Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

So as I stated in my earlier post, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had a segment that touched on the use of Steam Power.

This struck a chord with me.

Over the last few years my buddy Jeremy and I have become more and more interested in hybrids, solar, wind and other alternative energy sources. So much so that I often times talk my wife, Gina's ear off about my own personal theories on energy related stuff.

So here is the base premise to my personal theory on what is messed up with energy production.

"Coal, Oil, and Nuclear are nothing more than steam engines."

All of them create heat using various forms of fuel to create steam and drive turbines that in turn create power.

So when Jon Stewart started making fun of the fact that the Oil is running out and that we need to start using steam power, it made me chuckle. Because, most of the energy that is produced these days is actually steam based.

Power generation for the last thirty years has been the continual refinement of big steam based turbine energy plants.

Now, I realize that I don't have any sort of engineering degree, but I do have a love for applied physics. I realize that calling them "Steam Based Electricity Generation" is probably a little too well naive, and I should probably call it something more like "Turbine Based Electricity Generation".

Of course once you classify electricty generation like that, it means lumping in Wind Turbines and HydroElectric Dams. I mean those are forms of power generation that involve the spinning of turbines to create electricity.

Other forms of electricity generation of course are Chemical (being like Fuel Cells) or photovoltaic (ie Solar Panels).

I think I might be missing the point of my overall theory, so let's try to pull it back.

The majority of electricity production in America comes from Coal fueled energy plants. While as our President is fond of pointing out the majority of electricity production in France comes from Nuclear fueled energy plants. (Mind you France is smaller than TX, so not like it wouldn't be hard to build a bunch of nuclear plants to power TX, just means no one wants one in their backyard.)

It still comes down to the fact that whether it is Coal or Nuclear, it is still a form of a steam based turbine.

This seams very freaking weird to me. Why is it in 30 years that we haven't made greater advances in electricity generation?

The simple answer is that fossil fuels have been more the most economical fuel, in terms of $$$. Not necessarily in terms of energy efficiency or the environment. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for clean power generation.

I learned today while doing a little research for this post that coal fueled energy plants actually expell (on average) more radiation than a properly running nuclear energy plant. (article)

That was very suprising, yet very understandable. Coal is dug up out of the ground, so is uranium. Therefore burning stuff you dug up out of the ground is likely to contain other shit from out of the ground. And burning stuff almost always releases other stuff into the environment.

Ok, so back to my point. Why is it that our energy generation technologies still focus mainly around a steam based turbine?

Is it because we know how to build them?

Is it because the turbines are easy to build?

Why?

I have read about photovoltaic stuff over the years and the production of those cells utilizes toxic chemicals which means they aren't very enviromentally friendly. Not to mention the cost of their production has kept them from being deployed on a massive scale. There has been some good news recently that some research groups have devised new methods to produce solar panels. (Article)

I guess I am just suprised really that as a world we are just now begining to make the necessary refinements to alternative/renewable fuel technologies that will get us away from trying to figure out new ways to heat up water and make steam to run a turbine.

Solar panels/cells are a great idea, free power from the sun. Then everyone throws out, "What happens at night?"

Two schools of thought, both of which I think are needed to achieve success.

1. Store excess power that is generated for use at night.
I read some articles recently that talked about using the excess electric to pump water upwards, thus storing it as "kinetic" energy, so that when night falls the water can be run through a turbine as it is allowed to release that stored kinetic energy downstream. I can't say that I am in favor of this idea too much, it seems like this would be highly inefficient.

Another article I read a while back about a device you could buy allowing you to buy electricity at night, during the off-peak, when demand is lower and presumably cheaper. However, the way I see it is, you now have a "Whole House UPS" why not fill it with power from solar panels on the roof. Store that power generated during the day for use at night. Since the unites are intended for homes anyway, why not use it at that distributed level to store power generated at the home level.

2. Use another form of energy generation at night.
By using Solar during the day you can offload the need to generate energy by a fossil or nuclear energy plant, and use those energy plants at night. Since the sun has gone down that means that it should be cooler out. And thus the need for power sucking air conditioners to be going full blast will go down at night, leveling out and providing us with a balance of night and day power generation.

