Alternative Energy
By saying alternative energy, this often indicate usable energy other then fossil and nuclear, particularly Renewable Energy that do little harm to the nature.

Solar Energy
"Only 0.1% of land mass needed to power the entire human civilisation."
Abundance, intense, and nearly infinity source of energy - Sun. Since aeons mankind has worshipped Solar as god. And today, technology to harness the power of Sun has been developed, and some of the technology allow for storage of solar energy which can be made available at night or cloudy days.

Wind Energy
"The wind energy from just three states of America can power the whole country."
Nearly every corner of the Earth has wind. And with a wind turbine, which construct of simple technology: blades, gearbox and a small generator, we are able to harness the unlimited, renewable and free. Wind Energy is the fastest growing alternative energy in the world, as many has realised the benefit of wind. Wind turbine is something that can work silently and passively at your neighbourhood by merely taking even less space then some advertisement banner.

Hydroelectric Energy
The power of water, easily stored, easily managed, easily available at any possible time, hydroelectric power has already became one of the main source of energy. How far can this go? How possible can we do this without interfering too much on nature? Hydroelectric Power doesn't always means massive concrete block and sinking several eco system under a lake, micro hydro, a smaller of hydro power, can supply electricity to a community and has much lesser ecological influence.

Post will be updated occasionally.

Old post below


This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 26 2009, 05:35 PM

You're veering dangerously close to the politics of it, which would be RWI

I'll kickstart the thing with a focus on the more technical aspects instead.

Currently, the 2 great hopes I've managed to discern when people speak of alternative energy sources are the following: wind, and solar

The 2 sources suffer from a major problem though; that the power generated is inconsistent due to weather fluctuations. We've grown used to wanting to boil water when we want to, not only when the sun is extremely bright and it's hot.
That then brings in the hidden cost of these alternative sources: you need energy storage mechanisms, which in turn reduce the efficiency of these alternative systems further.

This inconsistency of power generated also guarantees that you will always have to build more capacity than is needed, so that you can generate extra energy to compensate for the downtimes when the weather doesn't permit.

But generally, increasing efficiency for now is our best option if we want to save in terms of carbon costs.

[Political part now: A relatively simple way to increase solar power/wind power adoption in Malaysia would be to institute a buyback policy on TNB, where TNB has to buy back power generated by solar/wind installations installed in homes at a higher rate than what consumers have to pay for electricity supplied, as in Germany. However, electricity prices in Malaysia are so low as to probably make the return on investment negligible after 20-30 years. Perhaps if electricity prices were raised to RM0.70-0.90/kWh, and the buyback scheme paid consumers RM1.00/kWh generated, this would be quite economically viable]

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 9 2009, 01:24 AM

The term "Alternative Energy" indicate an unconventional source of energy. As the term indicate, it is alternative ways of doing the same thing of generating power, and sort of give impression like cannot be used as the primary solution.

And this stage of development, there isn't any example of countries with primary source/base load as alternative/renewable energy, most of them serve as compliment to the base load which usually relying on fossil fuel.

However, base load renewable energy is completely possible, perhaps the incurred cost will be higher, but there are already some prototypes which relying mainly on renewable energy. For example, solar tower. It made of a series of mirrors which deflect sunlight and focus them on a single point, sort of like what a converging lens do, and the focus point will generate intense high temperature which is utilized to heat steam and spin turbine. It has an energy storage system consist of hot molten salt which enable energy supply at night.

We have a sunny sky and hence plenty of solar energy, but the possibility to install a large arrays of mirrors is small and might be better to utilize our averagely green and fertile soil into agriculture. Installing solar panel on every roof top might not justify the cost as our resources are rather limited it is not a good way to spend our tax payers money, and we are not ready to pay a premium for expensive solar energy either. Small scale solar facility might be workable but it will be far from contributing a significant amount to our national needs.

