/sci/ - Science & Math

>nextbigfuture

<3

I remember hearing something about this in NBF, but it was about tethered wind generators.

I am intrigued, I vaguely remember hearing about this last year.

wait, what the hell is this?
is it just a big concave mirror that's held alof by balloons

Yeah there was this article a few months back about them.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/stratosolar-for-concentrated-solar.html

Looks promising. But still, LFTR!

>>3684030

Yes, thats the beauty of it!

this is pretty cool
nuka-cola approved

i'd love to see a test installation, very small scale, possibly sub kilowatt, and leave it up there for a year or two as a proof of concept.

i'd be worried about tresses on the light pipe cable thing, especially during very severe weather

>>3684079

The problem is that light-pipe diameter is pretty much fixed. Less than cca 136 m and number of photon reflections becomes too much, and desired 99,5 efficiency would not be achieved.

I wonder if it wont be better to have entire power generation system floating on hydrogen ballons in the stratosphere (including turbines) and stream down only power lines.

>>3684111
bad idea. the infrastructure needed for pretty much any kind of turbine is very _very_ heavy. even braytons (which stratosolar will probably be too cold for) wouldn't be quite that compact or lightweight

>>3684111

maybe. there was this floating atmospheric habitat someone posted here (i think it was Mad Scientist). someone has it?

colonising the atmosphere is the next logical step :)

>>3684122

and what about stirling engines?

>>3684147
> stirling engines
i guess? they aren't that efficient unless you have a massive temperature gradient.
there's also the problem of having very high voltage cables stringing to the ground, those are extremely heavy and hard to handle compared to fiber optics.
stratosolar's got the right idea; keep the heavy stuff on the ground

>>3684147
They have an idea to put PV(AKA SOLAR PANELS) coupled to a powerline, this would scrap the 136m tube requirement.

>cost effective solar
>mfw a lightning strike would fry it
>mfw I do solar installations across the southern USA and know this is a bullshit idea.

>>3684224
that's true, lightning could be problematic
but it seems the light pipe it just that, a light pipe. it could be ground insulated from the rest of the plant.

what kind of installations, residential exclusively or some large scale stuff too?

>>3684224

>mfw a lightning strike would fry it

>2011
>not using lightning protection system
just ground it

>mfw I do solar installations across the southern USA and know this is a bullshit idea.

Why? ah.. afraid of competition are we?

>>3684310

That isn't even close to competition for me.

Convex dome focusing is much better, doesn't require the high altitudes (just clear LOS to the horizon) and can focus so much light down a pipe even from ground level.

Now *THAT* is a competitive tech that almost scares me.

This pie in the sky bullshit isn't going to cut it.

Can only be used up to 60º latitude?
They honestly suggest using a coal plant to make up for the downtime?

Also, the shrouded tether seems like asking for mechanical failure, and they didn't even talk about how upper-atmosphere electric phenomena would affect this thing.

Mostly this seems way over-optimistic, with a lot of potential problems being ignored.