If instead, the best sections (few want to pay $20K to own some waterless land in a hot desert) are offered for price high enough to make a significant dent in the debt, that 1% of Americans who could afford it are already trying to get the assets out of the US and dollars, so for less they could buy a small island in the tropics.

Since the Russains are also oil rich now, I suggested that we sell Alaska back to them in my earlier reply to Mad Anthony.

Most Federal land is in Alaska and the sunshine states. Canada might be interested in buying Alaska. The government has been paying down its debt with huge surpluses for several years now.

Desert land in Nevada, California and New Mexico might find buyers in private solar energy companies.

Theres a huge cover story in the current Scientific American on how these areas can be developed for solar power...with tech that exists NOW!

Thats really the only thing this wasteland has going for it...quadrillions of solar BTUs!

...Theres a huge cover story in the current Scientific American on how these areas can be developed for solar power...with tech that exists NOW!...I have not seen it, Does it favor the solar thermal or Photo-Voltaic as more likely to possibly become economically competive with more conventional energy sources of grid power?

I am interested as about 40 years ago, I patented a solution to the fundamental problem with solar thermal power. That problem is:

That if the absorber is hot enough for efficient conversion of the energy into higher quality forms, like electricity or turning a shaft, then the IR re-radiation from the absorber is a large fraction of the energy absorbed.

Patent is number 4033118 (Mass flow solar absorber).

BTW, I got a new book from the library today:

'The Creature from Jekyll Island' by G. Edward Griffin.

All about the history of the federal Reserve, and so named because the federal reserve act was conceived at a resort on Jekyll Island, Georgia (1910).

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/5457/bookthecreatureyn1.jpg

About the Cover:

"The use of the great seal of the United States is not without significance. At first we contemplated having an artist change the eagle to a vulture. That, we thought would attract attention and also make a statement. Upon reflection however, we realized that the vulture is really quite harmless. It may be ugly, but it is a scavenger, not a killer.

The eagle on the other hand, is a predator. It is a regal creature to behold, but it is deadly to its prey. Furthermore, as portrayed on the dollar, it is protected by the shield of the US government, even though it is independent.

Finally, it holds within its grasp the choice between peace and war. The parallels were too great to ignore. We decided to keep the eagle."

I have not seen it, Does it favor the solar thermal or Photo-Voltaic as more likely to possibly become economically competive with more conventional energy sources of grid power?
1. It favours both thin film PV installations (like the type made by Nanosolar), and thermal reflector/fresnel options.

2. The use of high voltage DIRECT current power lines to transfer electricity over long distances.

3. The use of underground caverns of compressed air storage for PV solar power, or molten salt tanks for thermal solar power.

Here it is: :)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/3703/df70132abe4c22cfeb36b17sx5.jpg

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/8339/df70132abe4c22cfeb36b17xh4.jpg

This video is absolutely the best exposition of Ron's understanding of monetary history in the US going right back to the creation of the Federal reserve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji_G0MqAqq8

Why do you never hear the other candidates talking about it???
Take a guess! :cool:

-Look what happened to JFK...

1. It favours both thin film PV installations (like the type made by Nanosolar), and thermal reflector/fresnel options.
2. The use of high voltage DIRECT current power lines to transfer electricity over long distances.
3. The use of underground caverns of compressed air storage for PV solar power, or molten salt tanks for thermal solar power. Here it is: :)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan ...Thanks. I read it. It is not "wrong" anywhere, but quite misleading in several spots, but that is consistent with their objective of promoting the solar alternative. Here are a few comments explaining some points they neglect and trying to bring a more realistic balance to their article:

First DC transmission is better than AC as they suggest, mainly as 100% of the time the line is at full corona limited voltage and thus moving more power. AC is at the corona limit only twice each cycle. Corono is the ionization of the air by the intense electric field adjacent to a small diameter conductor charged to a high voltage. - Why all high voltage (read that as all long distance) lines do not use a single conductor, but typically a parallel cluster of 4 about 20cm apart in square cross-section. This geometry makes the wire surface electric field much lower and thus permits much higher voltages before corona losses become significant. There is also some slight radiative loss with AC, but at 60Hz it is not very significant (and certainly less than the losses at the "city end" when the DC is converted into 60Hz AC for local distrubution.) Sweeden first developed DC transmission about 40 years ago, then 30 or so years ago American Electric Power company put up an experimental one, in Ohio, as I recall. I am glad to learn, from article that they are now in use. - I.e. economical despite the need for the terminal DC to AC conversion equipment they require.

