Choice: food or solar fields

[Hay Dude]

there is a corporation in the UK that has nuclear Fusion plants on the drawing boards that have a real-world route to cheap as hell nuclear fusion (not fission) power.
Skipping the lasers, the super-magnets, the particle accelerators they figured a way to accelerate a bit of tritium or deuterium to about 200 times the speed of sound to hit another particle the energy fuses the two. one impact of a tiny little bit ( a few grams) of material will power an average home for two years. Their plants will do one such discharge every thirty seconds.
And they can do it cheap cheap c
heap

This U.K Startup Has Made A Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion - By Using Projectile Fusion

Scientists have come up with a new technique to achieve nuclear fusion. FirstLight Fusion, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, has used a t

wonderfulengineering.com

Nuclear fusion breakthrough achieved with new projectile technique

In a world first, First Light Fusion, a UK based start-up, has achieved fusion with a projectile approach

www.newscientist.com

Let’s GO!
I like that better than 1/2 the USA covered in Chinese solar panels and ugly windmills.

 

[DutchInNZ]

The coming change in energy sources is inevitable!

Solar viability and storage?
Take a look at Drakes Landing. Solar based community with ground storage system For heat. It’s been in operation for a few years. It works.

Drake Landing Solar Community

That falls in the anecdotal category of: "Everyone can become a billionaire; just look at Jeff Bezos". No doubt that that such big installation can work for heating a small rural community; also single houses are self-sufficient if you hang enough collectors on it. What I did not see on their page is the investment and operating costs, the lifetime and the number of houses that is connected to this grid, which furthermore is stated to be in an area with many sunshine hours. That its functioning is marginally, however, can be deduced from the fact that it took years to become viable and that still fossil fuel is needed.

Now let's translate that to the scale of cities, where the very big majority of the people live, and of all industrial requirements. It then becomes clear why Consumers Energy is looking for such an enormous area to just replace their two coal-fired plants. For the rest they buy nuclear from Entergy and run gas-powered plants. Can you see the problem? B.t.w., in Europe, gas-powered plants are also seen as the devil's invention, like coal, and there they want to eliminate absolutely everything fossil by 2050.

Energy is not restricted to heating only; that is only a small part of the world's and nation's energy packet. In the whole it is electricity that is required for the big major part, and water of 80C (175F) does not make any of that.

Why not build solar farms over the ocean under wind farms?

In the North Sea, between the UK and the continent, very big windfarms have been, are and still will be constructed; already those existing wreak havoc on that environment. Adding solar farms will kill off everything that still is living there.

This shows the effect of windfarms on the local environment; each windmill is abt. 250 yards high, so you look at tens of miles of hinterland. Picture of Vattenfall field in the North Sea:



Let me add a thought to this: only the first windmills work at full capacity of the at that time present wind; the following ones lose a lot because of the whirling slipstream of the foregoing ones, and the more to the back the lower the efficiency factor. Propeller plane designers know that too.

 

[Raul-02]

ugly windmills.

Yah those stinking wood shoed dutch, and their shabby windmills are so boring.
Oh wait ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

[Mtsoxfan]

“Solar [works] on cloudy days”…..
So it’s kind of like having an NG or Nuke plant and turning down it’s output to 10%.
And this happens frequently because it’s dark roughly 1/2 of every day and of the remaining days, it could be cloudy some of the time, or perhaps snow covered panels.
And we get to deface open meadows with thousands of acres of them AND they’re made in China?
Yippee
Sign me up.

When we lived i CT, we had a 52 panel array on our roof. Produced 15+MW a year. We had electric heat pumps for heating and cooling 2500SqFt home, pool. We were netmetering and the only bill each month was a $19 service charge. WE'd get a credit at the end of March every year. The payoff was 8 years or so, although its not an aples to apples calculation in our case. 12 years later, solar panels are much more efficient, producing more power than the ones we had. Solar does work, if you have the room.

 

[jyoutz]

Oh yeah?! lol You don’t think politics doesnt play a heavy hand in who/where/what gets used for power generation?
Keep dreamin‘

Power companies make their own lease agreements with private landowners and public lands. They decide where the best site locations are related to operations (considering local zoning and transmission line locations). In most places, but not the corrupt rust belt. The whole world is different in the northeast.

 

[Raul-02]

When we lived i CT, we had a 52 panel array on our roof. Produced 15+MW a year. We had electric heat pumps for heating and cooling 2500SqFt home, pool. We were netmetering and the only bill each month was a $19 service charge. WE'd get a credit at the end of March every year. The payoff was 8 years or so, although its not an aples to apples calculation in our case. 12 years later, solar panels are much more efficient, producing more power than the ones we had. Solar does work, if you have the room.

Some questions:
1) the only bill was the $19 service charge: Were you not using any electricity from the grid at all? So no electric Bill at all?
2) "The payoff was 8 years or so,[...] 12 years later," Huh? You purchased the panels and took 12 years to pay? Who'd ya buy from: private or the power company? What was that bill?

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Some questions:
1) the only bill was the $19 service charge: Were you not using any electricity from the grid at all? So no electric Bill at all?
2) "The payoff was 8 years or so,[...] 12 years later," Huh? You purchased the panels and took 12 years to pay? Who'd ya buy from: private or the power company? What was that bill?

No, we used no power from grid. Our excess production is held in a " bank" and when we need it at night, it is returned.
Paid off in 8, yes. The 12 year comment is in reference to the efficiency increase of the panels over that time.
15mw is a lot of energy to produce and use. We used most of it being an all electric household. Our credit at end of year was around $100 depending on price of electricity at the time.
We bought system from private company. Took 3 months of red tape, inspections etc. from time system was complete to actual start up.

 

[lman]

No, we used no power from grid. Our excess production is held in a " bank" and when we need it at night, it is returned.
Paid off in 8, yes. The 12 year comment is in reference to the efficiency increase of the panels over that time.
15mw is a lot of energy to produce and use. We used most of it being an all electric household. Our credit at end of year was around $100 depending on price of electricity at the time.
We bought system from private company. Took 3 months of red tape, inspections etc. from time system was complete to actual start up.

Odd that you would set up that system and after payoff you decide to move. Are you going to do the same thing at your current residence?

 

[forgeblast]

There were several of that type of programs over the years, funded by various methods. Some of the money you pay for firearms and fishing equipment goes to fund conservation programs.

Before we went with CREP, which was to help out the Chesapeake bay, we also had someone from Duck Unlimited come out to see about putting in a wooded pond to help migratory birds, but decided to go with the Crep route due to the added value of the trees we would be planting. CREP will tell you to farm the best and CREP the rest. It has really helped out with erosion and i do not have to mow in a mud pit lol. Its also providing a lot of habitat for wildlife.

 

[Egon]

When we lived i CT, we had a 52 panel array on our roof. Produced 15+MW a year. We had electric heat pumps for heating and cooling 2500SqFt home, pool. We were netmetering and the only bill each month was a $19 service charge. WE'd get a credit at the end of March every year. The payoff was 8 years or so, although its not an aples to apples calculation in our case. 12 years later, solar panels are much more efficient, producing more power than the ones we had. Solar does work, if you have the room.

Nice information.