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[__ Science __ ] solar vs fossil fuel

Truthfrees said:
any scientific minds who understand this article on the dangers of solar power?
Click to expand...

They shut down air pollution free nukes, and start up CNG plants in their stead. CNG produces NOX and other stuff.

The sun does not shine at night, so they need to run CNG plants at night when solar is off-line.

This only matters in places that now use nukes for power. If they currently use coal or CNG, then solar is a win with regard to air pollution.
 
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Michael74 said:
They shut down air pollution free nukes, and start up CNG plants in their stead. CNG produces NOX and other stuff.

The sun does not shine at night, so they need to run CNG plants at night when solar is off-line.

This only matters in places that now use nukes for power. If they currently use coal or CNG, then solar is a win with regard to air pollution.
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Nukes are not enough at present .my state has 4 plants .if those go offline,no,solar can't be used as a back up.

Most areas that use solar buy power from power plants such as cng,nuke or coal.
 
jasonc said:
Most areas that use solar buy power from power plants such as cng,nuke or coal.
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The sun doesn't shine at night. They don't have any way to store enough of it during the day. No way to completely replace conventional power plants with today's technology. Maybe someday. For now, all they can do is generate during sunny days. Then run or buy conventional at night or cloudy days.

ARPA-E is working on the technology. When it is ready, they can switch to it.
 
Michael74 said:
The sun doesn't shine at night. They don't have any way to store enough of it during the day. No way to completely replace conventional power plants with today's technology. Maybe someday. For now, all they can do is generate during sunny days. Then run or buy conventional at night or cloudy days.

ARPA-E is working on the technology. When it is ready, they can switch to it.
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batteries cant be relied upon for for demands at all of sudden. that is the problem. solar makes what It can and maxes and out and produces when its NOT needed, you can use a sub station to locally met peak. a sub station is like a pressure increasure if you will, it can bump up the pressure to the demand locally. batteries simply cant do that for long.

my state also has this solar power problem. fpl and duke came out and said their solar arrays arent able to meet demand. it doesnt rain in my state everywhere.fpl put theirs near the transmission lines, and any one can buy from them as planned.

nuke while not perfect is much safer and we dont need to destroy farmland to build that amount of enegry production.
 
Michael74 said:
Right. Batteries are not yet up to the task. When ARPA-E develops better batteries, then they can go solar.
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Batteries again can't be used to meet a peek.I remember black outs from cold snaps .power out for hours .imagine a heat wave in,my state for days.

Battery storage ,conversion to dc and back and a loss of power nevermind the emissions and other pollution from mining to make them.perhaps I may be wrong but I'm,skeptical of the large scale grids I live near by working .I'm talking 10 or more ,acres .
 
Not only is solar less efficient, and subject to whether the sun is out or not, but it is also dangerous to wildlife. Case in point, an oil field in California was using solar panels to heat water in an attempt at turning it into steam for injection purposes. Well, the the number of panels required and pointed at the receptacle it certainly got hot, but it also had the dubious ability to flash fry any bird that happened fly over it.
 
Knotical said:
Not only is solar less efficient, and subject to whether the sun is out or not, but it is also dangerous to wildlife. Case in point, an oil field in California was using solar panels to heat water in an attempt at turning it into steam for injection purposes. Well, the the number of panels required and pointed at the receptacle it certainly got hot, but it also had the dubious ability to flash fry any bird that happened fly over it.
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Solar mirrors not solar panels
 
Lots of chemicals in solar too, that they are not quite sure how to deal with. Solar may have a place in the future, when technology improves. For now, it is still experimental. Photovoltaic generates about 1.6% of US electricity. Hydro (7%) and wind (6.6%) are the primary renewable in use today.

Solar needs better batteries for storage before it becomes practical. Today's batteries won't meet peak demand on cloudy days or at night. They have to use CNG power plants as back up for solar in areas where it is used.

Fossil and nukes combined produce 82.8% of US electricity today.
 
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MIT Technology Review had an article on batteries for the grid. Lots of companies are trying, but so far nada.

Solar is actually inexpensive to generate, as is wind. They just don't have any way to control how much sun and wind there will be at any given time, so they don't have any way to match what is generated with changing demand throughout the day.
 
I have an idea concerning electric cars.
I envision you drive up to your filling station, much like a gas station today. There are alignment tracks that you drive along and then the red-light pops on saying “STOP”. Much like a car wash. You put on your parking brake, a machine reaches up under your car and removes a large, discharged battery and a charged one is put in to replace the discharged one. Within ten (10) minutes or less you have exchanged your discharged battery with a charged one. Now off you go with a 300-mile charged battery.

(:-
 
Michael74 said:
The sun doesn't shine at night. They don't have any way to store enough of it during the day. No way to completely replace conventional power plants with today's technology.
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At this point, we're unable to go completely green with electrical power. Wind and solar are a fast-growing and profitable sector of the power generation infrastructure. But we'll be using some fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. I notice that Iowa has, for example, gone about 35% wind power. But it still has fossil fueled plants.
 
Barbarian said:
Wind and solar are a fast-growing and profitable sector of the power generation infrastructure.
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Wind power potential varies by geography. Some areas can benefit from wind more than others. The US mid west has a lot of wind power potential. Many other countries have almost none:

commons.wikimedia.org

File:Global Map of Wind Power Density Potential.png - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org commons.wikimedia.org

Solar power potential is mostly a function of latitude, and cloud cover. The closer to the equator, and the fewer the local clouds, the more solar power generated from solar cells. Germany built a lot of solar cells, then figured out that they were too far north to generate much power from them. Now they are desperately building a pipeline to Russia, hoping to import non renewables from them.

Geography significantly determines which areas will be able to profitably use recyclable energy. At least with today's technology.
 
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kathydixon said:
I have an idea concerning electric cars.
I envision you drive up to your filling station, much like a gas station today. There are alignment tracks that you drive along and then the red-light pops on saying “STOP”. Much like a car wash. You put on your parking brake, a machine reaches up under your car and removes a large, discharged battery and a charged one is put in to replace the discharged one. Within ten (10) minutes or less you have exchanged your discharged battery with a charged one. Now off you go with a 300-mile charged battery.

(:-
Click to expand...
Finally, something we agree on. I've been pushing that idea for quite sometime on other secular chats. If they want e-cars to be a success with consumers, they either need replaceable battery packs or quick charge batteries. The current system is a no-win for most average folks.
 
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