Re: Are Biofuels the Answer?

Hi Synthisol,

  You said: "
If solar panels were doubled in efficiency (with no increase in production costs) then ..."  I agree!  How about if the price of solar panels was reduced by a factor of 4?  Even if the efficiency stayed the same? 

Because that's just what my company is doing.  We've got a
technology that's not PV, it's called CSP (Concentrating Solar Power). 

So that's why I'm here.  I'm trying to spark some interest &
enthusiasm for what my company does.  I also enjoy the forum and the
debate.

Now I just hope I can get some decision makers to keep reading!

The concentrators / collectors are made of aluminum & steel.  Two of the most recyclable commodities around.  Because of their simplicity they'll last almost forever.  The electricity is produced by a generator, copper & more steel.  Then entire system is simple to produce, easy to operate, and has zero-emissions.

 Your also correct about the money for research problem, except it's not a research issue; it's a manufacturing challenge.  The technology is so simple and so stable that investors are afraid that there aren't enough "barriers to entry".  Try convincing an investor to invest in a project where he can't profit at the expense of some other poor SOB...  They want guarantees of big profits, not to attract competition.

When I designed the system, the green aspects were one of my first criteria.  I could have designed it to use exotic materials, and damaging chemicals, but them I'd have had to justify those choices.  So I chose simple & clean.

I knew that there were scams out there too.  The perpetual motion crowd make fantastic claims, and will never deliver, but somehow they attract funds, go figure?  So I set my sights on 15% thermodynamic efficiency. That's significantly less that the best thermal processes out there, and on par with the best commercial PV today.

Then I aimed at the hard target... $50/MWh, that was the brass ring in 2001  That was the price of new commercial generation equipment.  I manages to get it down to $86.  Close, but when you realize that there's no fuel required, and the O&M would be only a few $/MWh, I knew I had a winner.

I think we all want fusion reactors.  Remember "Back to the Future" and Mr. Fusion?  Imagine every home, completely self sufficient for energy... Non-polluting, non consuming vehicles, metals, ceramics, plastics all made without pollution, or CO2, NOx, SOx, dioxins...  Sign me up for that future!

 In the mean time, yup, 'the powers' want more & bigger centralized power, that makes them more $$$, and for as long as folks are willing, or are required, to buy energy, that's going to be the model.

So I'll plug my product again.  We us the DG (Distributed Generation) model for production.  Every commercial building you can think of could deploy one of our systems, from 2500W to 250kW we can put it on the roofs.

From its general appearance, the system's main module is indistinguishable from a commercial air conditioner.  It's a box with a big fan and some pipes & conduits that sits on the roof.  It does it's job unnoticed and unseen.

What is actually accomplished is to reduce some or all of the electrical demand of the building, saving the customer money, and reducing the peak demand on the central generation facilities when the loads are the greatest, usually mid-day to the early afternoon, the dog-days of summer.

Remember, CSP-DG won't replace the utilities, it complements them.  The utilities supply the power when the sun doesn't, and they transport the excess when the local demand is low.  Everybody wins!

Thanks for reading, so who has an idea for harnessing "used oak leaves"  I live in New England, and boy do I have a supply of those!