Solar power generation world record set in Germany

that's what's up Gman

http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/California-wave-power-project-is-on...

We almost had wave power here in Humboldt.

"California wave power project is on the rocks
Wave power project on rocks
PG&E suspends effort off California"

Published Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Excerpt:
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has suspended its WaveConnect project off the Humboldt County coast. The project would have used buoys bobbing in the Pacific to generate electricity.

PG&E, based in San Francisco, planned the Humboldt project as a way to test different wave-power devices. But the cost of securing government permits, installing the devices and putting in place the infrastructure needed to bring their power to shore made the project untenable, company spokesman Brian Swanson said.

"The big factor was this was new and unproven technology," he said. "We're still committed to wave energy, and we'll still look for opportunities along the California coast, including Humboldt."

.......
Yeah, using water and gravity would never work, way too radical a notion. Instead, let's sink billions into proven dangerous and costly nuclear power plants. Hey, figuring out what to do with and juggling nuclear waste will be job security, plus we have all this left over Uranium and DU to feed the military industrial complex. Bonus!

Yes, these appropriate technologies can work synergistically. People get hung up on the battery part of solar and declare it unfeasable, when in reality the battery could be water pumped up hill to be released after dark or compressed air or hydrogen gas, or....gravity wheels.

I do think that putting all our eggs in one basket, even a pretty solar basket, isn't wise.

omg wow you must be genius or something. I wonder how all the hundreds of people in Washington can't come the exact same conclusion.....hmmmmm

in short, they are doing it smartly or moreTHEY WANT IT TO WORK!!!
which i think it's the big differences.
In US and many other countries, Govs are trying, for political reason but make sure nothing will make any revolution, just the right under funding, in order to win support from both side, look we are trying, see it's not working, so they kept the big fat campaign funding from Oil, coal and nuke lobbies.

spain, is in an average of 30 to 40, picks at 50% of their electricity consumption covered by Wind power plants

the lack of will we will never get rid of our suffocating and radiating electricity policy

Washington conclusion is cause by dark money that no one knows

It's all of 3 seconds.

Young at heart.
Fighting the grumpy old man syndrome.

so our kids will have asthma, drink heavy metal water, eat shit because so we had to had iCloud!

sorry, but spain, germany and soon scotland are proving you can have both, we are on era we need to change or die slowly

Do you work for a coal mining company, or a fracking company?

So the conservatives and the ultra conservatives are having second thoughts. I guess the big corps are putting pressure on them to change policy, especially if it is working.

"We haven't got the costs under control at all."

Exactly. It's this scam of a global economy and its corrupted, fixed markets that hold back human progress and nothing else. The technology and resources are abundant.

I was having fun reading the story until you mention lawsuits and sunburns

just imagine if they had a Mojave desert.....the Germans would probably be zero carbon now. But not those dumb americans, they still cannot decide if the president is a citizen, if health coverage is go or bad, and they are still trying to tell women what the can do with their bodies and wombs. Maybe when the US joins the 21 century....they will discover solar power

that is the most awesome idea of the day....we should go out there and see if they want to set up a power company in the desert.....let the German's "march" in and show us how to use that desert. The roofs are already there and they are already attached to the grid....all they have to do is make every roof they can to look like the picture. It is so simple.....

Its so simple I would love to play the video of this story in front of some Repub idiot, just to watch their head slowly EXPLODE.... "Its not going to work....its too expen...the tech is....BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!" It would be an great sight because you would expect brains and stuff....but instead a dark slimy smoke like demon would float out of they're skulls.

LOL,,,this is the only chuckle of my day, DA...

americans are undoubtedly the stupidest people on the planet, on average

oh shit....i di...prank caller prank caller. I forgot about that, we are both sooooo screwed!!!

Ask the average person on the street about renewable energy and whether they care, and see what you get. But ask them who got kicked off of American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, or who won the game last night, and see a very different response.

Our country is full of (to quote R Crumb) mass-media hypnotized philistines, and the gubmint likes it like that.

