http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2220098/mit-team-debut-solar-thermal


MIT team debut $5,000 solar thermal system

Start up claims low cost solar thermal dish will deliver return on investment in just two years
Joanne McCulloch, BusinessGreen, 26 Jun 2008

This is interesting. 1000 times more power than solar cells. OK, Solar cells convert 10 to 15% of the light. That means you are getting 100 times more power out than you get from the sun. This is a perpetual motion of the first class which is clearly impossible. If you don't understand what I just said, you shouldn't comment about energy until you do.

Possibly merely misleading. If the power is measured as energy / cm^2 at the thermal pipe rather than energy / cm^2 at over the mirrors, you might get that answer. However, if this is true it is thoroughly misleading (or the reporter completely mis-understood what he was being told).

The system uses curved reflectors to focus the energy on a collection pipe.

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BOINC WIKI

http://web.mit.edu/10.391J/www/proceedings/GreenHousing_Kaufman2001.pdf

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Can't help but wonder how things would be had we begun development 30 years ago when Jack was doing his thing.
.

The electric car is around 100 year old, the quest for a better battery had been going for years, fuel cells have been around for a long time but still are very costly and hydrogen is dangerous, costly and very hard to store. There was a show on the Discovery channel called "Connections" where they explored the fact that a series of inventions and ideas have to come together at the same time to make something new. It looks like we are reaching the point where that can happen in the automotive industry. To reply to your statement, development was going on 30 years ago or Jack would not have had his car.

When I say development I don't mean a prototype. I mean full on infrastructure logistics. Solar and wind electricity have been around for so long it's embarrassing we haven't implemented them before now. So much open land just sitting there doing nothing at all.

The modern auto is the results of over a 100 years of development. To produce something that will survive in the market place, the product must be at least as good as what is already out there. Prototypes and limited runs are the only way to prove if you have something that you will not go broke when produced in large numbers. The auto industry as already turned out Edsels and now days has been burned by the SUV. If the oil prices stay high, it will be worth the risk for the auto industry to introduce something better because people will be willing to risk new technology and a higher price tag to save a few bucks at the pump. If oil cost were low, the customers would never buy small cars and would stick with SUV's. The auto industry can only produce what people will buy. I don't know how old you are, but when the 1970 oil price spike happened, every one wanted a small car. This is when Japan took over the auto market place because they were the only one producing small cars. Within a few years, oil dropped in price and people moved back to bigger cars because the small cars didn't meet American needs(you just can't haul six kids and gear in an econobox). The real problem is getting people to want something like this, other wise you have to make something that meets there needs and wants.
You also appears you have not been around a wind farm. They can only be put in a few places and people don't like living near them. To be cost effective the U.S. could only provide a small percentage of it's power needs from wind. Also, the wind tends to blow mostly during the day. This makes wind good for day time power but useless at night.
As for Solar, you only get about 100 watts a square meter. If you looked at my first link, you would have found it takes more power to produce solar cells than they produce but this may change in the future. Other forms of solar power have also have problems when you want to go big. The only good replacement for Coal is Nuclear and as for the waste problems, we should be pushing development of Fast Neutron Reactors (also known as breeder reactors). They solve the waste problem by burning not only their waste products but the waste from old style reactors and produce waste that breaks down in a few hundred years instead of thousands of years. We can thank Jimmy Carter for banding fast neutron reactors in the U.S. and giving us a real waste disposal problem.
You may look at Arizona, California and New Mexico as waste land, but it's ecology is just as important as that of the east coast and far more fragile. Damage to it can take 100 years to recover because growth is much slower.

Try reading about solar someplace else. My BS meter went off when I started reading that. From the article "The longer you run a solar panel the worse...". Simply not true. The longer you run a solar system the better the payoff. The energy cost is paid off in 2 to 4 years. The dollar cost takes a bit longer but will still be paid off well before the end of the 30 year estimated lifespan of a solar electric system. He is mixing the dollar cost with the energy cost as if they are the same (they are not).

