/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3962661

>Someone explain to me why we couldn't just hook solar panels to the top of everything?

For homes, solar panels are fine. But on a utility scale they are too expensive. Solar power towers, aka heliostats, are the only practical utility scale solar solution right now. They use less land, produce uninterrupted power day and night without the use of batteries (via a molten salt heat storage mechanism) and cost less to build and maintain as they use mirrors instead of solar panels.

Spain is building lots of these following a boondoggle where a government subsidized solar boom turned out to be economically unviable once the subsidy was removed.

We're beginning to see them in the US as well, the largest one courtesy of Google.

>>3930480

>Hydrogen could be used to store excess energy and burned as needed. Would be cheaper than batteries

Molten salt boilers are cheaper than either and permit solar towers to provide uninterrupted baseload power in sunny equitorial regions.

>>3921448

>No, it isn't. It's got a variable capacity and without robust battery tech you can't store excess power efficiently.

It appears you're unfamiliar with solar power towers. The mirrors heat not the water boiler, but rather a salt boiler around a water boiler. The molten salt boiler acts as a heat storage battery of sorts, the most efficient known. It keeps the water boiler running overnight for a tiny fraction of what batteries would cost.

>>3485819

>But I'll still keep pushing for nuclear power being our main source of energy in first world countries because I think that it is a more reliable source of energy than solar or wind.

If you don't know what a heliostat is I invite you to research them. They will change your whole view of renewable energy. They produce uninterrupted power, day and night, by the use of thousands of cheap mirrors which track the sun and focus light on a central boiler. The reason it works at night is because the outer boiler holds molten salt, not water. Molten salt is the most efficient 'heat battery' we know of, which is to say it retains thermal energy very well. It's heated to boiling during the day, and that heat lasts overnight, keeping the inner water boiler running and producing electricity right through to when the sun comes up.