Sustainment plan?

Question

Sustainment plan?

Answer 1

Solar Electric Grid Plan

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so... Scientific American

How to have 65% solar grid by 2050 and nearly all solar by 2100. At a small fraction of what oil really cost. Then electric cars would be charged on clean energy too.

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/

Green Wombat has several stories on the companies working on solar thermal power plants in California.

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

GABY says solar is unreliable. Not so.

"Solar thermal power plants can store energy during daylight hours and generate power when it's needed. Ausra's power plants collect the sun's energy as heat; Ausra is developing thermal energy storage systems which can store enough heat to run the power plant for up to 20 hours during dark or cloudy periods."

GABY says solar uses too much land. Not so.

"Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

from http://www.ausra.com

Concentrating photovoltaic power plants are viable for this also. They both use parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight. One converts light to electricity, the other uses the heat of the sun.

And other clean energies can add to the grid as distributed energy, including roof top solar panels, wind, waves , geothermal,etc.

We already have about 100 nuclear plants running, so for now, at least, they are part of the mix.

Fuel cells, that run on natural gas, are commercially available for power plants. Heat from the fuel cells is also captured and used.

Much cleaner than burning the gas.

Manure and plant waste from farms is good source of power and eliminates methane that would add to greenhouse gases otherwise.

I was impressed with the following.

"Wild Rose Dairy in Webster Township, WI is home to an innovative renewable energy facility powered by cow manure and other organic waste. The farm is home to 900 dairy cows, and an on-site anaerobic digester creates methane-rich biogas from their waste, which is used to generate 750 kilowatts of electricity per hour—enough to power 600 local homes 24/7."

That's one home for every 1 1/2 cows.

and

"Environmental Power’s Huckabay Ridge is the largest renewable natural gas plant in North America, if not the world. Huckabay Ridge generates methane-rich biogas from manure

and other agricultural waste, conditions it to natural gas standards and distributes it through a commercial pipeline. The purified biogas, called RNG®, is generated by Environmental

Power’s subsidiary, Microgy, and is a branded, renewable, pipeline quality methane product."

A large dairy farm near where I live is also doing this.

Also, photovoltaic prices are coming down and efficiency is going up