Best Alternative Power System

sorry for the error, I said that it "can" be safe enough for your back yard, that should be cannot (I edited it). and the cake thing was a figure of speech, like "the best of both worlds". they are working on sonofusion, which may some day be good enough to heat your house, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

they tried sonofusion, but it needs just as much work as magnetic confinement.

antimatter would be an awesome power source. i see huge solar arrays (many square miles of surface area) in orbit, each with an antimatter power plant on them. as antimatter is produced, ship it down to earth to be used in power plants. antimatter would also replace alot of chemical fuel in the rockets, enabling cheap space flight.

if fusion works out, there's a huge supply of He-3 on the moon that's supposed to go through a non-radiation, pure electricity fusion. clean pure energy...

personally, i can't wait till something like this happens....

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

What the hell is the point of antimatter if you already have such a massive solar array?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Firstly fusion will be possible way before antimatter is easily contained and transported, antimatter will still be useful as rocket fuel (maybe) but not very practical for power production.
secondly, He-3 is not actually better than D-T fusion. the radiation from D-T fusion is actually helpful because you can produce more tritium with that radiation. so you can "breed" more tritium than your reactor needs as fuel. so why would you fly to the moon to get more fuel when you can make it out of lithium?
thirdly, to clockwood, what good would a giant solar array in space be if you couldn’t get the energy back to earth? antimatter would be a good way to get it back to earth because it packs a huge punch in a small size. (1g of antimatter=23 space shuttle fuel tanks)

I am confident that the generation of fusion reactors after ITER will be able to produce at least some power. this may be 25 years out but that’s not too long. antimatter is much farther out. however, only time will tell. maybe there will be a huge breakthrough in antimatter production/confinement.

 

Here is overall system description. This system harnesses water forces in a unique and reliable manner.
Representative of power unit that transforms natural force into usable elctrical power- Absolutely environmentally safe.

Geistkiesel

 

i say that we use satellite or space probe based solar panels and either beam it back, or send out probes to collect it once the batteries are charged

 

Yes a centralized power system would definitely pose more problems than a personal power system depending on how compact your personal system is. Independent power is in every way far better than a cerntralized system.

Moving to another country will not change the fact that centralized power is less practical.

In city design, there is no moving to other countries. You simply design an independent city in a specific region.
If it is possible to avoid a central energy system, it would save the city and the citizens tons of money to simply provide personal power systems in every home.
Therefore, no structures need be created other than for plumbing, sewage, and communications(which also cary some degree of power).

As far as I know, antimatter supposedly provides energy at 100% efficiency. The most advanced power systems do not go past 5%. Solar systems much less. Don't quote me on that though because my knowledge on this is very limited.

 

cool skill: just thought you might be interested in a concept known as the Earthship. It goes even further than merely the notion of supplying one's own power (using solar or wind for example). The typical earthship will also have facilities for managing waste (including that of humans) on the actual site - hence no need for elaborate sewage infastructures spanning entire cities. As regards water supply, many of them collect rainwater directly from the sky as well - perhaps not viable for parts of the US I am aware, but entirely viable in many climates.
Personally, I prefer Joe Jenkin's humanure system to the methods proposed on the earthship website, but I think many of the ideas in the earthship model are a huge improvement on the typical modern house.
I suspect a number of people savvy to the Green/Environment debate are tempted to jump down my throat at this point (I can imagine Edufer having a field day!). But regardless of the merit of the reasons that Greens might put forward for the earthship model, the 'de-centralised' aspect of it still appeals to me enormously. No need even for "plumbing" or "sewage" structures for example (large-scale ones that is). And if you use satellite/wireless communications technology, I suspect you can even by-pass the need to rape cities with communications cables.

My apologies for the divergence. I thought yourself and others might be interested, and it is somewhat related!

 

I do drive, and I did love it for a few years. But then I started looking at the exact things that cool's link mentioned, and it just isn't worth it. Especially with oil prices rising ina seemingly never ending way, the car is on it's way out.

 

Remember, it takes a buttload of power just to keep the antimatter cantained. You either deal with large, dense lumps of it or you use it in short order. Otherwise you spend more than you make. Not to mention you can't touch it during its manufacture or gathring...

 

I wonder if this will ever see fruition ?

 

Actually, I believe solar can be up to the task.

However, what it needs is some technological advancements to make it as cheap as paint (per sq m) and equally appliable. We have millions of square kilometres of oceans, if large platforms were built out there, unbelievable amounts of energy from the solar panels would be generated. Also, their efficiency has to be bounced up for increased production. Plus, platforms in space can be even more effective due to no atmospheric degradation of the sun's rays.

I'm a firm believer in solar energy.

 

So how do you store the energy ,and what other method to generate electricity do you use for the 12 hours a day that there is little or no sun?

