Lastley I've seen these solar farms where the sunshine is directed at a tower producing a super heated salt solution for the prod of elec.........
anyone know how efficient they are....?
did hear that the oil producers were considering cableing up the planet and then sell that to us instead of oil....mmmmm......dont think so....
but Graphene etc could help make it poss.....
here in Crete elec is totally produce using OIL.....
I think lots of little things could help the planet if those in power were really interested.....back to greed again....
Bummer on the lack of competition - but you're likely right about Germans and panels. The chinese economy is notorious for copying and undercutting, but my understanding from a decade ago was that they were already innovating on solar panels, which is why a prior political scheme to subsidize solar manufacturing here (under the idea that if you could just subsidize it to start, it would become competitive against a place that works for wages at a 10th of ours here and regulatory oversight far less) was so dumb.
Germany is notorious in the US for advertising their engineering and then giving us south american or mexican-made versions (of cars, for example) when they wouldn't dream of owning the trash that they make in lower cost markets. VWs, for example, are utter garbage here - I can say that with too much experience. Apparently, in Germany, they are better (made locally there and look the same as the mexico-made cars that we get). I doubt they're as good as a toyota of the same range, but everything made by VW/Audi is worse here, but delivered with the same stuck up "german engineering" ad copy.
Back to the panels - every panel I've seen in the last decade has been of chinese make. The US manufacturers are out of business or mostly out and I haven't heard of any issues with the panels (they are dirt cheap here - the machine that installs them, a combination of commercial leasing, etc, and securitization of leases - that machine adds huge overhead, but the cheapness of the equipment makes it possible). An example of something they do here is to put together panel packages, get history of your use and then offer a contract to install solar at the same price you're already paying for electricity. The equipment cost is around $6k, but the installed cost with financing is about 4x that. The customers have no clue, all they see is a contract to go to solar generation without a change in their cost of electricity....
...i'm in the weeds, that's not germane to England. The only reason I mention it is that someone with a little bit of foresight here can install for slightly over the $6k level and be economically better off pretty quickly IF they live somewhere favorable. Most open space in the US is favorable enough.
The tower you talk about, I believe those are molten salt type thermal generation plants. There's one in the southwest US and I'm not sure about their efficiency, but I think they were based on the idea that mirrors were cheaper than panels in harvesting the sun's energy, and in theory, the molten salt can be heated and used to generate steam whenever there is demand. I haven't seen any or many more built, and apparently, the energy focused by the mirrors kills birds.
With the right design here, maybe there's some synergy for KFC franchises to fry chickens for free with a power contract!!
(the solar thermal installations were popular here years ago - for hot water. Most of them went into disrepair as it costs me about $12 a month to pay for the natural gas to heat my water. Vacuum tube installations showed up then in rural areas when panels were more expensive, but I think cheap panels have just about killed most of the other small scale solar and wind popularity.
A relative of mine got a 10 kw windmill back in the 1970s when that was trendy, but lives in an area with bad wind (he's deceased now), paid to build a 90 foot tower for the turbine, and was rewarded by a machine that was often broken. It's not enticing to have something that is less than economically feasible (at that time), not turning that often due to wind, and then broken most of the rest of the time with the promise of having to go to the top of a 90 foot tower to fetch it.
He was a bit of a nut and had a separate 3 leg 199 foot tower (the legal limit here before lights are required) to use two way radios for his business before cell phones became cheap. I'm not normal, and I guess my relatives aren't, either.
is far superior and more important than the lb
having driven both a high spec TT and an R8 they are very different cars whether or not they share some parts.
