RateItAll: The Opinion Network

What is greater than electricity? How can anyone rate it low? Electricity is not an energy source. It is a super way to move energy from one place to another, but I love electricity. How else could I write this?

This is NOT an alternative FUEL!

Solar thermal is by far the most promising alternative. To provide 100 quadrillion BTU of the entire US energy demand, with an efficiency of 11%, an area 246 miles on a side would be required. This area would represent 2.1% of the lower 48 states. To generate the entire US demand for electrical energy, an area 64 miles on a side would suffice. Efficiency of solar thermal is remarkable when compared to green plants with 0.5% conversion efficiency measured in calories and is nearly double that of the best photo voltaic strategies. ----- From sunlight in the southwest, 500 million watts on average is available per square mile or 780,000 watts per acre. At 11% overall land efficiency, 85,800 watts per acre can be produced. A 1 gigawatt plant with 2.8 gigawatts peak output would require 11,655 acres, an area 4.2 miles on a side. This may seem like a large investment in land and equipment, but a 2.3-mile security zone for a nuclear reactor would occupy the same area. The helio-stats would only cover about 50% of the land area placed 40 feet high. These helio-stats will also reduce transpiration to allow otherwise arid land to be suitable for a duel use raising crops. ----- One of many designs, the LUZ trough technology was limited by the performance of a multi-layered sputtered coating on the thermal receiver. This coating is an optical filter which blocks light below near infrared. After high energy (high frequency light) passes through the filter, this light is shifted down in frequency via collisions with molecules and is trapped as low frequency light known as heat. ----- The 390*C limit provided 95% absorption with 17% emission of near infrared as measured at 360*C. This temperature is somewhat below the ideal for the turbine but adequate for power generation. Their receiver was housed in an evacuated glass tube centered in a parabolic trough mirror, which tracked the Sun on a single axis. The area required for the 852, 100 meter long, independent assembles comprising an 80 megawatt (peak) plant is 400 acres which produces a continuous average output of 29 megawatts over the year for a 10.7% total efficiency. The efficiency if based on mirror area rather than land area was about 25%.

The underpinnings of many future drive systems seems to be moving away from archaic mechanical transmission drive systems to electrical systems with simplified or direct drive systems. The source of power seems to be varied, stored, or on board generation from fuel cells, solar, small gas or gasoline engines, or biodiesel. To stigmatize electrical drives as boring or inadequate seems to lack imagination, like that of the big three. It's seems that the source of energy is the question, electricity the given.

Electricity as an alternative fuel? Ummm. No. Electric cars run on half electricity, half fuel. They can't go fast, either. Who wants a V8 Expedition with a little electric engine in it?

Without superconductive material the amount of lost energy in transmission and use is excessive and unsustainable and you have to a primary energy source to manufacture electricity.

How is Electricity an alternative fuel? You need fuel in the first place to generate electricity!