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What will be the best renewable source of energy in 2050?
As of now, we have Wind, Water, Solar, Geothermal, and many more. But as our technology changes and diversifies, do you think we will use completely different sources?
elizabeth muncey 10+
Zhikai Zhu
Efrain Torres
By raising temperature hydrogen can be produced at 50% efficiency. The used heat can be recovered and reused.
The following reference can also be used with natural gas or solar heat source.
http://www.fchea.org/core/import/PDFs/factsheets/Hydrogen%20Production%20From%20Nuclear%20Energy_NEW.pdf
neil cheney
Krisztián Pintér 200+
neil cheney
Krisztián Pintér 200+
neil cheney
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Allan Macdougall 30+
Only when USAGE becomes efficient, will we then have a chance of powering our lifestyles with renewables by 2050.
Wherever there is a problem such as this, take a look at how nature solves it. As one example, biomimicry can solve problems such as natural air-conditioning by designing buildings that mimic termite mounds. This principle is already being used successfully in Zimbabwe:
http://inhabitat.com/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/
Ian Mcewan
Krisztián Pintér 200+
neil cheney
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Cameron Baker
Ahmad Ragab 500+
David Brossman
And yes, I think there are a number of ways to funnel air flow using the support structure or other architectural features depending on where the turbine is being used. I know from living in New York City years ago that there are places in the urban environment that are like wind tunnels! People far brighter than I can certainly determine the best locations for potential urban wind turbines, and if a location could be greatly improved with the addition of some form of wind funneling structures, that in itself could lead to some very exciting, creative as well as functional, design challenges.
Also, I will share with you the irony, that upon receiving your two terrific ideas on how this idea could be improved, I also received notice from the TED Conversations Admin that the conversation I had hoped to start by posting our website was removed as it is “too self-promotional for the TED.com community”. I am a TED community virgin, and regret any over reach on my part. In fact, I am struggling, having been inspired by over 120 TED speakers, on how to go about sharing this idea/invention so that it is put to the best use as quickly as possible by as many people that could benefit from it as possible, (open source, collaboration, etc.), and yet protect it so it doesn’t go down some get-rich-quick route for the already rich, or wallow in some bureaucratic research lab for years sucking up grant money and getting nowhere. I thought what better place to go for ideas, but TED! Now I know. But, any thoughts you have on that dilemma would be appreciated as well. I would certainly like to continue our conversation in the proper forum, perhaps by email, as we are a bit off topic for this thread.
Again, thank you so much.
David Brossman
Buzzy Tiencken
Keith Henson
It can scale to tens of TW, the energy payback time is less then 2 months.
The reason it has not been taken seriously is the high cost of lifting parts to GEO. Rocket performance is limited by the energy in chemical fuels, barely enough to get 2% of takeoff mass to GEO.
If you can sidestep the limitation of chemical fuels, then the payload fraction goes way up. Solid state lasers, grown up versions of the tiny ones in CD players, will do that. I.e., unrelated developments in electronics are about to cause a "Black Swan" effect on space transportation.
Burning hydrogen in air is even better than lasers—till you run out of air. The current concept is an air breathing rocket plane such as Reaction Engines' Skylon for the first 2 km/s velocity gain and hydrogen heated to 2700 deg K by a multi GW laser in GEO for the rest of the velocity to LEO. That gets about 25% of the starting mass on the runway to LEO as payload. From there up, lasers deliver around two thirds of the mass in LEO to GEO, about 18 tons out of 120 or 15%. Three times an hour.
That gets the cost down to under $100/kg, the cost of power plants to $1.6 B per GW, the cost of power to 2 cents per kWh or less and the cost of synthetic gasoline made with electric power to a dollar a gallon.
Further bootstrapping (10% of new power sat construction) allows lift capacity to grow by a factor of 3 every year (based on laser capacity). Goal is energy at such low cost that humanity can painlessly get off fossil fuels in two decades. Cost is about 1/3 of the $500 B for a Mars mission *and* you get a Mars mission virtually for free by sending the 100th power sat (all 25,000 tons of if) to Mars for local propulsion. (The high cost is due to having to haul up the first power sat with conventional rockets.)
The previous iteration of the concept is here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898
Yuguo Zhang 100+
Adam Degner
David Brossman
David Brossman
peter lindsay 30+
Terry Hendicott
Solar Chimney Spain 1980's did not work. 200 m diameter 200 m tall.
Simple revisit on basic arrangment with a little attention to proper science choices in that arrangement rather than leaving things to chance by lack of attention in arrangement. Factors of 100's are available to imrove things when you look at why it did not work.
Difficulty is attracting funding for simple revisit on small scale as proof of concept before rushing into bigger plants or destroying credibility of the option based on one failed but very expensive test.
1980's 50 million odd Euros. Failed.
Simple 15.5 m dia x 14 m tall model with simple but rather effective on paper changes needs only 166,000 USD over 2 years to properly document, trial feasibility build at 15.5m dia by 14m, and determine how to scale it up to large.