Recent stuff I have read about wind generation has brought up similar question. "So what do we do when there isn't enough wind?"

Ok, same deal in my opinion. Store it for later.

I have rambled on a bit here, so again I want to bring back the main point.

Why does the majority of our electricity generation center around steam based turbines?

Simple answer, cost of doing business.

A related debate is on the lips of all Americans now that the price of regular unleaded at the pumps is hovering around $3.00 a gallon.

"Why are we still using gasoline?"

I am a huge fan of the hybrid cars, but those are still just a stop-gap. This gives us the segway to Fuel Cells.

For those that don't know, Fuel Cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction.

The simplistic view is that when you combine hydrogen and oxygen together you get a release of energy (electricity) and water.

NASA has been using fuel cells (and solar cells) for quite some time to power space craft (and stations). There isn't an Exxon nearby so filling up the space shuttle because the needle is almost on 'E' isn't an option.

So why don't we generate electricity on an industrial scale this same way?

Again, cost of doing business. Fuel Cell technology these days still utilizes lots of precious metals (platinum being one of main metals).

However, there was a good article I read in I believe Business 2.0 (hardcopy, sorry) it was discussing the problems that the production of Hydrogen for use in Fuel Cell cars and industrial energy generation faces. It brought up the very good point that you can create hydrogen from water (remember, H20) by applying an electrical current.

But of course you are about to ask "Aren't we trying to make electricity? Why would I use electricty, to make hydrogen, to just make electricity again? That can't be efficient?"

Well, of course it isn't. However, we go back to that issue of "storing" energy. The article proposed this scenario.

Use Solar and Wind energy to convert water into hydrogen. Store the hydrogen for later. This would allow us to fill-up our Fuel-Cell based cars and at night we could use the hydrogen to produce electricity (and water).

That concept seems like the best one to me. You get very clean energy, that is pretty darn renewable. Sure you lose a energy in the transfer from water to hydrogen and back. But you started that process using Solar and Wind, completley renewable energy.

As a closing note, what I am kind of curious about is. If you can apply pressure to a quartz crystal and get a small electrical charge, can that effect be exploited on an industrial scale? Will we one day be mining and searching for Dilithium Crystals?

Note: I did not mention a few other methods, like wave energy, or a recently Business 2.0 article mention that was name like the "Tower of Power" in which air is heated using the sun and drives a turbine. One of the wave energy ones I read about actually uses the wave energy to compress a 'bladder' of air that in turn drives a turbine.

So the wife was pushing me to get out of the house and awa from my computer.

So I decided to embrace my inner geek. I had been trying out the Magic scene. However, the monetary investment in that game as a whole is a huge turn off. And unfortunately my trips to Dallas have frequently been falling on the days that would allow me to play a 'draft' game of Magic that is more about skill (and luck) vs how much $$$ you spend on your deck.

I haven't given up on the whole Magic scene, but definitel have not had the opportunity to pursue it as much as I would like to have.

So about the same time I also started looking for a group to join and play some D&D.

Since Gina's days off alternate every other weekend, I figured a Saturday or Sunday game would be good. However, our games have usually been Friday nights. Which are not quite a convenient as a saturday afternoon. We start at 7pm and end around 10 or 11pm.

We have lost 2 members of 7, but gained 3 more this past sessions, so we are actually +1 total. But tonight we were missing two folks.

I am a half-orc druid. To be quite honest my character sucks balls. I don't have any extremely excellent stats, and to some degree I have a few that are down right awful.

At the start of the party we had no healers. So I opted to play druid. Be a bit of a healer and eventually a powerful caster/fighter. However, in the meantime I suck. I can't fight really, and I don't have enough healing spells to really keep the party going past one or two combat encounters.

Mind you, our DM is a little twisted. He keeps throwing some tough stuff at us. So after combat we usually have to rest, heal and regain spells.

Anyway, I am now level 2. This will make things a little better, another couple of spells. And I think I get a new ability. At level 3 I get a new feat, that I am looking forward to.

So I have embraced my inner geek. I need to buy some newer D&D books though, im using version like 2.x.