I'm no expert in this topic but would like to hear from you if you are. Its year 2010, everyone's worried we're running out of oil so why haven't we seen solar energy factories dotting our landscape?

Solar heat is probably our biggest source of free energy as a tropical country. The heat is unbearable. Isn't it possible, at the minimum, to use that heat to turn water to steam, use that steam to turn a motor that charges a large battery, and use that battery to run light bulbs and fans?

What are the issues that are preventing such a thing?

issues....:
1. large start up cost
2. unstable power supply
3. energy storage problem
4. efficiency issue

Start up cost
How much more expensive is it than setting up a regular diesel-powered station? Or is the real issue return on investment?

Unstable power supply
Yes, foreseeable if bad weather or 4 seasons... but isn't tropical weather is predictable and the heat pretty much uniform all year round?

Energy storage problem
Is it any different than storing wind power energy which is big in Europe and soon, China?

Efficiency issue
If its loss due to conversion from heat to electricity, how high is it compared with burning diesel to run steam turbines to generate electricity?

I am also not an expert. I just hope some expert could give some ideas. If the entire roof is made of solar cells would that be sufficient to 1) light up you house, 2) Refridgerate your food 24 hours daily 3)give power to TV and PC from 19:00-23:59 4) Provide hot water shower for typical family of 4 people 5) Power air cond while you sleep.

much higher....since the technology for it is new....hence the materials for it is expensive since there's no large scale production of it...
also, investors are more willing to put their money on more proven systems than a relatively new system


nope.....the sun still don't shine at night... also there's cloudy days....rain all leading to unstable power supply and hence it is hard to calculate how many solar power stations are needed to power a certain industry or population.
unlike fossil fuel based you can increase or decrease output at will.

energy is not stored....it is just sent to the grid as it is produced.....
very bad if we cannot store energy and use a unstable power supply

no need to compare with fossil fuel based actually...
efficiency not high enough to balance the high startup cost and deliver cheap electricity at the same time.....hence the attractiveness of this system to investors is low



attractiveness will increase when the fossil fuel price increase and government incentive is given to develop it.

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Added on May 19, 2010, 3:16 pmthat's some seriously high power demand you are talking about..... efficiency and storage issues apply here.....most likely you will need more power from external sources...

but...no doubt that installing that could lower the electricity bills..... as for attractiveness to put solar cells on the roof...depends on how much time is needed to offset its initial cost and the mentality of the people and the cost of electricity per unit...

This post has been edited by slimey: May 19 2010, 03:16 PM

interesting discussion..

Interesting... I used to think it was a limitation of physics that made it impossible to develop the solar cell further based on current materials. Problems with the traditional photovoltaic model perhaps. I think something new is brewing in Australia on this.

On the issues, so far I can't see much difference from those experienced by wind power such as seasonality (wind sometimes stops blowing), storage, efficiency, set up cost. One wind turbine and its support subsystems are not cheap and because climate change is making wind patterns unpredictable, the risks of wrongly placing them is high.

Wind power is already mainstream in certain parts of the world so I wonder why its any less risky than the old photovoltaic solar panels? We don't know if the wind might stop blowing tomorrow but the sun will definitely come up for sure.

malaysia maybe more suitable for wind than solar with our long coastline, solar panel take over large area, australia and china can setup their solar farm in the desert while we need to clear forest to setup solar farm. they need to look at the wind pattern in malaysia and identify optimum area to setup wind farm, china have been setting up wind farm at breakneck speed, so we can by the tech and consultation from there.

either solar or wind we still need a better grid system to transfer the energy more efficiently and balance the load.

as for energy storage, a simple but not very efficient way can be found in dam australia where during night time where energy use is low, the extra power is use to pump power into the dam's lake and during peak our the water are released to generate extra energy

This post has been edited by robertngo: May 19 2010, 05:19 PM

there are 2 ways of obtaining power from solar, the most common is photovoltaic where you convert light into electric. at current technologies, efficiency is low, and you need a large land area, with high initial costs. cost of generating power this way is around 3-4times the cost for fossil fuel plants.

the second method is to covert heat from the sun to electric by heating up steam and running turbines. there are already several power plants in the world using this method, but again, cost and outputs are an issue. typical plants of this type is around 10-20MW region. (in comparison, fossil fuel plants operate at 100MW-500MW per machine)

If one diesel plant produces the power of 10 solar plants, won't it still make economic sense for each town to be served by its own 1-2 solar power plants? Sure there's a setup cost to solar but won't it be mitigated by lower running cost? Diesel plants must top up their tank every day. Solar plants escape this cost.

