20 replies to this topic

[inea]

A solar boat travels around the earth. The boat is powered by solar panels. The boat makes this trip to promote the use of solar energy. Will solar electricity become a way to get energy in the nearby future?

[truefusion]

This would be a wasted effort on those who decide to take on such a mission. This, also, would not help to promote the use of solar energy; if a field of solar panels do not cause others to yield towards solar energy, then neither will ships that cover the same amount of ground on sea that have solar panels on board. Financially, it would be more beneficial for a company to stick to land than to sea, as there is more to manage out at sea than there is on land. Also, it is unlikely for any boat to travel enough distance to keep up with the rotation and revolution of the Earth—if that is what was intended of the ship. So long as there is a way to obtain energy in larger amounts, whether in a dangerous fashion, people will consider it over the methods that are "less efficient."

[shadowx]

That's better, a proper post that we can actually reply to and discuss....

Solar energy.... enough energy hits the earth in a day to power us for months if not years, but when a solar panel is only 1 square meter or so we have a problem....

As far as i am concerned the future of energy is nuclear. Unless we move solar production outside of our atmosphere. The Dyson Sphere ideas are brilliant but they will never be created in the next 1000 years or so (maybe 500 for a partial sphere or ring of small devices) but out in space novel ideas can be used rather than basic solar cells we can use induction, magnet currents etc... to focus and trap electrons from the solar wind and use those to power an IR laser which is collected back on earth to re-generate electricity. clean, green and lots of it. But at the moment it isnt particularly feasible.

For the near future, perhaps the next century, nuclear will take over. After that perhaps solar outside the earths atmosphere.

[inea]

The website of the project.

Information










It is 1/10 of a soccer field of solar panels on a catamaran.

Edited by inea, 30 September 2010 - 12:09 AM.

[sheepdog]

I am still hoping for solar power.
Neuclear power still scares the stuffing out of me. I know they claim there are sufficient safeguards in place, but anyone who knows anything at all knows you can't stop every imaaginable scenerio from happening. Its not a matter of what or how it happens, but when. Sooner or later there will be a disaster at a nuke facility. And when it does your looking at something like 500 years before an area of many many square miles will be totally uninhabitable by humans, or any other living animal.(with the possible exception of *BLEEP* roaches.) I just don't think it's worth the risk.

Sooner or later someone will come up with the technoligy to make solar power more efficient. Smaller, less expensive panels, better quality batteries for storing power, and a wider spread of technoligy that uses it more efficiently.

I prefer solar for other reasons too. I don't see any way that any company or organization can claim ownership of the sun and charge for it's use. The same cannot be said of power generated by neuclear plants. Who ever builds and operates those plants will charge whatever they want for the power they produce. Much like the utility companys do today. With solar, once you buy the panels and batteries they are yours. And with our free enterprise system, if it survives, there will be enough competition in the building of panels to hopefully keep the cost of them down to the point the average person can afford them. Or at least I hope thats the way it works out.

There have been some really fantastic break threws in all forms of technoligy in just the past few years. With increased interest in renewable energy sources, it's just a matter of time before somebody comes up with a good, safe workable and affordable way to harness the power of the sun.

[Iniyila]

using solar energy you create electrical energy which is a clean energy using a clean procedure so it will be very useful to use from that. but the most problem is the surface that is needed for producing enough energy. as you see for the boat , they have expanded the surface of the boat to get more energy they can not produce enough energy from small surfaces now because solar cells are not very efficient right now. so it will not be main source of energy in near future, but if scientist try to make more efficient solar cells then maybe we can say it will be a source (not the main one) of energy in far future.

i have done some experiments myself and in our house roof we have a solar panel but there are many problems in using that, one is it produces DC current so if you want to use it in home equipments you should have a DC-AC converter which brings down the efficiency. then the panels are produced from smaller cells you can put them serial to get more voltage or parallel to get more current but even with a 4m * 6m panel you have to bring down current to get enough voltage like 12V. another problem is how to keep this energy ? you need batteries which can cost you a lot and after each discharging and charging again the battery gets old. another thin is need of very accurate voltage regulators connected to batteries because sunlight is not always the same so voltage variates and if you don't use a voltage regulator then it will harm your equipments. so using solar panels is not very cheap and easy.

i think instead of working on converting sunlight to electrical power we should think in using sunlight directly. look at the way we can transfer data, we can transfer it using optical fibers, there is no electron in the line but there are photons which carrying data. we can do this for powering things because photons have energy too. this work will bring us more efficiency till converting sunlight to electrical power using low efficiency solar cells. i don't say that this can be done or it can be done i say if it is possible to do that then it will be great.

[contactskn]

Dear friend as the costs of petroleum fuel is increasing day by day drastically. It will not be a big deal if in the future solar energy becomes one the most important sources of electricity. In our city and locale many of them are shifting from petrol bikes to battery operated bikes as solar battery operated bikes or cars are not available here so the substitute is battery operated bikes. And most of them are fully satisfied with the same. As it is producing very less pollution also. By the lets hope that in the future some good substitutes of petroleum fuels will be there in the market out of which one could be solar batteries.

[anwiii]

why would you want expensive solar panels when you can buy a cheap ugly windmill and put it in your front yard for everyone to see?

[k_nitin_r]

Solar energy is a great way to think about conservation. As long as the sun has enough Hydrogen to power the nuclear fusion that it has going up there, things are looking cool. The problem with using solar energy is that the energy comes to earth in a diffused form and therefore you would require a large area to capture the energy. One way to reduce the cost of producing electricity from solar energy is to use mirrors to help increase the concentration of sun light onto the solar panels.

If you do find yourself using lots of 'AA' batteries and tossing them into the bin, think of how much you could save by using rechargeable cells and charging them using solar energy. Battery manufacturers need to do their part by making rechargeable batteries cheaper. There are tons of them all around in mobile computing devices, digial cameras, cellular phones, and other electronic devices so surely they would have achieved economies of scale. Apart from the energy needed in the production of batteries, such as in powering diesel trucks to transport chemicals and materials for the batteries, we also use traditional fossil fuels in disposing off the disposable batteries so rechargeable 'AA' batteries is what we should all be demanding.

Nuclear fission reactions are 'dirty' in that they result in radioactive fuels that are hard to dispose off. Existing research has not provided us with the technology to successfully manage a sustained nuclear fusion reaction, let alone build a nuclear fusion reactor.

Windmills are definitely a cheap source of energy when you've got plenty of wind blowing all around the year. As long as a hurricane doesn't bring the windmill tearing down onto your rooftop and crashing through the living room, they're the best way for the rest of us living by the country side to get some clean and cheap energy.

[deadmad7]

inea, on 29 September 2010 - 10:59 PM, said:

That actually looks pretty cool... but i think its big waste to build something like that. Who the heck would want to have boat like that?

anwiii, on 19 January 2011 - 07:30 AM, said:

why would you want expensive solar panels when you can buy a cheap ugly windmill and put it in your front yard for everyone to see?

Hahahaha. You know, there are CHEAP AND UGLY solar panels now. People use them to power like some parts/rooms of their homes and in my friends house, it works great! But you need a good place on your rooftop.