already has a poor record of backing clean-energy projects. Too many fail.

And, Sparko, please bear in mind that this is the Natural Sciences forum, which is the best for the subject of technology. Not Civics, including crony capitalism and corporate capitalism.

Though I doubt the California project will meet its design objective (a million kilowatt-hours) ever, it could be too early to cry FAILURE! anyway.

[Teallaura]

TS, you contended that solar could be/was nearly (kinda varied as the thread went along) commercially viable. Sparko's post goes to commercial viability. Were I still a mod, I would not find that to be a derail. Honestly, I'd consider moving the thread first.

You two should go get a cold coke and sit under a shady tree - you two are now just arguing out of pure habit.

[Teallaura]

Pricing seebeck generators:

A fan for circulating the air in a room requires about 140 watts. Looking at this web site http://www.customthermoelectric.com I could not find a Seebeck generator single module that can generate that much power. I guess about 14 modules would be necessary at a total cost of around $900. That is more than the fan would cost, around $30. I guess the savings from keeping the furnace off longer would not make the pay-back period any less than 9 years. I think that is not acceptable. It's even worse if the savings are just the fan's power requirement.

Maybe Lil can save the day by showing that small turbines are much cheaper (payback less than 6 years).

Just build a rocket stove in the den....

[Leonhard]

TS, you contended that solar could be/was nearly (kinda varied as the thread went along) commercially viable.

It already is in some places, though we're a decade or more away from it being commercially viable everywhere. In Denmark its more than twice as expensive than land-based windmills (who themselves are 20-30% more expensive than coal).

[Teallaura]

It already is in some places, though we're a decade or more away from it being commercially viable everywhere. In Denmark its more than twice as expensive than land-based windmills (who themselves are 20-30% more expensive than coal).

Eh, minus the artificial inflation on coal and oil, I'm not so sure - but I'll concede some viability at present.

Sparky's post is still on topic.

[Truthseeker]

TS, you contended that solar could be

No.

/was nearly

Yes, but not quite correct.

(kinda varied as the thread went along) commercially viable.

You forgot, grid parity in places such as Hawaii and around Yuma, AZ. And I think the realm of commercial solar power will continue to increase in extent.

Sparko's post goes to commercial viability. Were I still a mod, I would not find that to be a derail. Honestly, I'd consider moving the thread first.

I saw Sparko's post as a bungled attempt to humiliate me, to be honest with you. Maybe the post went to commercial viability, but the project clearly was not, at least so far. Again, I don't think it will achieve grid parity.

[Sparko]

TS, the powerplant I posted about is the one you brought up earlier and that someone mentioned was killing thousands of birds by frying them with the heat beams.

It uses the same basic technology you have just now been pushing with the DIY thermosolar power panel and which I said were too inefficient. The link I gave shows that even on a very large scale that the technology is still WAY too inefficient. The people who want to push this technology overpromise and then want the government to bail them out. They end up COSTING us more money than if we stuck with traditional energy generating methods.