Well it is going to cost me twenty grand to get a set-up that will power my house as it is. if i make some changes then about ten grand to do it.

My family in Hawai'i switched from a windmill to solar power ten years ago and paid next to nothing thanks to government incentives put in place by Clinton/Gore.
The windmill cost too much in repairs and batteries, and was loud.
They are able to get all of their electricity for lights and appliances from solar, and when they occasionally require more power they use a propane generator.
Too bad the politicians aren't big on solar in Texas. But even if you have to pay $20 grand you will make it up in electric bills in a few years.
Go for it!
;)

Plan on it I have some stuff I have to pay off first.

But that takes work and nobody wants to work.

Too busy partying.....

yep!

only the top 1%

A broken and expired economic paradigm is more the problem than anything. Greed, I don't believe, could every be completely eliminated and will always exist as an inherent flaw in the human psyche, but there are ways to minimize the impact of greed. One such way would be to have a shift in how one views the concept of property. I think it's pretty damn obvious to the dumbest of the dumb that if the Earth's ecosystems were to collapse, the results would be catastrophic for civilization. All it truly takes is to change the one idea of how natural resources are valued and distributed among all of the world's people. This doesn't need to be an authoritarian type of agreement though. It cannot be forced. People's values across the general population need to prioritize better, in my opinion. We really ought to eventually get to building a new system from the ground up somehow since most of the technology is readily available.

I can see starting afresh and from the ground up. That would really help if done right. I just don't see people going through the hardship of starting over. They won't even leave their location to go to work. They want it now and they want it brought to them.

New viable methods may arise such as hacktivism, online activism, and mass information distribution combined with the age old tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience. Utilize each to the max when possible no matter who you are. This would be the best way to approach this issue of daily lives which our families depend on to survive. For me, innovation would be a good thing. It will take work but there are more ways than ever to contribute and really make this a widespread movement, which it truly already is. Get in on the fun. ;)

Yep!

I agree. ^'d!

when I was in Las Vegas many of their roadside signs were solar power

Embarrassing how badly informed some amercans are.....

HOAs tried to do that here in AZ and they were sued and defeated in the courts.

The good news is that there are very progressive people within private enterprises and the Indian Nation that are not waiting for Congress to get their shit together. We are working on creating a very large alternate energy project near Holbrook, AZ. It will combine a very large array of wind turbines and vast number of solar panels to generate a great deal of Megawatts of clean energy. All of the landowners have signed on, the project has been approved by the city, state, and Navajo Nation and is in the final phases of utility Power Purchase Agreement contracts, approvals and funding. If all goes well, funding and construction will start in early 2013!

we had solar panels on the White House and bush took them off

BANE enterprises can stop it

That are what battery storage units are for!

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/fuelcells/seca/tutorial/TutorialI...

Here ya go.

Well lets take a standard car battery that can store and deliver around 500 watts, we would require 44 million car batteries to store that electricity. There are over 80 million people living in germany. So it is quite feasible if every fourth person had four 500w solar batteries to store solar generated electricity.

Also, there are solar batteries that store less, and more, power than a standard car battery. There are batteries that will store 4300w, and I'm fairly certain that there are batteries that will store more. Solar panels are also slowly and steadily increasing in their efficiency. Most solar panels today are about 15% efficient, and some of the most efficient are around 22% and slowly climbing.

there is no need to store the 22 gigawatts, they use the power as it is generated. certainly not rocket science.

There are models that will map out exactly how much battery storage you will need, based on your normal electronic usage, to get you through the night. You do not need 22 gigawatts of storage because most of the power generated goes directly into the grid to be used immediately. If they are using solar power generated electricity to power the grid during the night, they have calculated the appropriate storage requirements to meet the percentage of solar power they are trying to meet and throughout the day fill those battery cells accordingly.

Well if the moon is full then enough. How ever in the daylight hours it created enough to scare the Hell out of Big Oil

Does your house draw 22GW's of power last night or any night as far as that goes?

Yes! we are one house at a time will change everything.

