What Happens When Hope Takes Over Planning

[oil pan 4]

When you get a bad duck curve you have to disincentivise the use of solar that peaks around noon. Have to get people to put in south west facing panels which will shift more production to when most solar installs are dropping out, but overall will produce less power.

[freebeard]

EV West campaigned at Bonneville and they partnered with someone who brought a trailer with a solar tracking system. Flatten the curve.

North-South oriented vacuum tubes silvered on the bottom don't require any tracking, for heat anyway. The thickness of masonry can be adjusted for the climate.

From another decade: www.bizjournals.com: Cloud goo inventor on a mission to save the world

It is a boast that some might consider preposterous. "I have invented a product that has saved as much energy as 10 million people use, or two-tenths of one percent of the world's energy consumption."

But Albuquerque inventor Day Chahroudi's claim isn't the raving of a scientist gone mad. For Chahroudi, 60, is the inventor of Low-e, an insulating glaze that coats anywhere from 60 to 95 percent of the windows manufactured in America, and of which more than $3 billion worth has been sold. Popular Science magazine, in fact, has named Low-e-like insulating glazings one of the top 100 inventions of the past 1,000 years.
[snip]
The weather panel
Chahroudi has been working to make Low-e and Cloud Gel come together in a product that he says will change the way buildings are built. His product is called the Weather Panel, a one-inch-thick combination of glass, Cloud Gel, Low-e and water in a self-contained portable solar water heater and heat storage unit.

The concept of the Weather Panel is that the Cloud Gel will let in the sun to heat the water sealed inside the glass panel. Once the water is heated to a pre-determined temperature, the Cloud Gel turns white, preventing the water from getting hotter. The Low-e in the panel would prevent the water from losing heat to the outside. The heat from the water would instead be transferred to the inside of the building during the night.

Chahroudi is hoping to see the day when the roofs of buildings in northern climates are made out of scores of Weather Panels linked together.

A Weather Panel has an insulating value of R-10, Chahroudi says. The R-value is a measure of how quickly heat is lost through a substance. A typical house wall has an R-value of 10, while fiberglass insulation sold for use in attics has an R-value of 19. An ordinary, single-pane glass window has an R-value of 1, while a Low-e treated window has an R-value of 2.5 to 3.

From another century: motherearthnews.com: Steve Baer and Holly Baer: Dome Home Enthusiasts

The Baers — in alliance with a few of the Southwest's young communes — began by showing the world that very inexpensive dome housing could be fabricated from the tops of junked automobiles (Steve's out-of-print manual, Dome Cookbook, is still the classic reference on the subject).

[Xist]

Don't the most effective panels rotate on multiple axes?

[freebeard]

I'll try to remember. It's an array kind of like a Portal floor that deforms to make a parabola that follows the sun and converges to a stationary point.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

When you get a bad duck curve you have to disincentivise the use of solar that peaks around noon. Have to get people to put in south west facing panels which will shift more production to when most solar installs are dropping out, but overall will produce less power.

The duck curve somewhat exists without any solar.

The real problem is people and businesses shifting peak power later as compared to historical.

In yeah olde times the power demand from 5-10pm was much lower than today and the demand curve was much different (even 20 years ago peak power was earlier)

So the answer to the problem is to (as a population) get people to wake earlier or much later and alter business hours.

My guess is pricing plus unpopular policies could motivate some interests to alter their hours of operation to kill the duck.

[freebeard]

Does the curve account for night-time recharging of electric vehicles?

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Does the curve account for night-time recharging of electric vehicles?

My PHEV actually charges during peak solar and after midnight.

Most with EVS and solar I know either charge mid day during peak solar or set the charge timer for super off peak late at night to avoid fees.

Also Given EVs are such a small percentage of vehicles (under 3000 statewide) in my case you would expect to see different usuage patterns in non Bev states versus the 2 or 3 with Bev states that have around 1% passenger cars plug in.
But you actually see very little difference between states with and without EVs there is a seasonal difference in states with real seasons and farm usuage is different but nothing due to plug ins yet.

One would hope Most plug in users would chase pennies by offsetting use But some states (like mine) penalize you too much for you to break even.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

No but logically solar heat is more efficient than photovoltaic

My 10,000 gallon pool is plumbed with one panel that's probably 5'x3'. It spent a lot of time in the 80s this summer, peaking at 88 for a few days during the last big heat wave. Not bad, considering it got down into the 70s at night and we didn't bother covering it. I'd hate to think of the solar electric setup we'd have needed to get the same results.

[freebeard]

The simplest thing is the solar pond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond

A solar pond is a pool of saltwater which collects and stores solar thermal energy. The saltwater naturally forms a vertical salinity gradient also known as a "halocline", in which low-salinity water floats on top of high-salinity water. The layers of salt solutions increase in concentration (and therefore density) with depth. Below a certain depth, the solution has a uniformly high salt concentration.
....
The largest operating solar pond for electricity generation was the Beit HaArava pond built in Israel and operated up until 1988. It had an area of 210,000 m² and gave an electrical output of 5 MW.

[Fat Charlie]

A pool in the sun can gain heat. But if you have a pool that has to have a filtration pump running anyway, and slap a solar panel in as part of the return plumbing, then you can really gain heat. Passive solar is important, but optimizing what's already happening is better.