Finland is a world leader in wind energy, they have the highest wind energy usage in the world. According to them, a base load energy source from an unpredictable source like wind energy can be completely possible. They have went far into developing wind energy, one of the latest wind farm they started is floating wind farm, a series of floating wind tunnel located off shore, eliminated the need to allocate lands for wind farms. Wind energy is the fastest developing alternative energy in the world.

But be it whatever kind of alternative we might look into, the most important thing to do now is to minimize waste of electricity, as we all aware of, TNB is buying electricity from IPP, and the contract work like TNB has to purchase all the agreed electricity generated, regardless of whether there is a demand or not, this result in wasting of precious energy fuel and must be properly managed. IPP will continue to squeeze TNB to purchase more electricity for their own profit, rather than to meet the demand. That is why we should tackle this problem first before we seriously look into alternative energy, otherwise, any extra source is just some more wastage.

Solar towers still require sunlight to generate electricity, and even the cool convection tower idea would require the same, so the base load problem still cannot be avoided. They still require the same energy storage mechanisms to smoothen out the base load

The problem about Malaysia and wind energy is that I doubt we have much useful, extractable wind energy, relative to Finland. Geography tends to matter a lot when we speak of solar and wind, and it seems that wind is quite unfeasible, afaik anyway, in Malaysia

Perhaps I have spent too much time in RWI, but it is undeniable fact that government is the one to decide whether certain alternative energy will kick start.

Rather then relying on one single source of alternative, it is recommended to make them compliment each other. And when all has failed, we still can kick in our diesel generators.

Perhaps it is not wise to follow blindly what others have, we should develop a technology that fits ourself most. Wave energy is 24/7 and is unlimited, with the long sea shore we have, but there isn't any working model just yet to generate power with it. Biomass however, is something that considered something that is quite accessible.

With the intense agriculture activity we have, and the warm climate we live in, we only have the problem to dispose biomass rather then acquire it. Each and every palm oil mill we have is potentially a net power producer, some by burning empty fruit branch, while some construct bio digester for their waste and collection of methane, to meet their energy demand, and often with a surplus.

Of course, at the rate nowadays we are consuming energy, biomass can never meet most of our demand, but it work as a compliment to our national grid.

Precisely. And that's why I would advocate for a mixture of energy supplies, because nuclear; etc can be useful due to their inherent benefits.

Allow me to add one more point for why energy storage mechanisms are extremely important for solar especially. We do have a slight solar variation throughout the year, mainly due to the monsoon affecting the number of hours we get unimpeded sunlight. You can plan for the day/night deficit because our days are relatively constant, but this variation will force you to increase capacity further instead, shifting the economics further away from it being ever applied em masse.

I still think nuclear is the future for mankind,at least until fusion matured after 1 century from now.I think nuclear would be more sustainable with the new,upcoming Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor and Very High Temperature Reactor(Discover,June 2009).Nuclear power generation just get safer and more efficient.Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor even could use spent uranium fuels as fuel which also shortens the time needed for the waste to be not radioactive.

Coal burning pollutes the environment too much.

Solar and wind are too dependent on weather.

Malaysia could get more hydroelectric dams,though but it destroys the surrounding environment.It's expensive and time consuming to build.

What about wave power? With almost every state in Malaysia having access to the ocean, this could very well be a viable alternative energy source for us. Waves are also more consistent compared to solar and wind. The problem i heard with this technology is the extremely high setup cost which i guess is due to building something in the middle of an ocean which is not an easy feat.

If im not wrong,the out put is pretty low too,but i did saw some more recent development to cut down the cost and increase the efficiency.

I read some article about an interesting comparison of nuclear energy and solar. That all our river water and sea water contain some tiny bit if dissolved uranium originate from the earth crust. If we filter the river water before the flow into sea for dissolved uranium as reactor fuel, it would be more then enough to power up the entire planet, and it will last longer then our sun. And since river water is renewable, so uranium can be considered as sort of renewable as well.

Most importantly, nuclear power is massive enough to satisfy our power hungry needs. It can function as base load, as well as peak load alone.

