IBM Solar Concentrator Can Produce12kW/day, Clean Water, and AC 268
Lucas123 writes IBM Research and Switzerland-based Airlight Energy today announced a parabolic dish that increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times while also producing fresh water and air conditioning. The new Concentrator PhotoVoltaics (CPV) system uses a dense array of water-cooled solar chips that can convert 80% of the sun's radiation into useful energy. The CPV, which looks like a 33-foot-high sunflower, can generate 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat on a sunny day — enough to power several average homes, according to Bruno Michel, the project's lead scientists at IBM Research in Switzerland.
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And power poles are ok?
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What about neighbor's houses? Shoot them up, they're ugly and block your view of all the flat stuff that's on the other side.
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Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
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.22? Can you not afford a real gun?
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.22? Can you not afford a real gun?
It's important that the round not exit the skull, but instead ricochets around to turn the brain into mush.
It's just being considerate to the neighbors.
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otherwise a
the
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um... the AR-15 fires .22
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um... the AR-15 fires .22
No, it doesn't. Oh, the diameter of the bullet is very similar, but it's longer, heavier and moving much, much faster and therefore carrying an order of magnitude more kinetic energy. Of course I'm comparing to the ubiquitous .22 LR, but the comparison doesn't change much if you step up to the .22 magnum, and the difference is even larger if you look at the .22 short.
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One can generally buy a hundred rounds of .22LR for the cost of two or three rounds of .223 ammo.
Assuming one can *find* said .22LR.
Chet in Goodsprings usually has some, or you can try the gift ship inside the giant dinosaur statue in Novac.
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Only if you stick the gun point blank to someone's head. otherwise a .22 won't penetrate the human skull.
Don't bet your life on that.
First things first, let’s see what percentage of observed gunfights ended in a fatality for the person on the receiving end.
The graph is pretty clear on this: .22 caliber firearms are just as deadly in a gunfight as any other handgun caliber. In fact, it beat the average (far right). Surprisingly, every caliber that begins with a 4 (.40 S&W, .45, .44 Mag) performed worse than the .22 caliber firearms in terms of putting the opponent in the dirt for good.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.c... [thetruthaboutguns.com]
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+5 Funny for that comment.
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> I can't understand what the heck people are thinking sometimes.
That's because the some of us have evolved past "oh no big scary thing me get gun shoot it feel good"
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Chill out dude.. the solar irradiation, called isolation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]) is nowhere near the amount they claim, if 12 kW power average over the day is what they claim, for the amount of surface area their thing covers. I guess they mean 12kWh, not kW, kilowatt-hour, not kilowatt, which are two different beasts. Even that, at 5 cents a kWh, 12 kWh comes to 60 cents of electric power a day. Their contraption looks like a couple ten thousand dollar thing, and the economics are simply not there. Let alone the maintenance cost of a moving thing, that has to track the Sun accurately across the sky, it could be miscalibrated, or motor breaks down. The cheapest thing with solar is massive massive land area at like 8-15% efficiency, with a flat nonmoving panel, that might cost a couple ten bucks a square meter, long term. 80% collection efficiency might be great on a space station or satellite that needs to get lifted off this planet with expensive rocket fuel, but it does not make sense down here if it costs $10,000 for a few square meters, the price needs to drop to like $10-$40 per square meter, and these guys, like Mc Hammer says, just can't touch that. The maximum amount of solar irradiation hitting the planet is 1kW/square meter, and 12kW would be 3x4 meters, at 100% efficiency, a human being being around 6ft=6*12 inches=72 inches=72*2.54cm/in=182.88 cm, or 1.83 meters tall, in comparison. Looking at the guy next to some of their devices, it's not 3x4 meters area, though others look big enough, but who cares if it breaks the bank simply on pouring the cement foundation for it, let alone the tracking system, compared to some slanted panel you toss out there, without a concrete foundation, and you don't care if it breaks down because it can be thrown away and replaced cheaply. Solar power is all about economics, and that means not much fancy stuff. Nuclear has the energy density plus it does require the fanciest of fancy things you can throw at it, but solar is simply too thin energy wise to invest a lot of money into a small collection surface area, because even if you get every last bit of it, it's still not that much. Massive land area, like cheap real estate available in deserts, is what's needed by solar. Wind can allow farming side by side, and real estate land area requirements are not that big. If anything, semitransparent thin film covered glass solar is the future in nondesert places, that allows a greenhouse to still make it in its semi-shade, plus all the glass covered buildings and nonglass rooftops, though cleaning them can be an issue on roofs.
