admin answers:

Hey Taylor, yes, I agree with the other respondents here, there are great breakthroughs to come in the renewable energy business. Let me outline some specifics: Solar panels today, or photovoltiacs to be exact, are only about 12 to 15 % efficient. Over 80% of the suns energy that hit them is only turned into heat, same as if it just hit the ground. They used to be 7%, but we have almost doubled that. The Germans are working on a project right now to harness the suns light and heat to convert to electricity, it is called Desertec. Their plan is to heat oil to over 600 degrees F, then store it in a huge building sized insulated tank. Then using water to oil heat exchangers, they can send water in which will boil in seconds and run a steam turbine. There are several advantages to this plan, not the least of which is the solar array is now 50 to 60 % efficient. A solar factory in the northwest corner of the Sahara Desert can power all of Europe, all day, and all night since the stored hot oil stays above 212 degrees well into the night. Now we have solar electricity even while it’s dark. This is experimental, but if it works that well, you’ll soon see these plants in desert environments all over the globe. Some items further out on the experimental table are liquid salt as a heat medium, and items like liquid nitrogen, and so on. There is plenty of solar energy in the world, we just need to get better at using it, and people like you can make that happen.

Looking at wind, Albert Betz was the scientist who penned what is now called the, “Betz Limit,” a theoretical limit on how much wind energy can be converted to usable torque by a turbine. You can check it out on google or wiki if you like, but in a nutshell, 59% is the maximum theoretical limit of any wind turbine. Well our best units today work in the 30 to 35 % range, well below the Betz Limit. Again, people like you can help us push that envelope out further, so now we can run all the homes in the Pacific Northwest on half the wind farm we would need using todays technology. The same can be said for biomass, landfill conversions, methane use, hydro power, and so on. The area of direct thermal conversion is really old school, even as cool as it is now. There is a woodstove you can buy today that when you feed wood into it and heat it up, it also makes electricity using a Peltier Heat Junction. They work, but are expensive and highly inefficient, again, a work in progress and probably years behind. Global warming is no wimp, just ask anyone on the East Coast USA what they think about it today after the last two “weather patterns,” they have been through. Or check out Sir David Attenborough’s comments on Yahoo’s front page today. K’s comment on fossil technology should be “fracking,” not “fracting,” but he’s correct, we seem to be finding more oil when we should be burning less of it. My feeling on that is if it’s unhealthy to pipe the exhaust from your car to the inside of the vehicle, it’s just as unhealthy to vent it to the outside too.

If you really have an interest in all of this, I highly recommend getting an education in the field and doing whatever you can, we still need more help working all this stuff out. Our home generates about 90% of its own electricity now, with the help of a solar array and small wind turbine. We heat with passive solar and wood, and collect rainwater as well as heat water with the sun, but life would be even better if all this could be done with less resources, less money, and more reliability, that’s where people like you could come in. Good luck Taylor, and take care, Rudydoo

admin answers:

No live voltage – until blades allowed to rotate.

admin answers:

24 volts single phase is not very useful, specially as the frequency is probably varying all over the lot. Why not rectify the 3 phase to DC, which is quite efficient, then use an inverter to convert that to 120 or 240 VAC 50 or 60 Hz, as you prefer.

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admin answers:

The Nuclear plants that are proposed for construction in the US in the next 1-10 years will cost between 5-7 billion dollars per reactor, depending on which design. In the past, they were built for as little as 300 million dollars.