Oil money. Fiat money. Fractional reserve banking.



You can't just switchover without causing damage to certain industries and power whose interests rely on oil backed currencies.

This post has been edited by garytong: May 20 2010, 04:52 PM

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

Search for "Example #3" and start from there. It might help.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 20 2010, 05:49 PM

Dude, thx for the link. This is what it referred to:



Some critique:

It is like saying the amount of rice eaten in Africa in one month barely rivals the amount of rice eaten by 2 towns in China. While it may be factual, it doesn't necessarily mean Chinese towns have superior eating habits. It may mean that there's not enough rice to go around in Africa. Invalid comparison.


No indication if the "real world" includes installations in the tropics or just those in the northern hemisphere where sunlight duration and intensity is seasonal. This is one problem I often find in US publications. When the world in "World Series Baseball" is defined as all the US states between Florida and Michigan, you start to take their version of "real world" with a pinch of salt.


The figure of 20% is questionable if the data is derived from northern hemisphere pv installations and furthermore, "all the pv installations in the world" may be an irrelevant figure, like the rice consumed in Africa thing.

does not really matter actually..... you can output as much as you want as long as you build them as big as you need it...

let's assume we have 1 coal fired plant and 1 solar plant of equal size..... the coal power plant will win easily in competition of power output....

no point talking about efficiency when there's no stability.... kinda like counting one's heart rate when the heart rate is not stable....
the sun does not shine at night....that is a fact....
now unless we develop a reliable method of storing excess energy while there is sunlight in the day time then you will have no power at night.
chances are you'll still be seeing coal fired plants around to provide that stable energy which is required...
no doubt that building solar power plant will reduce the need for power from fossil based sources.....
but if we build these 2 systems together it is very hard to estimate the proper ratio of fossil fuel based energy to alternative energy
thus leading to big wastage of funds.....just to create that extra "safety zone" of energy output...

country developers don't like that........ try putting yourself in their shoes and weight all the options available to them.... and get your conclusion yourself

of course, you can always complement solar with hydro, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave, tidal, osmosis, nuclear etc plants.

none of this is viable to replace fossil fuel, together the reliance on fossil fuel is much lower

Yes at our present consumption rates, nothing less than fossil fuels is viable apart from nuclear. Our lifestyle's so tightly wound around fossil fuels a 10% drop in energy supply will be drastic, a 40% drop catastrophic. Given the numbers, I can't see any other way for alternative fuels to be viable except to reduce consumption i.e. a drastic change in lifestyle. In other words, over our dead bodies.

if you build solar farm you need to build another power plant to provided power when sun is not up.

the most viable way is to tap our hydro capacity as much as possible, build nuke plant to replace coal and diesel plant and complement with solar and wind farm, a new smart grid will help with delivering the power more more efficiently.

If you look at it that way. The way I see it, it's mostly to show how (relatively) economical it is to implement solar power as opposed to coal. Coal is cheap to invest in, which is why there's so many of them around. Solar is not.

I do agree it's an invalid comparison in the sense that the whole world could have built just one solar panel (never mind the cost), and it would still be "all the pv installations in the world". I didn't manage to drag up the numbers on how much solar power is generated world-wide, though.

Now that is just semantics. There's at least two reasons they named it "World Series Baseball":

From wikipedia:
The series were promoted and referred to as the "The Championship of the United States","World's Championship Series", or "World's Series" for short. As baseball outside of North America was not equal to that of North America at the time, the winners of the championships were by default the best baseball team in the world.

From wikianswers:
The MLB is the most prestigious league to play baseball. It is filled with the best players from all over the world from Asia, United States, Dominican Republic, and many other countries. Mlb scouts search for the best players around the world and offer them large contracts to join the club. When the playoffs are at the end there is nobody left except for two teams. This is called the world series because all that is left are two teams filled with the very best players form all over the world.

