From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 4:40 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On 5 March 2014 09:56, <spudboy...@aol.com> wrote:
according to a study today out in New Scientist, a researcher has estimated
that OTEC power,even with 3% efficiency, can produce 4000 times our current
consumption. It may even be affordable. We may have a good way out.
What's OTEC? Oops silly me, Il'l look it up.....OK. It's solar, via the
oceans. Nice.
I've looked at OTEC in the past, as you said it is essentially harvesting
stored solar energy stored in the warm surface layer above the thermocline.
There are however some formidable engineering issues dealing with salt
corrosion, oceanic storms and such. They tried to build one - a ship based
unit -- decades ago; I believe corrosion and other such problems were too
costly. One place they are using OTEC is Hawaii - maybe the only place that
I know of. There is an installation (or at least was operating a few years
back) where they were pumping up the deep cold water onto an on land
installation. They were able to use this quite cold water for
air-conditioning & concurrent production of some fresh water - the cooled
air loses a lot of its water vapor as dew. I am not sure that this unit was
producing electric energy as much as off-loading the air-conditioners load
that would have otherwise been sucking electricity down from the grid. do
perhaps indirectly in the form of negawatts (e.g. negative watts)
The biggest energy source we have available in fact is energy efficiency. In
the US buildings consume the lion's share of total energy consumed, far more
than the transportation sector for example. By just doing wide spread
insulation retrofits, putting in double and triple pane glass, and by using
energy efficient lighting - I have seen estimates that almost half the
energy currently used could instead be saved (reserves would then last
longer giving us more time to figure out an answer).
This is by far the most significant thing we can do; this is the low hanging
fruit. It is not sexy and is low tech for the most part, but it is by far
the most effective action our society can take at this juncture, given the
very poor energy efficiency base line of our nations built structures.
Chris
The trouble is, New Scientist solves the world's problems regularly, as well
as discovering the secret of life the universe and everything and a cure for
cancer every other week. I bet most of their gosh wow stories never get off
the drawing board. I hope this one does.
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