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LeopoldS

Testla energy Tesla Motors - 2 views

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    tesla announcing home batteries at 350$/kW
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    Good stuff, no way it will be done in the netherlands however due to the 'equal-return' law in place here still that puts the price of returning to the grid equal to the costs of buying. The costs of this law are enormous however and energy companies would love to get rid off it, and it will in the upcoming years most likely. I wonder however if that makes sense on a regional/national level, returning to the grid on that scale produces a more stable supply. Why store for personal use only?
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    Let's do some simple maths... Here in UK, example "economy 7" tarif yields night kWh approx. 12 pence cheaper than during day. Let's say the goal is to store energy equivalent to running a 2kW storage heater for 6 hours during the day. We need 12 kWh, so 12 times $350 this means need to spend approx. 1920 pounds for batteries. Time to break even at ROI: 1920 / 0.12 ~ 7.3 years... And this is assuming using the heater 365 days a year, and quite an expensive tariff (prepaid). SIWB :-)
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    Also need to take into account that battery capacity tends to go down with time and usage
johannessimon81

World's largest OTEC power plant planned for China - 1 views

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    I wonder how much energy you can extract from the ocean in a responsible way... Mixing up different thermal layers would probably a quite an influence on ecology.
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    The last available assessment report on the ecological impact seems to date from 1981 which would need to be brought up to current standards. On the other hand, this system could have a positive influence on fish population as deep cold water brings nutrients to the surface. The cold water could also be used to lower sea surface temperatures and affect hurricane genesis!
Daniel Hennes

V3Solar puts a new spin on PV efficiency - 1 views

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    "V3Solar has developed a cone-shaped solar energy harvester that is claimed to generate over 20 times more electricity than a flat panel thanks to a combination of concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced electronics."
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    Hmm.. that seems counter intuitive... how would it ever be that much better than a flat panel? Rotating the PV will only make sure only parts are illuminated. Operating temperature is a better argument, but that comes at the cost of exposure. Came across this little gem of a webpage, maybe we should outsource our impossibility EM drive work next time? :) https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-v3solars-spinning-solar-panel-cone-spin-cell-coolspin.t1166/
Joris _

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Space agencies tackle waning plutonium stockpiles - 2 views

  • For every 100 watts of heat that I've got, the best I can do is get 8 watts of electricity
  • NASA is developing an Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator to improve the efficiency by a factor of four
LeopoldS

Future Outposts Beyond LEO Require R&D Now - 1 views

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    interesting "recommendations" ...
LeopoldS

Wireless Power Consortium - 1 views

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    very nice  - right step in the right direction .... maybe already time for ESA to join .... Dunkan, please have a look at it
Nicholas Lan

Could urine be a source of renewable energy? - 1 views

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    amusingly one of the researchers is a Dr. Rong Lan
LeopoldS

PLoS Biology: Extreme Endurance Migration: What Is the Limit to Non-Stop Flight? - 1 views

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    the Alaskan bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri) (Figure 1), makes its eight-day, 11,000-km autumn migration from Alaska to New Zealand in one step, with no stopovers to rest or refuel. This roughly doubles the previous maximum direct flight distance in birds, challenging experts to square this remarkable marathon migration with our understanding of aerodynamic theory and endurance physiology.
duncan barker

Optics InfoBase - Ultrathin, metamaterial-based laser cavities - 0 views

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    I'm not sure if meta materials can be used to enhance lasers in space........Leopold
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    well .... will have to read this more carefully, but it seems, why not, no principal difference in space on this aspect ... any idea on this José? (in case you read this, which I doubt very much) - or maybe Luzi?
LeopoldS

Comparison of Two GaN Transistor Technologies in Broadband Power Amplifiers  ... - 1 views

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    interesting paper for wireless energy transmission ... Duncan have a look ...
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    Yeah, its nice to see some research into semiconductors which aren't silicon. This paper would be useful for us if we wanted to do a study of the efficiency of the DC to microwave conversion systems for SPS.
LeopoldS

Cosmic Log - Copter sets a laser-powered record - 2 views

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    next step taken .... after they won the power beaming challenge ... fantastic team!
LeopoldS

Surfaces that Keep the Ice Away - Technology Review - 1 views

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    probably not of much use for space but still ....
LeopoldS

Access : Coherent terahertz control of antiferromagnetic spin waves : Nature Photonics - 1 views

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    terahertz lasers controling the spin of electrons ....
Juxi Leitner

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy - 4 views

  • He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls. Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. Hotta says that performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle), the phonon doesn't travel across the intermediate ions so there is no heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without traveling across the intervening space.
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    wonder if we can use that to power a moon base .... or on-board a SBSP satellite
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    will still have to read the actual article but am a bit sceptic if this interpretation really will hold ... what are our fundamental physicists saying about this?
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    I am not the physicist but I thought it might be interesting, from a space security point-of-view
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    Yes it seems really interesting and opens new possibilities. However this technology review article is not very good and the guy uses terms which have a precise meaning (like teleportation), which is different from the word we know... Quantum teleportation is what we use for designing quantum computers, but we are quite far from any practical applications. This energy teleportation will allow new scheme involving energy (if it is experimentally confirmed) which is very nice. However it seems this occurs in an entangled many-body system, which the only macroscopic one I know is a bose-eintein condensate (BEC). So it would mean infuse energy in the BEC by doing a measurement on one of the atom and extract it few millimeters away by doing a measurement on another atom. very far from any long distance power transmission...
LeopoldS

OhGizmo! » Archive » [CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity F... - 3 views

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    this is what I call wireless power transmission really applied ...!
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    this is amazing !
LeopoldS

Solar Plant in Space Gets Go-Ahead - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com - 2 views

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    here we go - a quite significant step in getting SPS off the ground !!
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