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Good thing we have Slashdot to save us from getting excited about hi tech stuff. I mean, just off the top of his head, the OP has taken apart thousands of man hours of work and cut to the chase. Fine work.
Less space than a Nomad, no wireless. Lame.
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According to the article, it's 40 square meters, and the Sun gives up a max of 1.3KW per square meter, which means it has a maximum of 52KW output at 100% and a clear sky. 80% would be about 41KWh per hour. If you assume 3 good hours, that's over 100KWH per day or $5 of $0.05/KWH energy. Almost $2k per year.
The economics still aren't there. A clear sky isn't enough. You won't get the sun's max in North America due to angle of the sun, especially in fall or winter. Even in summer, the angle in most parts of the country is such that you wouldn't get the max. And, in most parts of the country you also have a lot of clouds and rain (desert southwest being the exception), and you also have a fair amount of severe weather that could damage the thing. I'd be surprised if you get half of your $2k per year figure.
So fi
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The world is bigger than the US you know.
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1.3KW per square metre is at the top of the atmosphere.
It's significantly less at ground level. You get about 1050W peak at high noon on a cloudless day at the equator and less as you go north or south from there.
Rule of thumb: $1/kW or forget it. (Score:2)
A dollar capital cost per kW of generation (with a couple decades lifetime minimum) is the ballpark for the breakeven point between grid power and solar generation on mid-US-latitude sunny sites (5ish solar hours/day), with grid power available.
Being remote (so running grid is pricey) or having a small load (so basic connection fees aren't justified) shifts the point to higher dollars/watt, as does an increase in utility rates. Shade, dark weater, and high lattitude shifts it downward. (Forget about solar
Re:Rule of thumb: $1/W (NOT kW) or forget it. (Score:2)
Oops. Typoed $/watt to $/kW in part of the above and accidentally hit submit rather than preview. My bad.
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>Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate (solar module efficiency) is around 21.5% in new commercial products
%7-15 is so 10 years ago. In the lab they have new technologies that does as good as third to half sun.
Also the article says kW, not kWH, which is far more reasonable, because its computerworld, and its really not unreasonable.
>80% collection efficiency might be great on a space station or satellite that needs to get lifted off
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They are doing some funny math to claim 80% efficiency, as that is almost double the current best efficiency achieved in a lab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And I'm pretty sure 80% efficiency is above the theoretical maximum too . . . .
Nothing funny about it. This thing is combined heat and power system. You get electricity directly from the cells, and in keeping the cells cool, you get hot water suitable for running an absorption chiller and desalinating.
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Cubic litres (Score:5, Funny)
The system is capable of producing up to 1,600 cubic liters of water per day
Either the author is an idiot, or his universe has more dimensions than mine.
Re:Cubic litres (Score:5, Informative)
a new parabolic dish that increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times
Nope.
Re:Cubic litres (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cubic litres (Score:5, Funny)
It must be the higher dimensionality thing since he successfully converts that to 350 cubic gallons (imperial, no less) a bit further along.
Alternatively, the water produced by this process is cubic in shape which would make it difficult to use with traditional plumbing systems.
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Imagine the joke potential when we all get to move to Uranus!
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True, but at least it could be transported on a flatbed trailer, rather than an expensive tank truck.
Not to mention, getting water to you cows just got a whole lot easier. Just kick one off the back of your pick-up!
I don't know...It sounds pretty good to me.
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"Either the author is an idiot, or his universe has more dimensions than mine."
The latter seems more likely.
I love this idea. Until the cooling system fails.
12kW/day? (Score:5, Informative)
Is that 12kWh or 12kW/24h which is 288kWh
W is a unit of power, not energy.
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Hmm, TFA also says the collector can produce "1600 cubic liters per day" of H2O.
So I suspect very strongly that the author hasn't a clue what he's talking about as regards this device....
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It takes a sodium chloride solution and produces water and salt
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*sighs* yes, it produces 1600 CUBIC LITERS of it.
