What about geothermal energy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8030802595.html

google environmental pollution due to solar panel

Then your statement applies only to the ones in China, and not in the US, or say other European countries with more stringent pollution checks, where I'd presume the recycling is required by law, not all solar manufacturers as implied by your statement above.

don't see the production in china decreasing anytime soon. they already produce 28% (not latest figure) of world's solar panels ... plus, there's no guarantee other third world country producing solar panels don't have the same problem (think india)

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i have questions about solar panels.

solar panels consumes alot of energy to be produced. can someone specify how much? how long does a solar panel have to operate to offset the energy used to produce it?

edit: not arguing about this ... just wanna know since i have read about this somewhere.

This post has been edited by spursfan: Aug 11 2009, 05:05 PM

Yes, it does manage to offset the energy used to produce the panels in the first place:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

nice ... thanks

When dreamer mentioned something about alternative fuel up there, remind me about our national biofuel plan, which never take off. Not too sure if it is because the gov isn't dedicated enough to bother about alternative fuel, or we just can't afford to sacrifice our economical growth into some biofuel plan.

Whenever we mentioned biofuel, we will heard something about biodiesel from palm oil, aka EnvoDiesel. But the main purpose of it is more like burning up our ever increasing palm oil stock, rather then have anything to do with renewable or environmental. We can see that whenever palm oil price go down below margin, we will see someone start talking about burning it in diesel engines.

There are nearly unlimited supply of agricultural cellulosic waste and it is a very good idea to make something out of it. Just by burning the fibre in a coal fired power plant, you get renewable energy.

Technology to convert plant fibre into vehicle fuel is already available, and has already made possible in mass production. By using this technology, we will turn whatever supposed to be waste into vehicle fuel, and cut, if not eliminate, petroleum usage.

What is stopping us from using this technology?

One thing, cost. Petroleum, sad to say, it still too cheap for any cellulosic ethanol to kick in. Especially for a government like the one we have which always put money/growth in the first place.

Not only the government is not giving any incentives in encouraging any alternative fuel development, there is no foreseeable plans being done by the gov to develop any alternative fuel, aren't they?

China is not another planet. We only have one planet, and there isn't any law AFAIK to prevent people from using solar panels came from polluting factories.

As the above stated(and the source given by other forummers), we cannot just make solar panels and label it as green energy on the marketing brochure. "Green energy" is not just some advertising gimmicks(which most of the time it turned out to be), it is a responsibility.

Other then busy cashing in tonnes of profit, we much make sure our responsibility to protect the environment. As Alternative Energy do not mean Alternative Pollution.

Googled a bit and I found this: source
In a large scaled photovoltaic system, we can minimize the usage of silicone material by using a high efficiency panel and mirrors to deflect solar energy on a smaller piece of solar panel.

Or use solar thermal generators which use focused solar beam to generate heat to push steam turbine. source

Given enough R&D, solar energy will be able to reach its maximum potential, efficiency, and feasibility.

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 12 2009, 01:41 PM

so should we use it now when it have not reach its maximum potential?

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as for biomass, i have mentioned gastification before ...

an example would be this - a car powered by wood chips. using the same method, we can extract the carbon from our palm oil waste and use it to produce energy. this technology is currently being used for some coal power plants

try reading up on gastification. quite an interesting topic.

As mentioned, governmental encouragement is still play a very important role in widespread use of alternative energy. And when there is no demand on solar panel, how can something being developed to its max potential?

The point is the dedication of gov in developing alternative and clean energy. Such as the wind farms in Australia, and their crystal clean city buses that run on CNG.

Saying some alternative energy won't work, and sit on old and dirty coal power plant, won't save the day. You tried, and at least you gave people the message to be sustainable.

- - - - - - - - -

The gasification process and the FT process has long existed since before World War II, due to embargo, the German has to make air craft fuel via gasification of firewood. Commercial refinery reform natural gas into methanol or DME by FT process.

