Periodic Dosage Archive 2011-08

Solar Power: Photovoltaic vs Solar Thermal

Been spending few hours geeking about solar power.

There are 2 primary types: photovoltaic and solar thermal. Photovoltaic is the solar panels we are familiar with. i.e. a flat panel that turns sun ray into electricity directly. (e.g. on your calculator or house roof)

Solar thermal is using reflection to direct sun ray into a focal point, which turns into heat, and in turn generates electricity (usually by steam turbine).

Being a efficiency nerd, my question is, which type is more efficient at massive scale?

There are power plants using either types.

Photovoltaic is rather boring looking. You just have lots of flat panels on the ground. The reflection type is more sci-fi. (e.g. death star).

There are varieties of the reflection design. e.g. reflection parabolic troughs, that focus light into a line. The line is typically a thin oil pipe. This type is still boring to look at. You just have lots trough-like structures on the ground. Quite ugly too. Then there's arrays of flat mirrors on the ground that focus light into a high tower. Then there's giant parabolic dish ones -- like a death star -- the most eye-catching. See:

Solar Power Structures

My question about efficiency probably involves too many factors to be specified before one could say “which is more efficient”, but anyone got some comments?

gencdo: Gentle Cherishing Doll

2 persons i like to thank.

Xah Lee Blogs and What You Like to See?

Recently on Google Plus i asked where people know me from and what they like me to post on Google Plus. (See: [https://plus.google.com/112757647855302148298/posts/Fwfcun9zPg4].) One conversation leads to the fact that some people don't know i have webfeed of separate topics. So, here's a Reminder, and a poll.

If many subjects in my blog are not interesting to you, you can subscribe to individual topics, e.g. emacs only, programing only, math only, arts only, etc, at this page: Subscribe to XahLee.org Site Feed.

This blog at http://xahlee.blogspot.com/ is a aggregate of all, but except english vocabulary subject, which you can subscribe at http://wordy-english.blogspot.com/

Am also on [Google Plus https://plus.google.com/112757647855302148298/posts], twitter, facebook. In these places, i post links to new articles, and selected old articles few times a day. Also random chat (mostly on Google Plus).

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Accosted by a Sexy Anonymous

Got this comment the other day:

Anonymous said:

Bro you are a god among. I love you. Meet me and we can have RL sexy times.

Xah Lee said:

r u a sexy anonymous?

Anonymous said:

Perhaps… Why don't you see for yourself? I will be at the corner of W El Camino and W El Monte Ave, at the McDonalds today at 4pm our time. Just so you can find me, I have blonde hair and blue eyes and am 5'11. I will be wearing a white halter top.

See comment at: http://wordy-english.blogspot.com/2011/07/english-writing-style-on-second.html

Am i axing a big opportunity?

Note she mentioned blue eyes and blonde hair. That's my achilles's heel as i've blogged here and there. And she pinpointed the locality, and she might be local. She must've read maybe alot bout me. But i don't know anything about her. Is this a joke? or is she a real fan?

what would you do?

To the sexy anonymous if you are reading this: yeah i still want sex. But what is it you want?