That article was written by an engineer with over 40 years in the industry who as been working with making ideas real. It appears you don't understand the point being made. The real number don't back up your argument. Even out here when they sell you solar systems for your house, the payoff is over 15 years and thats not counting the cost of the land under them. The last few years Solar cell cost have been dropping and in a few year may reach the point where they will worth using for applications other than off grid usage. Incase you haven't noticed, with oil prices going up, the price of EVERYTHING is going up. When engineering power systems, power and money are tightly bound because the only reason for producing power is to make money. If you don't have an engineering or physics background you may not be able to work through the document. It also doesn't hurt to have a little economics as well.
To make it simple, the power from the cells must pay off the cost of the land, the solar cells, and people to keep the operation running and do this at a cost of less that TWO CENTS a kilowatt to compete with other forms of power. Yes, the power company get 10 cents a kilowatt or more to bring the power from the source to your house. Now this kilowatt of power is going to be produced by 8 to 10 square meter of cells. I am not saying it will not happen. If you are off the gird, it pays. For the power companies, it will be a few years but if things continue at the current rate, it will not be very many.

He may or may not have a message, but his presentation if full of BS. The longer you run a Solar System, the less it costs (it is after all producing some energy all the time). The solar system costs some number of $. Some of that is energy, some is labor, and some is materials. He makes the claim that ALL of the $ cost is energy cost - and that is just not true. He claims that the longer you use the solar system the worse the energy balance is, and this is just plain not true. The solar system is producing energy all of the time that the sun shines making the energy balance better, not worse. I understood him perfectly, he is just plain wrong about many things on the page. Also, just because he claims to be an engineer with experience in the field does not mean that he actually IS such. There are places where solar systems make perfect sense, and there are places where they make little sense. Examples of the former include most of the hot deserts of the world where the sun always shines during the day, and examples of the later include the cloudier areas. I know people that have reduced their electric bill by $100 per month with a $5000 solar system. That is a 50 month payback - or just over 4 years, not the over 20 years he claims.

You missed the point of the above argument. First, after living in the Southwest for over 40 years, I can tell you the sun isn't shining every day and may not be seen at times for over a week at a time. In Orange county CA, they installed solar power cell phones by the freeway so you could call for help if you had car problems. Within a year, we had a large storm blow through that blocked the light for so long that the batteries went dead. Second, the power companies pay less than 2 cents a Kilowatt hour for power. The consumer pays over over 12 cents a Kilowatt hour for power. At 2 cents a power company cannot make money on solar generated power. On the other hand, if you live off the grid or have a very expensive power company, you can break even or come out ahead. Prices of solar cells is dropping fast because many people have your dream and are trying to make it real, but it is not real for the power companies yet.
I also live within 200 miles of three test solar plants and one large wind farm. From the results, the wind farm is the best solution, but the power companies are still trying to get solar working. As I grow older, I want to depend less on others for what I need. I am on your side, but I also don't want to pay more for a service than it's worth.
PS Conservation is still the best way to save money on power. For me, a $100 power bill means the air conditioners is on or I am wasting power.

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Get a swamp cooler and your A/C bill will be 1/3 what it is now.

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Get a swamp cooler and your A/C bill will be 1/3 what it is now.

I grew up with swamp coolers but am currently in Anaheim where they don't work well. Also swamp coolers only provide at best about 20 degrees of temperature drop. On the other hand, we only use the Air conditioner in August and September but have not had it on this August. The weather seems cooler this year. Our condo has about 6 inches of glass wool so even when we heat or cool, the cost is very little.

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I have relatives in Carson who use theirs all the time with dramatic results and comfortable living. Same for a friend of mine in the High Sierras. Perhaps the newer coolers are somehow more efficient. I have experienced both coolers in both homes mentioned and can tell you the difference is night and day.

Glad you have good insulation!

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

I have relatives in Carson who use theirs all the time with dramatic results and comfortable living. Same for a friend of mine in the High Sierras. Perhaps the newer coolers are somehow more efficient. I have experienced both coolers in both homes mentioned and can tell you the difference is night and day.

Glad you have good insulation!

The problem is the relative humidity is between 40 and 50% in Anaheim and swamp coolers work best if you can get 8 to 10% relative humidity. I have been in a few businesses in the area that use swamp coolers and while it better than being outside, the air is very damp. On the other hand, when I was in Phoenix, there were only a few weeks out of the year where you wanted something better. If you left it on at night, you would be reaching for the covers by morning, Many people in Phoenix put both systems on their house so they can save money in the cooler part of the year and stay comfortable when it gets really hot. In short, swamp coolers do work well under the right conditions. On the other hand, I worked with a guy who wanted a way to cool his brother down in Vietnam. I had to explain that a swamp cooler was not the solution he was looking for.