There are no new technology under the sun, we are merely developing a more efficient ways to utilize it.

rexis: He had given the impression that all solar panel manufacturing is polluting. That is false, and I could give you many other examples of other forms of energy used in China which would be much cleaner if not for unscrupulous businessmen going for cash instead of thinking of the enviroment. It isn't inherent in solar panel manufacturing; all the pollutants can be processed; it is just that they refuse to.

What is enough? If the R&D spent was less for fusion would that be a better choice then? There will always be inherent real world limits in R&D spending, no matter which tech you prefer. Any statement such as given enough... etc etc would honestly not work in real life.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 12 2009, 05:02 PM

businessmen wants to close their plants and move to china ... that tells you how much they care about the environment ... it doesn't matter what kind of method you have to reduce pollution (in this case, for the production of solar panels), if businessmen can't be bothered, the technology is as good as useless ... so unless there is a fuss free way to process the pollutants cheaply, we might as well say that the pollutants can't be processed

i would say biomass and hydro is our best bet ... they have a certain advantage over solar and that is their output is more manageable compared to solar and the technology is known to us

as for solar ... it should stay in the kiv tray for the time being ... for research, but not for use in the country yet

This post has been edited by spursfan: Aug 13 2009, 11:54 AM

Think geothermal, think Iceland.

Geothermal power feed 89% of their primary energy needs.

The down side of geothermal is that it is largely depends on geographical condition with volcanic activities. We don't have any volcanic activities within Malaysia although we do have several hot spring for mandi. It might be not sufficient enough to generate any power with it, or it is not a good idea to turn some tourist attraction like Poring Hot Spring into a borehole with huge power station sitting on top.

But then, we will never know if there isn't any expert do some study on it.

Btw, we could use some thought sharing, not some pop quiz or 1001 science questions.

Of course there is never enough. Certain that solar power still have unimaginable potential yet to be unlocked, and this can only achieve via dedicated research and practical application. We have the technology, and we need to dedicate more energy into refining the technology. And improvement like that can never stop. When "enough" here it would mean sufficient effort applied and it is practical enough to become one of the major alternative energy, or even replacing our primary energy source.

Do you mean saving resources from fusion to put into solar research? No doubt fusion required considerable research before it is feasible, but that is something that is not yet a reality. Perhaps it will benefit us with unlimited energy after some 100+ years. It won't help us immediately, but the synergy is there. Things has to be carried out simultaneously.

Meanwhile, what do you think will actually work for real life then? Apart from building more and bigger coal fired power station.

(When talk about coal fired power station, there are still amber room for improvement, like clean coal fired station which capture all the CO2 emission and produce no smoke at all, etc.)

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 13 2009, 01:53 PM

Have done some research into wind energy feasibility in Malaysia. Offshore windfarms are feasible, but windpower on land is not really feasible

Even though from science point of view it is deemed as feasible but in terms of economic point of view?

As much as I would want to agree, as long as the economies of scale is not reached, I'd say it's a thought to be KIV-ed.

Regards, Joey

If you just want energy, you do not need to create ethanol at all. You can just burn the fiber to generate electricity.

The problem with producing ethanol is if you understand the process to produce alcohol, there is hard liquor like vodka that need distillation and alcohol beverage like beer that do not need distillation.
This is because the microbe that produce the alcohol from sugar die when the alcohol reach ~10%, if you want 40% liquor like vodka you need to distill the water first.

To produce 100% Ethanol, Do you think the 10% alcohol can provide enough energy to vaporize 90% of water? The conclusion is you will use even more energy to produce the alcohol.

Let's put things in perspective here:

Why are we seeking alternative energy sources? It depends on the context we're talking about. I'm going to presume that we're speaking of the global context of greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce global warming. Now I'm supposing the pollutants are simply non-greenhouse gases, or of much less strength than CO2 or methane.

