Alternative Power sources - Profitable Solar Power

Author

Profitable Solar Power - A suggestion

dreams2text@gmail.com

2005-08-26, 9:21 am

I invite you to visit http://dreams2text.blogspot.com and check out the
article that suggests ways of reducing the costs of solar power
generation so that solar power production becomes a profitable. Would
love to hear your comments.

Vaughn

2005-08-26, 12:21 pm

<dreams2text@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125056735.807133.210320@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>I invite you to visit http://dreams2text.blogspot.com and check out the
> article that suggests ways of reducing the costs of solar power
> generation so that solar power production becomes a profitable. Would
> love to hear your comments.

Why don't you post a few paragraphs? I seldom follow a blind link.

Vaughn

>

Christian M. Mericle

2005-08-26, 12:21 pm

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:23:57 GMT, "Vaughn"
<vaughnsimonHATESSPAM@att.fake.net> wrote:

>
><dreams2text@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1125056735.807133.210320@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Why don't you post a few paragraphs? I seldom follow a blind link.

Below are the first several paragraphs. I didn't mind following the
link. It's the blind leading the bald...

-- Christian

Profitable Solar Power
State of the art Solar Power generation costs 2-5 times the cost of
producing electricity from conventional sources. In other words,
currently solar energy is profitable only through charity, passion or
subsidy. Suppose some day Solar Energy costs 80% of what it costs to
produce electricity from conventional sources… Then people will invest
all their savings in Solar Energy than in banks or the stock market
until the rest of the power industry catches up.

However, is that dream possible? I attempt to present some ideas here
that might lead to the solution. I invite your comments and
criticisms. In case you came across a similar system kindly let me
know. What I discuss here are some possibilities of constructing
profitable large solar power plants ranging from hundreds of kilowatts
to hundreds of Megawatts. These stations could be independent or sell
power to the Grid.

Recently there has been a lot of fuss about a 4,500 acres 500MW Solar
Plant These guys use large parabolic mirrors that track the sun and
focus its light onto 25kW stirling engines which generate power. They
claim to be able to produce solar power without subsidy. However there
is a catch. It can do so only in the case of California where the
power is nearly twice as costly as it is elsewhere. We have more
distance to go.

What is interesting is that they do this in-spite of the fact that
they use stirling engines. Stirling engines are suited for achieving
high efficiency at low temperature differentials. But they are bulky
and typically much more expensive. They use a gas like hydrogen,
nitrogen etc rather than steam to run the engine. The stirling engines
do not use the gases for their chemical energy but as heat exchange
fluids. Check out this article on howstuffworks.com to clearly
understand what Stirling engines are. Check out more information from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

Another great disadvantage of this type of power plant is that it
produces power during only 1/3rd of the day considering the fact that
the intensity of incident radiation during early morning and evening
are very low and nearly zero during night. In addition to that are
periods of cloud and rain. Such systems either need to store energy
elsewhere or pull the energy from the grid. Their argument about this
is that they can charge high prices from the electric utility supplier
as the load is maximum during the day time.

If your solar power station could produce power even during the night
you could charge your premium during the peak load and also receive
more cash for the power during the night. I call this phenomenon of
under utilized infrastructure as “sleeping capital”. You need to keep
your capital investment awake even during the night. Your stirling
engine and generator are all objects that were bought by paying hard
cash. Every extra hour they sit idle reduces the profitability of your
power station. If you use some trick to keep this stuff busy even
during the night, your profitability increases.

But is there a way out?

First let us consider Stirling engines. Stirling engines have high
efficiencies of the order of 40% but are bulkier and costlier. Steam
engines are less efficient at lower temperatures. Maximum theoretical
efficiency of a steam engine at 100 C is 20%. If we are able to
increase the temperature of operation of the engine to say 400 C we
get efficiencies of the order of 50%.

So here is the strategy. Solar concentrators such as parabolic
reflectors or fresnel lenses heat oil up to a temperature of 200C
which is used to boil water to produce steam at a high pressure. The
steam is super heated to temperatures of about 400C to 500C using
biogas, wood gas, natural gas etc. Now it might appear the biogas is
in-fact supplying about 75% of the heat here. But don’t be misled by
this. At the time of boiling, each gram of water picks up more than
2260 J/gram from the hot oil because the latent heat of vaporization
of water is about 2260 kJ/kg [This is quite a lot: five times the
energy needed for heating the water from 0 to 100 degrees Celsius.].
Heating one gram of water from 100C to 500C costs 400*4.18 = 1672J.
This is just 1672/ (1672+2260) = 42%. Considering the fact that the
water at high pressure boils at an even higher temperature we can
assume that the input from the biogas is less than 40% when the sun is
shining. Boiling point of water at 2 atmospheres is 120C.

During bright sunlight the hybrid power station would be using 60%
solar and 40% bio fuel. During the night the power would come from
bio-fuel alone. But the demand during the night would be small. So
less bio fuel would suffice during the night.

Mike Swift

2005-08-27, 8:22 pm

A plant in Daggett California has been built using this exact system. I
think it is shut down now there was a fire there a couple of years ago,
and I do not think it has been restarted. You can see the facility by
doing a search on Google for Daggett California and look for a very
bright area with what looks like cross hairs in it, and what looks like
a kidney shaped pool just below and to the right. It is a little way
north of highway 40.