I find it strange that you'd base the meaning of "real world" off from World Series Baseball. I could just as well have the same issues with Buffalo Wings (which aren't wings and don't come from buffaloes) or Mountain Oysters (which DEFINITELY aren't oysters and don't come from a mountain).

Sure, lifeaftertheoilcrash.net is based in the US, so "real world" would have more of a US-based context. But that doesn't mean tha's a reason to doubt EVERY single definition of that word that is released from a US source. At least, not until we know its context.

But hey, English is a strange language. Waiting will have to be filled before it can be grokked in fullness.

ANYWAY, BACK TO THE MAIN ISSUE... (apologies for detracting)


True that.

This is from wikipedia again:
For the weather and latitudes of the United States and Europe, typical insolation ranges from 4kWh/m²/day in northern climes to 6.5 kWh/m²/day in the sunniest regions.
In the Sahara desert, with less cloud cover and a better solar angle, one can obtain closer to 8.3 kWh/m²/day.

There's no doubt that solar power would work better on the equator than anywhere else. If the 4 and 6.5 figures are based of the 20% efficiency mark, then 8.3 is slightly more than double that of 4 (which makes it about 40% efficiency) and about 33% more efficient than 6.5 (too lazy to figure that one out).

I'd wager our country would have somewhere between that 6.5 and 8.3 number range due to more... humane weather conditions.

---

Added on May 21, 2010, 4:25 amWhich is why I believe the world will not end with a whimper, but with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 21 2010, 04:25 AM

OMG, buffalo wings didn't come from a buffalo? Hahaha... kidding.

Semantics... I dunno dude, I see it more as misrepresentation, much like how Miss Universe is not really Miss Universe since they didn't invite that 12-legged beauty from Planet Zorgorn. While it may not be significant in sports (an American swinging a bat isn't much different than a Dominican swinging a bat) there's a huge difference between kWh/m²/day measured in solars panels located in Costa Rica and Poughkeepsie New York. While baseball teams may find it hard to find a baseball pitcher in Costa Rica, researchers won't have any problem pitching up a pv panel there so its really apples and oranges. If the data is what I suspect it is, they should have just called it for what it is - North American figures instead of "world" figures. You'll appreciate the margin of error when u use their conclusions to benchmark numbers you collect from the equator.

Oh, I don't doubt every single definition of the word from all US sources because many are legit. Its just that after having seen a few of these 'scientific generalizations' in the peer review basket, I learnt not to conclude until I see the actual data. So until I see it, I treat it (and any other study from other countries) with skepticism.



This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 21 2010, 10:07 AM

Trust me, DON'T try the Mountain Oysters!!!

I don't doubt that either. I had a problem finding hard numbers regarding alternate energy sources online. So either no one has judged it important enough to research/collate the information regarding the differences in geographical location, it's not public information, or I'm just doing it wrong. The best I could do was that wikipedia entry with the 8.5 kWh number.

also, one of the studies done by tnb shows that solar (as in photovoltaic) is not that viable for malaysia despite year round summer, is due to our significantly high cloud cover and rainy seasons. while a dry and hot place like sahara can get high output, expect malaysia's output to be significantly less.

Hmmm... that's interesting. Do you have a link to those studies?

nope, not really, as i dont think tnb publishes any of its findings. its more of hearsay from industry insider

Don't really need to study. Just go and check out where solar farms are situated. All of them deserts like nevada etc.

nowaday nuclear energy is an another option for malaysia

i don't think malaysia has those professional workforce to handle nuclear technology

I think that's why people are alarmed at the idea, not that nuclear is bad. The Europeans have had nuclear for decades with no major incidents. We on the other hand can't even maintain the toilets and elevators in public buildings. The immigration computers were kaput when I went to renew my passport early this year. And they want to maintain a nuclear station?

After scouring the other threads regarding energy, I find it shocking that absolutely no one has mentioned that plutonium and uranium are non-renewable themselves.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 25 2010, 06:11 AM

well, Im pretty sure thats simply because the amount of energy that can be produced from a specific mass of plutonium/uranium is large enough that the amount readily available is enough to fuel the energy requirements for the near future.

