Solve the World's Energy Needs? Any Non-Fusion Possibilities?

[Tzemach]

Back again - sorry about the delay in responding but I am in Australia and so about 16 hours out of sync with most of you.
I notice my concept of microwave steam generator caused a bit of comment. The reason this works is that the amount of steam generated is relatively small - it only has to continually recharge the batteries. The steam is not driving the vehicle, there must be someone who likes doing the math, how do we get 30mpg out of a gallon of water - not with a steam engine.

The use less energy has been a barrow that I have pushed for years, there is not a household in the world that truly needs to run on 110volts (or 240V as we do in Europe and Australia). Everything that the ordinary person needs can be delivered by 12v systems and this has been the case since the development of transistors in the 1950's. We are using twenty-first century technology with an 1890's power supply. How smart is that?

 

[Pengwuino]

The use less energy has been a barrow that I have pushed for years, there is not a household in the world that truly needs to run on 110volts (or 240V as we do in Europe and Australia). Everything that the ordinary person needs can be delivered by 12v systems and this has been the case since the development of transistors in the 1950's. We are using twenty-first century technology with an 1890's power supply. How smart is that?

So are you really proposing we switch over to DC power to transmit our electricity?

 

[Tzemach]

No I am definitely not proposing switching transmission to DC but if we design our houses to run on DC we only need about 12V 50A at the board instead of as here in Australia 240V 3000A. I don't even use that much for the welder in the shed.

 

[AlphaNumeric]

12V 50A, that's 600W in total! Not enough for an entire household.

I think my house (or rather, my parents' house) can do 240V @ 40A so almost 10KW. We never get close to that, but easily go past 600W.

Are you sure you get 240V @ 3000A? That's 720KW of power you can draw from the grid! Besides 3KA is an insanely high voltage. I think the UK grid transmits at over 500 KV in order to get a very very low current (since the power loss relates to the current) but then transformers step it down to the 240V homes get.

 

[vanesch]

Everything that the ordinary person needs can be delivered by 12v systems and this has been the case since the development of transistors in the 1950's. We are using twenty-first century technology with an 1890's power supply. How smart is that?

You do realize that running something on 12V or 110V or 220V doesn't change anything to its energy consumption, right ?

The reason we still use 19th century transformer concepts (although greatly improved thanks to finite-element simulations etc) is that it is an *almost perfect* apparatus.
You could just as well complain about the use of a rope and pulley.

 

[vanesch]

I appreciate the efforts some designers take, but efficiency usually takes a backseat unless the application is battery powered. Designers have really only started implementing efficiency because they've been forced to by a.) regulations b.) their market refusing to keep replacing batteries (both literally and metaphorically).

Not really. In digital circuitry, almost everything has been changed into CMOS technology, which is as power-efficient as you can get: in a static state, there's essentially NO consumption, and the only consumption you have is by the charges that are transmitted from the V_cc to ground, first when charging a gate (to close the circuit) and then to discharge it (to open the circuit). The energy loss is equal to the charge transmitted times the power supply voltage. The minimal charge required is determined by the size of the gate of the transistor, which is determined by the smallest features one can integrate on a circuit (currently I think we're around 60 nanometers or so). People try hard to get this smallest feature smaller. Next, people lower the supply voltage: first it was 5V (TTL), then 3.3V, and I think we're down now to 1.5V.
Now, of course, the other aspect is the complexity of the implemented function and the smartness by which it is simplified. It is true that there, one puts a hold on optimizing further "if it fits". But the fundamental cells in a digital CMOS circuit are about as optimal as technology permits.

I'm guessing you mean the way in which the power is generated means that a large amount of surplus heat is also generated. It's only efficient when you decide that the waste isn't important in your calculations for a publicised efficiency figure (A view I'm 100% positive all car manufacturers will take). That heat is wasted because it could be recollected. The system would no longer be just a normal piston combustion engine, but it could be retrieved.

Well, the idea of an internal combustion engine is, eh, combustion (= a heat source from burning fuel). Now, it is a fundamental thermodynamical law (the second law!) that tells you that heat, obtained at temperature T1 can only generate an amount of useful work from the heat, and that the rest of the heat must be wasted to the environment at temperature T2. The ratio of T1 to T2 determines the percentage of the heat that can optimally be converted (look up "Carnot engine" which is the perfect thermal engine). So you will NEVER be able to build a car without a radiator, based upon a heat engine such as an internal combustion engine.
And current cars are not very far from this ideal engine.

The system to recover that thermal energy might cost a few thousand more capital on the car's price, and the system could even recover those costs over the miles of petrol wasted in generating heat, but the manufacturers just go with a fan infront of a radiator.

No amount of money would do away with it, because it is against the second law of thermodynamics. Now, of course, you could do still SOMETHING with the heat (after all, it is about at 80 degrees, while the environment is colder, so you could still extract a little bit of work there), but it would be so tiny that it isn't really worth the effort, to have the radiator at, say, 30 degrees instead of 80 degrees (and hence have a BIGGER radiator).

Computing for instance. The number one problem with conventional digital computing is heat generation. As we get those multicore processors I was talking about that use kilowatts / megawatts, it'd be nice to anhilate all the heat generated by using superconductors for the logic circuits.

Well, for one, there will always be waste heat in computing, but it is true that this theoretical minimum is much smaller than what's wasted now. Nevertheless, the way things are done now are about as optimal as can be done, with current existing technology.

Superconductors are already being used for energy storage but not in the way you mentioned. Rather, they're used for the bearings on ultra-high energy flywheels and gyroscopes.

I'd think these are permanent magnets, no ? Superconductors in bearings ? Never heard of it. Any docs ?

There are natural energy stores as well. Here in the UK, in Wales, there's a big lake high up. When the demand on the national grid falls, the surplus energy is used to pump water into the lake. As the demand rises, water runs back out through a hydroelectric power plant. Of coarse, it's not 100% efficient but it's better than nothing.

Yes, and that's a good technique, if you have a lake at your disposal :-)
Not really the most compact device, but it works well.

 

[Tzemach]

Back again after the usual delays. I mention our extravagance with electricity because I grew up in area where there was no electricity supply. We used the same kerosene lamps, candles and wood fires that our ancestors did for hundreds of years. If anyone has seen the Australian movies "The Man From Snowy River" I lived next door to the cabin in which Kurt Douglas' character resided.
I installed a 12v system there and it provided light, radio, TV and all the mod. cons. We don't need to use the amount of power we usually do, heating and cooling are probably the only real need for heavy power consumption.

 

[keinve]

well, we don't exactly use low polluting energy right now. it really depends on the area. for instance, it's always sunny and windy where i am, and I'm also on a hotspot. thus, solar, wind, and geothermal energy would suit me.

 

[Dissonance in E]

I\ve always wondered about this, why can't piezo crystals be integrated into floors and such to provide elctricity?

 

[IMP]

This was an old thread brought back to life.
I think the first major step is to get the cost of solar panels way down from what they are today. When we can place panels on all roofs everywhere and just use 'the grid' as the means to store and distribute that electricity, we will have made great strides. Of course wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuc will play a part.