Happy Birthday

So, I was wondering what's really important on this day?

• I started my voyage around the Sun at about 2 am on 28th feb 1988 and today I've orbited the sun 17 times.
  
• Legaly, I'm an adult from now on! {oh! really }
• The moon circled me about 240 times
• The year was 1988, leap yr, if I'd born a day after....on 29th....Feb...?
• Mom said it rained that day
• India celebrates National Science Day on the 28th February of every year. It is on this day that Sir.CV Raman discovered Raman effect in 1928 and recieved Nobel Prize in 1930 {Physics}.

------------------------------------
Moving on..
I had another big idea...
which can, {I think}
> Revolutionise Solar Cars,
> Generate energy from traffic on roads,
> Efficiently Capture solar energy from the roof of your home
> Can be installed in high-rise buildings.
But first, understand what's a Solar Tower. See the animation below;

Image courtesy: Sandia National Laboratories
Animated by Mridul

See that the ground surface is flat and still we are able to concentrate sunlight, without using any parabolic reflectors etc.
So,
Now imagine a miniature version of this arrangement. Tiny little reflectors {like the heliostats} are mounted on a flexible {say plastic} sheet. These reflectors are mounted in a checked arrangement, just like the chess-board. And we'll use some form of electronics to control the alignment of the reflectors.


Control?
With a digital circuit controlling the alignment of reflectors; just like pixels are controlled in LCD screens; we can 'tell' the reflectors to face the sun and align in such a way that sunlight is focussed on a point in space.
Results? {Imagined ;) }
Visualise a Solar car covered end to end with such a sheet. And we can add a mini tower on the top of vehicle. This tower will act as a collector of sunlight and it will channelise the intense beam of light into the body of car. Then, we can seperate this light-beam into its constituent colours {spectrum}(earlier post) and place solar cells at the blue end and a stirling engine {heat engine} at the red end.

See! we have increased the power of Solar car:
Present Day Solar Car Power = Light+Photovoltaic cells
Our Solar Car Power = [Light+Photovoltaic cells]+[Heat+Stirling Engine] => More power
See the Difference!
Other uses of this idea will be discussed later. Its 4 am now; I'm feelin sleepy. Ceya

Do you like this idea? Any Questions?
Please provide Feedback.
Feel free to do so. Click on "Comments" below

Cost of Pollution

Hello!
A thing always comes to my mind when people say that renewable energy is way too costly than simple fossil fuel energy.
Let us see what exactly you pay, using renewable energy in contrast to conventional fuel energy.
See, in the case of fossil energy,

1. Extraction costs {Fossil fuels are extracted (mined) from deep inside the earth, includes refining cost}

2. Transportation costs {Fuel is transported to power station}

3. Equipment cost {Machines used in the power plant}

4. Transmission costs {Wiring costs plus transformer costs; Electricity comes to our home through wires, of course}

5. Finally; the cost of waste generated; The cost of Pollution {Nobody bothers to include this to your bill but you are paying it anyway; explained below}

And in the case of Renewable Energy (lets take Solar!)

1. Equipment costs {Major one, cost of Solar cells or Solar panels or Solar concentrators; One time cost}

2. Essential Accessories {Batteries, inverters etc.; One time cost plus maintainance costs}

That's All! {Free energy; No wastage; Clean; Pollution free; Less use of Resources; Full control; Flexible & Everything Nice}

What is the cost of pollution all about?
It is nothing but the price it takes to remove Carbon dioxide(Green House Gas) from the atmosphere which is generated as a waste product from the power plants and industries. It is the major contributor to Global Warming and Climate change. Currently, there is no way to remove this gas from the atmosphere, artificially, because the process itself consumes energy {a lot}, the generation of which creates more harm than good! Of course new techniques can be employed which use Solar energy to remove excess CO2 . As this one.

