[Server-sky] [ExI] Power sats again

Thu Jul 18 03:41:54 UTC 2013

I wouldn't take Google's brag page numbers at face value. I know how much
some of the numbers were skewed for the data center I was at, even those
numbers discussed within the company, let alone posted.

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 6:57 PM, tme at asteroidinitiatives.com <
tme at asteroidinitiatives.com> wrote:

> **
>
>
>
>
> On July 17, 2013 at 7:14 PM Michael Turner <
> michael.eugene.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "The problem with hydro in most places is that it is remote, or small,
> > or destructive of habitat, and usually all three."
> >
> > First, something that keeps getting lost in this discussion is that I
> > propose beaming power up from Earth through a microwave relay back
> > down to Earth. Surely, if it's very efficient sky-to-Earth, it's no
> > less efficient Earth-to-sky?
>
>
>
> I don't think so, for two reasons. One, the problem is not really
> symmetric. Antennas are more expensive per square meter up there than down
> here (at least now, and for quite some time to come). So, you should expect
> smaller antennas up there radiating to big farms down here. The reverse is
> not as efficient, unless the uplink array is phase coherent (so it acts
> like one large antenna), which is expensive AND subject to atmospheric
> phase changes (which you don't care about in downlink).
>
>
>
> It is conceivable that you could do a phased array with adaptive phase
> corrections, and deliver all your RF to a small spot up there, but it will
> be neither easy nor cheap, and it might not work well under all atmospheric
> conditions. This would be for uplink only, the downlink wouldn't care.
>
>
>
> BUT, that is only the one way problem. The real problem is that you want
> to go _two way_.  That multiplies your efficiencies (squares them if they
> are equal up link and down link), plus another factor for whatever link
> losses you have up there. (For example, if you were 50 % efficient going
> up, and 50% going down, the total efficiency is 25%; 25% is definitely less
> than 50%, and that's before you account for losses up there.)
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Marshall Eubanks
>
>
>  I really don't want people to lose track> of the basic idea, but (thanks,
> Charles) maybe that's gotten drowned
> > out by a misunderstanding of what I saying in the first place.
> >
> > Second, "small" and "destructive of habitat" might not be mutually
> > exclusive, but in general, smaller is far less destructive. I believe
> > the Sierra Club's official position on hydro is: small is good, big is
> > bad.
> >
> > Finally, I'm trying to address "remote." Forget big dams, for the
> > moment. If you have lots of (small) hydro in a remote area, and
> > collect it over wires to a microwave transmission and beam it to
> > space, for distribution to markets, that takes us back to my question
> > of definition: since hydro power is solar, in effect, could relaying
> > that power through orbit be considered a kind of SSP?
> >
> > And if the capital costs of starting with SSP as microwave /relays/
> > are much lower, instead of with huge PV arrays in orbit, well,
> > wouldn't that be the place to start with SSP?
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Michael Turner
> >
> > Project Persephone
> > K-1 bldg 3F
> > 7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
> > Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
> > Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
> > Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
> > Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
> > turner at projectpersephone.org
> > http://www.projectpersephone.org/
> >
> > "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
> > together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com>
> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 07:40:04AM -0700, Charles Radley wrote:
> > >> BPA argued that this was unreasonable,  however, in 2011 the FERC
> ruled
> > >> against BPA and forced them to buy all the wind power even when there
> > >> was not enough demand for it.   BPA wanted the right to turn off the
> > >> wind turbines, but FERC ruled that BPA does not have the right to do
> that.
> > >
> > > Bitcoin smacks of busywork to me, but the idea of turning excess
> > > energy into more valuable outputs is a great idea.  Google turns
> > > a kilowatt hour of $0.05 wholesale electricity into $20 of bottom
> > > line results.  Shipping raw industrial inputs is silly when you can
> > > convert them into high value products with low shipping expense.
> > > Even undeveloped countries ship sugar, not sugar cane.
> > >
> > > The usual problem with conversion of erratic sources is the capital
> > > cost of the conversion tools.  Most rapidly-depreciating high tech
> > > stuff does not want to be idle 90% of the time.  Water pumps are
> > > examples of low tech stuff with long lifetimes that can stand to
> > > be idle.  But most places where water needs pumping are a long
> > > way away, at the end of expensive power lines.  We can only pump
> > > so much water until we run out of useful places to store it.  The
> > > problem with hydro in most places is that it is remote, or small,
> > > or destructive of habitat, and usually all three.
> > >
> > > Regards wind energy, we have lots of power engineers here in the
> > > Pacific Northwet and I sometimes attend their meetings.  We also
> > > have a lot of innumerate greenoids who can't tell a watt from a
> > > joule.  The interactions are "interesting".
> > >
> > > Here is a plot I made of 2012's 5 minute averages of regional
> > > power demand horizontally, available wind power vertically:
> > > http://keithl.com/wind2a.png
> > >
> > > A perfect power source would be a diagonal line that matches
> > > instantaneous production to instantaneous demand.  Honest
> > > accounting would measure power sources by their 80% reliable
> > > availability, which for wind power is less than 2% of the
> > > nameplate rating.  If your car or house or computer was
> > > randomly unusable more than 20% of the time, you would scrap
> > > them.
> > >
> > > Windfarms in the Northwest are touted as if they produce 4.7GW
> > > all the time.  The maximum they ever produced was 4.37GW for
> > > one five minute period in 2012, with an average of 2.18 GW
> > > and a mode (50% availability) of less than 0.74 GW.  The
> > > availability is fractal, not even as good as random.
> > >
> > > Electricity is valuable to customers because the power is
> > > reliable, standardized, meterable, and adjustable to varying
> > > demand.  An energy source's value diminishes as it loses those
> > > qualities.
> > >
> > > At the other end of the energy usability scale is one 3600 MT
> > > nuclear explosion per year.  That produces 4.2 trillion
> > > kilowatt hours per year of energy, about the same as annual
> > > US electric generation, but in a lethally inconvenient form.
> > >
> > > At some point, a technology crosses over from "useful power"
> > > to "extreme nuisance", and without good rapid-response high
> > > capacity power storage ( http://launchloop.com/PowerLoop ) we
> > > gotta just grin and adapt to the bad decisions made by others.
> > > As suboptimal as the results are, they would be far worse if
> > > the decision-makers were also in charge of cleaning up the
> > > messes they make.
> > >
> > > This email is too long already.  In the next email I will
> > > discuss what this means for Server Sky, and a presentation I
> > > will make in two weeks that is difficult to design because
> > > of these problems.
> > >
> > > Keith
> > >
> > > --
> > > Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > http://lists.server-sky.com/mailman/listinfo/server-sky
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