* Provisional contracts for two 1,117 MWe AP1000 reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station have estimated final costs of approximately $4.9 billion per reactor. [1]

* On April 9, 2008, Georgia Power Company reached a contract agreement for two AP1000 reactors to be built at Vogtle, at an estimated final cost of $14 billion. [2]

The profit on a running reactor is about $1 million dollars a day, the cost is 5.93 cents per kWh, and includes Uranium for fuel, insurance, waste disposal, and employees like security.
The lifetime cost of new generating capacity in the United States was estimated in 2006 by the U.S. Government: wind cost was estimated at $55.80 per MWh, coal (cheap in the U.S.) at $53.10, natural gas at $52.50 and nuclear at $59.30.
“Future costs” include the cost to decommission a reactor, which is currently around $300 million dollars.
If we expand the topic from electricity to energy in general, Nuclear Power really starts to get cheap. According to Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine: “The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports—with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

Nuclear fission is the splitting of the nucleus of an atom into parts (lighter nuclei) often producing free neutrons and other smaller nuclei, which may eventually produce photons (in the form of gamma rays). Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). Fission is a form of elemental transmutation because the resulting fragments are not the same element as the original atom.

Nuclear energy is a way of creating heat through the fission process of atoms. All power plants convert heat into electricity using steam. At nuclear power plants, the heat to make the steam is created when atoms split apart — called fission. (Other types of power plants burn coal or oil for heat to make steam.)

The fission process take place when the nucleus of a heavy atom, like uranium or plutonium, is split in two when struck by a neutron. The “fissioning” of the nucleus releases two or three new neutrons.

It also releases energy in the form of heat. The released neutrons can then repeat the process. This releases even more neutrons and more nuclear energy. The repeating of the process is called a chain reaction. In a nuclear power plant, uranium is the material used in the fission process.

The heat from fission boils water and creates steam to turn a turbine. As the turbine spins, the generator turns and its magnetic field produces electricity. The electricity can then be carried to your home, so you can work on the computer, watch television, play video games, or make toast!

MW = Mega Watt (1 million watts)
kW= Kilo Watt (1 thousand watts)

admin answers:

An automobile alternator will generate about 700 watts if spinning at the proper speed. You may need a belt drive to get to that speed.

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admin answers:

A traditional windmill is the easiest to build – that is pretty flat blades mounted in a vertical circle with a tail piece to aim it into the wind. The shaped blades of a propellor type wind generator are much harder to make as are the mixer shaped blades of a vertical windmill.
The big problem of making a model of a standard windwill is getting the power out. The shaft the blade turns on must have a crank or gears that line up with the center of rotation of the head, so the blade axle must have a bearing on either side of the crank or gear head – in a small model, getting these bearings mounted, etc., gets more tricky than in a bigger device.
If pumping is done with a crank, there must be counterweights so the windmill is only lifting water and not the weight of the shaft. If gearing is used, the tail must be bigger to offset the torque from the load (otherwise the spinning of the blades will rotate the head around the gears.
The second reference in particular will give you good data.

admin answers:

I think you are looking for deep cycle batteries, the same kind that are used with solar collectors.

Try some of these sites…

Edit – to answer the question “Why not car batteries?” … The difference between a deep-cycle and car battery is that deep-cycle batteries contain solid lead and withstand “deep-cycling” (losing up to 80% charge) better than automotive batteries, which have a different construction. Car batteries are designed to give you more “starting” power and stay up above 50% charge. Deep-cycling a car battery can result in a quicker breakdown of the core, thus increasing cost in the long-run.

admin answers:

Call your electric company; the folk you would have had to call anyway to get connected & let them know that you would like a reverse meter so that they can measure how much energy that you are back feeding. There is specific wiring for this that has to be approved through your county anyway & it is a safety feature for people working on the lines after a storm so you don’t inadvertantly electrocute a lineman who is trying to restore power around you. They will no doubt have the answers that you need or can advise you on where to look for the insurance. The way that you do a million dollar insurance policy is called an UMBRELLA POLICY on the homeowner’s. That isn’t hard. It is a property insurance that goes above what the homeowner’s insurance carries. The UMBRELLA coverage is a catastrophic event coverage that is called secondary insurance. It isn’t even very expensive as it covers after everything else has been exhausted first. Go to yahoo & google Umbrella insurance & then if that doesn’t work, look at commercial insurance companies in your area. I know that CNA which is a HUGE insurance company, they write in Texas & may be able to write your friend the policy that he needs. I hope this helps. I used to do underwriting assistance for them & I helped insure folk in Texas in particular.