Very missleading is the subtile suggestion, made several places, that technology will significantly improve the efficiency of photo-voltaic cells. It will not. This is because of the mismatch between the solar sprectrum and the band gap energy of the PV semiconductor. The energy in sunlight is distributed over photons of many different wavelengths (different energy in each). For example, if the band gap energy of the semiconducting material of the PV cell is 1ev, then those solar photons with 1ev energy can be converted into electric energy with 100% efficiency, in excessively simplified theory. Those UV photons with with four times this enegy can only be converted with 25% efficiency. Those photons with less than 1ev only make heat when they are absorbed. If I recall correctly, for silicon, and a source, like the sun at 5000 degrees (assuming black body spectrum which the sun does closely approximate, except for some "holes" due to absorbtion in the outer most layers) the THEORETICAL MAXIMIUM conversion efficiency is only 22%. In practice, it will always significantly less. 17% conversion efficiency is probably the practical limit and then achievable only with very expensive, perfect, single crystal cells. (Interstitial defects or boundary states between crystals tend to trap the electrons that the phonons elevate into the "conduction band" and then they soon fall back into the "valance band" as heat.)

Further more, at least 20 years ago when I was an expert in this area, the cost of PV electric power would fall by less than 50% even if the solar cells were free! These other cost were called the BoS costs. (Balance of System) They include the installation, the land, the copper wires that collect the very dispersed enegy to some transmission line, and importantly the cleaning and replacement of the solar cells. If many cells are connected in series to produce a high voltage, and a bird shits on one (making it be without light while the others are in stong sunlight) it will have high internal resistance. The others in full sunlight will produce a high voltage across the one in the dark. This high voltage across the higher dark resistance can generate a lot of heat in that one cell and destroy it, making the whole series string useless until it is replaced. (If the bird shit only covers most, say 95%, of the cell, it is a "goner" for sure.) While desert land is still cheap, copper is about 5 times more expensive (in inflation adusted terms) and labor cost for cleaning and repair is certain not cheaper today.

Summary: as the efficiency will not significantly increase, and the BoS cost will not significantly come down it is "pipedream" to think PV cells in the desert will ever be economically competive with coal or hydro-power, without significant subsidies forever.

Also I am not a fan of compressed air for storage as in the compression a great deal of heat is generated (lost energy)*. Better is pumped storage with water. If there is both water and a convenient mountain lake near by. (I think pumped storage facilites along the Hudson river have been part of the power system for NYC for more than 40 years, but may be wrong about that.) In the desert, there is usually salt water available deep. It could be pumped up to a subsurface reservoir and then dropped back thru turbines to a lower one with significantly higher efficiency than a compressed air storage system, I am almost sure, but salt-water tolerant turbins are not cheap.

What I "dream" about is supper conducting magnetic ring storage. The cost of the magnetic ring is linear in the circumference or diameter of the magnet ring, but the energy is stored in the magnetic field, not the ring. The energy stored is at least a quadratic function of the ring diameter, so if it is large enough, this storage becomes quite affordable if you are thinking of covering large areas in the desert to collect solar energy. NOt only that but also you get a "free" magnetic field for many experiments that need one.

I realized all this 50 years ago. That is why I thought about how to overcome the fundamental problem of solar thermal power and patented a solution 40 years ago.
--------------------------
*few realize it but most of your electric bill is not related to the fuel cost. It is mainly the capital tied up in the system that you are paying for. Typically 85% or more of the bill and 100% capital cost if it comes from a hydrolectric dam, as about 90% of all electric power in Brazil does. Lets say 10% is fuel cost, thus even if the German compressed air storage returns only 70% of the energy used to compress the air that is only an increase of 3% in cost, but as it is done to avoid building greater generation capacity to meet the peak load, (i.e.only used for the peak demand loads) there is a huge saving in capital cost - at least ten times greater economic saving that the loss due to the inefficiency of the compressed air storage.

