Forget the 50 mpg carb; this guy has a 80 mpg Mustang

[Bones]

Well Holden, you get it then you don't.

I will say it again.  It is easy to have a collector surface area of 100 sq. ft in an 8 sq. ft area of land.  Not sure what about that you are not understanding.  You even said it yourself.  It is a simple engineering issue.  Nothing more.

Unless you can grasp that simple concept, then we are at an impasse.  I have never stated what the collector area is.  I have never stated I use a collector.  I have never stated anything about how the system works.  You can assume whatever you like.  I am done with it.

I have nothing to prove to you or anyone else.  Your lack of understanding is not my problem.  whether or not you believe me is not my problem either.  If you just have to be right, then so be it.  You are right.  Better?

bones..  at the risk of maybe getting a letter bomb in the mail....

I have upgraded you from nutjob to dangerous bitter nutjob.

I bet your system wouldn't help anyone.   

I know if I exaggerated the case a little I could say that I have come up with several ideas in the past that have made others millions and.. I never seen a cent of it.

What I did was enjoy the fact that others had a good time with some of my ideas.. 

lazs

I could care less if it will help anyone else.  I am more than happy it will help me out.  That is all that matters.  I can be dangerous and have managed to blow open some items during various tests.  I am absolutely bitter.  I enjoy the company of many others that were also considered nutjobs for their ideas that eventually helped mankind.  None of mine will.  That you can be sure of.

You can also add spiteful to the list laz.

[CAP1]

Well Holden, you get it then you dont.

I will say it again.  It is easy to have a collector surface area of 100 sq. ft in an 8 sq. ft area of land.  Not sure what about that you are not understanding.  You even said it yourself/  It is a simple engineering issue.  Nothing more.

Unless you can grasp that simple concept, then we are at an impasse.  I have never stated what the collector area is.  I have never stated I use a collector.  I have never stated anything about how the system works.  You can assume whatever you like.  I am done with it.

I MISSED PARTS OF THIS, BUT I THINK I GET WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY.

holden is saying that you can only harvest (for instance) 10 KW of solar energy per 100 sq. ft.

so by taking and fitting 100 sq. ft of collector into 10 sq. feet, you could then place 9 other collectors of the same capacity, each one collecting 10KW, thus multiplying the amount of energy you can collect.

i think?

[Bones]

Yes CAP1, that is essentially it.

[CAP1]

Yes CAP1, that is essentially it.

now that's effed up though.......

in the other thread, it took a couple posts for me to get the 4.5% to 5% thing...and i understood what you're talking about right off the bat.

 i hope it works for ya.....it would be good. i also wish i could figure out how to do it too. would be nice to convert mom's house to solar, for everything, as she's having serious trouble affording it now......

[Bones]

It was a discussion.  I never said I was doing it.  I have a model that I did that shows how it works.  From that I learned some other things and applied that and from that I learned more, and so on.

The system that will power my home is a combination of technologies, along with a couple of things I created.  I have not found one specific technology that would supply electricity consistently in all conditions.  Does not mean there are not any technologies that would.  Many of the things I simply cannot afford.

So my system ends up being a compromise of sorts.  Although there is a couple of new twists and one totally new concept/invention that makes it all work in such a compact area.  Otherwise, I would be stuck with a 38 to 40 foot parabolic dish.

[SageFIN]

The problem here is that with the sun as the energy source, only the projected solid angle towards the sun matters. So even if a miraculous fractal solar collector had an area of gazillion square meters, it could collect as much energy as it's angular size (as seen from the sun) allows for (i.e. it's projected area). The numbers Holden posted mean basically the same thing.

The following thought experiment might help. Say the sun radiates at the power of P watts (all wavelengths combined). This radiant flux is divided approximately uniformly in all directions. Well then, if we think of an imaginary sphere around the sun then every patch from this sphere receives an amount of power equal to the patch's area divided by the area of the whole sphere, if we approximate that no radiant flux is lost in the interplanetary space. Then if we think of a sphere that has a radius equal to the distance of the earth from the sun, it is clear that the whole of earth receives only some little fraction of P watts in power, equal to the angular size of the earth as seen from the sun divided by the area of the said sphere (a rather huge sphere at that).

Proceeding to an even smaller scale, it is obvious, that a solar collector working at a 100 % efficiency can only ever produce as much power as the projected area of the whole assembly allows for. The only way to get additional energy is to add it in some other form, such as the rays of the sun heating up a substance releasing chemical energy or such.

[Maverick]

I MISSED PARTS OF THIS, BUT I THINK I GET WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY.

holden is saying that you can only harvest (for instance) 10 KW of solar energy per 100 sq. ft.

so by taking and fitting 100 sq. ft of collector into 10 sq. feet, you could then place 9 other collectors of the same capacity, each one collecting 10KW, thus multiplying the amount of energy you can collect.

i think?

Cap1,

What Holden has been saying is this. There is not enough sunshine impacting the area to get the Kw power that bones is claiming to collect.

This is another example. You have a spigot that flows 1 gallon per hour and you need to collect the water. Holden is saying no matter what size or design collector you have you can't collect more than 1 gallon per hour of water from a hose or spigot that flows only 1 gallon per hour.

Bones is saying his gadget with it's increased surface area and design will collect say 10 gallons of water per hour from the same spigot. There is a bit of a disconnect there and both sides of the discussion cannot be correct.

[Bones]

It does not increase the surface area.  I was simply discussing how you could create a 100 sq ft collector and not have to lay it out flat on the ground.  Why that concept is so difficult for people is beyond me.  I cannot take credit for it either.  Not my idea.  I have seen the designs and various implementations of the concept.

