----- Original Message ----- From: mix...@bigpond.com Date: Monday, April 27, 2009 0:57 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Not what Algore wanted to hear
> In reply to Harry Veeder's message of Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:45:08 - > 0400:Hi, > [snip] > >If you want a reliable and continous supply of power, solar and > wind > >will not give you that unless you can figure out how to store the > >generated power cost effectively. > [snip] > As already discussed frequently on this list, solar can be captured > and stored > using algae. This is essentially what we are already using when we > burn coal. > We would just be shortening the cycle time from millions of years > to months. > While wind and solar don't actually supply continuous electric > power, they are > also not as bad as you might think. To start with wind may be > variable, but if > connected to a continent wide grid, then the wind is always blowing > somewhere,which helps to reduce the size of the "bumps and > hollows". Solar would supply > direct power only during the day, but then that is also when most > power is > needed. At night, energy stored in the form of biomass could > supplement that > supplied by wind, to ensure a continuous supply. > Furthermore, as I have also pointed out in the past, it should > prove both > feasible and cheap to store energy as heat underground in molten > salt. At the > temperature at which common table salt melts, the Carnot efficiency > could be as > high as 62%. This could provide a means of storing solar energy > through the > night at a cost up to 1000 times less than that of lead-acid > batteries.If the solar energy is collected in a desert where there > is very little cloud > cover from day to day, then storage for much more than a day would be > unnecessary, particularly if multiple solar plants contributed, > that were > geographically widely distributed. > > Then there are also other clean power sources that can contribute > during the > night - hydro, tidal, geothermal. > In short, by utilizing an effective mix of different clean sources, > a reliable > power supply can be achieved, without fossil fuels, if we really > wanted to. > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > Isn't the point of adopting solar and wind power to avoid burning combustibles? Growing a biomass like algae as a source of fuel seems to defeat this. On the other hand if we eat the algae... harry