This argument does not apply to solar PV power because a 2% increase in the efficiency, even achieved with no increase in the cost of each PV cell (seldom the case and why cheaper inefficient cells are normally used), is a 2% reduction in the BoS costs as the collector area is 2% less. Thus, one must understand that different systems have different concerns about efficiency. If pumped air were used with a solar PV system the losses heating the air are much more significant. This is because the energy is not necessarily taken from storage only to meet peak load demands, but for night and cloudy times also.

Ah, interesting!

Notice how the article addresses THIN FILM solar panels as the only viable way forward, as opposed to crystalline silicon:

"In the past few years the cost to produce photovoltaic cells and modules has dropped significantly, opening the way for large-scale deployment. Various cell types exist, but the least expen*sive modules today are thin films made of cadmium telluride. To provide electricity at six cents per kWh by 2020, cadmium telluride modules would have to convert electricity with 14 percent efficiency, and systems would have to be installed at $1.20 per watt of capacity. Current modules have 10 percent efficiency and an installed system cost of about $4 per watt."

Apparently this estimation is already outdated, because Nanosolar has already started shipping film with a rating of 1$ per watt.

Unless this article is vastly misleading:

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/12/nanosolar-ships.html

"In one of the most significant announcements in renewable energy for the year Nanosolar, producer of CIGS solar cells made using nanoparticle ink and roll-printing technology, announced that it has shipped its first product and received their first check from product revenue.

They are already sold out for the next 12 months and are working to scale their production capacity as fast as possible. The advent of low cost thin film cells, that according to Nanosolar will be able to be produced for $0.99 per Watt...When this cost is achieved, it will mean that solar is competitive with all other forms of power production..."

More commentary here:
http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/30/10-questions-for-nanosolar-ceo-martin-roscheisen/

On the compressed air storage issue I understand what you wrote about energy loses due to heat exchange, but isnt that one of the advantages of underground storage, where the heat and mass of the earth itself acts as a natural insulator???

This also from the wiki article:

"In the real world, gas heats when it is compressed. If this heat is lost to the surroundings, efficiency suffers. That's why commercial energy storage systems are located at natural underground caverns. Because of the large volume, energy can be stored with only a small change in pressure, hence a small heat loss."

Because its a retarded idea?

Competing US currencies. Yeah. Thats gonna work great.

Well do you like Walmart? or any other monopoly? Monopolies create control and submission. I'd rather have competition.

I honestly believe that if Ron will be elected, he will be blown away like Bhutto, King, Ghandi, Kennedy, etc. The powerful families in the world will make sure of that. Rothchilds and Rockerfellers. Bill Gates might be the richest MAN in the world, but if you combine all the family members, you will begin to understand who weilds power. I just don't understand, what ideal drives these families to commit such crimes. They act like animals, not realizing that humans have a higher capacity for thought and solutions. We are much smarter than monkeys, I assure you. But they act like monkeys. I think the reason they shoot lions and go hunting, is because they like to feel on top of the food chain. This is animalistic, and will lead to their own demise, and the society they live in. They are leaders they should lead the right way, if you can't lead, admit it and leave, don't kill people who were worse off than you.

I honestly believe that if Ron will be elected, he will be blown away like Bhutto, King, Ghandi, Kennedy, etc. The powerful families in the world will make sure of that.
Its a chilling thought but I dont think he has a chance at this point. Nevertheless I'm glad hes in the race and getting an alternative message out that might make some people think.

The US system is so gigantic that its become almost impossible to change...somewhat like an ocean liner that cant turn fast enough to avoid crashing into an iceberg.

Well off thread so I will be brief...."In the past few years the cost to produce photovoltaic cells and modules has dropped significantly, opening the way for large-scale deployment. ...With thin films printed from nano particles there must be a high density of surface and interstitial states that will trap the electons the photons liberate and ease their return to the conduction band as heat, not electricity. I stongly doubt the claim of even 10% efficiency. As noted earlier the BoS cost were dominate 20 years ago, so now they must be several times greater than the solar cell costs. I.e. with low effiency nanoparticle films the pannel may be cheaper but more acres of them are required for any given output and the BoS cost tends to scale with the collection area. In the reader comments of your first link, several noted that Germany is giving a large subsidy to solar power. No doubt why, if true, NanoSolars first big instalation is planned for there. Without subsidy they are far from competive with coal or hydropower.

