OU on the BBC: James May's Big Ideas - Power to the People

Quick thought after looking at the light tower idea if you used a satelite dish array and a magnifiying lens you could get more focused heat? (like when we burnt ants with a magnifying glass) I'm not sure if I have explained myself very well but why have they gone for a none focused approach?..

What it was sad about the program, it is the uneccesary comment about the solar mirrors in Spain. Basically, James says how the americans were not be able to build an efficient solar system to capture electricity, but an UNFINISH country like Spain managed to do it.

The lack of respect about Spain and the science they produce is quite obvius, and I think the BBC should revise the whole program and remove comments like this. Do not forget James and BBC that Spain is one of the most advance countries in the world in terms of renewable energies.

Thanks

Petrol from the Sun using the excess CO2 we are creating by using fossil fuels is a great idea as we have plenty of sunny places that are in-hospitable to human settlement but ideally suited to this system. The sun is free all we have to do is make thousands of these devices to produce petrol. Yes the cost could be high but also think of the cost of a new refinery.
This system just goes round and round, remember one day of sun on this planet is equal to all the energy we use in a year!. We do not need to build any new infrastructure to distribute the fuel and all the existing vehicles do not need to be modified nor do we have to manufacture millions of new battery cars, hydrogen cars or any other alternative. That said it could buy us a couple of decades while we slowly change to alternative propulsion systems.
If we think about it hard enough we can split water using this system. We can therefore make our hydrogen economy again using the Sun.
Lets make a start on this as soon as possible before we have to fight for all the very sunny places in the World.

Petrol from the power of the Sun eh? That's great - we can now pollute the planet for free! only the Yanks could think of an idea such as that!

With regards to the space elevator. A thether will be put on a satellite to take an elevator up and down. As space has no gravity surely the pull from the elevator will cause the satellite to fall towards earth and the tether to loose its tension?

The solar concentrator mirrors shown in the last item can indeed be used to generate electricity almost directly - placing a stirling engine at the focus can achieve efficiencies approaching 30-40% (far higher than photovoltaics). It has been estimated that an array of these devices some 100 miles square (NOT 100 sq. miles!) in the SW desert of the USA could supply ALL of that country's electricity needs - a similar set-up in, say, Morocco would do the same for Europe. An even more efficient heat to electricity conversion method has been claimed - so-called "power chips" which are similar to a thermionic vacuum tube ('valves' to anyone long enough in the tooth to remember) but etched on a nanoscale onto a type of silicon chip that makes use of quantum tunneling to allow electrons to jump across a tiny gap when heat is applied - thus producing electric current. Efficiencies above 40% have been claimed for this but with no moving parts. Any heatsource could be used - solar concentration, geothermal or even waste heat from other processes. However, the company responsible for these claims (Borealis group) has gone rather quiet of late and the only government which has so far taken this technology seriously is, ahem, Iceland!

Regarding rewinding the cable for the kite, you need two kites attached to the same bobbin. When one goes up it rewinds the other one.

Mr May,
When will you (and your chums at Top Gear) get your head round the simple fact that using a machine to harness the sun to make petrol to keep your internal combustion engined Porsche (or whatever) is completely bonkers when you could use much the same machine (and the same amount of sunlight) to make electricty that would take you 4 times as far in an electric vehicle?
MW

to LiamJM. My device WEC,
"Utilising Wave Energy" was patented in 1960. Another title is,
"Principle of the Falling Rotating
Weight" Your remark about information from Wikipedia is flawed. Wikipedia and you and me, sit in a huge perpetual motion machine. My device simply taps into this, presumably endless free energy. Perhaps you and Wikipedia have a date when this free energy will be switched off? Does Wikipedia have some dodgy signposts? Best Regards
Tom Shaughnessy

To LiamJm. Don't be so quick in your comment and don't quote others! I did write that HALF of (a due to g) was lost but Half is profit enough. Take longer digestion and you might learn something. Tom Shaughnessy

Does the petrol making machine have the added bonus of scrubbing Co2 from the atmosphere? If so, how effective would it be in this respect in terms of how many we would need to have any significant impact in reducing our over carbon output?
ie: Will enough of these help to halt/reverse runaway Co2 emissions?

Answers on a postcard....

one more thing I have in mind: some of these 'clean' power uses have consequences - you can make micro hurricane with wind mills, tectonic moves with to many geothermal drills,etc. we've already seen what biofuel did to food prices - we have to think about what mass use will do to the earth and people..

few thoughts:
1. sun is shining even when its cloudy(some people don't know it).
2.space elevator is the great idea we just need nanotube carbon wire to withhold the pressure(and it's weight)
3. we can combine renewable energies in GPS - green power stations (sun at day,with wind in the afternoon, and tidal waves at night)
4. we need good efficient batteries (quick to recharge,with good output)
5. we dont need source of power that take more energy in the system,that it's produce (James why didn't you mention that?)
6. there is more wind and candelas 10000ft above, what about plane then?

I may not have caught the full gist of the kite method - as I understood it, the kite soars into the air dragging its cable off the drum, generating electricity as it spins. The kite then drifts back to earth under gravity requiring no expenditure of energy to retrieve it. But how is the cable rewound onto the drum for the next flight?

to continue. My device follows the path of wave energy ie all energy moves in 'wave form' - up-down up-down and so forth. The fastest (speed of light) to the slowest, moves in Undulations. Cause of motion sickness? It is fortunate that your road vehicle and floating vessel moves just so and this can be utilised to propel your vehicle without fuel. Because of this up-down motion
we cannot capture full force of gravity. But half (16.1ft/sec/sec
is profit enough
Take a look at my 8 videos on YouTuber. The link is 'leadtogold'
-mechanics
Tom Shaughnessy

Want another source of free energy? Try the Force of Gravity -
32.2 ft/sec/sec, an acceleration.
The programme with James May was most interesting with its plethora of complicated and sometimes daft concepts. The Salter Duck was not the first WEC
as broadcast. My WEC was patented in 1960. Who did that research?

