Category: Solar Power

Here Comes the Sun (Again)

Kyle

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times that talks about how Silicon Valley has caught solar fever. If it sounded familiar to you, you’re not alone; they ran a similar article about a year ago. Not sure how I remembered it; it just rang some sort of vague bell and I ran a search. (I guess the Times stopped restricting Web access to stories more than two weeks old. Anyone know when that happened? It’s a good decision, I think, especially in light of the sharing culture that’s developed in the blogosphere. It probably happened years ago and I just didn’t notice.)

Anyway, this new article brings us up to speed and discusses the idea of Moore’s Law being instructive in the case of solar power prices. To be honest, though, I’m feeling goofy today and was more amused at the involvement in the story of a Sun Microsystems cofounder (the author showed more restraint than I could have in playing it straight) and how the Times‘s style guide forced them to refer to the chairman of SunPower as “Mr. Rogers.”

Speaking of energy costs, I’d be negligent if I didn’t also link to this story about nuclear waste storage costs. I thought the piece was generally pretty well done, which is always refreshing when nuclear’s involved. It seems to me that DOE gets blamed for what are at least partially Congress’s mistakes [full disclosure: DOE pays for my research], but, in fairness to the author, the NEI lawyer is really the one who gives that impression.

I was a bit confused by the part about DOE’s “initiative to gather the waste and run it through a factory to recover re-usable components.” Are they talking about reprocessing and the domestic parts of the GNEP plan? If so, this seems like an odd way to say it (and not just because only dinosaurs still hyphenate reusable in the middle of a line).

(By the way, nice Web site redesign, NEI.)

Molten Swing

Kyle

This article from Power Engineering caught my attention today. One common claim about renewable energy is that you can’t use it to make “base load”–the electrical power you need available all the time: day or night, rain or shine, wind…or no wind. My gut tells me that the claim is effectively true, though of course I’m biased and there vehement detractors (some of them Australian, apparently). My (developing) expertise in systems analysis–nuclear fuel cycle systems analysis, though, not the power grid–says that the question’s probably harder to answer definitively than either side is willing to admit.

Anyway, the game would totally change if energy produced from renewables such as solar and wind could be efficiently stored. One interesting idea for storing solar power is to use the collected energy to heat up molten salts, which are suitable thermal-hydraulic fluids because of their high heat capacity and good conductivity. This is one of those great “now why didn’t I think of that?” ideas, although the news note is a bit light on details. Let me know if you know anything about how the currently-employed technology (in the Nevada Solar One plant) works.

Speaking of molten salts as thermal-hydraulic fluids, I was (as usual) fairly impressed with the Wikipedia article on molten salt reactors. Check it out.

And on a totally unrelated note, here’s some news about our continuing, tragicomic insistence that spending billions of dollars on missile defense is a good idea. (And as long as we’re talking about missiles and whether they hit their targets, I can’t help but point you toward “Nuclear Missile Testing and the Social Construction of Accuracy” by Donald Mackenzie, which I read some time ago in Richard Staley‘s excellent history of 20th century science class.)

New Year’s News Wrap

Kyle

Mourning yesterday’s Badger loss in the Outback Bowl due to a “gutsy” but selfish and foolhardy performance by Tyler Donovan, subpar secondary play, and questionable play-calling (you guys had all three of your gifted running backs available and this is the best you could do?!), I decided to just do a quick news wrap-up today. (By the way, congrats and thanks to Michigan; you guys helped the Big Ten manage to not look like total chumps yesterday.)

USA Today: “Tech could reduce coal facilities’ emissions“

I didn’t know USA Today wrote stories this long. Anyway, this one’s worth a read just to keep tabs on this important technology (integrated gasification combined cycle). Any honest nuclear engineer will tell you that nuclear alone isn’t going to solve all our energy problems, so everyone should be rooting for the carbon-capture potential of IGCC.

Chicago Tribune: “Space power could be bright idea“

The hallways of UW-Madison’s Fusion Technology Institute (which takes up most of the floor I work on) are decorated almost exclusively with framed articles about the interesting but rhetorically nightmarish idea of mining the moon for helium-3 to fuel fusion reactors (“but you haven’t even gotten one to work yet!” the critics would rightly decry). This power-from-space idea seems slightly less far-fetched, though still a little frightening (“but what if you point your one megawatt microwave transmitter in the wrong direction?”).

New York Times: “Rock Is Back. Give Him a Cookie.“

Review of that show I mentioned earlier. Glad to see Jill Scott opened. By the way, not that I’m any authority, but I’ve never read a disappointing article by Kelefa Sanneh.

New York Times: “The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen“

This article contains a half-dozen book ideas for some food-loving engineer. It reminded me of the time I had a homework question that asked for fluid mechanics and heat transfer arguments for why fryers and convection ovens cook turkeys faster than traditional ovens. (Come to think of it, that might make a good holiday post next Thanksgiving; this past year, CSC didn’t exist yet, plus my friends Carl and Brenna and I were too busy eating Thanksgiving burritos at Las Iguanas in Toronto).

New York Times: “Web Playgrounds of the Very Young“

When judging the recent regional Ethics Bowl Madison hosted, I heard the argument that “marketing is not brainwashing.” While I’m inclined to agree most of the time, the way the suits talk about “instill[ing] brand loyalty in a generation of new customers” in stories like this makes me not so sure. Those new customers are, like, seven.