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http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2220098/mit-team-debut-solar-thermal


MIT team debut $5,000 solar thermal system

Start up claims low cost solar thermal dish will deliver return on investment in just two years
Joanne McCulloch, BusinessGreen, 26 Jun 2008

This is interesting. 1000 times more power than solar cells. OK, Solar cells convert 10 to 15% of the light. That means you are getting 100 times more power out than you get from the sun. This is a perpetual motion of the first class which is clearly impossible. If you don't understand what I just said, you shouldn't comment about energy until you do.

Possibly merely misleading. If the power is measured as energy / cm^2 at the thermal pipe rather than energy / cm^2 at over the mirrors, you might get that answer. However, if this is true it is thoroughly misleading (or the reporter completely mis-understood what he was being told).

The system uses curved reflectors to focus the energy on a collection pipe.

I did consider this before I wrote the reply, but my thinking was for large scale production, you must buy the land and that cost money (it may look like waste land, but someone owns it). So to compare apples with apples, you need to consider energy at the initial surface. Two of the solar plants in the area use mirrors to reflect light to a single small heat collector, but there is a size problem because the sun is not a point energy source. The more area used to collect light, the bigger the collection point has to be to collect that light. On the other hand I have seen many stories butchers by reporters and that is most likely what happened here.

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What was the square footage on the business building being cooled?

My families cooler gets you reaching for the blankets on the way into bed.

Anaheim, California?

---

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Can't help but wonder how things would be had we begun development 30 years ago when Jack was doing his thing.
.

The electric car is around 100 year old, the quest for a better battery had been going for years, fuel cells have been around for a long time but still are very costly and hydrogen is dangerous, costly and very hard to store. There was a show on the Discovery channel called "Connections" where they explored the fact that a series of inventions and ideas have to come together at the same time to make something new. It looks like we are reaching the point where that can happen in the automotive industry. To reply to your statement, development was going on 30 years ago or Jack would not have had his car.

When I say development I don't mean a prototype. I mean full on infrastructure logistics. Solar and wind electricity have been around for so long it's embarrassing we haven't implemented them before now. So much open land just sitting there doing nothing at all.

The modern auto is the results of over a 100 years of development. To produce something that will survive in the market place, the product must be at least as good as what is already out there. Prototypes and limited runs are the only way to prove if you have something that you will not go broke when produced in large numbers. The auto industry as already turned out Edsels and now days has been burned by the SUV. If the oil prices stay high, it will be worth the risk for the auto industry to introduce something better because people will be willing to risk new technology and a higher price tag to save a few bucks at the pump. If oil cost were low, the customers would never buy small cars and would stick with SUV's. The auto industry can only produce what people will buy. I don't know how old you are, but when the 1970 oil price spike happened, every one wanted a small car. This is when Japan took over the auto market place because they were the only one producing small cars. Within a few years, oil dropped in price and people moved back to bigger cars because the small cars didn't meet American needs(you just can't haul six kids and gear in an econobox). The real problem is getting people to want something like this, other wise you have to make something that meets there needs and wants.
You also appears you have not been around a wind farm. They can only be put in a few places and people don't like living near them. To be cost effective the U.S. could only provide a small percentage of it's power needs from wind. Also, the wind tends to blow mostly during the day. This makes wind good for day time power but useless at night.
As for Solar, you only get about 100 watts a square meter. If you looked at my first link, you would have found it takes more power to produce solar cells than they produce but this may change in the future. Other forms of solar power have also have problems when you want to go big. The only good replacement for Coal is Nuclear and as for the waste problems, we should be pushing development of Fast Neutron Reactors (also known as breeder reactors). They solve the waste problem by burning not only their waste products but the waste from old style reactors and produce waste that breaks down in a few hundred years instead of thousands of years. We can thank Jimmy Carter for banding fast neutron reactors in the U.S. and giving us a real waste disposal problem.
You may look at Arizona, California and New Mexico as waste land, but it's ecology is just as important as that of the east coast and far more fragile. Damage to it can take 100 years to recover because growth is much slower.

