Solar electric

[petersonra]

Bob the numbers can work pretty good as long as someone else is footing the majority of the bill.

I installed a 50 KW system and the payback should be pretty short if it produces what is expected.

Here it is here.

http://view2.fatspaniel.net/PECI/burkeoil/HostedAdminView.html?&eid=164519

There seems to be some issue with the reporting software as the peak numbers are very different depending on if you look at the day, week or month.

A 50kw system has to be close to half a million bucks. It looks from the displays that on a good day it will generate about 250kw-hrs. Thats sounds about right for the system size.

Even at retail rates thats only about $9000 a year worth of power.

 

[iwire]

A 50kw system has to be close to half a million bucks.

Very close, just under $400K before rebates.

 

[al hildenbrand]

The lesson learned is you have to have conventional power in hot stand-by at a moments notice to replace a renewable source like sun and wind.

It occurs to me, that as we move away from fossil fueled personal transport, and move to vehicles powered by stored electricity in their self contained batteries, that a significant percentage of these batteries will be sitting, topped off with charge, waiting for their next use, plugged into the grid through the charging branch circuit.

There is already a PoCo administered wireless load management scheme in my area to cycle loads such as central ACs, electric water heaters, etc. Not shut them off, but cycle large numbers of little loads so the net peak demand on generation is lowered, or at least held from increasing. This PoCo load management is invoked at the times of peak demand, usually the dog days of summer, afternoon into evening, or as demand requires.

It seems to me that marrying the PoCo control administration with the charge controllers of parked vehicles could supply the "carry through" necessary for standby peak generation to be brought into play for a locale that is unexpectedly without sun or wind energy, thus side stepping the need for "always hot" peak generation.

One of the more interesting models of consumer experience of personal vehicle reliability is being touted by Shai Agassi and Better Place where the owner of a vehicle does not have to own the batteries. This reduces the front end purchase cost of a vehicle to the consumer. One rents the battery. In taking trips beyond the range of the vehicle's battery, the battery is swapped out for fully charged ones in a "filling station" like experience.

Adding control circuitry to the battery that can communicate with the PoCo grid and share charge within parameters agreed to by the customer and the PoCo seems wholly feasible to me.

 

[dereckbc]

three mile island and chernoybl effectively ended nuclear development in the
us. a very real problem with nukes isn't the fuel pellets. there's ways of
dealing with that... but after 40 years, the nuke itself gets pretty brittle from
the neutron flux.

Here is part of the ignorance problem. Please I am not implying you are ignorant, but the public at large is easily duped. Your reference is to 50 year old designs. The five pre-approved reactors are modern designs and thermal run-away (melt-down) is impossible.

 

[dereckbc]

Capacitors?

You are referring to Super Capcitors. They are in development, and prototypes are in place. EESTOR has one available, but Lockhead Martin bought exclusive rights to the technology for energy weapons and space craft.

The challenge for Super Capacitors is the extreme operating voltage range, and public safety. A Super Capacitor charges up to 100 KV or more, and then discharged to ZERO like any capacitor. Well you can see the problem; how do you build a regulator to operate say a 600 VAC three-phase motor in you car and make it safe for the public to charge it up? It is a work in progress, and I think it can be done within 10 years.

My vision is a speacial gas station so to speak. An electrical sub-station. You pull your car up on a steel platform to make a equipotential ground plane, exit the car and go inside to a protective building, and the trained attendent grounds the frame of your car and charges up your battery or capacitor in a few minutes while you are safe inside swiping your credit card.

Secondly the manufatures will make a home charging unit. Something like a welder or battery charger that plugs into a dedicated NEMA 7-30 plug like an electric dryer circuit on a seperate POCO meter and charges more slowly like a few hours or overnight. The extra meter will billed at a different rate than home power so Uncle Sam can get his fuel tax.

Folks this is not dreams but reality today with current technology, we already have it. If you look at the Telsa Car it has a 40 KWH Litium Ion battery, and gets 160 watt-hours to the mile for about 250 miles in between charges. It is not a golf cart, it is a luxury speed demon like a Corvette, except faster with more bells and whistles. Think about that for a minute. $4 for a tank full of gas to go 250 miles ready today. Not too mention battery technology prototypes are being tested right now to overcome the current drawbacks. We are one product generation away from such a goal.

So I say heck with subsidies, offer a carrot or reward for the first company to offer a battery with 400 wh/kg @ 3000 recharge cycles in 10 years with 75% original manufactured capacity (theorhetical limit is 1400 wh/kg). You will own the world and a prize to be first. Right now current tech is 250 wh/kg at 1000 cycles. It is one step away.


Another problem solved.

 

[ishium 80439]

dereck, might I ask what your relation to the electrical insdustry is? Engineer, designer, thought provoker, distribution, bottle washer? It seems that you have quite a bit of insight into some of these issues.

 

[Fulthrotl]

Here is part of the ignorance problem. Please I am not implying you are ignorant, but the public at large is easily duped. Your reference is to 50 year old designs. The five pre-approved reactors are modern designs and thermal run-away (melt-down) is impossible.

