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This looks like it has real potential. Let's hope so!
Solar Energy, All Night Long - Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/30/nocera-solar-power-biz-energy-cz_jf_0731solar.html?feed=rss_business - broken link)
I'm not going to be a "nay sayer" but there are plenty of things floating around out there that sound great. Making it actually work, and work on a large scale, is a bit of challenge and where many ideas end up in the graveyard.
Me personally, I certainly hope this one pans out. Number of hours of sunlight per 24 hours has been the biggest drawback so far with solar. If the energy could be continuously produced 24 hours per day, that would be huge.
I've been following this guy for a while now, and he is the real deal. You can't get much better credentials than being an MIT professor. Like every new invention, it is still years off, but now that he has done it, lots of new money and more scientists will get involved.
Soon the Arabs will be trying to grow tomatoes in their worthless sand....
I'll bet some of the Arabs are growing vegetables in hydroponic gardens in their "worthless" sand.
If we had a really well developed world wide electrical grid we could transfer the electricity from the sunlit side to the night side on a continuous basis. Then solar electricity becomes a major contender. In the mean time we need to build more storage units (pumped hydro for example) to store the energy collected from solar collectors and wind turbines and release this energy as power when we need it.
We need an alternative SYSTEM, not just alternative energy collectors. The world’s energy problems will not be efficiently solved if it is left to a bunch of competing sources operated by a bunch of competing companies sponsored by a bunch of competing governments. It will be solved if we stop the bickering and devise a functional plan and then build and operate it. This is not likely to happen because we are run by a bunch of small minded opportunists more interested in their personal aggrandizement and profit than the need of the whole of humanity. This has always been so and I do not see it changing anytime soon. That is unfortunate. The technology to solve these problems is there but the will to do so is not.
basicaly sounds like a hydrogen fuel cell......Make a 2100MW sized unit that takes up 25 acers and can be operated by 75 guys and I'll buy into it.................
Todd the nay sayer
Sounds like an exciting discovery. We can only hope that there's the engineer talent and the venture capital to bring the science to the market place.
The point about having enough engineering expertise to make this happen is a good one. As new developments emerge from research, will we have the collective skillset to make these things a reality?
It also poses a sobering thought: We will continue to move into a world that requires very cutting edge education. The good paying jobs of old that do not require a lot of education will continue to diminish. What does this mean to our society?
I'll bet some of the Arabs are growing vegetables in hydroponic gardens in their "worthless" sand.
If we had a really well developed world wide electrical grid we could transfer the electricity from the sunlit side to the night side on a continuous basis. Then solar electricity becomes a major contender. In the mean time we need to build more storage units (pumped hydro for example) to store the energy collected from solar collectors and wind turbines and release this energy as power when we need it.
We need an alternative SYSTEM, not just alternative energy collectors. The world’s energy problems will not be efficiently solved if it is left to a bunch of competing sources operated by a bunch of competing companies sponsored by a bunch of competing governments. It will be solved if we stop the bickering and devise a functional plan and then build and operate it. This is not likely to happen because we are run by a bunch of small minded opportunists more interested in their personal aggrandizement and profit than the need of the whole of humanity. This has always been so and I do not see it changing anytime soon. That is unfortunate. The technology to solve these problems is there but the will to do so is not.
Currently, power transmission over distance is a MAJOR real world limitation of physics. There is a reason they build power generation plants near the sources of use.
Possible breakthroughs in new materials (nano-tubes) might help solve this in the future but for now it's not viable.
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