Great, more laughably inept energy creation schemes and more dawdling in low Earth orbit. Let me know when they start working on the liquid thorium reactor and on sending a nuclear powered robotic mission to Mars to stockpile fuel and oxygen in preparation for an upcoming manned mission.
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Don't get me wrong, the world is moving solar big time, China is building the worlds largest solar plant (2000MW)
I don't know about the world but China is building the coal power equivalent of that (about 250MW of coal power maybe?) like every other day or so.
Of course they are building a coal plant every day, their economy is growing at 10%+ a year. But they are also investing in large scale solar technology, that plant alone will cost about 5 billion and pioneer new scales of solar technologies. Which I'm assuming they will leverage for additional solar plants. You must understand no one has built a 2000 MW solar generator yet, the first one to do has to pay the cost of research and development for such a large scale solar project.
The largest solar plants so far generate about 100 MW. This plant will be 20x larger than the previous generation solar plant, so it will be expensive.
The US also has several 1000MW projects in planning but given that it's privately funded, you can never tell if they will get the capital to complete it. I've read for years about solar projects in US in the planning phases which never come to fruition.
The writing is on the wall, fossil fuel will be phased out within this century. Solar and fusion power will probably be the predominate energy sources in the next 100 years.
Quote:Original post by Sander Personally I am more interested in Solar Updraft Towers. Much cheaper to build.
I've never understood the primary complaints against solar towers. "They take up so much space!"
Lies. They take ZERO space.
Planned cities built with a working solar tower are the way to go. You're not going to power the entire city that size with a single tower, but you are going to greatly reduce the external power requirements for a city center of that size. Plus you are going to have a fully planned city. Yes it will likely cost billions, but you are going to have a completely planned infrastructure for transit. You are also going to have climate controlled cities with the ability to lock down sections for emergencies.
Basically, you build the tower over a new city!
Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.
I think the biggest objection was of complacency. The developed nations could get all the energy they wanted from oil/coal/gas at reasonable prices (probably average price of oil for most of the 20th century adjusted for inflation is about 10 dollars, this is just a guess i'll have to fact check). Sure it caused the "green house" effect, which no one was really concerned about except futurists and scientists, but they weren't the ones running those countries.
Then it all went in the crapper. Oil prices spiked due to wars and impending peak oil, massive climate change due to runaway feed back loops (forest burning due to higher temperatures and drought conditions, tundra defrosting, disruption of deep ocean currents to recycle CO2, etc..) and impending world wide century long droughts.
Just like how the oil crisis in the 70's galvanized the US to its energy dependency and vulnerability, the Iraq war and affects of climate change is galvanizing the world to find better energy solutions and mitigate climate change.
Finally real money is being pumped into alternative energy solutions. Commercial available solar power efficiency have nearly quadrupled in just the last 10 year and are realistically competitive with conventional power. Oil companies are spending billions on a replacement oil feedstock from bio-mass (grasses, algae, agricultural waste, etc..).
So the world of alternative energy is looking bright, but will it be enough in time? Maybe.
Quote:Original post by Sander Personally I am more interested in Solar Updraft Towers. Much cheaper to build.
I've never understood the primary complaints against solar towers. "They take up so much space!"
Lies. They take ZERO space.
Planned cities built with a working solar tower are the way to go. You're not going to power the entire city that size with a single tower, but you are going to greatly reduce the external power requirements for a city center of that size. Plus you are going to have a fully planned city. Yes it will likely cost billions, but you are going to have a completely planned infrastructure for transit. You are also going to have climate controlled cities with the ability to lock down sections for emergencies.
Basically, you build the tower over a new city!
You're not the only that wishes the world started building planned super cities. The idea of a city that is perfectly constructed to be environmentally sustainable with clean power generation and transit has always been one of my dreams. It would cause a surplus of construction jobs that's for sure.
Space based solar as in the OP is a terrible idea for a few reasons.
I was listening to a article on the radio a couple of weeks ago, it seems as if theyre close to going commercial (within 5-10 years) of being able add something to paint that lets it work like a solarpanel (albeit at only ~10% of a solarpanels efficiency) whilst this may seem terrible the benifit is the extra cost to the paint is minimal which is the main problem with solarpanels, theyre expensive to make.
As far as the Space-based solar station goes, it can be applied to a few things. Not just Earth-based stations. How about shuttles? Moon bases? Relay stations (ex: SBSS sends solar energy to relay point which sends the energy to another relay point until true destination is reached)?
It may be not as economical as spray-on panels but still can be useful and worthwhile even for Earth. IMO.
Quote:Original post by Sander Personally I am more interested in Solar Updraft Towers. Much cheaper to build.
I've never understood the primary complaints against solar towers. "They take up so much space!"
Lies. They take ZERO space.
Planned cities built with a working solar tower are the way to go. You're not going to power the entire city that size with a single tower, but you are going to greatly reduce the external power requirements for a city center of that size. Plus you are going to have a fully planned city. Yes it will likely cost billions, but you are going to have a completely planned infrastructure for transit. You are also going to have climate controlled cities with the ability to lock down sections for emergencies.
Basically, you build the tower over a new city!
Nicely done biting sarcasm. It is however rather unfair to solar towers to suggest such an extravagant requirement as building a whole new city from scratch, you can simply use one as a greenhouse for plant cultivation, which it in fact is, making a wee bit of power on the side as an added bonus.
[Edited by - Diodor on November 13, 2009 8:20:11 PM]