And how you are paying this cost anyway?
All of the 5 steps listed above in the case of fossil fuel energy produce waste carbon dioxide and other polluting substances like particulate matter, Carbon Monoxide, nitrogen & sulfur compounds etc. which are responsible for a host of health problems including Asthma, Hypertension etc. and Carbon monoxide is a well known poisionous gas. Nitrogen & sulfur compounds cause acid rain etc.
So you're paying the cost in terms of increasing medical bills, costlier energy, changing climate etc.
-----------------------
This post just describes an idea. I'm accumulating the data now and a new entry with animation effects is due to be posted soon. So bookmark {add to favourits} this page for future reference.
If you have any questions/comments about this; please comment by clicking on the link below.
Please help Support this idea with some data you find relevant!
Regards,

Wait! But how long?

These days I'm studying some Mathematics. Topics include; Differentiation, Integration, Analytical Geometry etc.
And I'm preparing to apply Math to our discussed idea of Offshore Rig, calculation of collector area, intensity of sunlight at focus, beam width, and cost analysis can be done using Mathematics.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on global climate change among the political leaders. Let's hope something useful comes out!

Last week on Discovery TV channel, researchers told about the major impacts of Global Warming. Slowing or stopping of the Great Atlantic conveyor(circulating warm water in the Atlantic ocean) could mean a catastrophe for life. Entire North European regions will get engulfed in ice & snow and the rest of the regions will get too hot to support life.
Moreover, there are reports of dampening Atlantic Conveyor due to excessive cold water inflow from melting ice in Greenland glaciers. Also, I read somewhere that even if we stop emissions of CO2 now, the climatic changes are irreversible. Something must & must be done. The idea of Off-shore Solar rig comes to the rescue I think.
Please Support me in development of this idea further.

More on this issue at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_surprise

The Benefits

Now the question comes, what are the benefits of generating energy through a off-shore Solar-Rig (see end of page if you don't what it is); well, here are some

i) optimum utilization of space as it’ll not lead to deforestation on land,

ii) oil rig platform technology is very much developed and it’ll help in setting up Solar Rigs easily

iii) old & dried up oil rigs can be used as platform for Solar Rigs and,

iv) such high temperature & power system can be used for hydrogen generation which is fuel of the future.

Any comments?

Energy Collector Design

I've thought of a design for the Energy Collector of my project, 'off-shore solar' (As I'll call it now). Now first, what's an energy collector? Energy Collector is a device which is placed at the focal point of the Concentrator. Sun light can be as intense as around 3000 Suns at this point and temperatures in excess of 5000K

Image courtesy: Sandia National Laboratories & National Renewable Energy Laboratory (SunLab)

Now, think how wonderful it will be if we can take out useful energy from a solar cell without frying it in this intense heat. So, my design of the collector is basically based on this idea. We know that a silicon solar cell can convert only high frequency light into electricity i.e. blue to violet part of the spectrum. Rest of the energy essentially goes waste as heat in solar cells.

But, this is going to change Now!

If we can separate the intense beam of Sunlight into a spectrum like this, then we can safely place a solar cell in the Green to Blue portion of the spectrum and heat collectors can be placed in the Yellow to Red portion.
The results we can obtain using this technique seem to be amazing as the solar cell will work at maximum efficiency with minimal heating and we're also utilizing the heat of the sunlight.

Now the question is how we're going to split the sunlight into parts?

Maybe we can pass the intense beam through a prism or will diffraction work? (I'm not sure about this) or we can maybe... ah... err.... Ya, maybe we can use the way nature makes it (in a rainbow). If you're a researcher or professor or student or anybody knowing about this reading then can you please suggest me somethin..? Thanks very much!!

Suggestions & Comments are invited, thank you for reading.

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.

Explanation:
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.

Comments are invited

A fuel cell car.

The Big Idea

So, How can you convert this beautiful oil-rig into something which is far more beautiful and eco-friendly...?
I will tell you! Just place a large parabolic solar concentrator on the top and derive useful and non-polluting energy from it and what's more, you can even track the sun easily, just lift up'n'down its large four feet to adjust. Imagine!!!
This idea is Copyright © Mridul,

Hi

Today I got another issue of Renewable Energy World Magazine, a bi-monthly dose of fresh new developments in the renewable energy world. And the Amazing thing about it is that it’s Free. Cover story in this issue is ‘How the PV industry manages environmental issues’ and a special report on Global Status of Renewables. My favourite article on Concentrating Photovoltaic

Vogan completed (scroll below)

Tim & Scott Witness test