Combined-Source Energy Farms

We see more wind and solar farms popping up every day. What we don’t see (or at least I haven’t seen) are the two being built in the same place. Think about it: the only times that solar panels don’t generate electricity are at night, and when it’s cloudy. Generally it gets cloudy as a result of weather systems, which usually cause it to be windy. So why is it that we see wind farms and solar farms as totally separate facilities?

If the goal of building a renewable generation facility is to power a certain area of the energy grid, it only makes sense to utilize every source that we can. The biggest problem with renewable energy plants is their downtime. The sun only shines, and the wind only blows, at certain times. Building solar collectors and wind farms together could greatly reduce downtime of the facility by taking advantage of the weather, and prominent energy source at a given time. A solar farm that generally loses 30% of it’s uptime due to weather could greatly benefit from a wind farm that would make use of most, if not all, of that downtime by taking advantage of the weather systems passing through. With this method the capacity factor of renewable energy generation facilities could be increased to compete with current coal, oil, and nuclear plants.

The amount of generation capacity per energy source could be adjusted to suit a given area. For example, a wind farm located in a natural air stream would not see much necessity for incorporating a large solar collector, however a small one may be added simply to increase the efficiency and capacity factor of the overall facility. Likewise, a solar array in a naturally dry and sunny location may increase it’s capacity factor with a few wind turbines.

The biggest advantage of this setup, however, is that renewable energy generation facilities can be built in areas that do not favor one form over the other. Many towns and cities that do not have major wind currents, nor an exceptional amount of sun, can get reliable renewable energy from a plant that balances wind and solar sources. This now creates the opportunity for many cities and villages to generate their own renewable energy. Benefits could also be seen by building combined-cycle plants, generating both electricity for power and heat for the town or parts of the city.

There is a lot of energy out there just waiting to be harvested, we just have to build the facilities to use it. I think that all energy farms, being built for the sole purpose of powering a certain area, should take advantage of the different sources of energy available. What do you think?

The Flaw With Fusion

Fusion power is currently the undisputed ideal form of energy production. It is similar to the current widespread nuclear fission power, but instead of using enriched radioactive fuel, it works by focusing intense energy on a single point, causing several atoms to fuse into a single, larger atom. This is the same kind of energy that powers the sun. The easiest fuels to use are the isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium (²H) and tritium (³H), because they react at the lowest temperatures.

But you didn’t come here for a chemistry lesson. The fact of the matter is that fusion power has been marketed to the public as being able to use water as fuel and produce helium as a byproduct, which is true. But even though this form of production is incredibly efficient, we are still turning water into helium. I know what you’re saying, there’s a LOT of water on this planet, right? How much can we afford to lose? There is only so much water on this planet at one time, and we will never get that water back unless we invest the energy to turn the helium back into water.

These power plants are said to only need to consume one liter of water to produce the power we get from 500 liters of petroleum. But how much water do you think it will take to power the whole planet? In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption occurred at a rate of roughly 15 terawatts (source). If I did my math right, it would take 22,000 lbs. of water to power the Earth for one day on fusion power, that’s over 4 thousand tons per year!

That may not be very much water in relation to the amount on the planet right now, but we’re talking about permanently upsetting the balance. Once fusion power becomes economically and technologically feasible, and energy becomes more cheap and abundant, we will most likely start using more of it. That will result in a decrease in the amount of water in our ecosystem and an increase in the amount of helium.

That being said, fusion power will most likely be able to safely power our planet for at least a few thousand years, probably long enough to find a more reliable energy source, or a more abundant source of nuclear fuel. But people need to know what fusion power is all about before endorsing it. It’s not an end-all solution to the world’s energy problems, nor is it completely safe. It’s not even considered a renewable energy. I think that when fusion power becomes a reality, it should only be used to supplement renewable energy sources, not as the primary energy source. When you break it all down, the only true sources of renewable energy that we know of right now come from the heat of the Earth, or from the sun.

Too Early To Retire The Shuttles?

It looks like the shuttle debate is back on. Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, has introduced a bill in congress to postpone retirement of the space shuttle program, as mentioned in an article in InformationWeek today. Bailey claims that ending the shuttle program would cause the U.S. to take a back seat to Russia and China in terms of space research and missions. The shuttle program has been due to end later this year without opposition, until now.

The problem with ending the shuttle program now is that we don’t have a vehicle to replace the 3 shuttles currently in operation. The Constellation program was intended to replace the shuttles with the Orion spacecraft after their retirement. However, president Obama proposed the cancellation of the Constellation program on February 1 of this year due to it’s being “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation”.

So maybe the 6 people aboard the International Space Station can rely on China and Russia for their needs. But what’s going to happen when one of the 32 GPS satellites has a problem, or one of the 8 U.S. weather satellites goes down? Who is going to clean the lenses on the Chandra X-Ray and Hubble space telescopes?

I don’t have any problems working with other countries, but it’s bad enough that we’ve been losing our jobs oversees, let alone our space program, the bold symbol of friendly competition that is held by only a handful of elite countries on this planet. In the 1960′s we had a dream to go into space and to put a man on the moon, and after years of trial and error, after trillions of dollars invested, we’ve succeeded. Many of the luxuries that we have today came as a result of the space race: GPS, satellite TV, and weather information to name a few. And now we’re just going to give that up because it costs too much? Why does it seem like we keep spending money on other countries, and cutting the budgets at home?

Yes, cutting government funding for space operations will spur more business for private space companies. The problem, however, is that I can count on one hand the number of successful reusable spacecraft that have been developed by private companies. It is probably not a very good idea to cut funding to programs when we haven’t yet figured out how to make up for them.