Counterpoints; Explained
There are some counterpoints regarding my idea (see previous post) of offshore solar power plants. I'll explain them below;
Point 1: It would deprive sunlight to the part of ocean below and will affect marine ecology.
Yes, surely it would block sunrays from entering the ocean below and thereby less oxygen will be generated by undersea plants & phytoplanktons and it would affect marine life, but we can avoid that problem by using this process;
In this process raw material is water (H2O), final product is Hydrogen and by product is Oxygen, means oxygen is generated as a waste in this process much like in trees. We can simply dissolve this oxygen in the sea-water below and avoid the ecological problem.
Now, this reaction works only at high tempreatures which is easily obtainable in solar concentrators, which is exactly what I plan to use.
The hydrogen generated can be used directly in fuel cells or we can use it to generate electricity on-board and then transmit that electricity through undersea cables.
A fuel cell car.
1 comment:
Mridul,
I don't really think that the oil companies would be able to feasibly fit in a solar power concentrator while using it as a oil rig at the same time. Judging from the footprint of the parabolic concentrator, you'd have to cover the entire "effective" flat surface of the rig in order to balance energy capture and ecological impact. But the nature of an oil rig is that it has protruding ends and parts, which probably would make the balancing act unfeasible. Hence, I think that it would only be feasible for them to dismantle the surface of the oil rig before bringing the concentrator onto the surface of the rig.
Additionally, I think that oil rigs don't produce electrical power; they produce oil. As such, the concentrators would concentrate solar power in a form that has to be transportable (perhaps quantizable too?). What form of energy would that be? Perhaps the energy could be converted into hydrogen, through the electrolysis of seawater in the ocean. This would also help the world to convert to hydrogen power. That would also produce oxygen for plants and animals below.
The last thing, however, is the capture of sunlight. By blocking out sunlight, some light energy would not be available to produce not only oxygen but also photosynthetic products for marine life. However, I believe that this is a small problem, assuming that only old oil rigs are replaced with solar power concentrators.
Oh, and by the way, nice fuel cell car. I swear to buy only fuel cell cars. ;)
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