I believe the general consensus is that the use of fission technology is only required until fusion technology is able to replace it.

That is a dangerous assumption.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5060

Unless we can ramp up global uranium production, we'll see uranium shortages around 2013.


This is just as dangerous. We could easily "run out" of all conventional and non-conventional energy sources, and fusion still wouldn't have made any progress.

How about the wind turbine energy? I think we have plenty, sea, land and hill around. Which enough area to setup a wind turbine farm to generate power.

Our wind characteristics have to meet a certain minimum before turbines become viable and I don't know if TNB has done the studies. Its also a policy issue. Do we even have a policy on green energy in Malaysia which include concessions in importing expensive turbines.

Wind turbines have the same problem as solar. High start-up costs, needs backup power station when there is no wind since there is no cheap and efficient way to store power, EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) values still lower than oil.

in short,it's very hard to realize these technologies in Malaysia as we don't have the workforce to handle them

1) I went through the linked source and could not find anything to back the statement on shortages occurring from 2013. The only occurrence of note would be the end of the US contract for russian bomb material which would lead to a shortage in uranium supply TO THE US. The study in itself seems to focus more on the availability of a secure fuel supply to the US rather than actual availability of Uranium globally.

Do correct me if I'm wrong.

2) As far as I know, there is already a fusion reactor being built in Russia as well as a prototype model of a more cost friendly design in MIT. Of course, the actual viability of both these models is something that we can only "wait and see" to confirm.

Another thing to note, seeing as someone already pointed out Malaysia's large coastline in relation to wind power, what about the use of tidal power like undersea turbines?
The large amount of rivers in malaysia seems to me like a prime reason to at least consider it based on the power plant built on a river in Wales.

Dont worry. Such technology will take its course and progresses eventually when we reach a dead end - oil mines used up..etc

You'll need to scroll down to Figure 5 and Figure 6 to get world supply and demand figures. Demand was ~65,000 tons in 2005, while supply from mines worldwide was ~40,000 tons. Googling up on "annual uranium consumption (or supply)" will give you roughly the same amount.

Ramping up on mining production also takes time and money.

So I'd say it's a worldwide problem. And even if shortages were limited to the US, what makes you think they won't try to take it from someone else?

Are these two the one and the same?

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/05/russia-it...on-ignitor.html

Apart from this and ITER's one in France, I've not read about any new fusion reactor projects.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 26 2010, 05:40 PM

Ah, thank you for the correction.

I actually meant ITERs one in france instead of the one being built in Russia. I got the two mixed up. So, yes.. those two projects.

You're welcome.

Ok, now that I understand the issue of frequent cloud cover over Malaysia, it does make solar a dicey proposition. But one thing we do have ample supply of cloud cover or not. Its pure heat... like an oven. Our concrete and road surfaces can radiate temps exceeding 50 deg celsius, hot enough to fry an egg as they say. Its not hard to imagine a whole hillside being converted into a heat sink. Isn't there some kind of technology that can extract all that energy?

Yes. They are called the steam engine and the internal combustion engine.

----I could be wrong from this point here----

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine#E...of_heat_engines

All these heat engines rely on some sort of working fluid to transfer heat from Point A to Point B. And the working fluid is almost always in the form of a gas or a liquid. Plus, it's only applied to systems with moving parts (so no plugging it in directly to a TV or XBOX).

Solid state forms aren't a good method of distributing the conversion of heat-to-energy throughout a system that has moving parts. Unless your car is as flat as a pancake.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 31 2010, 03:20 PM

Or it can be a frickin huge frying pan a block wide where you actually fry a thousand eggs.

Two problems that I see. First as you said, the need for some kind of medium, a plasma of some sort to transfer that heat energy from A to B. The second is a way to focus all that energy to one spot to superheat the plasma & make it hot enough to actually make conversion to useable energy viable.

Makes me wonder how many joules of energy can we extract, say from a 1m square piece of thick metal left to bake 11am-2pm in downtown KL, and how big the metal needs to be in order to capture in enough heat energy to boil a kettle of water.

