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$2/Watt is their design goal for a medium sized installation. Personally I'm having difficulty imagining the sort of thing that would require less than 10 Watts, but is happy with intermittent power. Unlike large turbines, wind speed in much lower and much more variable right next to the ground. And unlike wind farms, there's no possible redundancy with a system far away where the wind would be blowing. Even with his demo the LED was flickering. With solar power you can see if power will be reliable today.
Wind also tends to be stronger during the day, so using it for lighting doesn't strike me as the most efficient way to go about things.
I also doubt the membrane will last all that long: it's a string that has to be kept under a specific tension, which is undergoing large vibrations. These are all terrible things for reliability.
$2/Watt is their design goal for a medium sized installation. Personally I'm having difficulty imagining the sort of thing that would require less than 10 Watts, but is happy with intermittent power. Unlike large turbines, wind speed in much lower and much more variable right next to the ground. And unlike wind farms, there's no possible redundancy with a system far away where the wind would be blowing. Even with his demo the LED was flickering. With solar power you can see if power will be reliable today.
Wind also tends to be stronger during the day, so using it for lighting doesn't strike me as the most efficient way to go about things.
I also doubt the membrane will last all that long: it's a string that has to be kept under a specific tension, which is undergoing large vibrations. These are all terrible things for reliability.
soylent
Muse
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2007
- Messages
- 968
Kilowatt-hours are like seat-hours at a football stadium. Some are worthless, some are during a big game.
The electrical grid is not a bank where you can store and withdraw electricity. Storing electricity is very expensive, transporting electricity is quite expensive(it's a bigger part of your electricity bill than generation of electricity by a decent margin, at least in Sweden); that makes wind power almost worthless unless you have monstrous quantities of natural gas on the electrical grid waiting to pick up the slack at a moments notice. It's not by accident that Enron, a big natural gas company, was into wind in a major way.
The electrical grid is not a bank where you can store and withdraw electricity. Storing electricity is very expensive, transporting electricity is quite expensive(it's a bigger part of your electricity bill than generation of electricity by a decent margin, at least in Sweden); that makes wind power almost worthless unless you have monstrous quantities of natural gas on the electrical grid waiting to pick up the slack at a moments notice. It's not by accident that Enron, a big natural gas company, was into wind in a major way.
It seems more like a method with (as yet unrevealed) niche applications rather than a revolution. Recharging batteries seems the most likely application. That could be either for constant (but not 100% reliable) low power uses like a remote communication relay, or for higher-power devices with lower duty cycles, such as flashlights and portable power tools. (Without the battery, at 50 Watts or less peak power, you might as well use a hand tool.)
Solar cell technology in a comparable stage of development (that is, prototype) is also pushing into the $2.00 per Watt range.
Respectfully,
Myriad
Solar cell technology in a comparable stage of development (that is, prototype) is also pushing into the $2.00 per Watt range.
Respectfully,
Myriad