This thread is for initiatives to combat global warming, be it renewable energy, clean coal, carbon capture or space mirrors etc...

To kick it off, here's a few from last week:

Scotland funds "world's biggest wind farm"..

quote:

Now Scottish Power is planning a venture which it believes could create enough power for 2,000 homes.
[...]
Scotland has the potential to generate a quarter of Europe's marine energy
[...]
Wave and tidal power could supply a fifth of UK's electricity needs

Does this imply that the potential marine energy for the whole of Europe would only supply 4/5 of the just the UKs electricity needs?

Australia to phase out incandescent bulbs, potentially saving 4 million tonnes of CO2 per annum.

One of Britain's biggest wind farm planned.

Great thread topic!!! Thanks Kradlum!
---
SoCal Solar Power
Huge Solar Plants Bloom in Desert

Two Southern California utility companies are planning to develop a pair of sun-powered power plants that they claim will dwarf existing solar facilities and could rival fossil-fuel-driven power plants.
...
The first phase of the SoCal Edison project will be to build a 1-megawatt test site using 40 dishes, which should be complete by spring 2007. Construction on the full, 500-megawatt facility is expected to begin in mid-2008, and should take three to four years. Each dish can produce up to 25 kilowatts, and the site will eventually have 20,000 dishes stretching across 4,500 acres of desert.

Stirling plans to begin construction on SDG&E's 300-megawatt project in late 2008, and it should take about two years to install the 12,000 dishes covering about 2,000 acres.

From http://www.stirlingenergy.com :

________________________________________________
Proj on!

I forgot - EU agrees to 30% CO2 cut by 2020. Germany plans to cut emissions by 40%.

virgin chief will give 25 million dollars to the guy who scrubbs enough carbon

maybe this is the guy

I really like that he wants to make gasoline out of the recovered carbon and burn it again...

dunno. these mirror and phosphorous spreader types are a new problem...at least they've accepted the problem...

quote:

Originally posted by DIT:
Great thread topic!!! Thanks Kradlum!
---
SoCal Solar Power
Huge Solar Plants Bloom in Desert

Two Southern California utility companies are planning to develop a pair of sun-powered power plants that they claim will dwarf existing solar facilities and could rival fossil-fuel-driven power plants.
...
The first phase of the SoCal Edison project will be to build a 1-megawatt test site using 40 dishes, which should be complete by spring 2007. Construction on the full, 500-megawatt facility is expected to begin in mid-2008, and should take three to four years. Each dish can produce up to 25 kilowatts, and the site will eventually have 20,000 dishes stretching across 4,500 acres of desert.

Stirling plans to begin construction on SDG&E's 300-megawatt project in late 2008, and it should take about two years to install the 12,000 dishes covering about 2,000 acres.

quote:

Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur (predictions thread):

2006 - After the success of 'An Inconvenient Truth', the market for 'eco-media' takes off, and global consciousness snowballs.

2008 - 'Sun farms', self-maintaining photovoltaic fields several miles wide capable of powering entire cities, effectively end the (fossil fuel) energy industry.

Hey, a little off target, but maybe I'm not so bad at this futurismization stuff after all!

nanosolar Printable Solar Cells
This looks pretty cool - solar power you can roll out like roofing material. Could really open up the market for locally generated solar power.
Nanosolar's thin film technology involves "printing" a microscopic layer of solar cells onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil. The resulting panels are lighter, cheaper, and as efficient as traditional solar panels, but they require no silicon, short supplies of which have caused many solar companies to stumble. Others are pursuing thin film, too, but Nanosolar is poised to produce enough to generate 430 megawatts of electricity a year"”four times the amount produced by all solar plants in the U.S. combined.

Perhaps more importantly, Nanosolar is the first company to figure out how to produce these cells cheaply. How cheaply? Less than $1 per watt, or one-tenth of the cost of traditional cells. In other words, solar power will finally be able to compete with gas and fossil fuels. This year, the company will begin building the world's largest solar-cell factory, which will triple U.S. capacity and make us second only to Japan in output. Investments from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, are bolstering the company, and a new deal with Conergy, the nation's largest solar electric systems integrator, gives Nanosolar a huge jump on its competitors.
(ref.)

Aw yeah!

TVA produces an average of 822 kWh (One kilowatt-hour (kWh) equals the amount of electricity needed to burn a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours.) of electricity per day with 16 different pilot sites right now. That's 300 megawatt hours per year. With cheaper solar cell technology, that number will go up exponentially.

these guys seem to have beat a price point

quote:

Originally posted by Eric:
TVA produces an average of 822 kWh (One kilowatt-hour (kWh) equals the amount of electricity needed to burn a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours.) of electricity per day

The maths looks wrong. If it produces 822kWh per day then shouldn't it power 822 100 watt light bulbs for 10 hours?

quote:

Originally posted by Kradlum:

quote:

Originally posted by Eric:
TVA produces an average of 822 kWh (One kilowatt-hour (kWh) equals the amount of electricity needed to burn a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours.) of electricity per day

The maths looks wrong. If it produces 822kWh per day then shouldn't it power 822 100 watt light bulbs for 10 hours?

Yup per day or 300,030 - 100 Watt light bulbs for 10 hours over the course of 1 year.

Not a whole lot of power compared to the Kingston coal power plant that produces 10 million megawatt hours per year. The growth of solar power will have to be exponential to phase out fossil fuel energy production.

Oh yeah. Sorry, I misread it.

as someone who built a house out in the woods and didn't get power for 3 years, I can tell you. Running a house is all about the heat. The lights and appliances are easy. A little wind or solar and you're there.

But the heat is hard. Geothermal is the answer. I don't mean hotsprings, I mean 7 feet down in your yard the temp is enough to heat your house if you bury a big coil...

it's not just solar we need. Wave energy, wind, geothermal, micro-hydro, they all have to be used...

Back in the 70s I saw a documentary on tv about a large array of hundreds of mirrors (in France?) that focused sunlight into a point, supposedly it woud reach thosands of degrees. Wonder what happened to that one.

Found it-


SOLAR FURNACES AT ODEILLO

those guys were on the right track but you have to have a sterling engine at the centre to turn the difference in heat to power

There is a lot of controversy in Norway at the moment, as the red and green government has refused to pledge the same CO2 cuts as the EU.

Also, the gas-fired power plants being built may not have CO2 capture for years.

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/karsto/

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37742/story.htm

http://co2captureproject.com/index.htm

"you have to have a sterling engine at the centre to turn the difference in heat to power"
?
Thought you only had to boil water....

quote:

"Photovoltaic was the first-generation, utility-scale solar technology," he said. "The Stirling engine looks like it will be the second generation."

I think the france one was first-gen too.

If sterling engines spin because of a difference in heat where are they getting the cold?