To explain (for the slow), liters are cubic decimeters. A cubic liter would be decimeters raised to the 27th power.
Note that we don't actually have twenty-seven spatial dimensions available to produce cubic liters in....
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Sorry for nit picking but a cubic liter is a decimeter to the 9th power. L^3 = (dm^3)^3 = dm^9, not dm^27.
Not that this helps those of us constrained to 3 (or 4) dimensional space.
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Didn't notice that.
Re:12kW/day? (Score:5, Informative)
It could also be 12kW peak, which with typical sunlight variation over a day would work out to around 60kWh per day.
Most of the time I see a non-technical article about solar with a kilowatt figure it's the peak power available from the cells, and as a first estimate you can multiply the peak solar power by 5 hours to get the daily output.
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It is 12kW peak according the TFA.
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Rather depends where you are.
That's about double (on average) the total solar panel output here (UK). (5h/day = 1800kWh/kWp, UK average is around 1K)
An important caveat is that this is entirely useless for places that get a lot of diffuse light.
Concentrated panels work only when you can see the bright disk of the sun - a cloudy bright day produces no power.
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Yes, it's a very crude estimate, and more of a summertime number too here in the US.
In the US I would refer them to PV Watts [nrel.gov] which will take examine a database of historical solar data and tell you how much daily energy to expect through the year for different types of setups, even including solar panel fixed angle or angle tracking systems. But it will not take into account your point on the effect of diffuse light on concentrated systems.
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According to the article:
"can generate 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat on a sunny day "
(implying peak performance)
and later in the article:
"still generating electricity with a more than 25% yield or two kilowatt hours per day"
25% is 2kwh, so full yield is about 8kwh per day. This would suggest that 12kw probably happens rarely and very briefly.
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Well if its 12kW and you run it for an hour, then it would be 12kWh no? And if you ran it for 24h (assuming constant output which of course isn't valid but regardless..) then you'd have 12kW/24h.
W is the right unit here if he's dissociating from the amount of time in use. Saying its 12kWh means nothing if you don't know whether that's for a single hour or summed over the sunny part of the day or what.
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Re:12kW/day? (Score:5, Funny)
Per cubic story.
FTFYFTFYFTFY
47 square yards? (Score:3)
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" Took me all of two seconds to find out this is 423 sq ft,"
so..not a problem then? Other then the use of imperial, that is.
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This is one of those rare times where SI and imperial almost align... yards and meters are close enough unless you are building something.
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It's used by the same sort of people who measure their irrigation water in ache feet [wikipedia.org].
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That is of course "acre feet", not "ache feet". Bloody auto-correct!
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I thought you were going to say "this is 39 square meters". Even Google converts automatically into m.sq. when you input "47 square yards".
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You typically buy fabrics by the square yard/meter. I know cubic yard is common for landscaping, as well. I wonder if construction trades also do similar for certain construction?
Plain solar panels cost less (Score:2)
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But these give you heat as well. It's kind of a heat collector with solar panel piggy backed on. I suppose it saves space and is serviced by the same company, which may not be true of using heat collectors + solar panels, though I'm not sure of the economics. Also where a power grid is available, I would favor using heat collectors alone for heating/cooling/warm water and power grid for power (duh).
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Sure you can have these fancy concentrators, but nothing will cost less per kW than plain solar panels arrays or wind power. Why concentrate the suns rays instead of using solar panels, whose costs decrease all the time?
Because making solar panels is horrific for the environment.
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
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No, actually more like 80X! Because it converts the light to electricity at 80% efficiency instead of 15%-20% for un-concentrated. This is due to the extremely steep temperature gradient between the super-heated front-face diode receiving the sunlight and the water-cooled electrode behind it. (I'm sure somebody else can explain the physics better).
The point being, say you have a rooftop in a city and wan
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Wrong : the 80% efficiency is not electricity but heat + electricity. Or that is what I understand. 80% eletric efficiency would be big news. And even then, maybe the figure is optimistic i.e. apply perfect black paint to a piece of cardboard and you have a 100% efficient device, even though it's of no pratical use.
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So not 4x efficiency like I said, but still 2x.
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Concentrated solar power is a popular concept because mirrors cost a helluva lot less than solar panels.