"SONGS-1, a Westinghouse 3-loop pressurized water reactor constructed by
Bechtel and rated at 1347 MWt, began commercial operation on January 1,
1968."

yes, my reference is to 50 year old designs. there's a bunch of them that
were built, including my ignorant reference quoted above. as it went into
service 41 years ago, the design predates that, obviously. so it being a 50
year old design is a reasonable conclusion.

accepting my ignorance as documented fact, can you please explain to
me what we are going to do with all these 50 year old designs after
decommissioning? when songs-2 and -3 are decommissioned after their
licenses expire in 2022? i realize they are a different design than songs-1,
but it's still a huge pile of irradated concrete and steel sitting in the
middle of the highest concentration of people in north america. one out of
every six people in the united states lives within 100 miles of it. what do you
do with it? break it up and put it in the landfill? fill it with concrete? convert
it to a shopping mall?

Edit Note: I deleted your picture, it was too large freezing up the thread. Please use smaller format like 800x600

THX

Dereck

 

[dereckbc]

:grin:

dereck, might I ask what your relation to the electrical insdustry is? Engineer, designer, thought provoker, distribution,

All of the above. I am a EE of 30 years. I started my career as a Sub-Station Relay Control Engineer with a POCO. I then switched to Microwave and Digital Communication Engineer with a Telco. After 10 years in the TELCO biz they realized they needed what they call a Power Distribution and Power and Protection Engineer to design telephone switching offices electrical distribution systems or PPE. I organized and directed the PPE for MCI/Worldcon and now another large Telco to remain nameless to protect my identity. But basically a PPE designs AC and DC distribution systems which includes large scale UPS and Battery plants.

So I have slept at a Holiday Inn last night and I think I know about power generation and battery tech. :grin:

 

[al hildenbrand]

So I have slept at a Holiday Inn last night and I think I know about power generation and battery tech. :grin:

LOL

I just ran into this on the Discovery Channel News: Cars Designed to Feed Electric Grid.

There is a lot of exciting motion gathering. . . .

 

[wawireguy]

I helped wire up the line voltage side of a residential windmill a few years back. I think we figured out it might power a light buld all day or something in that range. For the cost of the sytem the return was absurdly low.

As far as nuclear power what is the cost of storing the spent fuel over umpteen hundreds of years vs using something like hydro electric power? The spent fuel is like the deficit, something you pass on to your grand kids. I don't think reprocessing fuel is as simple as dereck makes out either.

I personally think hydro power is the best way to produce power. It's clean and renewable with no hazardous waste. It does effect fish but then new fish are introduced to offset the loss of the old fish. I know some people don't like that but the fact is without our hydroelectric generating capacity we would be in the dark.

As far as solar I wonder if the equipment can last long enough with maintainance costs figured in to recoup the cost of the install?

 

[ishium 80439]

I don't think there is a snowball's chance at the equator that we will see a large scale hydro project undertaken in this country ever again. The environmental impact is certainly larger than a few fish and the need for water to supply an ever increasing population will create a firestorm of Herculean proportions. Water rights laws in the west are labrythine at best and taking water away from downstream users just is not feasible anymore.

I do like the idea of trying a bit of everything until we hit that Eureka moment. Of course the questions for EC's is which of these phantom technologies do we chase to be positioned for the cash in?

 

[dereckbc]

As far as nuclear power what is the cost of storing the spent fuel over umpteen hundreds of years vs using something like hydro electric power? The spent fuel is like the deficit, something you pass on to your grand kids. I don't think reprocessing fuel is as simple as dereck makes out either.

First there is no reason on earth to store spent fuel rods, that is Government policy only. France and Japan very small countries, heavily populated produce more nuclear energy than the USA and they have no storage problems, Why? They reprocess their fuel. In fact since Germany and UK bought into the Kyoto agreement and do not build conventional power plants, so they have to import electricity from FRANCE. Think about that for a minute, and then think about the other 80 countries that produce nuclear power, they don't have any problem, just US.

Hydro power is already tapped out in the USA most of which happened during the great depression via TVA. There are no more rivers or land to use for hydro.

 

[petersonra]

First there is no reason on earth to store spent fuel rods, that is Government policy only. France and Japan very small countries, heavily populated produce more nuclear energy than the USA and they have no storage problems, Why? They reprocess their fuel. In fact since Germany and UK bought into the Kyoto agreement and do not build conventional power plants, so they have to import electricity from FRANCE. Think about that for a minute, and then think about the other 80 countries that produce nuclear power, they don't have any problem, just US.

Hydro power is already tapped out in the USA most of which happened during the great depression via TVA. There are no more rivers or land to use for hydro.

reprocessing old fuel rods is only a problem in the minds of the radical left. its far safer to have the rods reprocessed and in a fucntioning reactor than it is to have them being stored somewhere just rotting away.

Most of the really good potential hydro spots have been used. In fact, many of the smaller ones are no longer in use becasue they just are uneconomical to operate.