There is no disconnect.  Everyone seems to be assuming a system that is 100% solar driven, in a conventional collector or photovoltaic manner.  This is where the problem is.  This is where I can understand why there is a misunderstanding.  You are not familiar with the design nor the concept of the design.  Therefore you cannot begin to toss numbers and formulas at it which would make much sense.

Analogous to calculating the thermal energy in a gallon of gasoline for a car which is only using 1% gasoline to generate motive power and then stating you cannot get 100 miles to the gallon from the gasoline. Hmmm.  A bit wordy.  Maybe the point will stick though.

[SageFIN]

It does not increase the surface area.  I was simply discussing how you could create a 100 sq ft collector and not have to lay it out flat on the ground.  Why that concept is so difficult for people is beyond me.  I cannot take credit for it either.  Not my idea.  I have seen the designs and various implementations of the concept.

Well, this is entirely reasonable. However, one could just construct an elevated flat section of solar panels and it would be just as good.

There is no disconnect.  Everyone seems to be assuming a system that is 100% solar driven, in a conventional collector or photovoltaic manner.  This is where the problem is.  This is where I can understand why there is a misunderstanding.  You are not familiar with the design nor the concept of the design.  Therefore you cannot begin to toss numbers and formulas at it which would make much sense.

Analogous to calculating the thermal energy in a gallon of gasoline for a car which is only using 1% gasoline to generate motive power and then stating you cannot get 100 miles to the gallon from the gasoline. Hmmm.  A bit wordy.  Maybe the point will stick though.

As I stated before, if the system is not 100 % solar powered, then it could get almost any amount of power per square meter. The energy is just introduced in other than solar form. Would you mean something analogous to using a solar collector to heat water and use it to power a turbine as in this solution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_tower

[Bones]

Steam requires an enormous amount of continously supplied thermal energy and the potential for energy loss is high.  Then you have the problem of continuing to supply that thermal energy over night unless you want to use some type of battery storage system as a backup.  Then you have maintenance costs, which can be quite high, due to the corrosive effects in dealing with steam and battery systems.

A steam turbine would be out of the question for personal use.  Far too expensive.

[SageFIN]

Steam requires an enormous amount of continously supplied thermal energy and the potential for energy loss is high.  Then you have the problem of continuing to supply that thermal energy over night unless you want to use some type of battery storage system as a backup.  Then you have maintenance costs, which can be quite high, due to the corrosive effects in dealing with steam and battery systems.

A steam turbine would be out of the question for personal use.  Far too expensive.

I chose my words poorly anyhow. Using a steam turbine with solar power would produce no net gain over the total radiant energy. To get more output than what the sun's radiation affords, the suns rays would have to be used to light up some combustible for example, the chemical energy of which would faciliate the greater power output.

Without knowing the exact details of your system, it is quite impossible to say more about it. The fact however remains that using nothing else but solar radiation it is impossible to get more than the amount of power that the sun radiates over a given projected surface area.

[Bones]

Absolutely true.  You cannot get out more than you put in.  Always been a good rule to go by.

The Sun at approximately the 40 degree latitude, places approximately 1KWH of energy per square meter (about 2280 BTU's for the entire daylight period) to the ground.  It will vary a little during the course of the year.  If it is a thermal system, you have to decide how you are going to convert that to electricity.  There are a number of ways to accomplish that,  The method you chose will dictate how much thermal energy, from the Sun, you will need to provide the electrical power you want.

[Holden McGroin]

Well Holden, you get it then you don't.

I will say it again.  It is easy to have a collector surface area of 100 sq. ft in an 8 sq. ft area of land.  Not sure what about that you are not understanding.  You even said it yourself.  It is a simple engineering issue.  Nothing more.

Unless you can grasp that simple concept, then we are at an impasse.  I have never stated what the collector area is.  I have never stated I use a collector.  I have never stated anything about how the system works.  You can assume whatever you like.  I am done with it.

Sure I can have 100 sq ft in 8 sq ft of land, but It is only the area of the collector perpendicular to the suns rays that count.  That means that for every m2 of are perpendicular to the suns rays, you can only collect 1 KW.  That is all that is avalable.  There is no more.  If I design a system that collects all the energy from the sun Regardless of design I can only collect 1 KW  that is all anyone can get.  It does not matter the design,  there is only 1 KW to collect.

What you said that I first objected to was,

One of my little projects is generating about 3000W@120V in a 10 square foot area.  However, it is a little different than what is commercially available

This is impossible, as there is only 1 KW of sunlight available in a 10 sq ft area.

You claim that you are collecting three times more energy than is available to collect in a 10 sq ft area.

[SD67]

Holden I see what you're getting at but I think you're missing the point. What you state is true IF you are using conventional collection techniques.
What Bones is alluding to is that although the physical size of his apparatus is only 10sq.ft. the effective collector area in his design is 30sq.ft.

[Holden McGroin]

Holden I see what you're getting at but I think you're missing the point. What you state is true IF you are using conventional collection techniques.
What Bones is alluding to is that although the physical size of his apparatus is only 10sq.ft. the effective collector area in his design is 30sq.ft.

What I state is true regardless of collection technique.  There is only so much sun to collect.  It you want more, you must have more area perpendicular to the suns rays.

I suppose if you had a 100 m tower 2 meters wide at the south pole, you could get 200 M2 of collector perpindicular to the suns rays on a small footprint, and then collect 200 KW, assuming 100% efficiency. 

Is that where this collector we are talking about is?

Let see 3 : 1 is this at 71 degrees N latitude?   

Solar 2 in the Mojave is using 4000 acres to get 750MW, in 2010. thats about 35 sq M per KW ... mirrors and sterling cycle.

PV are on the order of 20% efficiency, 40.7% was a laboratory world record last year.

So if PVs are used at 20% efficiency, you get 200W/M2