 

I thought is: why use the byproduct (light) of the suns fusion when you can just skip the middleman, and use the fusion? the time and money required to use solar/wind/hydro to produce enough energy would better spent on fusion research.

as for the whole de-centralized thing: I don’t really get it, what is so great about being de-centralized? whatever costs me the least money will be the winner. I don’t think there is any way a personal system will ever be cheaper than a centralized system. maybe if carbon nanotubes are developed and thus you can make windmill that is very durable and you live in a windy area, but that’s about it.

what I meant was: if you don’t like our government taxing you for a centralized power system you can move to another country. and my saying "cheap fusion power" implied that he would have to pay a lot more to run an alternative power source.

 

I have installed a wind power test system for USCG so i am not either oposed to wind power nor thinking strength of materials is a major problem. Give the location where conventional line power is not availble (as one of the off-shore small islands that is basicall just a rock with a lighthouse on it wind power is very economical and with diesel cycling to rechage storage battery, or continously running should the batter systme fail, very reliable as a light house must be. I seriously doubt nay carbon naantube will make a signficant difference.

What would /will make a revolution in electric power systems, and drive the industry towards smaller widely distributed generation, with reduction in transmission losses and cost, is a practical relaible fuel cell that can run on natural gas, especially if the unavoidable (despite not being limited by thermal / Carnot cycle limits) generation of local heat is used. I fully expect that during the next generation (say 25 years at most) home in the northern part of US where gas is already available will get most of their electric power and nearly all of their heating and cooling for natural gas and the efficiciencyof fuel utilizationw will be twice that of central power.

The conversion of DC to AC is no real problem. Some long distance transmission systems already convert the low voltage AC generated to high voltage DC for transmission and the convert back to AC for local distribution. Sweeden has lead the way in this as they have great excess hydropower potential in the north of their long country and most of the electricity requiremants in the south. AEP was investigating a DC transmission system also 10 years ago, but I do not know if they have such a line in operaation. The basic reason why DC is better for trnasmission is thatthe line is continudsously opperating near the corona limit voltage, but an AC is at this high voltage only a very small part of the cycle and thus delivers much less power, for a given cost in conductors etc.

 

not everyone lives in a windy area, or a sunny area. that is the problem. windmills are great if you live somewhere that has wind and no neighbors. An area near where I live was trying to put up windmills but the community blocked it. I guess they had a problem with the "eye sore" aspect of it and the fact that they make a low pitched "wooof wooof" sound.

eventually nuclear is the way to go, either fission or fusion. the way I see it we will always have a grid, because it will be cheaper in the end to run nuclear than any other means, and you can't have a nuclear reactor in your back yard. not to say that depending on your property type you couldn't run a wind/solar power system. but I don’t see how you are going to be able to do that anywhere near a city.

I just don’t see overall how anything could compete with fusion. of course there will be places that other things would be cheaper, but for the average person they are not practical. if you walk over by that lighthouse you are powering and scoop up one gallon of water, there will be enough energy (in the form of deuterium) in that water as there is in 300 gallons of gasoline.

 

The power can be exported from those sunny/windy areas to those which lack these natural elements . France exports electricity to Holland and Germany .

And if that nation is desely populated like say the Netherlands nuclear production and waste disposal becomes dangerously close to populated areas . Exporting the waste by transport to other countries poses other safety/enviromental problems as well .

 

France produces ~80% of its power via nuclear fission.

I am talking fusion mostly. the amount of time/money one would have to put into wind or solar would be better invested it fusion research. they can already produce ~15Mw (figure from 10 years ago) of power from fusion reactors, but they have not reached "ignition" so they can't keep that going. and best of all 0 environmental impact (fusion makes no waste, and the machines themselves become radioactive for only a short time)

 

Windmills have a habit of grinding birds into paste. They are sometimes called condor cuisinearts. If you are willing to lose wildlife, you may as well go fully hydroelectric.

 

I'll attempt to draw an analogy between a city and a tree (quite possibly a flawed one at that - but which I think will adequately serve the purpose).
Consider the trunk and the branches of the tree to be the city's infrastructure; the leaves to be the people and houses; and the soil to be the source of the resources that we need (e.g. water or energy). Just as the tree's trunk and branches convey the nutrients and water absorbed by the roots to the tree's foliage, the city's infrastructure does the same for houses with energy and water.
This should make it clear that, depending on the location of the incident, damage to any area of a centralized system almost always affects an area considerably larger than the area where the incident actually occured. If, for example, the passage of nutrients along a tree's branch is obstructed some way or another, all the leaves beyond that point on the branch will be affected. This is analogous to an estate in the city suburbs losing it's electricity supply. If, however, the trunk itself is damaged, well then, all of the tree's foliage is affected. This would be the equivalent of a city-wide blackout, which make a strong testimony against centralized systems.

Yes, I feared this is what you meant, but was giving you the benefit of the doubt. All I'll say is that your manifest stupidity lends a sense of irony to the proposed exile.