...On the compressed air storage issue I understand what you wrote about energy loses due to heat exchange, but isnt that one of the advantages of underground storage, where the heat and mass of the earth itself acts as a natural insulator???No. Problem is that air compressors require high quality energy (electricity usually) and produce hotter air (heat is low quality energy). You will never get any significant fraction of it back as high quality energy as the temperature rise is low and Carnot limits the recovery to high quality energy. E.g. 95% or more of the heat produced during the compression is not recoverable, even if none is lost by perfect insulation.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZIEkXd8xSCI&feature=related

As noted earlier the BoS cost were dominate 20 years ago, so now they must be several times greater than the solar cell costs. I.e. with low effiency nanoparticle films the pannel may be cheaper but more acres of them are required for any given output and the BoS cost tends to scale with the collection area. In the reader comments of your first link, several noted that Germany is giving a large subsidy to solar power. No doubt why, if true, NanoSolars first big instalation is planned for there. Without subsidy they are far from competive with coal or hydropower.
As reported in the New York Times, Nanosolar claims a $1 per watt cost for the panels themselves means that systems can be built for $2 per watt...making them competitive even with coal plants at $2.10 per watt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/technology/18solar.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

"Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.

“With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said."

As reported in the New York Times a $1 per watt cost for the panels themselves means that systems can be built for $2 per watt...making them competitive even with coal plants at $2.10 per watt.

"Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims ...
“With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said."Yes NYT is reporting NanoSolar's CEO's CLAIM. In USA, I doubt you can even keep them cleaned and damaged cells replaced for that second $1/w. I have already expressed my doubts about the 10% efficiency and noted the fact that as efficiency drops, the BoS cost go up.

Summary: I will believe it when it has seen a year or two in the field with birds, blowing leaves and occasional hale.

I will believe it when it has seen a year or two in the field with birds, blowing leaves and occasional hale.
Indeed, I'll keep ya posted.

I can just imagine what goes on in the testing department.
The industry standard is that panels should able to withstand 3/4" hail at 60 mph. One company uses a machine that fires ice cubes at 140 mph!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlb-WA9sEBQ

This also from the wiki article:

"In the real world, gas heats when it is compressed. If this heat is lost to the surroundings, efficiency suffers. That's why commercial energy storage systems are located at natural underground caverns. Because of the large volume, energy can be stored with only a small change in pressure, hence a small heat loss."
Just came across this blog entry which made me realize that wind power would likely be a much better choice for compressed air storage, rather than PV solar energy.

Primarily because the energy generated from many different turbine sites around the country are not constant, given the intermittency of the wind.

And in spite of some comments in protest that this storage technology cant possibly work, the reality is that it already works. Two compressed air storage plants have been up and running for years.

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/compressed-air-energy-storage.html

"I have always been a big fan of wind power. But one of the knocks on wind is that it is intermittent. Since electrical demand probably won’t match up very well with wind fluctuations, installed wind capacity does not displace conventional power generation in a 1 to 1 ratio. For example, I have seen it claimed that 2,000 megawatts of installed wind energy still requires 1,800 megawatts of standby power for when the wind isn’t blowing.

Clearly a storage system is needed. During times of high wind flow and low demand, the excess energy could be stored in something akin to a giant battery. When the wind isn’t blowing, users would pull from the "battery". I have given a lot of thought over the past couple of years as to just what form such a storage system would take. I could envision several different options. One, air could be compressed into a storage system and then discharged through a turbine as needed. Two, water could be pumped uphill, and then be allowed to flow back through a turbine as needed. Three, water could be split to hydrogen and oxygen. I don’t like this option as much, because most electrolysis is inefficient and hydrogen storage is problematic.

Imagine my surprise this weekend to learn that while I have been daydreaming about a wind energy storage system, someone is in the process of doing it. Furthermore, others have previously blogged on it. I felt a bit like Rip van Winkle after waking up from his long nap. How could I have missed such an important development? The storage system is called compressed air energy storage (CAES).

A group of Iowa cities intends to not only harness the wind, but also capture it, store it underground and use it to help make electricity when demand peaks.

Members of the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities have invested in a proposed power plant that would use wind turbines to drive compressed air into underground aquifers. The air would be released to generate electricity when needed.