Any venture capitalist takers?
Debra Smith 200+
Enrico Petrucco 20+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
http://www.gov.cn/english/2010-12/28/content_1773883.htm
Terry Hendicott
I will state my position again. The web shows the same fundamental mistakes as Spain. Spain produced 0.1% efficiency according to unbiased academic reports. Without changes it will not succeed. No fundamental changes shown.
Environmission 2000 public quotes on costs for 1000 m tower in Australia well under typical construction costs that is why from 2000 on its public cost estimates escalated but still not enough. You can track their predictions in published documents 2000 to 2009. That is why scheme now gets scaled back 200MW to 50MW. Still not a project.
China is same arrangement. You cannot scale up a 0.1% plant design to larger and expect improvement no matter how well meaning the intent of renewables. Rethink is required and it is possible. Simple fundamental errors exist in the arrangement.
I will again state to get funding is difficult for a basic revisit, but revisit is necessary.
Electrical transmission was dead in the water a long time ago despite its promise until an individual approached and stated he knew what was wrong and could make it work as it was so simple. Took a long time till someone took him seriously and he drew the coils of the first transrformer on a single piece of paper. Hola. The rest as they say is history.
Don't want to distract from overall conversation so will leave it at this.
David Brossman
The Quixote Project at http://jpssis.com/index.html
And help us in our quest of the perfect windmill.
peter lindsay 30+
Enrico Petrucco 20+
You could borrow the tubercle design concept from Whalepower to redesign the leading-edge finish of your sails. This has been proven to decrease the minimum windspeed needed to begin operation and to improve output power by 20% during field testing.
(basically it uses a serrated edge)
Additionally, you could affect the local air environment:
I would suggest trialling designs to fit to the support structure in order to funnel air into the effective sail region by decreasing air pressure at your rotational centre. This could yield very large improvements in output power.
Lennart Leuchtmann
-The oil in every windmill has to be changed often. (we are talking a lot of oil here)
-The current buisnessmodel is sending a sparepart to several underdevisions of a company, hereby increasing the price of the item. This leads to a lot of co2 emission because of the excessive transport.
- The machine emits a low-frequence constant noise which is feared to affect humans and animals in a negative way.
Dont understand me wrong: i am a fan of windmills. I'm just saying that we need to get better at building them.
Regarding the "best" renewable solution, I think we need a healthy mix of them all. I especially would like to see big development in sea-wave energy. Sadly it seems that it will be one of the only things we can use the oceans for anyways, as we are in the process of destroying most life in it.
David Brossman
The Quixote Project at http://jpssis.com/index.html
And help us in our quest of the perfect windmill.
Debra Smith 200+
David Brossman
Cameron Baker
Lennart Leuchtmann
I don't know what position you have in this organization, but maybe you can enlighten me about this:
- Who will realize the best of the ideas?
- Where will it be patented?
- Will the design be open source? / who is making money from it?
I hope I'm too paranoid and that there's no real necessity questioning your intentions :)
David Brossman
In fact, right now, I am the organization.
Read A Humble Introduction on the site if you are interested further.
I hope it would give you an honest idea of my intentions.
This is very new territory for me. I need to make a living, but the idea must go beyond
making anybody rich, including myself. I am in the 99%, just getting by. I have a patent pending, big deal. I can't pay my medical bills.
I want to see this wind turbine design do some good for people. I am struggling
over just how to share / sell / give away what I have managed to develop so far so, yes I can make some money, but that it doesn't fall into 1% profiteering hands.
I am working on open source materials, which is a lot of work.
Thanks in advance for any other thoughts you may have.
all good things,
DB
Debra Smith 200+
Debra Smith 200+
Henk Mulder 10+
We might even come up with new sub-nuclear sources of energy that don't involve the release of energy when the cores of atoms are split or united.
Siddharth Malani
http://www.bloomenergy.com/
Ernest Webber
You specifically asked about renewable resources, which precludes nuclear fission, fusion and fossil fuels. Sadly, by 2050 we will probably still be using these. Geothermal is pretty picky about siting, so not scalable up very far. I live in Washington State and I saw a study done not too many years ago on Vashon island in Puget Sound, looking at all the extant alternatives for supplying renewable energy there. By a pretty wide margin, solar was the only one that even had a chance of supplying significantly all the need (not. Vashon is a semi-rural place, above 45 degrees latitude. I'm not saying solar cells is 'the' answer because even within the solar field, there is a ton of diversity; hot water can be collected with just pipes and a pump. Electricity can be generated by solar cells, stirling generators, steam towers, salt ponds, etc. etc.
Frankly, from my perspective, the most urgent need right now is to stop constructing buildings using old technology that consumes energy like it is going out of style. We can pretty much make a zero-consumption house now
Barry Palmer 50+
You have put this whole discussion in a very realistic context.
Also, you have given me some more reading to do. Never heard of electricity from salt ponds before.
Barry Palmer 50+