Unlimited energy on the cheap - just a dream?

[HughJass]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/ne ... d=10587618


place your bets

 

[cuebald]

lol
I read articles based on "secretive small town firms" bringing you either a new energy gadget, new computing revolution, or new mode of transportation practically every 6 months.

"After a botched demonstration in 2007 where Steorn blamed heat from the camera lights for the failure, Steorn has yet to deliver any free energy."

The article even admits that this guy is a quack :laugh: :laugh:

We might see cheap, clean energy in a few decades if/when they get Fusion working properly.

 

[Bryan]

How come the article in that paper and the title of this thread is "Unlimited energy on the cheap - just a dream?", but the thrust of the article has to do with the huge capacitor that the guy claims to be developing, not energy production?

 

[HughJass]

Well, now I’m upping my stake in Zenn based on several recent developments. One is EEstor’s release of testing data indicating performance characteristics that exceed their objectives. A second reason is Zenn’s decision to exercise its option to invest an additional $700,000 to increases its ownership interest in EEstor from about 3.8% to over 10%. Zenn based their decision on independent analyses of EEstor’s test data. Zenn’s choice adds enormously to its potential value if EEstor pays off. Zenn also has rights to certain transportation uses of the EEstor USU.

The third factor in my decision to increase what is still a highly speculative "investment" is the release to the internet of an audio interview with EEstor CEO, Steve Weir. EEstor has been extremely quiet about it’s progress for the past few years. In fact it is known to some as a "stealth company" - in other words a company that is trying to avoid publicity. Now some enormously optimistic projections and background information has been leaked to the public via this audio interview. I’ve posted below a report of the interview by allcarselectric.com.........

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/vi ... id/3375689

"After a botched demonstration in 2007 where Steorn blamed heat from the camera lights for the failure, Steorn has yet to deliver any free energy."

The article even admits that this guy is a quack :laugh: :laugh:

that quote is referring to a different company.

 

[oni]

aussieavodart................................are you trying to out do CCS??

 

[cuebald]

What he'll try and do is attract as much investor cash as possible via buzz/hype like his, with which he'll promptly disappear with.
Kinda like all those cold fusion/"holographic storage"/weird car efficiency increasing gizmo stories of yore.

 

[HughJass]

How come the article in that paper and the title of this thread is "Unlimited energy on the cheap - just a dream?", but the thrust of the article has to do with the huge capacitor that the guy claims to be developing, not energy production?

Either the journalist has a hard time distinguishing between the two or it was done to grab attention.

 

[somone uk]

the title sounds like a violation of thermodynamics and is completely undescriptive of the technology
whist i was at uni i have seen supercapacitors before that go up to 3kF but they were pricey and could only work up to a disappointing 3V though there are more practical 400F that can go up to about 200V since the energy is APPROXIMATELY equal to 0.5*CV^2, i think it's a bit of a pie in the sky, for many years electronic engineers have wanted there to be large capacitors, batteries are sh*t, they are inefficient and they deteriorate though the problem with capacitors is that as the energy is consumed so is the maximum power they can supply and the voltage across them, i wouldn't wanna be the one designing voltage stabilisers for that
personally i think we should just bite the bullet and use hydorgen cells, people will not want to change from the habit they have of filling up at a station and waiting 5 minutes, i mean how many times have you been caught leaving your phone to run out of battery?, waiting ages to charge your car if you forget to do it overnight is not something people want to put up with

 

[ali777]

whist i was at uni i have seen supercapacitors before that go up to 3kF but they were pricey and could only work up to a disappointing 3V though there are more practical 400F that can go up to about 200V since the energy is APPROXIMATELY equal to 0.5*CV^2, i think it's a bit of a pie in the sky, for many years electronic engineers have wanted there to be large capacitors, batteries are sh*t, they are inefficient and they deteriorate though the problem with capacitors is that as the energy is consumed so is the maximum power they can supply and the voltage across them, i wouldn't wanna be the one designing voltage stabilisers for that

It's good to see another engineer here

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no interest in energy production. We used to write MATLAB (I like this language) code to calculate the electric field in the capacitors, now I don't even remember the most basic equations. Ask me about signal processing and algorithms, I might have an opinion :whistle:

But I agree with what you said. The whole article doesn't make sense to me. I think that company is trying to generate a bit of an interest and how convenient is it that a phone conversation was leaked....

 

[The Gardener]

Hydrogen won't work as an alternative to gasoline. The net energy yield is next to nil.