Actually, my money is on plants, because they cost a helluva lot less than solar panels or mirrors. Yeah they're probably around 1% efficient compared to 16%-18% for most commercial p
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Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs.
Flat mirrors, maybe. Parabolic mirrors on gimbals with sun tracking mechanisms, maybe not so much.
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Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs.
Flat mirrors, maybe
Which is what this thing uses.
link to a genuine source, not this shitty article (Score:5, Informative)
Sources (Score:3)
The UK press release is more informative.
https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40912.wss [ibm.com]
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/44972.wss [ibm.com]
There's also a video of a TED@IBM talk (which I haven't watched)
http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solving_the_Energy_Crisis_One_Sunflower_at_a_Time [fora.tv]
Found the IBM link. (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a link to the IBM release: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/solar.html
This confirms a power output max of 12 kwel and 20 kw of heat from the device, so they are talking power rates here.
Here is another link to more info: http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/zurich/dsolar/product.html
Note that the dimension given are in the metric system, and the author of the article botched the conversion, going to square yards instead of square feet.
It is 10 meters high with a 40 m diameter dish.
Of course I would like to see what wind loading a 40 m dish would take, in terms of thunderstorms and the like.
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"Of course I would like to see what wind loading a 40 m dish would take, in terms of thunderstorms and the like."
since the device is made from concrete i would imagine it is nice and stable if properly installed. that is instead of glass in the mirrors which are just aluminum with a silvered surface... and yes that was from the fine article.
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Wind loading... why not just put it on an axle and let it spin to make even more kW per day and possibly even more cubic liters of water!!
Building codes (Score:2)
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Watch the establishment try to stop this product through such excuses as building codes etc..
They won't have to lift a finger. Nobody is mass-producing the photovoltaic cells that can accept the whopping concentration of sunlight the thing uses, and even if they were, almost nobody has access to sufficient water flow to keep it cooled. Cool water goes in, really stinking hot water comes out. It's illegal to dump high volumes of water that warm into rivers and lakes in the US (which is why nuclear power plants have huge cooling towers, despite being located next to rivers and lakes). So even if
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How? (Score:2)
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Ah.... okay, that'd do the trick.
Not exactly something that would be viable for a person's home then.... especially if they lived in an apartment.
Pretty innovative...easy to mass produce. (Score:5, Insightful)
*SIGH* Units FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
Desalinisation (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is pretty terrible on the details. It seems that this CPV device is intended to be built near the ocean, and use salt water for cooling; the water can then be run through a desalinization system.
According to Wikipedia there are several desalinization processes available that use heated water and a membrane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Desalination_powered_by_waste_heat [wikipedia.org]
The article is vague on how the CPV system provides cooling, but the CPV system produces heat as a byproduct, and it is possible to use extra heat for cooling. There are refrigerators that run on propane, with no motors. (There is a sort of pumping of coolant that relies on gravity [ehow.com].
There are a lot of places in the world that get lots of sunlight, are near salt water, and could use more fresh water. So this sounds like a good idea, but it isn't going to be installed everywhere.
Let me guess without RTFA... (Score:2)
How did I do?
Dimensional analysis please. (Score:2)
The Facts from IBM scientists on Sunflower (Score:5, Informative)
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Sure, it can also cook dogs unit they're hot.
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That's sounds like an extremely expensive way to heat your dog's unit.
Just get an electric doggy blanket for him.
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That is so annoying every time I see it. It produces 12 kW.
The author is clearly an idiot since the article is riddled with errors in both units and facts, but most likely it produces a PEAK of 12 kW. For solar energy, it is much more useful to state both the peak and averaged power. But by far the most important information (which the article omits) is the cost per kwHr. Anyone can stick a mirror on a pole. Doing it cost effectively is harder. Without knowing the cost, there is no way to tell if this is actually useful, or just a silly stunt.
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I doubt many of these ever "see the light of day". At best, some third world niche.
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You should read the referenced article.... It is awash in stuff like this... "Cubic Gallons", "Cubic liters",
This wasn't written by somebody who knows what they are talking about. Somebody's trying to pull a fast one..
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What is leftist about it? Free subsidies to corporations and a lack of will to do anything about global warming is a right-wing thing.