---

Added on May 31, 2010, 5:06 pmAh, turns out there is actually such a thing called harvesting thermal energy. Quote:

"A unique concept for harvesting electrical energy from thermal energy is presented. A thermomechanical actuator was fabricated using ferromagnetic material. The device converts thermal energy into mechanical energy, which can be converted into electrical energy using piezoelectric materials. Magnetic force and operating frequency were measured on the device. Results show that the current power density at ΔT = 50 K is between 1.85 and 3.61 mW/cm2. A thermal finite element analysis model is also presented to understand the influence of thermal interface, suggesting that increases of 18.5 mW/cm2 or higher are achievable."

Source: http://apl.aip.org/applab/v91/i9/p093508_s1?isAuthorized=no

IEEE also entertained the idea here:

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/do...109/BSN.2006.37

I've heard of projects to harvest geothermal energy before in places that have volcanic activity. It seems that some of the technology is already commercially available.



This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 31 2010, 05:06 PM

also been done. no need for fancy plasma or unobtainium, just plain water-steam would do.

again, temperature fluctuate throughout hte year. maximum outout for such a plant that was constructed was around 10MW. comparatively gas power plant outputs 100-200MW. combined cycle (gas+steam) outputs 600+ MW.

Yes. But Malaysia hardly has any volcanoes...

We have an extinct one in Sabah I think, and we still have a few active hot springs in peninsular Malaysia. The point is, whether the source is geothermal or solar, we are baking left and right with no motivation to harness all that energy.

I notice the power industry keeps running back to oil and gas baseline as if nothing else will ever do, except nuclear which you rightly pointed out is also non renewable. Its a subtle way of saying the renewable energy sector is a waste of time. If societies are not willing to consider a lifestyle that's less power hungry, then I guess the writing is on the wall then.

actually we dont need to increase power output, how about just reducing waste, by implementing strict building code on home and office to be more efficient. there are one zero energy building beloging to Pusat Tenaga Malaysia. the lesson learn there should be implemented in other new development and retrofitting old building to be more efficient.

You mean efficiency in buildings that require cooling? Sure you can crank it up but it will only delay the inevitable. If oil supply will reach critical levels in 50 years, mustn't the shift to alternate sources have to happen now in order to avoid social unrest later? I am unsure if Malaysia has an energy policy other than to increase tariffs every other year. Anyone here know?

Hot springs wouldn't give the same energy output as a volcano. Even less worth the time.

The reason we keep going back to oil and gas is despite the relatively high price, it's still cheaper to extract and they have a much higher EROEI (Energy returned to energy invested) ratio than anything else on Earth.

Sure, we definitely have the technology to move almost 100% of global energy consumption to renewable tech. But it'll bankrupt everyone in the process. (I have high doubts if we can even achieve this, considering that even renewable tech relies on a fossil-fuel based infrastructure to start up).



A lifestyle that's less power hungry means cutting down on consumption. No one would be willing to do that (And yes, not even me).

Didn't someone say "the American way of life is non-negotiable"? Well, that applies for pretty much everyone on Earth.

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Added on June 1, 2010, 1:17 pmLike Beastboy said. It'll just be delaying the problem. With increasing population growth, the benefits of such a move would be canceled out with everyone having a smaller piece of the pie.

Humans have never been able to kick off the habit of carrying out Jevon's Paradox.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jun 1 2010, 01:17 PM

As long as the variables stay constant, yes, but as oil reserves dry up, the cost of exploration/energy invested will go up. Nobody seems to want to get their heads chewed off for predicting a depletion timeline so we all get to enjoy this illusion of a bottomless pit.

If you want to clone the current centralized power generation schema, then I agree. But why can't power generation be decentralized? A couple of small stations per district using a wind/hydro/solar combo coupled with an aggressive change in lifestyle. A radical shift for a radical problem, one consumer companies ain't gonna be too happy about.

Oh with enough pain, people will change. Nothing like lighting the fire under our *sses to make us dance.

Yes, but by the time the cost of conventional (i.e. oil and gas) energy is expensive enough to justify investing in other forms, it's too late. We MIGHT have had a chance to transition to a renewable form of powering civilization if we started decades ago. No way that is happening now with resource scarcity.