In all the various debates on power over the last few years no one has mentioned hydro-electric generation - why?
It produces no greenhouse gases, requires no fuel, is not subject to the vagaries of the weather or the diurnal cycle, lakes are generally considered to be environmentally friendly.

the majority of the methods shown are all pritty much untrustworthy--wind gives over,waves dont and fusion is a little short on duration....why didn't anyone discuss geotherm?
drill a hole in the ground,pour in water and out comes steam.now granted,its got to be a rather deep hole to get close to the core so why not drill where the black smokers are as your in a geothermal vent already--totally renewable-when one cools beyond use drill another whilst the last on reheats-insted of drilling on land - drill in the mid ocean trench that saves a whole lot of drilling.getting the power to a land mass is the next "how to"that needs solving.

And leave nuclear power where it is safest - 93 million miles away!

Take hot desert areas next to the sea that is a bit windy, with waves and tides where no one currently lives. Must be hundreds of suitable locations around the planet.

Plant loads of Boeing Stirling Engines and similar CSP units, snakes, wind turbines and wind kites and similar.

Use saltwater as a medium for the csp units, get four bi products - electricity, distilled water, petrol and fertilisers.

Build hightech ecocities with universities and agriculture. Add in algae methods of getting oil.

Result - a sustainable planet. Easy really!

James

A Q.I. programme last night. I say ‘quite interesting’ because it only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of the range of renewable energy technologies that are being developed, and also the enabling technologies needed alongside them. For instance with your hydrogen bike, as you pointed out, the emissions are clean however there are a lot more challenges to overcome before it can compete in all other aspects with the current design.

It would take too long to cover all other RE and related technologies here but to raise couple of points:
Firstly I was surprised that you didn’t mention the battery driven Tesla Roadster, which would have left your HFC bike, and possibly the other bikers standing, with 0-60 in 4secs!, or less, and 240miles on a full charge, which takes, if you have a big enough plug, about 10 minutes, and it costs far less to run (assuming the gov. don’t slap wads of duty on the electricity).
The other point I would like to highlight is your statement that the Sahara could supply all of Europe’s energy (I can’t recall if this was electricity or all energy) but this was somewhat of an understatement. In fact the worlds TOTAL energy consumption is equal to the sunfall on less than 1% (about 0.5%) of the surface of the Sahara. To put it another way, even allowing for only moderate solar capture/conversion efficiencies, the Sahara could supply the WHOLE world with ALL its energy about 20 times over!, I can do the figures for you I you want. There are a number of schemes that have been proposed to take advantage of this huge free energy supply, using technologies such as the solar power tower. One of these schemes is the ‘DESERTEC Concept’ which has been presented to and well received by the European Parliament. This may not be as exciting as Nuclear Fusion but could produce a meaningful contribution to our energy needs in a realistic time scale, i.e. years rather than decades and much of the technology is tried and tested. Lots of info on energy form deserts and DESERTEC can be found at http://www.desertec.org/ or http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/.

Finally, to reiterate my opening point regarding tips of icebergs, I would like to say that that there is enough going on in the RE tech field to devote a whole series to it, not just one programme.

If we want to continue with our current life styles, including traveling the world without destroying it, we can. Most of the solutions are out there, and the rest are not too far behind, we just need to implement them. The main holdups are political will and cash, a few £100Bn should go a long way towards a solution.

However, all said and done, it’s good to see presenters such as yourself supporting the renewable energy agenda.

I had a look at the link suggested by d1dgr16 (13 Oct - 11:21AM) and was intrigued by the statement:

“If he is right, solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and NINE TIMES more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells.”

Top end 3D (multi layer) solar cells made by Spectrolabs have achieved over 40% efficiency (light energy to electric energy) which means that Yuan’s solar cells will be 360% efficient!! There is obviously something wrong with these numbers because if he is right he has probably invented the first perpetual motion machine. (requires a light source better than 28% efficient, which I think may be possible with some lasers).

Have a look at this James:

http://www.katu.com/news/local/28432984.html

I found the episode fascinating because it occurs to me that wave power may solve two pressing problems at once.

I live in Norfolk at the moment where, like many low-lying coastal areas, we are losing huge amounts of land to the sea every year.

As global warming accelerates, it's going to get a lot worse.

I'm not a scientist but it occurs to me that the "ducks" and "snakes" shown in the episode would vastly reduce the amount of energy battering our coasts.

At the same time, rather than expensive and passive sea defences made from concrete, wave power devices would generate electricity for the immediate area.

Thus the economics of wave electricity generation must include not just the cost of generating per unit of electricity but also the savings generated by halting the erosion of valuable building and farming land.

I'd hate to see any more of the beautiful coastline around here vanish when there already exists a technology that, imaginatively applied, would save it AND pay for itself.

John Mangan

A great programme tonight James.

I spoke to the Edinburgh university in the 1960's about wave power so they have hung about a bit.

Anyway once we have another way of producing secure energy we then need to keep transport moving.

I think this is simple.
Electricity can be used for propulsion but instead of waiting while batteries are rechanged, present day filling stations are converted to change our discharged batteries for recharged batteries.
The batteries should be of standard sizes so that the change over can be effected with seconds.

Car manufacturers will need to conform to a standard fitting method and position.

So filling stations will sell electricity for transport rather than fossil fuel.
Regards
John Hardy