Power generation

[AtomicLabMonkey]

http://www.eet.com/at/news/showArtic...cleId=53700939

Under a multiyear Energy Department contract that started in 2004, Stirling Energy Systems will supply Sandia National Laboratories with solar dishes for integration into full-fledged power-generation substations capable of direct connections to the existing U.S. power grid. Right now about 20 EEs, including more than a dozen from Stirling Energy Systems, are working full time at Sandia to create the electrical-control systems to manage these sunshine stations.

If the project succeeds, the DOE predicts that by 2011, Stirling solar-dish farms could be delivering electricity to the grid at costs comparable to traditional electricity sources, thereby reducing the U.S. need for foreign sources of fossil fuels.

There is some hope for solar power after all. Not that DOE can't fall a few years behind their planned schedules (believe me), but it sounds like a good possibility that we'll see this as a large scale means of power generation within 20 years.

[Dean]

Unfortunately, to make a significant impact, I think you have to cover a significant portion of Nevada with them, and by the way, that would require something like 100,000 times as many as have ever been produced....

So don't count on it....

Disclaimer: Any numbers in this post are from some rediculously vague memories I have of reading or hearing something about it at some point, and that may well have been years ago, and/or might be from a fictional TV show, not a factual/scientifc one.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

Originally Posted by Dean

Unfortunately, to make a significant impact, I think you have to cover a significant portion of Nevada with them,

I see no problem with this plan.

[tysonK]

Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey

I see no problem with this plan.

me either, the drive to vegas is boring anyway, you might as well look at solar dishes than nothing at all.