Posted by pahump1 Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:14pm PDT
It is a wise idea to invest seriously in Self-Reliance, even if it hurts a lot at first. It is much better then paying all that money to people who hate us. And want to kill us in the name of religion. These Projects also provide employment building them, and maintaining & repairing, a Self-Reliant Utility. Its a win win future for all of us in this nation. from Paul Humphreys. CA
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Posted by Mike Sat Oct 31, 2009 3:30pm PDT
Why can't the cooling systems be built as a "closed" system? Automobiles reuse the fluid (mostly water) in their systems over and over and over... FOR YEARS. So... let's look at what a closed system would require to run. Let's say the solar farm does use 500 million gallons of water a year. (Yeah, I know the article says UPWARDS of 500 million gallons, but we have to start somewhere.) At 500 million gallons a year, one days' worth would be 1,369,863 gallons.( Non Leap Year) Even if the water only traveled through the system only once per day (not likely, but this is a worst case scenario), that would STILL be a huge savings in water usage. Now multiply that by the number of proposed solar farms in the article (35), and you get around 47,945,205 gallons of water circulating in "closed loop" cooling systems. Somewhere around 9.5% of the water needed for ONE solar farm (according to the article) to cool 35 solar farms! Just wondering. Mike
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Posted by Travis Sun Nov 1, 2009 7:20am PST
Like Mike said, why not used closed loop and in the process convert the heat exchange process into energy. In the current system there's a lot of thermal energy going to waste as well as water.
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Posted by Skip Sun Nov 1, 2009 12:07pm PST
It is important to determine the amount of energy required to send water to the end user. As I have believed all along, it seems to me that it might be more practical to incentivize solar at the end user(the home or business) than to build solar farms. Not to mention the loss of energy through transmission. This is also the case with rainwater harvesting. Raindrops Cisterns a design/build rainwater harvesting company has found that if you suppliment your water usage you save water and reduce energy. This seems to hold true to solar if this water issue can not be rectified. Raindropscisterns.com We believe point of use makes sense.
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Posted by Erik Sun Nov 1, 2009 7:13pm PST
The primary systems are closed loop. They don't use water for the fluid that traavels through the collectors, various oils are used as they have higher boiling points. The water is used for the secondary loop, where heat from the oil turns the water to steam to run the turbine. After exiting the turbine the low energy steam can either be exhausted from a cooling tower (as they currently are, increasing efficiency) or condensed back to water and pumped back to be heated up into steam again (as they could be, albeit with lower efficiency). A closed secondary loop would have the advantage of not wasting water, and reducing maintenance to the heat exchanger and turbine (cleaning scaling periodically), but keep in mind the plants reside in high ambient temperature spots, and energy to run condensing pumps and quickly condense steam to liquid and get it to the heat exchanger would be large.
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Posted by clifford Sat Nov 7, 2009 9:23am PST
This solar project is still raw. A excellent idea ,but still raw. We are still confident that as new technology unfold, someone will develop a cooling system that will revolutionize the whole energy world.
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