Fuel from food? The feast is over
November 23rd, 2008 By ARTHUR MAX , Associated Press Writer(AP) -- In future years we may look back at the Great Mexican Tortilla Crisis of 2006 as the time when ethanol lost its vroom. Right or wrong, that was when blame firmly settled on biofuels for the surge in food prices. The diversion of American corn from flour to fuel put the flat corn bread out of reach for Mexico's poorest.
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The dual solar thermal-photovoltaic system will wrest approximately twice as much power from an area as regular solar thermal or photovoltaic energy systems. That will be an important advantage in the upcoming industry of rooftop solar power. Apartment buildings, skyscrapers and industrial buildings all have flat roofs that can accommodate our solar power systems and the greater efficiency of of dual thermal-photovoltaic energy generation systems will make it cost competitive with other generation systems.
There are times when the sun is too strong and excess power that could be generated would overtax the turbine generators. Solar thermal utilities have to aim their solar reflectors away from the power towers to cool them, wasting solar energy and lowering efficiency.
The Vulvox solar system will have a photoelectric component that will continue generating electricity and it will be fed into the grid, even if the collectors are aimed in another direction to cool the power towers.
The Vulvox solar system will generate higher power levels than competing parabolic troughs and solar power towers, while retaining all of the storage capabilities of solar thermal power.
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Sure. ~2% sunlight to biomass is about the best you can expect from macroscopic plants.
From biomass you can make various kinds of fuel depending on processing method and how much you're willing to pay; ethanol, methanol, butanol, DME or synthetic oil. These fuels can be used directly in existing vehicles or with slight modification and they have high enough energy density for applications that really need it(e.g. aircraft)
Because PV cells are expensive as hell and generate electricity(which is not a portable fuel), that forces upon you a new middleman(batteries, electrolysis hydrogen storage fuel cells; whatever).
It's doubtful that PV cells can be ramped up fast enough to make any difference; in France they're going to offer an obscene feed in tarriff of euro 0.45/kWh(commercial buildings), euro 0.33/kWh(residential and ground mounted), euro 0.55/kWh(building integrated); even when the tax payer is guaranteeing a price ~10-20 times the price that nuclear electricity costs at the bus bar from any of their 86 nuclear plants they still only expect capacity to grow to 5400 MW installed by 2020(at ~20% capacity factor that's equivalent to one nuclear plant and one pumped storage plant).
Nuclear power is secure power.
Until you realize that there isn't enough enrichable uranium in the world to last past 2080 if a full conversion were to occur today.
This is relevant only due to the lack of adoption of breeder reactors, which some countries, US included, have outlawed.