Actually, there's been quite a few people who's picked up on resource depletion and tried to warn others. M. King Hubbert was pretty much the first person to predict US oil production peaking by the 70's. Other who have also tried to sound the whistle (but sadly, will never be popular in the mainstream) are Richard Heinberg, Jared Diamond, Mike Ruppert and Julian Darley.

(Note: Because their surnames sound the same, I should not that M. King Hubbert is NOT related to L. Ron Hubbard, who is the father of Scientology.)


Because for one, it's expensive. And there's not that many places on earth which has the best of all three "weather conditions". Third, it's not efficient in terms of energy generation/infrastructure setup and maintenance.

I'd say that it's possible to pull this off in a few towns, maybe a city or two, but no way our country (or any country) can pull this off. It will be a financial and logistical nightmare.

Agreed. Though I see it as us being dragged, kicking an screaming down the Olduvai Gorge, wondering where the hell we went wrong.

Guys, can tell me basically solar energy as in those solar panel installed on our house main purpose is just to supply hot water ONLY? tats wat i heard... correct me if im wrong =)

Yes. It's only to supply hot water.

Note that these really aren't solar panels in the strictest sense.


Difference Between Photovoltaic Systems & Solar Water Heating
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5864535_differen...er-heating.html

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jun 1 2010, 08:45 PM

I wonder if we have a more biological way to manufacture solar cells?

Looking at biotechnology. Usage of enzymes and such.

It would reduce the cost factor of making them but I don't think it's possible for usage since we use more electricity every year.

Or maybe if someone is smart enough to make fuel out of CO2 (impossible at the moment and I don't think it's possible in our lifetime or our grandchildren lifetime)

There's algae fuel, which grabs CO2 and sunlight, then converts them to oxygen and biomass.

Very expensive tech though.

What do you reckon is behind this ostrich syndrome? I've seen denial but something of this magnitude is clinical man.

Yeah it could've been Harry Larry and Moe telling us for all its worth.

Scary. Sounds like my uncle.

Nope, it's not merely an argument of semantics.

Total solar insolation at our upper atmosphere = 1366W/m^2 per day. Amount that reaches the ground = 1000W/m^2 per day. Taking into account the cosine effect of the sun's trajectory from East to West, the effective insolation is only 250W/m^2 per day. Polycrystalline solar cells have efficiencies of only around 20%. It's not because of manufacturing defects. It's because solar cells can only work with a narrow spectrum of sunlight and doesn't absorb ALL light including visible light. So, they only capture and convert up to 20% of the sun's radiation into electricity. We end up with a measly 50 watts per square meter per day, which means a single square meter of high-grade solar panel can only produce a maximum of 50 watts throughout the year.

If it rains or if there are clouds, this figure drops even lower. Storage and conversion through batteries and inverters drops the effective figure to only 40 watts-year per square meter.

This is a terrible, terrible level of cost efficiency for the amount of electricity generated.


Definitely.

Not exactly true. A breeder reactor can be effectively self-fueling by enriching its own nuclear fuel. Hard neutron emitter byproducts can be looped back into the reactor core to contribute towards the neutron economy. Calculations have shown that if all uranium are mined from the Earth, and used in breeder reactors to breed enriched uranium and plutonium, this cycle can continue for a billion years or more. Basically, if we have the right sort of reactor, we're not gonna run out of nuclear fuel anytime soon.

Another possibility is Thorium, which is not as effective for breeding, but is so abundant and has such a high thermodynamic efficiency that pound for pound, it's much better than uranium. To start off with, it's about 700 times as abundant as enriched uranium. 1 ton of thorium can produce the same amount of energy as 54 tons of enriched uranium. This already makes thorium's energy efficiency almost 38,000 times higher than enriched uranium.

Thorium is cheaper to exploit as well, due in part to its abundance and due in part to the fact that it can be enriched in-situ within the reactor core as long as there's some thermal spectrum neutron source to kick off the reaction. In most cases, it would be the Uranium-232 and Uranium-233 impurities that often occur naturally together with thorium deposits.

