Renewable Energy Is The Future

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Via Hacker News:
FORGET SOLAR PANELS. HERE COME RAIN PANELS
CHRISTOPHER PLAIN·JULY 25, 2023

That's roughly the energy capture potential of PV, except sunshine is generally more reliable than rainfall.

I make electricity on a rainy day with PV, but you don't make electricity on a sunny day with this.

It might be useful in very niche applications.

[freebeard]

https://www.azlyrics.com › lyrics › creedenceclearwaterrevival › haveyoueverseentherain.html
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain Lyrics ...
"Have You Ever Seen The Rain" Someone told me long ago There's a calm before the storm I know, it's been coming for some time When it's over, so they say It'll rain a sunny day I know, shining down like water I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? Coming down on a sunny day

Divide the roof in four quadrants; one triboelectric, one photoelectric, one solar thermal, and one infrared radiator.

Let them compete for ROI.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

We should start eating the birds if we want to "protect" them.

I remember reading a few years ago something about "regional duck" from Amazon being at risk of extinction in Pará, nowadays that it's eaten less often than chicken.

[freebeard]

Building Nikola Tesla's Bladeless Turbine

Useable amounts of power from a Tesla turbine. 600-1200 Watts from 20-40PSI air. Would work with water or steam.

The engineering uses sheet aluminum disks with dimples near the rim to hold them apart.

[freebeard]

Via Hacker News:

www.science.org/content/article/electrified-cement-could-turn-houses-and-roads-nearly-limitless-batteries

Researchers have come up with a new way to store electricity in cement, using cheap and abundant materials. If scaled up, the cement could hold enough energy in a home’s concrete foundation to fulfill its daily power needs. Scaled up further, electrified roadways could power electric cars as they drive. And if scientists can find a way to do this all cheaply the advance might offer a nearly limitless capacity for storing energy from intermittent renewable sources, such as solar and wind.

So far, the cement devices are small, only big enough to power a few LED lightbulbs. But efforts are already underway to scale them up.

The cement devices are a kind of simplified battery called supercapacitors...... So, in recent years, several groups have made structural supercapacitors by spiking cement with highly conductive forms of carbon, such as graphene or carbon nanotubes. ..... In search of a cheaper alternative, Ulm and his colleagues turned to an age-old form of powdered carbon known as carbon black, which has been used since antiquity as a black pigment. Cheap and globally abundant, carbon black is also highly conductive.
.....
For structural concrete, the researchers found they could add up to 10% carbon black without compromising too much of its strength. Ulm says the group has patented its technology and is now working to scale it up to match the output of a 12-volt car battery.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Even though capacitors are chemically more stable than batteries, I'd still take it with a grain of salt...

[Piotrsko]

Ehhh: where or what is the insulating material? Seems to me that it would be the prohibitive part of this process.

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/01/mit-...ete-capacitor/

Needs a 555

[freebeard]

Agreed.

I could see a concrete block approach, but the separators would be subject to the same structural forces (tension and compression) as the blocks.

It relies on the carbon black collecting into filaments or dendrites. Possibly bacteria could be employed to structure the filaments (their reward being entombed forever in concrete).

[freebeard]

Thread on renewable energy turns to natural gas and biodiesel??

Microhydro cheaper than solar:

Genius Bladeless Hydro Turbine is Cheaper Than Solar

This could mean a pin-pong ball in every rainwater downspout. Run-off from a tribolelectric collector??

[oil pan 4]

Yeah the US increases hydroelectric capacity about 1 to 2% per year mostly 3 ways, upgrading through attrition the generators and turbines on existing large dams making them more efficient or simply adding capacity and adding hydroelectric to existing low head dams that simply didn't harness the water drop to make electricity.

I didn't know whirlpool turbines were up to 75% efficient.