East Coast outage?

Sun Aug 17 21:11:18 UTC 2003

On zondag, aug 17, 2003, at 20:57 Europe/Amsterdam, 
hackerwacker at tarpit.cybermesa.com wrote:

> The calculations I have seen of hydrogen produced vs watts in indicate
> solar could supply enough hydrogen to more than satisfy
> the requirements of a residential user.

Sure, a regular house has enough surface area to generate this 
electricity, but not appartment buildings or businesses. But why have 
the hydrogen in the middle? Batteries aren't as explosive. Also, it 
seems that the large amount of hydrogen that will leak out (remember, 
tinyiest molecules ever, but this is well established for other gasses 
as well) don't do the environment much good.

I don't think wholesale replacement of our current power systems is an 
attainable goal in our lifetime. (And it will happen automatically 
anyway as oil starts running out and gets so expensive that people who 
just want to burn it can't afford it anymore.) However, it is still a 
very good idea to add more solar energy to the mix, both on the large 
and the small ends of the scale.

Small: a few solar panels (with batteries) will give you at least 
_some_ power when the utility power is out. Being able to recharge your 
cell phone, run a light, a laptop and an ADSL or cable modem is much, 
much better than nothing.

Large: demand for power peaks when it's hot, but generating capacity is 
often much lower under these circumstances because river water gets 
much warmer so power plants that need this water for cooling can't run 
at full capacity. (We could be facing rolling blackouts because of this 
soon in Europe.) Guess what: solar panels don't need cooling and their 
output is highest when the weather is hot = lots of sunshine.

> So, put them on your roof. Lots of unused space. No need to have huge
> expanses for centralized generation. I've read of Solar Cells as 
> building
> materials, using the Cells as the shell of the house.

There has recently been a breakthrough that makes it possible to 
convert more of the sun's spectrum into electricity. This could 
potentially double the efficiency of solar cells in the future, then 
maybe they'll be more cost efficient.