Remember that it takes energy to make hydrogen.... so.... while hydrogen might be used as an alternate method of TRANSPORTING energy, it, in and of itself, is not a replacement SOURCE of energy capable of displacing the volume of hydrocarbons we burn.

 

[Bryan]

Hydrogen won't work as an alternative to gasoline. The net energy yield is next to nil.

What exactly do you mean by "net energy yield" here?

Remember that it takes energy to make hydrogen.... so.... while hydrogen might be used as an alternate method of TRANSPORTING energy, it, in and of itself, is not a replacement SOURCE of energy capable of displacing the volume of hydrocarbons we burn.

Rather than using the term "transporting energy", I'd prefer to use the term "storing energy". Making hydrogen (assuming that you have a source of energy abailable to do that) is one way to STORE that energy.

Interestingly, Bob Lazar has that hydrogen-powered Corvette, which he claims can drive a couple hundred miles or so, if I recall correctly. He claims to be making the hydrogen through the electrolysis of water, using solar panels as the source of the electricity.

 

[somone uk]

Hydrogen won't work as an alternative to gasoline. The net energy yield is next to nil.

Remember that it takes energy to make hydrogen.... so.... while hydrogen might be used as an alternate method of TRANSPORTING energy, it, in and of itself, is not a replacement SOURCE of energy capable of displacing the volume of hydrocarbons we burn.

i am no debating it as a source of energy, as a matter of fact the "net energy yield" of hydrogen is negative
my argument is that in the future we should use hydrogen as a means of storage
as far as getting the energy in the first place goes, photovoltaics is the easy answer, as a matter of fact we are near "grid parity" or in other words producing your own energy via solar cells is an economically sensible thing to do! (provided you know which cells to get)

 

[Bryan]

as far as getting the energy in the first place goes, photovoltaics is the easy answer, as a matter of fact we are near "grid parity" or in other words producing your own energy via solar cells is an economically sensible thing to do! (provided you know which cells to get)

What do you think is the "payback time" for solar cells (the time it takes for them to make enough electricity to pay for their purchase price)? Which are the correct cells to get?

 

[The Gardener]

I wonder how many hydrocarbons are necessary to produce solar cells?

 

[cuebald]

OT: I like the poppy in your avatar, Gardener. Do you grow them?

As far as I'm aware solar cells still are hit and miss - at least here in the UK there was a story saying some installations will never pay for themselves.

 

[CCS]

Hydrogen won't work as an alternative to gasoline. The net energy yield is next to nil.

Remember that it takes energy to make hydrogen.... so.... while hydrogen might be used as an alternate method of TRANSPORTING energy, it, in and of itself, is not a replacement SOURCE of energy capable of displacing the volume of hydrocarbons we burn.

There is nuclear energy, dams/geo thermal, wind, coal, oil, and the sun.
The sun comes in many forms:
algea ethanol
solar cells
trees grown and harvested

We can also get methane from waste, but often just enough to power the waste plant, not enough to power anything else.
Wind and water are actually powered by the sun as well. So are geothermal, oil, and coal, just from different time periods.

Algea ethanol is a way to take CO2 out of the air, store solar energy, and transport that to be burned for energy later. Solar cells don't use CO2, but instead use electricity and batteries. The batteries do not discharge as much as they stored, and the batteries wear out and can be toxic.

Springs and compressed gas and fly wheels are other ways to store energy.
I think compressed are breaks for each wheel would be good, if the compressed are could accelorate the wheel again too. Not sure how efficient but it is cleaner than charging a battery.

 

[ali777]

as far as getting the energy in the first place goes, photovoltaics is the easy answer, as a matter of fact we are near "grid parity" or in other words producing your own energy via solar cells is an economically sensible thing to do! (provided you know which cells to get)

What do you think is the "payback time" for solar cells (the time it takes for them to make enough electricity to pay for their purchase price)? Which are the correct cells to get?

As far as I know solar cells aren't financially feasible yet, but there are some government incentives to popularise green energy.

I don't know what parity means in this context. From what I have seen in the news, read in the newspapers, etc, the payback time for solar panels is more than 20 years. An advanced payment of 20 years worth of energy bills is a huge ask for anyone. It is also likely that the panels will require maintenance or replacement making it even more expensive.

From financial point of view, it just doesn't make sense. If I had such a huge amount of money available, I'd invest it somewhere and get better return.

My dad uses solar panels for hot water, I never asked him how much he paid but I don't think those water panels are very expensive.

 

[Bryan]

From what I have seen in the news, read in the newspapers, etc, the payback time for solar panels is more than 20 years.