But then, one of the weakness of nuclear energy is that it is being too massive. Any slight error will render the entire city inhabitable for the next 10000 years and pollution to the entire continent, permanently. So it is like a double edge sword, with one end extremely useful, and the other extremely deadly. There are promises that nuclear reactor technology is quite matured, but then, people just can't be too sure about it.

No one can be so sure about fusion reactor, so far the biggest experimental fusion reactor ITER is already a friggin huge installation, can't imagine what kind of size the real thing will be. But who knows, 500 years later we can fit a fusion reactor into a vehicle.

And talk about solar, being the most reliable energy source in space, there are a proposal which involved a satellite with large solar panels launched into orbit, and transmitting energy back to earth via microwave. Now this is something that unaffected by weather, renewable, and reliable. The only problem is cost.

Wave energy is yet another renewable source that is available for 24/7, however it is extremely difficult to harvest this multi directional, slow, and strong energy. Constructing such device must be able to withstand storm and weather condition too. But it is not impossible. A commercial example of wave farm generator is the Pelamis(aka Sea Snake) Wave Energy Converter. source

Three of these thing can produce enough power for 1500 families, it is certainly not low.

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 10 2009, 01:06 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_et...cal_approach.29

Folks,

We have plenty of waste from Palm Oil plantation. They are all fiber based. If we can use cellulase enzymes to convert them into Ethanol, we solve two problems.

A) What to do with the waste

B) We have an renewable energy source.

Dreamer

Speaking of Cellulosic ethanol as an alternative energy...There has been establishment using process simulation software to look at bio refinery design at the moment.

Let's look at economic point of view:

Fundamental scale of economies can be achieved if 5,000 to 10,000 tonnes of biomass per day can be processed. Else, if the tonne metric is below 2,000 per day, the capital costs will go upward.

Let's go the science point of view:

Is it cleaner and greener? For the combustion of ethanol, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, both known carcinogens are produced. Levels of peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN) may also increase and this is definitely will not be a good news for our Ozone.

A more technical and safety measures should be addressed accordingly to achieve a sustainable resources. If this science hurdle is overcame, it would be a viable option to consider.

This however comes in the question of: Will Ethanol (Green Gold) could replace imported crude oil (Black Gold)? With Shell Oil predicting global market for bio fuels such as mentioned would grow to exceed $10 billion by 2012, I would not say the notion being coined by "dreamer101" is not viable. It's just a matter of time for us to have a potential substituting resources.

Malaysia can utilises the waste from Palm Oil plantation since our country has abundant pile of palm oil waste. Would our Government considering it's plausible possibilities? It can be considered as long as the environmental and economic issues are tackled accordingly.

Regards, Joey

p.s: Some excerpts are from Institute of Science in Society (back dated ISIS Report).

This post has been edited by Joey Christensen: Aug 10 2009, 11:02 AM

Joey Christensen,


<<Is it cleaner and greener?>>

Versus

A) Landfill

B) Burning them as it is aka Haze.

What do you think??

Dreamer

It seems that you didn't really consider that option A) gives the ability for the fiber to rot back to soil again. But I still get your point though, that this is just another step at being more efficient at using our oil resources more efficiently.

Long term wise though, as oil stocks drop further I think biomass will become unviable because chemical fertilizers derived from oil will probably become more and more expensive.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 10 2009, 11:08 AM

Option A and B are not viable. It's even worst off.

What makes me think is, if we can somehow or somewhat convert formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in a safely and/or environmental friendly manner, Cellulosic Ethanol is definitely a better choice.

Regards, Joey

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Added on August 10, 2009, 11:11 amDecomposition is unquestionable. I have to admit, since "dreamer101" mentioned of landfilling, would it be " occupationally unsafe" to build high rise building on it? It sounded stupid but I can't get rid of the notion of landslides or "quicksand effect". (Highland Towers incident still gives me the shivers, yu know?)

