Yet another shot at Dense Plasma Focus......
Hm - Well Chrismb, we couldn't cover Kansas because we couldn't have all those Jayhawks moving to Iowa and spilling over into Illinois. (Unless they all spilled to IL.) It seems obvious that we'd have to bury the core. Talk about a make-work project! Need only apply if you bring your own shovel. Our motto is, "Save the top soil."
Aero
Interesting, how much does that usually cost? To cover the roof of a typical house with solar panels.chrismb wrote: If you stick solar panels all over the top of a typical house, you'll get somewhere like 2 to 3kW of electrical power from polycrystalline types, which is around what the house actually uses. But you'd need ~14 Olympic swimming pool's worth of solar plasma to generate the same power! (assuming 30% thermal efficiency to electricity) That's quite a real-estate burden on top of building your house! And that's not counting the containment and power extraction facilities!
Throwing my life away for this whole Fusion mess.
Not as much as you would think if you steal a large fraction of the cost (government subsidy).Robthebob wrote:Interesting, how much does that usually cost? To cover the roof of a typical house with solar panels.chrismb wrote: If you stick solar panels all over the top of a typical house, you'll get somewhere like 2 to 3kW of electrical power from polycrystalline types, which is around what the house actually uses. But you'd need ~14 Olympic swimming pool's worth of solar plasma to generate the same power! (assuming 30% thermal efficiency to electricity) That's quite a real-estate burden on top of building your house! And that's not counting the containment and power extraction facilities!
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
That you should ask - I have been monitoring these prices for a while and figured a few years ago that the cost'd be around 20 years of electricity.Robthebob wrote: Interesting, how much does that usually cost? To cover the roof of a typical house with solar panels.
Given solar panels, then, had a 3 to 5 year warranty I thought "shame", but ... I guess someone else made that self same calculation and you can now buy german made cells (here in UK) with 20 year warranties.
If I felt I was going to stay in my house for 20 years then I would begin, now, to seriously look into a full installation of panels to come off-grid. They are around the 5 euro/watt mark, and I reckon you'd need around 4kW worth to run a house, so that'd be 20,000 euors or so. 1m^2 is about 150W or so, so you'd need 30 or so m^2 roof space.
Is that peak or average?chrismb wrote:That you should ask - I have been monitoring these prices for a while and figured a few years ago that the cost'd be around 20 years of electricity.Robthebob wrote: Interesting, how much does that usually cost? To cover the roof of a typical house with solar panels.
Given solar panels, then, had a 3 to 5 year warranty I thought "shame", but ... I guess someone else made that self same calculation and you can now buy german made cells (here in UK) with 20 year warranties.
If I felt I was going to stay in my house for 20 years then I would begin, now, to seriously look into a full installation of panels to come off-grid. They are around the 5 euro/watt mark, and I reckon you'd need around 4kW worth to run a house, so that'd be 20,000 euors or so. 1m^2 is about 150W or so, so you'd need 30 or so m^2 roof space.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Solar (as the price comes down) is a good match for peak requirements of AC in the US. I can see a day coming when prices are low enough that solar cells will be a building code requirement in houses (almost all) with AC.chrismb wrote:Peak. I reckon a UK house is just fine on 1 to 1.5kW continuous equiv average. Not sure how it'd work in US with air con, but domestic house builders here don't have anything as far sighted as home ac.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.