On Jun 21, 2009, at 6:12 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
Speaking of how politics and energy overlap...
Here is a "supercritical" way that the DoE could reduce natural gas
usage significantly:
http://www.r744.com/knowledge/faq/files/ecocute_all.pdf
The heat pump is run by electricity. Right now electric energy costs
about 3 times as much as gas, so a 30 percent energy improvement is
not much economically speaking. Once we are converted to primarily
nuclear and renewable energy, the price of both may in a decade or
two drop significantly, because the renewable energy capital cost
will likely disappear before the plant does, on average.
I think heat pumps are best implemented as a hybrid thermal well and
solar system. The temperature of thermal wells stays well above
ambient temperature. They are very effective here in alaska. When
combined with a solar hot water collector, thermal solar energy in
the day can be used to heat the thermal well to store energy and
increase overall system efficiency.
I think solar photovoltaic can integrate nicely with this as well.
Solar cells take about 15% of the solar radiation for electrical
energy production, but the left over energy is still available as
heat. Solar cell clad hot water (or other heat collecting fluid)
piping can thus be used to heat a thermal well while simultaneously
producing photovoltaic energy for pumping the water.
None of this is new thinking. The full integration of such a hybrid
system might be though.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