I disagree, I think that solar energy can play a significant role in energy production. We have the technology and the need for it. We just need the desire to implement it on a large enough scale that the technology develops faster. Virtually all technology advances at a much faster pace when it is being used on a large scale. Computers, automobiles, electrical power, the development and refinement of these was slow until after they were widely used, then production was forced to keep up with demand for more advanced and/or more reliable products.

Thanks for sharing this TEDtalk!
First let me say that IceKat is coming from the past and wants to keep us there.
What is not being considered is the huge leaps in solar technology over the past few years. They can now collect power from the moon and stars and even streetlamps.
We are now at the point where we could supply ALL of our electricity with a combination of solar, wave and wind within a few years, not decades!
What we need is an energy grid such as proposed by Buckminster Fuller in his 1980 classic, Critical Path -- connecting all countries around the world to one power grid in order to supply renewable energy 24/7/365.4.
Now if we could only move beyond political gridlock.....

A New Solar Energy-Harvesting Panel - And it Works During the Night

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 5:55:00 PM - by CoolerPlanet Staff

Steven Novack, a technology pioneer employed by the U.S. Department of Energy, announced earlier this week the development of a new solar panel which will nearly double efficiency by collecting solar power from the previously untapped infrared (IR) spectrum, as reported by the New Scientist. Although the project, currently underway in Idaho Falls, ID, has to work through a few snags, solutions may be in place as soon as mid-2011.

The element which makes these solar panels so unique is that nearly one half of all available energy in the solar spectrum is in the IR band. Current solar panels, which rely solely on visible solar radiation, are only 25 percent effective. By including infrared solar radiation, you significantly increase available radiation and increase efficiency to 46%. Because infrared energy makes up such a large percentage of solar energy and may even be absorbed at night, a solar panel collecting both visible and infrared radiation would be extremely advantageous in places like Alaska where there is little sunlight during the winter. Infrared radiation is also absorbed at various angles which eliminates or reduces the concern of solar panels not being placed in the exact location required for direct sunlight.

Though these new solar panels may completely revolutionize green energy, there are a few challenges which must be hurdled first. The first issue which must be resolved is the length of antenna required for an infrared panel. Unlike visible radiation which uses very short antennas, the length of antenna required to collect infrared radiation is similar to the wavelength being captured making it much longer than that used by today's solar panels. Research is ongoing to produce an array of billions of short antennas which would collaboratively collect the infrared wave. To date, this has worked for collecting infrared radiation in the far end of the spectrum but further work is required to modify the antennae bundles to collect a greater percentage of infrared radiation.

The second hurdle which exists has to do with the current which is produced by the infrared radiation. It is a very high alternating current which must be converted to direct current in order to be useful. Unfortunately, the silicon diodes crucial to conversion usually don't work at the high frequencies required. In an effort to circumvent this problem, a novel diode is being created to replace the silicon diodes. The novel diode should be capable of handling the high frequencies required to successfully convert the current. Both the antennae bundles and novel diode should be available as prototypes within the next few months.

A solar panel capable of collecting both visible and infrared radiation and effectively using it to provide power would completely revolutionize green energy. It will become more effective in all areas of the world and the absorption at various angles mean it would only be a matter of time before solar panels could be placed anywhere. This is a huge step forward for green energy.

"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours of Friday and Saturday"

This is not far off in the future. It happened last weekend!
The technology is here. Let's DO IT!!!

Many, many places on Earth enjoy over 300 sunny days a year, even when it's zero degrees outside.
We need to build a global energy grid to keep the renewable energy flowing 24/7/365. But it's not all about just solar. Wave power is coming online and is a lot more constant. SEFElectric Inc. has discovered a way to capture limitless atmospheric electricity with blimps and weather balloons. I'm not a fan of wind and geothermal yet they provide enormous amounts of power.
The technology is here now and the only thing stopping green energy are the dirty coal and big oil whores.

My apologies, I meant to say that I think solar energy can currently play a significant role in energy production.