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I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face: solar power is the future. It is the only form of power generation that directly genreates power rather than t
by jmyeet 2y ago
I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face: solar power is the future. It is the only form of power generation that directly genreates power rather than turning a turbine. As such it has no moving parts (apart from, maybe, an array that gets tilted to face the Sun for higher efficiency but that's optional) and has no emissions.
The cost of solar power has plummetted in the last 2 decades and nobody is quite sure where this will bottom out.
Now obviously sometimes it's night time and sometimes it's just cloudy. You have a number of options for this, in increasing level of engineering and technological difficulty:
1. Do nothing. Just take power when it is available. This works surprisingly well for a lot of our power usage. Power usage peaks in daylight hours so solar reduces your baseload requirements. Sometimes you can simply do things when the weather doesn't permit (eg data centers).
2. Store excess power in another form. This could be batteries but it could also be things like sequestering carbon from the air into a hydrocarbon form you can later burn for power. This is carbon neutral by definition. This method currently isn't economic. In some cases that doesn't matter (eg in cold climates where current batteries aren't particularly effective).
3. Power satellites that bean down power. A solar collector in space would produce ~7 times as much power as a terrestrial collector because there's no day/night or weather interruptions nor atmospheric loss. It is technically feasible to beam down power.
4. Build an orbital ring. Attach solar collectors to it. Run cables to the ground. Obviously this is more far future.
More [1].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBCbdThIJNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBCbdThIJNE
- euroderf 2y agoWon't your #2 be economic when photovoltaic power is basically free ? The day is coming.