The followup question would be, then is it still a good to produce solar panels for a global good but a local bad (in this case, China). I'd argue yes

Unimaginable power such as? It is certainly the most abundant source of power, but it's certainly not unimaginable. Frankly, the tech you speak of does not exist yet. What we have is a method to extract energy from certain wavelengths, not a technology that can extract energy from a much larger range of wavelengths, which is what we would want if we want a much higher efficiency for solar power. Of course, there's also the economics problem: Currently, the latest silicon based solar cell can achieve about 25% efficiency http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...s-msm102308.php

There are also multiple junction panels that can absorb multiple wavelengths, by layering multiple films over another, with each absorbing a different portion of the wavelength. These panels have managed about 41% efficiency currently, but are unfeasible economically right now, because of the complexity of the layering. I'm not saying that this won't change, but it will take a long time before we will get to see the economic costs to go down, while still keeping the lifespan of the panels.

My suggestion for what would work? The cheapest alternative energy is unused energy. I reckon that the best method is to cut down on trips, holidays, save power whenever possible. It's not only the money factor that counts in research, it's also the time factor, and it's that time factor that counts right now. Otherwise, use non-polluting energy sources such as nuclear to bridge over till fusion and solar arrives as a cheap source of energy, because right now they simply aren't (fusion almost by definition, solar, well, the variability problem etc, etc)

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 13 2009, 08:25 PM

Unimaginable potential, bro. As what you mentioned that the cost will go down in time. Who knows in not so distance future, we just send our electric car to paint shop for solar panel spray for battery recharge.

High efficiency solar panel is practical when it is for outer space application, where we seek for the highest efficiency and reliability per unit weight at all cost, for each gram reduced would result in astronomical savings in fuel cost. But high cost solar panel is not feasible for civilian use, like the idea of installing high efficiency but expensive solar panel on each roof could generate considerable amount of energy, but is clearly impractical.

When it is something on the ground, we wouldn't mind if it taking a little bit more space for low cost photovoltaic, we wouldn't mind if it is a bit bulky to use solar thermal collectors like solar towersolar tower or parabolic trough.

41%? That's super high. It is already in the high zone when the solar board reached 20%+

If 20%+ is indeed high, then why hasn't the economics of solar convinced everybody that solar is indeed the way forward, since those panels exist right now? It's still silicon panel manufacturing, with a tweaked design to increase efficiency further. It's because of the same old technical challenges as before, that have and will continue to limit the feasibility of solar for everybody.

It is always going to be a mix of energy sources, renewable and non-renewable, when it comes to energy policy of a country, and while solar will play a part, I doubt it would play much of a bigger part because of its inherent limitations, whatever the idea or design proposed.

why should we argue about using solar when biomass does the job fairly well ... the power output from biomass is more consistent and it is superior in price ... plus, we are not gonna run out of rubbish and plantation waste to burn any time soon

in science, yes we talk about potential ... and solar has so a lot of potential ... in the real world tho, money speaks much much louder

Be it solar or biomass, there is just too little application locally. Much of the biomass energy in padi field wasted by contributing to haze, meanwhile the palm oil refinery do generate surplus of energy by burning EFB, but AFAIK none of them feeding it back to the grid.

I just don't see our gov has any foreseeable plan to cut our dependency on fossil fuel.

Solar is just part of the puzzle to renewable energies needs.

Physical efficiency has nothing to do with popular use, financial efficiency, yes.

Take a simple example, diesel engines have much higher efficiency then petrol engine, why Malaysian mostly drive petrol cars? It is because our law make it much more expensive to drive diesel car. Not to say that Gov has taxed any solar panel, but solar panel is very expensive by nature, and our electricity is relatively cheap and make it financially impractical to install solar panels.

Governmental encouragement(not only by words) and dedication plays a vital role in widespread use of renewable energies. Take Spain for example, they have extensive renewable energies use in Solar, Wind, and the only Wave farm in the world. In order to reach the target of cutting 20% emission by 2020, their government has taken the initiative and made policies that encourage renewable energies.

We have our own solar maker here, do we make use of the solar panels they made?

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 14 2009, 09:04 AM