A few years ago I was posting for a while on the discussion forum of a Web site devoted to solar energy. The people who were running the place had made the rather optimistic claim that the solar panels they were selling had a payback time of only around 7-8 years or so. I told them at the time that I didn't believe that figure, and one of the solar energy users replied to me, saying that the general idea was that as the cost of energy inevitably rises in the future (the cost of electricity, in particular), the payback time for solar cells would continue to grow shorter and shorter. But I think that was a rather naive assumption on his part! I pointed out to him that as energy costs inevitably continue to rise in the future, so will the cost of manufacturing solar cells, keeping the payback time about the same.

An advanced payment of 20 years worth of energy bills is a huge ask for anyone. It is also likely that the panels will require maintenance or replacement making it even more expensive.

Exactly. I consider the cost of the associated circuitry (like the inverter, whose job it is to convert the electricity from the solar cells into AC which can be pumped into the local power grid) to be probably at least as important for the payback time as the solar cells themselves. All it takes is a SINGLE failure of a power transistor in those inverters to increase the payback time by another several years!

 

[somone uk]

I wonder how many hydrocarbons are necessary to produce solar cells?

apart from organic solar cells...none

From what I have seen in the news, read in the newspapers, etc, the payback time for solar panels is more than 20 years.

A few years ago I was posting for a while on the discussion forum of a Web site devoted to solar energy. The people who were running the place had made the rather optimistic claim that the solar panels they were selling had a payback time of only around 7-8 years or so. I told them at the time that I didn't believe that figure, and one of the solar energy users replied to me, saying that the general idea was that as the cost of energy inevitably rises in the future (the cost of electricity, in particular), the payback time for solar cells would continue to grow shorter and shorter. But I think that was a rather naive assumption on his part! I pointed out to him that as energy costs inevitably continue to rise in the future, so will the cost of manufacturing solar cells, keeping the payback time about the same.

An advanced payment of 20 years worth of energy bills is a huge ask for anyone. It is also likely that the panels will require maintenance or replacement making it even more expensive.

Exactly. I consider the cost of the associated circuitry (like the inverter, whose job it is to convert the electricity from the solar cells into AC which can be pumped into the local power grid) to be probably at least as important for the payback time as the solar cells themselves. All it takes is a SINGLE failure of a power transistor in those inverters to increase the payback time by another several years!

the problem we have is 90% of solar cells are 1st generation which are about 15-20 years obsolete, as a matter of fact the only reason i can think of that they are still made is either ignorance or patent reasons (newer cells will have an unexpired patent)

20 years is the payback time of what are called "1st generation" which are made from relatively expensive silicon wafers and don't yeald much in terms of efficiency and i would also want to add the rule of thumb is replace them every 20 years meaning that you would never get any money back

7-8 years sounds like 2nd generation which are less efficient then 1st but considerably cheaper
i haven't heard any given figures for 3rd generation payback but nanosolar claimed that they can make cells at $1/watt in 2007 idk about US energy prices but over here that would pay back in about 1-3 years might be even sooner if we get a feed in tariff and use economy 7
saying that idk how nanosolar's cells power output will change in varying light, some cells work differently, like some will become MUCH more productive on a sunny day whereas with some it won't make much difference
i wouldn't say we are far from the point where buying solar cells is a good idea but we are not quite there in that getting a good cell is harder then getting some RU

 

[The Gardener]

[quote="The Gardener":1vkd07pa]I wonder how many hydrocarbons are necessary to produce solar cells?

apart from organic solar cells...none[/quote:1vkd07pa]
I disagree.

Are plastics required to construct solar cells? That requires hydrocarbons.

Is copper wiring required to construct solar cells? Extraction and refinement of metals requires EXTENSIVE hydrocarbon use... unless you have a copper mine where PURE copper can be extracted, free of any other elements or minerals that need to be removed from the extracted alloy, and you have a virtual army of coppersmiths who can all manually pound the copper into wire form. Metalsmithing requires extensive amounts of heat, and I mean heat WELL in excess of the temperature of the sun's rays, that is universally generated right now using the burning of hydrocarbons.

And what about the other components of solar cells... the cells themselves, the other electronic components, transistors, resistors, etc... are ANY of these components manufacturable without hydrocarbon elements, or the burning of hydrocarbons in order to generate heat during the manufacturing process?

People don't realize that hydrocarbons are not only about gasoline or oil, most ALL of the components we use every day require hydrocarbon ingredients or hydrocarbon inputs during manufacturing.

In short... no hydrocarbons, no solar cells.