The plant will use power from its own wind turbines, supplemented by cheaper electricity bought at off-peak times, to force air into rock formations at least 2,000 feet underground. Current plans call for pressurized storage of tens of billions of cubic feet of air in rock formations deep underground.


If you think I was surprised by that, imagine my surprise upon reading this from the same article:

Only two other underground compressed air plants are in operation. A plant in Huntorf, Germany, was built more than 23 years ago and a plant in McIntosh, Ala., is 11 years old. Both store compressed air in underground salt caverns.

Iowa's project is unique in that it would use wind power to store the air and combine it with massive underground storage capacity. The Germany and Alabama plants store hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of air in a thermos-bottle shaped container installed in the salt mines. The Iowa project would use naturally occurring pockets embedded in sand or sandstone formations sealed by shale or other rock.

So, a plant in Alabama has been using compressed air storage successfully for 11 years, and I didn’t know about it until this weekend. The only difference is that they aren’t using wind to do it. The Iowa plant will be the first to do that, but others will probably follow."

About subterrian compressed air storage:

First, with rare exceptions, a man made cavern nisn needed as almost all created by flowing water (natural caves) have many small passages connected to the surface ("leaks"). The economics make it necessary to use artifical cavern which was made for some other reason, not in use now. I.e. old salt or mine, usually a coal mine, which may have some out gassing of methane (See next paragraph).

If used in conjunction with a natural gass fired steam generator, the heat produced when the air is compressed is not lost. Air extracted from the storage can be used directly used (sort of like a car's "supper charger" for generating (with fossil fuel being combusted) to create a higher pressure differential across the turbine than if atmospheric air were used. This of course is not the case with energy storage for wind power or PV power systems. The German system illustrated in first fig of post 4 helps show what I am explaining.

Note that in the previously posted Scientific American article there is mention of molten salt storage for thermal energy from solar reflector plants.

Of course the best spots in the US for this are also the cheapest in terms of the land required. So what if Death Valley is a national park! :)

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/6769/movingrockdeathvalleynabf6.jpg

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/09/aabout_solar_to.html

Solar towers use many large, computer controlled, sun tracking mirrors to focus the suns energy on a receiver located at the top of a tower. A heat transfer fluid, usually molten nitrate salt, is heated in the receiver and used either to drive a turbine/generator to produce electricity or to provide high temperature thermal heat.

The molten salt can be used to store the thermal energy for producing electricity at night or during cloudy weather. Commercial power plants would be sized from 50 MW to 200 MW each.

A 10MW plant, Solar One, located near Barstow CA operated for six years demonstrating the viability of solar towers. It used a heat transfer fluid to transfer the heat to the generator. Solar Two, was a retrofit of Solar one, built to demonstrate the advantages of molten salt for heat transfer and solar storage.

At one point it delivered power to the grid for seven days, 24 hours a day during cloudy weather. Molten salt solar towers are well suited to peaking power applications, being able to generate power when most needed, day or night, cloudy or sunny.

In a molten-salt power tower, the molten nitrate salt, which is a clear liquid with properties like water at temperatures above its 240 degrees Celsius melting point, is pumped from a large storage tank to the receiver, where it is heated in tubes to temperatures of 565 degrees.

The salt is then returned to a second large storage tank, where it remains until needed by the utility for power generation. At that time, the salt is pumped through a steam generator to produce the steam to power a conventional, high-efficiency steam turbine to produce electricity. The salt at 285 degrees then returns to the first storage tank to be used in the cycle again.

The Solar Two receiver is comprised of a series of panels through which the molten salt flows in a serpentine path. The external surfaces of the tubes are coated with a black Pyromark™ paint that is robust, resistant to high temperatures and thermal cycling, and absorbs 95% of the incident sunlight. The receiver design has been optimized to absorb a maximum amount of solar energy while reducing the heat losses due to convection and radiation.

The design, which includes laser-welding, sophisticated tube-nozzle-header connections, a tube clip design that facilitates tube expansion and contraction, and non-contact flux measurement devices, allows the receiver to rapidly change temperature without being damaged. For example, during a cloud passage, the receiver can safely change from 290 to 570C in less than one minute.

The salt storage medium is a mixture of 60 percent sodium nitrate and 40 percent potassium nitrate. Molten salt can be difficult to handle because it has a low viscosity (similar to water) and it wets metal surfaces extremely well."