Hey! Anyone thought of "sand"? Sand is everywhere! As far as my science mind can take me; glass, silicon are made of sand composition, right? It would be great if we can somehow uses it to create energy, right?

Regards, Joey

This post has been edited by Joey Christensen: Aug 10 2009, 11:14 AM

Alternative energy when demanded by people who have no technical knowledge regarding the subject often turns into a giant crapshoot.

For example, most of us think that installing power saving bulbs will save energy and thus help mother earth, but the reality is that due to the harmonics and switching load, you have to derate transformers as they start heating up and wasting energy, you get voltage fluctuations that have a detrimental effect on stability, you have circulating neutral currents and unbalanced loads further wasting power, not to mention, all of this has to be corrected by capacitor banks that require more resources to deploy.

Saving the earth? Best way is to turn the power off.

I'm in the power field and i realize after doing the math that nearly all alternative energy sources are pipe dreams at best. For example to reach 30 percent efficiency from Solar panels, you have to apply GAAS semiconductors, which comprise of Gallium and Arsenic, the latter being a poisonous compound. Not to mention the fact that silicon wafers are extremely expensive to produce at best, GAAS nonewithstanding.

Secondly with wave and wind power, you have the issue of transporting all that power from point A to B, add cable loss, conversion loss, coupling loss and other forms of loss, you have yourself a big problem. It's pretty obvious that a power generator of 1mW that's 1km away is going to deliver more power than the same generator 100km away.

Essentially there's no point dreaming until the dollars and cents parts add up. Our current industrial base is unsuited to such alternative power, and until we adapt it to be able to mass manufacture the supporting technologies, it's gonna be hard and expensive.

Alternative energy could mean a lot of things...one thing is alternative energy for transportation means and the other is alternative energy to power our factories and homes.

The developed nations have come up with a few good ideas and they are using it as of now.

As for alternative energy for transportation....battery power seems to be the way to go with all the advancements made in that field. There are other stuff like biofuel, H2, etc but the world seems to favor battery power and we 3rd world nations will soon follow suit. Why? Because the car manufacturers are taking that direction and even our own Proton is going for electric powered cars.

Alternative energy for powering the nation...hmmm hydro dams are good but in some countries....sorry la not going to work if u look @ their geographical condition...but one thing that almost everyone has...the sun. But solar powered systems has to be deployed in massive numbers to power cities and it alone takes up space.

The only viable source of power that humans are moving to is nuclear. There has been no major meltdowns for some time and nuclear power is getting safer and cleaner with progressive research in that field.

properly treated and engineered landfill area are able to be converted to other uses. not condo's though, single/double story terrace is possible.

but with current economic condition, and the availability of land in malaysia. this is not a profitable route. so most landfills are left to rot until they become unbearable

lets look at the options we have

solar - have you read on how solar panel manufacturers pollute the environment? this is the lousiest excuse for green technology that you can ever get.

wind/wave - we have very low potential for this energy type. i believe tnb has done research on this locally.

nuke - this is considered RE? nvm. the biggest problem with this energy source is the power plant. how sure are you that the project won't be ali baba sub sub sub con to somebody else. even if we manage to build it, i doubt that we are gonna let it go operational. Philippines has already built one under the mega corrupt estrada's regime (finished, can be connected to the grid) . it still haven't gone online yet. go figure.

hydro - submerges large areas underwater. the place where you build this power plant will be very far from where the power is needed. (think bakun) so get ready to build that hvdc link. the converter stations and cables ain't cheap.

biomass - low power output i guess. try gastification on the biofuel and it might burn like coal.

This post has been edited by spursfan: Aug 11 2009, 03:06 PM

Show proof or retract your statement.

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

I'm more concerned should we ran out of fossil fuel before having an alternative solution ready.
Should we be unable to find an alternative energy source that's as abundant to sustain our growth, there will come a time when human population control and energy budgeting is required.

The distribution of the new alternative energy is also important since a large percentage of current fossil fuel is consumed by transportation.