Mike Swift

In article <ijbug1554h7qnjuf88j9pkbu9ae5j81sqv@4ax.com>,
Christian M. Mericle <newsgroupinky@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:23:57 GMT, "Vaughn"
> <vaughnsimonHATESSPAM@att.fake.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> Below are the first several paragraphs. I didn't mind following the
> link. It's the blind leading the bald...
>
> -- Christian
>
>
> Profitable Solar Power
> State of the art Solar Power generation costs 2-5 times the cost of
> producing electricity from conventional sources. In other words,
> currently solar energy is profitable only through charity, passion or
> subsidy. Suppose some day Solar Energy costs 80% of what it costs to
> produce electricity from conventional sources… Then people will invest
> all their savings in Solar Energy than in banks or the stock market
> until the rest of the power industry catches up.
>
> However, is that dream possible? I attempt to present some ideas here
> that might lead to the solution. I invite your comments and
> criticisms. In case you came across a similar system kindly let me
> know. What I discuss here are some possibilities of constructing
> profitable large solar power plants ranging from hundreds of kilowatts
> to hundreds of Megawatts. These stations could be independent or sell
> power to the Grid.
>
> Recently there has been a lot of fuss about a 4,500 acres 500MW Solar
> Plant These guys use large parabolic mirrors that track the sun and
> focus its light onto 25kW stirling engines which generate power. They
> claim to be able to produce solar power without subsidy. However there
> is a catch. It can do so only in the case of California where the
> power is nearly twice as costly as it is elsewhere. We have more
> distance to go.
>
> What is interesting is that they do this in-spite of the fact that
> they use stirling engines. Stirling engines are suited for achieving
> high efficiency at low temperature differentials. But they are bulky
> and typically much more expensive. They use a gas like hydrogen,
> nitrogen etc rather than steam to run the engine. The stirling engines
> do not use the gases for their chemical energy but as heat exchange
> fluids. Check out this article on howstuffworks.com to clearly
> understand what Stirling engines are. Check out more information from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
>
> Another great disadvantage of this type of power plant is that it
> produces power during only 1/3rd of the day considering the fact that
> the intensity of incident radiation during early morning and evening
> are very low and nearly zero during night. In addition to that are
> periods of cloud and rain. Such systems either need to store energy
> elsewhere or pull the energy from the grid. Their argument about this
> is that they can charge high prices from the electric utility supplier
> as the load is maximum during the day time.
>
> If your solar power station could produce power even during the night
> you could charge your premium during the peak load and also receive
> more cash for the power during the night. I call this phenomenon of
> under utilized infrastructure as “sleeping capital”. You need to keep
> your capital investment awake even during the night. Your stirling
> engine and generator are all objects that were bought by paying hard
> cash. Every extra hour they sit idle reduces the profitability of your
> power station. If you use some trick to keep this stuff busy even
> during the night, your profitability increases.
>
> But is there a way out?
>
> First let us consider Stirling engines. Stirling engines have high
> efficiencies of the order of 40% but are bulkier and costlier. Steam
> engines are less efficient at lower temperatures. Maximum theoretical
> efficiency of a steam engine at 100 C is 20%. If we are able to
> increase the temperature of operation of the engine to say 400 C we
> get efficiencies of the order of 50%.
>
> So here is the strategy. Solar concentrators such as parabolic
> reflectors or fresnel lenses heat oil up to a temperature of 200C
> which is used to boil water to produce steam at a high pressure. The
> steam is super heated to temperatures of about 400C to 500C using
> biogas, wood gas, natural gas etc. Now it might appear the biogas is
> in-fact supplying about 75% of the heat here. But don’t be misled by
> this. At the time of boiling, each gram of water picks up more than
> 2260 J/gram from the hot oil because the latent heat of vaporization
> of water is about 2260 kJ/kg [This is quite a lot: five times the
> energy needed for heating the water from 0 to 100 degrees Celsius.].
> Heating one gram of water from 100C to 500C costs 400*4.18 = 1672J.
> This is just 1672/ (1672+2260) = 42%. Considering the fact that the
> water at high pressure boils at an even higher temperature we can
> assume that the input from the biogas is less than 40% when the sun is
> shining. Boiling point of water at 2 atmospheres is 120C.
>
> During bright sunlight the hybrid power station would be using 60%
> solar and 40% bio fuel. During the night the power would come from
> bio-fuel alone. But the demand during the night would be small. So
> less bio fuel would suffice during the night.

rebel

2005-08-27, 8:22 pm

"Mike Swift" <tomswift@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:tomswift-55010F.14422826082005@news.corenews.com...[color=darkred]
>A plant in Daggett California has been built using this exact system. I
> think it is shut down now there was a fire there a couple of years ago,
> and I do not think it has been restarted. You can see the facility by
> doing a search on Google for Daggett California and look for a very
> bright area with what looks like cross hairs in it, and what looks like
> a kidney shaped pool just below and to the right. It is a little way
> north of highway 40.
>
> Mike Swift
>
>
> In article <ijbug1554h7qnjuf88j9pkbu9ae5j81sqv@4ax.com>,
> Christian M. Mericle <newsgroupinky@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
//////////////////
Could some one give actual conversion figures for splitting water, Hydrogen
cuft. per Wt..
Only it appears to me that using the power of the sun to make Hydrogen and
using it as the storage medium to give back power at night maybe the
solution.
I know it is not economical to split water and make hydrogen this way
normally, but the power source is there for the taking.

LinkBot