Why isn't thorium-based reactors well-developed? It's for the simple fact that thorium is lousy as a nuclear bomb material. The uranium-232 impurities are unstable and emit neutrons all the time. While this contributes to a good fuel burn-up ratio within a thorium reactor, it ends up giving nuclear bombs a hair trigger. So, thanks to its lousy qualities as a weapons-making material, thorium has been overlooked for decades. The uranium-plutonium fuel cycle was focused upon so that nuclear reactors can generate material for nuclear bombs. Incidentally, it's this very same process that has the potential to generate fuel that can be fed back into the reactor, requiring just minor periodic addition of fertile materials (e.g. U-238) to be enriched in the core.. you can't get something out of nothing anyway.

Breeder reactors won't be our savior anytime soon.

http://www.fissilematerials.org/blog/2010/...tus_of_fas.html

Too expensive to build and maintain. Breaks down easily. Takes too long to repair.

I'm watching development of thorium reactors with great interest. Not that I think it'll save civilization from collapsing, but it's the closest thing to a "magic bullet" that can mitigate our energy issues. Since India is the most progressive in developing thorium reactors, it might save their asses in a few decades or so (Assuming they have the capability and time to do so) while the rest of the world turns into fuedal, warring states.

Where did you get this figure from? Most sources quote 3 to 4 times.

---

Added on June 3, 2010, 2:14 pmWell, you've pretty much answered your own question. Lots of answers, but they all pretty much boil down to denial.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jun 3 2010, 02:31 PM

Solar power extraction is not financially feasible at the moment. Definitely not for general application. The cost far outweight the savings. I have actually enquired for a working solar panel. A basic solar panel with lithium battery cost roughly around 60k. Higher capacity will cost more than 90k. I think it produce around 100 kWh on a good day.
Another way to extract the solar power would be to have the solar panel installed on a satelite. The satelite would then convert the energy into microwave before blasting it back to earth.

Exactly. Even if you were to install your own solar cell & generator at home, the total cost might have paid for 20years of electricity bills.

Besides being expensive, all solar stations will still have a diesel / battery back up so it won't be that much more "green" either.

And with current solar cells, we still can't harness enough energy to use for say ... running a milk factory or even a bakery. think of how much more power airports & smelter plants would need. the solar plants would take up miles & miles of land.

Reading this thread brings to mind Issac Asimovs' " The Last Question". Is there any way for us to stop consuming so much energy? It's scary to think about the future without any source of fuel left for us to suck on. I think those people staying in kampung have more chances of survival compared to us staying in the city.

Can't imagine a life without internet, without ACs, without TV

sorry, but if you think "the last question" relates to energy conservation or energy efficiency or green energy, then you have missed the point.

the last question relates to the unstoppable force of entropy, which means the universe will run out of energy eventually regardless of how green or energy conserving you are. it may take 10 billion years, or 10 billion billion years, but it will happen.

Thorium is 3 to 4 times as abundant as Uranium-238, which is not useful for a nuclear reactor if not enriched first. It is 700 times as abundant as naturally-occurring Uranium-235, which is the fissile fuel of nuclear reactors running on the Uranium fuel cycle. U-238 is only used as the fertile blanket to be neutron-enriched into Plutonium if I recall correctly.

100kWh!!! Are you sure about that? If a solar panel was 100% efficient and could capture 100% of the sun's spectrum, and could track the sun through the sky so that it's always incident against the sun, it would take 100 square meters of these solar panels to produce that much power.

If it's a fixed installation that doesn't track the sun, you'll need 400 square meters to generate 100kWh.

But since polycrystalline solar cells can only capture 20% of the sun's spectrum, we'll actually need 2000 square meters to generate 100kWh on a totally sunny cloudless day.

RM90k is a bargain for 2000 square meters of polycrystalline solar cells! Is it a subsidized price? Such as the solar panels under that TNB's BIPV subsidy program?

Ah. I stand corrected on this one. Thanks for the info!

Well I actually work as an Solar Design Engineer out here in California. Interestingly, what I found was Photovoltaics is actually not new technology, it actually has been around for almost a hundred years. It is true that initial start up costs are high, however, the system has a life-span of 25 to 30 years, and your ROI in Malaysia would be about half of that (Actually, I'm going to say this depends on how much of a utility bill you get in the first place). In California, there are government based and utility based incentives to help balance the cost of Solar systems here and ROIs can go from 4 to 7 years depending on the size of the system. Though, it would be unfair for me to point on California's case.

