So, what precisely does "renewable energy" mean? What is a "renewable resource"?

 

Laws of physics must be broken.

 

Use of <<, >>, and "don't be an ***" must be used here.

solar, wind, ethanol regeneration >> oil, coal regeneration with respect to our life spans.

As for the sun's energy being finite and not technically renewable...

 

Kidding of course. I figured you knew the answer before you asked.

 

It means someone is making cash of marketing it to libtards.

 

Totally marketing terms for sure. But like arga said I'm sure you already know.

But when I think of whatever it is that their trying to market, several things come to mind.

A hospital I used to work at on the central coast collects and pipes in the methanol from a local land fill and uses it to run their boilers. Saves a shitload on natural gas.

Bamboo, renews itself much quicker than other "hardwoods"

I think it's things like these that their trying ( at least in theory) to promote.

 

expensive and inefficient.

 

Let me preface this with, I'm not a left wing tree hugger, the political poll we all took a while back showed me pretty close to the middle, and I do realize that a lot of crap is being shoveled buy both sides. But how is the things I mentioned as examples, expensive and inefficient?

Floors made of a 300 year old oak tree, or 1 year old bamboo? expensive and inefficient?

The hospital, the landfill gasses power their generators (not boilers, I'm not back east anymore), supplying 95% of the hospitals power needs. It saves them $300k a year. expensive and inefficient?

Or let's add something like the pcw fleece jackets made of recycled water bottles. Yes this is slightly more expensive than than the standard production methods, but is it truly inefficient to use a discarded item to make something new, rather than a petroleum product?

Yes there are many "green" programs that are expensive and inefficient, and many unscrupulous people promoting them. But by lumping all of it together as crap, shows a bias that belies a lack of reasonableness that frankly removes the strength from your arguments.

I'm open to arguments and am willing to change my stance as I continue to learn. For some reason, I gather from your many comments on these types of discussions, you might not be so like minded.

I'll put my flame suit on now.

 

We need to send a space probe made of unobtanium to the sun, where it will collect a dump-truck's load worth of sun-matter and transport it back to earth.

We will then build an internal solar reactor with the sun-matter, which will provide enough energy to replace 100 modern nuclear reactors for 1.5 billion years.

And to complete the above sentence - "government supported/mandated renewable resources" are expensive and inefficient. If they were not expensive/inefficient, the government wouldn't have to back them.

Bamboo flooring? Recycled-plastic jackets? Fantastic ideas! But only if I'm still allowed to choose the other options.

Landfill generated methane? Government supported? I'm sure the methane power is by means of tax breaks and incentives for using "renewable energy" - would they still use the methane if they weren't getting bank from the government? If yes, then great idea! If no, then they need to shove rusty nails up their buttholes until they burst.

 

Are you taking the bamboo, burning it and creating heat energy? if so, that's expensive and inefficient compared to other sources of energy.

 

Anyone happen to read about the new joint venture company in San Diego that's going to make solar panels? They've got a contract to make a "power plant" of solar trackers that is supposed to generate 100MW. It's a company called Soitec (French) partnered with Orafol/Reflexite (German) and I design the tooling that makes the tools that will make the solar lenses.

NO gov't subsidies. We're set to at least double (to more than quadruple) the worldwide solar power output in the next couple of years. I'm hoping the bonuses make up for the fact that we got no raises this year.

 

too bad you didnt get your hands on the millions worth of glass mirrors/tube things that solyndra employees just smashed and threw away...

 

What technology are you going to be supporting? Silicon? DSSC?

 

It is unreasonable of you to expect reasonable discussion on this or any other political "hot button" issue.

 

aw.

 

I have a renewable resource in my pants

 

SOG, or silicone on glass. The lenses focus the energy of a larger area on small (higher efficiency) solar cells. This is direct energy production.

 

Any idea how they're going to be dissipating the heat of concentrated solar? My understanding is that the efficiency of SOG drops pretty significantly as temperature increases above a certain point from only direct sunlight. Concentrated sunlight seems like it would be a fantastic way to increase the overall efficiency of the solar panel if you could keep the temperature in a tolerable range.

Silicon does seem like a much better idea than DSSC for a power-plant solution, especially given that the efficiency of current DSSC degrades over the years. Any idea what the life expectancy of the Silicon cells is going to be?

 

Sorry, but I have no idea. Heat can't be too much of an issue, as the units are sealed boxes, but I really don't know. Not my area, as I just make tooling. Soitec is the one who makes the actual cells and and the JV is where the panels are assembled.

Life of the silicon cells themselves? No clue. Life cycle of the SOG lenses is still undergoing long term testing, but results are much better than anything else on the market to date. It doesn't yellow or get brittle like most plastic lenses, and is fairly cheap to produce. Several years at least, from what I've heard. Apparently, the lenses outlast the cells.

 

Just don't send out too many harvesters.