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Added on August 14, 2009, 1:02 pmWell all I can say is the government seems to be always lacking in foresight.
I remember hearing about hydropower and it's potential in Malaysia since secondary school. Ask any student about electricity generation in Malaysia and they think of hydropower. But after 2 decades why our utilization of hydropower is dismally low?

This post has been edited by tgrrr: Aug 14 2009, 01:02 PM

Exactly.

I can argue with bgeh here until page 100 about solar, but the main problem here is that our gov is short sighted, thirst for short term gain, and prioritise profit. Being a developing country, we can ignore Kyoto Protocol and do not think about cutting emission just yet.

Even our energy security is at stake. We can be easily affected by sky rocketing petroleum price, and even if petroleum price came down, TNB say they are burning imported coal. And the latest I read about we need to import natural gas to meet our own demand because all our gas exported under the pricing some decades ago.

In short, its a big mess. And in long, what can we do to get our foot out of this mess.

And I do not think that NUKE is the solution.

But you wanted a more technical discussion, and you're veering into the politics of the thing, every time another technical problem with solar is brought up, which is probably RWI, no?

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 15 2009, 01:28 AM

Dedicated research is easily talked about, hard to do, trust me on that one. There are limits to how far you can push a particular technology.

Most people believe that alternative energy is in finding new source. Didja know that most diesel plants are only 18 percent efficient?

It's not as exciting as fusion or GaAs solar panels, but i believe that transmission line matching, superconductors, proper application of insulation, proper spacing and use of dielectric, the minimization of corona effect, proper grid routing, efficient start-stop cycles, power factor corrected houses and so on have a lot more potential than most of these ideas.

The problem is not about the alternative solar energy, fusion energy, hydro energy, geo energy, wind energy, nuclear energy or biomass energy.

The problem is about how to get your so call energy inside the car with the condition that the car performance and cost must be at least the same as petrol car.

So what if u have all the alternative energy in the world. As long as you cannot get those energy inside your car u cannot use it as an alternative to fossil fuel.

You know what, Malaysia already got a surplus of energy.

This post has been edited by locke: Aug 15 2009, 12:37 PM

And another point made here too.

The challenge here is to develop alternative energy to be practical enough that even without government intervention, people will still use it.

Just like what above mentioned, how to get those energy into the car without giving up any performance and comfort. We already have the technology to make a car run without fossil fuel and with even higher performance, but we just can't make it cheap enough.

If im not wrong,hydroelectric is expensive and takes a long time to build as it needs time for the soil to set properly or the concrete to harden to the level they want.

Please note that it is only Peninsular Malaysia that has surplus, while Sabah and Sarawak towns are having daily blackout. Constructing an underwater cable could at least help utilizing those extra power.

It is true that no point to develop expensive alternative energy just to waste it. It should go two way, efficient use of energy must receive attention as well.

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 16 2009, 09:00 AM

Peninsular has surplus. East Malaysia has even more surplus compare to peninsular Malaysia. Please read link below, the underwater cable is to supply from East Malaysia to peninsular Malaysia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakun_Hydroelectric_Project

The blackouts are probably caused by the poor grid maintainence since East Malaysia has huge land with hard to access terrain and low population density. Who knows one of the electric pole is knock down by an elephant in the middle of the jungle or something.

Nuclear power.. ^^

Click here for more Nuclear Power?

The project is expected to be completed by 2010.

Before any hydro-electric dam is functional, we are running diesel power plants here.

You are prolly right about the power grid thou, but we have poor grid in peninsular, and even worst grid in the East Malaysia.

And about the underwater power transmission cable, there maybe isn't any urgency to complete it, because peninsular already have surplus, TNB already signed contract with IPP to buy all their powers for so and so years, they can't get rid of them just like that due to legal issues. But for Bakun Dam, it is vital for powering up East Malaysia properly, people are living in the dark here.

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Added on August 26, 2009, 5:37 pmNuclear power is generally not classified as alternative energy.

BTW, first post updated for more relevant content.

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 26 2009, 05:37 PM