It is true that power is not produced during the night, however you would be surprised that power can still be produced in cloudy weather, though production may be halved or even more. However, all these would have already been taken into account in the first place when sizing a system, so your building/house would be covered. Also, do keep in mind that renewable energy systems will definitely not take over current forms of energy, but it would actually mitigate the amount of coal being burnt, hence making KL's skyline more visible at times.

Efficiency of panels range from 18 to 20 percent and its bound to only go higher. Especially with the recent boom in the European market again due to large incentives and not forgetting the large American market. Prices on PV panels are now so competitive due to the over production in China.

my group at polytechnic has making Green Energy project..
but it stil not success loh..
coz the electric that we produce it stil low..
and many modification have to make..

What about if I start with a small scale first? Example taking out a few light to be connect to the solar? Will this still cost alot more? Worst it?

I m still thinking about this start with small scale first which maybe cost not more than RM4k.

The efficiency rating for solar panels takes into account the spectrum IIRC. That was a mistake I used to make myself.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#En...sion_efficiency , and standard test conditions are defined here http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/spectra/am1.5/ . So yeah, it's not going to be that bad.

Does a coal-mine cause THAT much pollution? The closest coal-fired plant to KL is in Kapar. I always thought that too many cars on the road were more of a factor.

Ozak:

Well, again i'm not too familiar with the Malaysian energy market, and the prices of panels in Malaysia, I was just giving information based on what I know since I work in the industry.

If you wanted to start small scale, you may want to consult the manufacturer or an electrical engineer/electrician before starting.

VMSmith:

The last statement I wrote was intended as a pun. I did not really mean what I said. Though, you never know.

Ah. Duly noted.

I do have a couple of questions regarding PV cells maintenance though.

#1: Considering that it's easy for dust to gather on the glass surface and for it to be easily scratched, how often/expensive would it cost to replace it? (Not looking for a specific number, just an approximate figure)

#2: Does the silver paste for PV cells need to be replaced over a certain number of years as well?

I have check around my local solar company. There have some small scale solar package for home user. With considerate cost. I calculate mostly base on US website as here don't have much detail. I guess it same since the parts is not much different. I might be wrong. The installation is not diffiuclt for me.

Over US side, are they start in small scale first or mostly go for whole house?

When the raining season comes u gg.


from wat i understand, there are 2 ways of generating electricity from solar. One is using solar cells, semi conductor like selenium can convert light particles to electric current.

light energy --> electric energy


the other way is to use the heat from sun to heat water and convert it to steam to push the turbine.

heat energy --> electric energy.

In Malaysia, a big barrier for us will be the still significant ROI. With most Malaysians actually taking 7-9 years to pay off a car, on a similar price scale, it will not be feasible for most people without a good financing option to be able to afford that cash outlay.

Actually, wasn't there a global overcapacity of panels? I was actually hoping for a price crash, followed by the surviving firms finally getting their acts together and put PV on the same price law as semiconductors (e.g. installed price per kW to be halved every 18-24 months)

IIRC there was one. But PV panels do not follow the Moore's law, because power scales with area of panels, while Moore's Law talks about number of transistors, which gets smaller.

The glass is actually manufactured to be more durable than that, the dust can be cleaned off easily with water, and the glass used is actually a temper proof/scratch proof glass, so you wont have to replace it.

PV panels are maintenance free, you dont have to maintain them at all. As a matter of fact most panels should come with a 25 year warranty. The reason their maintenance free is due to the fact that it has no mechanical parts.


Most of the time they just go for the whole house, or try to anyway, again it really depends on available area. There are reason for this and I don't want to go too in depth about it.

This is true, however a good solar company would have already sized the system so that you produce more energy during the non-monsoon months to cover up for the monsoon months, however I'm not too sure whether TNB will credit the power back to you if you over produce. Might want to check your local utility company, on this regard.


This is true, if the government however gives incentives, it may make sense then.

There is a global overcapacity, prices of panels have dropped since last year to an all time low. The firms are still pretty much waiting for other firms to file for bankruptcy and it may happen very soon, however with the new government incentives in some EU countries, these firms are given a thin life line for a while at least.