Try reading about solar someplace else. My BS meter went off when I started reading that. From the article "The longer you run a solar panel the worse...". Simply not true. The longer you run a solar system the better the payoff. The energy cost is paid off in 2 to 4 years. The dollar cost takes a bit longer but will still be paid off well before the end of the 30 year estimated lifespan of a solar electric system. He is mixing the dollar cost with the energy cost as if they are the same (they are not).

That article was written by an engineer with over 40 years in the industry who as been working with making ideas real. It appears you don't understand the point being made. The real number don't back up your argument. Even out here when they sell you solar systems for your house, the payoff is over 15 years and thats not counting the cost of the land under them. The last few years Solar cell cost have been dropping and in a few year may reach the point where they will worth using for applications other than off grid usage. Incase you haven't noticed, with oil prices going up, the price of EVERYTHING is going up. When engineering power systems, power and money are tightly bound because the only reason for producing power is to make money. If you don't have an engineering or physics background you may not be able to work through the document. It also doesn't hurt to have a little economics as well.
To make it simple, the power from the cells must pay off the cost of the land, the solar cells, and people to keep the operation running and do this at a cost of less that TWO CENTS a kilowatt to compete with other forms of power. Yes, the power company get 10 cents a kilowatt or more to bring the power from the source to your house. Now this kilowatt of power is going to be produced by 8 to 10 square meter of cells. I am not saying it will not happen. If you are off the gird, it pays. For the power companies, it will be a few years but if things continue at the current rate, it will not be very many.

He may or may not have a message, but his presentation if full of BS. The longer you run a Solar System, the less it costs (it is after all producing some energy all the time). The solar system costs some number of $. Some of that is energy, some is labor, and some is materials. He makes the claim that ALL of the $ cost is energy cost - and that is just not true. He claims that the longer you use the solar system the worse the energy balance is, and this is just plain not true. The solar system is producing energy all of the time that the sun shines making the energy balance better, not worse. I understood him perfectly, he is just plain wrong about many things on the page. Also, just because he claims to be an engineer with experience in the field does not mean that he actually IS such. There are places where solar systems make perfect sense, and there are places where they make little sense. Examples of the former include most of the hot deserts of the world where the sun always shines during the day, and examples of the later include the cloudier areas. I know people that have reduced their electric bill by $100 per month with a $5000 solar system. That is a 50 month payback - or just over 4 years, not the over 20 years he claims.

You missed the point of the above argument. First, after living in the Southwest for over 40 years, I can tell you the sun isn't shining every day and may not be seen at times for over a week at a time. In Orange county CA, they installed solar power cell phones by the freeway so you could call for help if you had car problems. Within a year, we had a large storm blow through that blocked the light for so long that the batteries went dead. Second, the power companies pay less than 2 cents a Kilowatt hour for power. The consumer pays over over 12 cents a Kilowatt hour for power. At 2 cents a power company cannot make money on solar generated power. On the other hand, if you live off the grid or have a very expensive power company, you can break even or come out ahead. Prices of solar cells is dropping fast because many people have your dream and are trying to make it real, but it is not real for the power companies yet.
I also live within 200 miles of three test solar plants and one large wind farm. From the results, the wind farm is the best solution, but the power companies are still trying to get solar working. As I grow older, I want to depend less on others for what I need. I am on your side, but I also don't want to pay more for a service than it's worth.
PS Conservation is still the best way to save money on power. For me, a $100 power bill means the air conditioners is on or I am wasting power.

I know that the sun does not shine every day. The wind doesn't blow all the time either. Both energy sources could be used where feasable (which is NOT everywhere for either). Neither solar nor wind will take you completely off the grid, but every little bit helps.

For a power plant, there are cheaper methods of using solar than photovoltaics if you are doing a large scale operation. Focused beams to heat a liquid to vapor comes to mind as a possiblilty.

Solar hot water is also cheaper than photovoltaics, but the energy savings come from a different spot (your gas bill typically) and over generation does no good as you will have to dump boiling water to cool to hot water tanks.

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BOINC WIKI

Yeesh,

This reply rendering is going to show up with one letter per line soon.

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss