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Thread: Night generating Solar Panels.

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    Default Night generating Solar Panels.

    In our local newspaper is the usual 'Greenie' raging and ranting about the possiblity of the expansion of the coal burning Mount Piper Generating station.
    This GREEN MP or Senator, Kealy says in the article we should be doing what Spain and other EU counties are doing by using '24 hour Solar Panels'.

    Have I missed some technological breakthrough that a Solar Panel can now generate electricity after dark in usable volumes to make batteries and generators redundant???

    No more 'lectric bills, no poles, no wires, Tesla/Edison, eat your hearts out.
    I can just here Edison saying from the Grave, 'Where's the Profit in that'??

    But methinks this 'Greenie' has been sniffin' the smoke and it aint from a Power station chimney.



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    Quote Originally Posted by gordon_s1942 View Post
    In our local newspaper is the usual 'Greenie' raging and ranting about the possiblity of the expansion of the coal burning Mount Piper Generating station.
    This GREEN MP or Senator, Kealy says in the article we should be doing what Spain and other EU counties are doing by using '24 hour Solar Panels'.

    Have I missed some technological breakthrough that a Solar Panel can now generate electricity after dark in usable volumes to make batteries and generators redundant???

    No more 'lectric bills, no poles, no wires, Tesla/Edison, eat your hearts out.
    I can just here Edison saying from the Grave, 'Where's the Profit in that'??

    But methinks this 'Greenie' has been sniffin' the smoke and it aint from a Power station chimney.

    Oh crap I only bought the old daylight version panels now they are going to worthless !!
    Sounds like this rocket scientist has been hugging too many trees and is suffering the effects of high sap levels in his blood.

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    There was talk of Infra red panels that provide energy at night time.
    No idea if they actually work in the real world.

    The other one is store solar heat from the day and using it at night in some form to provide energy again don't know if exists in the real world.

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    pft stuff solar panels i want one of these



    and if it gets up and going at the price they are quoting of 3grand thats bloody cheaper
    than a solar setup that could supply enough to run an average home that uses around the 12-18Kw per day

    shit a solar setup to do my place and what i use will set me back around the 40 grand mark
    dont say linux if i wanted it id install it

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    RE above

    As I said in another thread theirs a company in Melbourne doing trials now .

    Now the Aholes will rip into us for what we pay for natural gas . Because of all these LNG projects going a head .Our Gas is becoming very popular.

    The biggest reserves are in Canberra its generated by all the bull shit there.
    Last edited by pieces; 01-03-10 at 01:37 PM. Reason: .

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    The company is based out of Sydney. Or at least the one I'm thinking of.

    Generally what they talk about when they mention 24 hour solar is based on Solar Thermal power, and in particular, this kind of power station relies on "Thermal Inertia".
    It works like this...
    You have a hotplate over a fire. You heat it up and pour water on it.
    The water boils and turns to steam. Now when you take the hot plate off the fire, how much water can you convert to steam without the fire heating it ?
    This is the thermal inertia of the hot plate.

    Instead of the fire, we use the sun to heat something. It could be metal, it could be a solid, it could be a liquid. But when we heat it, we want it to be able to retain that heat.
    Doesn't sound so hard does it ? But you NEVER get nuffin' for nuffin' in Physics !

    Firstly, whatever the thermal mass is, it needs to be heated and it needs to be heated hot enough that it can still boil water for more than 2/3rds of the time it takes to heat it !
    So what this means that if you want to generate electricity for 24 hours a day, lets say 1kW base load, you will need at least a 4kW solar array to not only heat the thermal mass, but also boil water during the day.
    On top of this, we need to take into account thermal losses in both the reflector array and the thermal mass itself. This means that if we extract no power from the thermal mass, how hot will it be next morning ?

    Here's the butt clincher. A mass that is easy to heat up quickly, also cools down quickly !
    It gets worse .... a mass that heats up slowly, can't heat up quick enough. Which means an even bigger array to heat it quickly.
    Even worse still, the thermal mass has a thermal transient time. So no matter how hot you heat it externally, it just can't warm up quick enough. And even worse again, you can't extract heat from it quickly either.
    The thermal mass may be able to hold 24kWhr of thermal energy, but it may not allow you to extract heat any quicker than 500Whr/hr.

    It's like putting money into the bank. But the ATM doesn't let you deposit or withdraw anymore than $1000 per day. That's an example of a transient time.

    There is a demonstration model. Actually two of them.
    The first is at Cooma in NSW. The company that built this pilot plant is supposed to be building a solar thermal plant at Cloncurry in QLD. Despite $6 million dollars, the site is nothing but dirt. It will never get off the ground because quick simply, the technology is a pipe dream. The government is throwing away money on an experiment that everybody knows will fail, except the greenies who are still blissfully hopeful that it might work.

    The technology uses graphite as the thermal storage medium.
    While solar thermal itself may be fine for power generation during the day, solar thermal at night is not going to work.
    Solar is a day time base load technology, and not a very reliable one unless it is located in a predictably sunny location.

    When solar thermal "may" prove useful is for the 6pm peak period.
    Rather than generating power during the day, this energy is used to ramp up the thermal storage. Huge amounts of it which are then utilised quickly for the peak period.
    Thermal storage systems work well this way. The only issue is how quickly can the backup systems come online.

    For example. Coal isn't a very compatible technology with solar.
    Imagine that we could magically use solar for all of our day time power, but then we had to use something else at night. While this is reasonably predictable that night will occur at these times, if we use coal, the coal turbines need to be kept on hot standby. This of course uses a reasonable amount of energy, but less than full power.
    Nuclear can ramp up quicker and gas turbines or hydro even quicker again.

    Certain technologies are compatible with other technologies. There is no magically one technology cures all. It requires a broad spectrum of power generating technologies, and unfortunately some of the more whacky and useless green technologies are getting way too much money and air time and they sure as hell aren't producing any results.
    Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

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    Your right trash , the Cooma project should be converted to a "carbon sink" whatever that may be instead of the money sink it is atm.

    While on the subject of scams , this is no different from the perpetual motion machine , the SunBall and the SunCube , all scams created by the same conman.

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    Trash, as usual your disertation is right on the mark, clear and good informative good reading.
    I was wondering if these figures are based on an ambient temperature or in the real world from temperate to freezing, how that would effect the operation of that 'Thermal Transient time' and what happens to their brilliant scheme when in Mid Winter, we drop to under 10 hours of Daylight with 14 plus hours of Night?
    Unless they locate all this on the equator.
    As you also say, other assitive generators just cant come 'ON LINE' in the blink of an eye.
    Back in the early 70's the now demolished 'A' and 'B' unit at Wallerawang Power station would start to 'ramp up' about 4am during the week to supply the Sydney Morning Peak load.
    I would be very surprised indeed to find that this is not still done today as the cities begin to wake up during the working week.
    I used to work less than 2 miles from the Power station so I saw and heard it all when I was on night shift.
    I dont like Nuclear power as it exists today but if we could find a way to ensure the waste from their operation can be safely contained, Nuclear generation is the way to go.
    I do believe we can manage coal safely for many years yet to come and dispose of the ash residue properly.
    We had some expert claiming that if we built a canal of specific length, width and depth, water flowing could be harnessed for generation.
    He stated this is being done somewhere in Ireland.
    Hydro Generation !!! why didnt we think of doing this I ask you ??
    Could it be we havent got enough water to float a Piss tin in that canal of his ??
    What does he think the Snowy Mountains scheme is all about??

    Correction, this canal is Tidal I just remembered, which considering the size of Ireland and if they have the 10 foot Tides would work a treat but piss poor useless at the Birdsville Track Hotel 500 miles inland and the coast has metre tides.
    So even if this was a viable solution with these canals on the coast, you still have to run wire inland to distribute the power so where is the saving in the Free Energy now?
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 01-03-10 at 01:13 AM.

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    These Bloom Box are awesome, can't wait till they develop more in future.Sounds like a gadget in "Back To The Future" movie..Lol!

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    Quote Originally Posted by CONAXLE View Post
    These Bloom Box are awesome, can't wait till they develop more in future.Sounds like a gadget in "Back To The Future" movie..Lol!
    they do dont they , but what was amazing was the ebay setup saving them in excess of 100 thousand dollars in 9 months
    dont say linux if i wanted it id install it

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    You can easily make power at night from daytime solar power.
    A bit of lateral thinking is all it takes.

    Just use the excess power to pump hydro water back up the hill during the day.

    In Tassie when the Hydro power station load decreases they use the turbines to pump water back up the hill, (yes there are inefficiencies, but it works.)

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    Quote Originally Posted by ScooterRat View Post
    You can easily make power at night from daytime solar power.
    A bit of lateral thinking is all it takes.

    Just use the excess power to pump hydro water back up the hill during the day.

    In Tassie when the Hydro power station load decreases they use the turbines to pump water back up the hill, (yes there are inefficiencies, but it works.)
    Sure great idea if there is excess but with solar there is rarely enough to cover what's needed as it's running let alone doubling the size to pump water up a hill.
    It's still not 24 hr solar , it's day time solar and night time hydro , no lateral thinking necessary.

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    Firstly to pump water, you need water.
    If this was a viable option, we would have Snowy Mountain Hydro Electric schemes all over Australia.
    The Lake Lyle dam near Lithgow is a below level water storage for Mt Piper/Wallerwang Power Stations and it has a small turbine in the outlet.
    The intent is to return some of the water back from lake Lyle to another dam at Mt Piper which is an above level dam.
    This dam is at the head water of Pipers Creek which flows to the Cox's River, the Powerstation's, to Lake Wallace and to Lake Lyle but allowing some to the water to flow through to the Cox's River to eventualy reach Sydney's Warragamba Dam.
    Terrific setup except for one unfortunate teens weeny problem, there's no bloody WATER !!
    About 8 or more years ago, the inflatable rubber Dam wall at Lake Lyle ruptured and allowed possibly 60 to 70 % of the water to flow away.
    It happened about the same time it had been decided to upgrade all dams with better spillways etc so this work was done at Lake Lyle while it was near empty.
    A new spillway incorporating a new form of 'wall' was built to replace the pneumatic bag one and we waited.
    The dam today has not refilled.
    WHY ?? because we havent had sufficent rain to bring it up more than 40% which without followup rains can soon soak away or be evaporated, PLUS water must be released in the Cox's River System.

    It got so low at one period to see all powered boats prohibited from the Lake.
    I am wondering how soon there will be very loud wailing and screaming when BOTH Wallerawang and Mt Piper SHUT down because the water they need from Oberon dam finaly dries up ??
    Oberon dam I think is down to about 10% capacity and it supplies water to many areas for drinking water here as well as the Upper Blue Mountains from either Mt Victoria or Katoomba down.
    So, do we drink or have electricity?
    No such claim or warning has been made by any Authority but I feel its a possiblity that Oberon may have to cease supplying the Power stations with water by Mid Winter unless good descent rains occur soon.

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    Gordon,-

    Level Six Water Restrictions
    Last modified: March 30, 2010 - 10:14 PM

    As at publication on Thursday, 25th March 2010, the Oberon Dam level is currently 9.63% and falling. This means that Level 6 Water Restrictions are in place for the Oberon local government area

    Contact details
    Council
    council@oberon.nsw.gov.au


    Last edited by Keepleft; 31-03-10 at 08:55 PM.
    5th Wyking Panzer Division

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    That is not good news because my 'Town' water is part of that supply.

    From what I have seen of Oberon Dam it has a very limited catchment area and the rain has to fall literaly into the Dam boundry to be collected and that isnt happening.
    While the area isnt one to experience heavy rains as in the past the majority of rain came little but often and aided by a few days of snow kept the supply up but over the last 10 years this pattern has changed.
    From memory the annual rainfall should be around a Metre but its been barely half over the kast few years.
    I stand unequivicably behind everything I say , I just dont ever remember saying it !!

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