why are there 2 people in suits?
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Mandatory clothing in our utopian solarpunk society of course
Stock assets to show scale, probably.
Human sacrifices to the Turbine Gods.
Have we even tried powering our turbines with CEO blood?
This is old technology that is more expensive/complicated/maintenance-ey than PV. An economic falacy is that if you have oil/fossils you should use that instead of solar. It's always better to use cheapest energy. Export the fossils, import solar. It is more jobs to have solar as well, and in fact most of the deployment costs are local work/materials (wiring/support structures).
I really like the concentrated solar systems that use molten salt, where rather than heating water directly, molten salt is heated and stored In large insulated tanks and tapped off to a heat exchanger to run the turbines, thus allowing power generation to match demand and continue at a constant rate even when light level very (such as at night).
One interesting idea is to use a concentrated solar system to run an Einstein–Szilard refrigerator, or some other absorption refrigerator cycle.
They can't keep getting away with this!!
Yes, Everything, always turns back to mechanical enginnering.
carcinization but for steam engines instead of crabs
It turns out spinning things is really useful and boiling fluids is a convenient way to spin things.
It's still funny that so much boils down to steampunk with a fake mustache.
boils down to
I see what you did there!
Not enough brass, though
Wait, it's all steampunk?
Always had been.
"I'll try spinning! That's a good trick!"
Wisdom from a Jedi born to bring balance to things.
heat transfer fluid is circulated
solar battery pumps?
Everybody with a college course in Thermodynamics.
Solar thermal is kinda obsolete I thought, now China is churning out PVs for pennies.
Solar thermal has some distinct advantages when you start talking about really big instillations. Especially when considering power storage, molten salt systems can store heat and allow the generators to keep working even at night. Much cheaper than batteries at very large scales.
Thermal solar systems are generally very efficient when the goal is heating something, not just generating power. So say, you want to run an ammonia plant without burning natural gas, or if you want to melt down metals for recycling. There are so many industrial applications where it’s a better way of doing it than using an electric heating element.
But t solar boiler can still be useful in some cases. Where heated water in "solar" on the roof is used immediately for shower etc.
Modern solar into a modern heat pump is gonna be more efficient than heating water. It's also more versatile and convenient, cause it maintains that efficiency when you pull power from the grid at night. And of course lets you use the power for other purposes.
I agree. But installing a waterboiler on a roof right above a shower is a lot simpler and probably still cheaper, for example in a camping hut situation, so off grid
Lots of huts probably have an ac or heater. This could all be the same device, at which point it'd definitely be easier than running the pipes for water and maintaining pumps and a dedicated tank.
Don't see a reason you couldn't have a simple ac window unit that also has a warm water port, which you plug a single cable into going straight to your pannels on the roof.
Edit: And once batteries are more affordable (or if you have a few grand to burn) you can then plug in a battery pack conveniently on the indoors side of your window unit.
The indoors side can just have a few regular outlets you can extension cord around to where you need them.
I mean it seems the more complex solution in deployment for sure, but its design could still have use in low heat industrial uses (sub 250°C, e.g. food prep, textile, sanitation etc.) where it is used heat -> heat rather than heat -> electricity -> heat. Maybe these replace thermal collectors eventually.
But that is not the point of this meme at all, just my thoughts.
IDK, heat pumps are basically multiplying the electricity they use.
Only with small temperature differences, the higher the difference the lower the COP.
For heating I'd guess it can still be relevant. As a means of producing electricity though? Yeah
It all boils down to steam....
At least hydro and wind power are still safe from the boiling water...
Punches below the belt. Right in the photovoltaics.
I wonder if we could kill 2 birds with one stone. Have parabolic solar panels that reflect unabsorbed light to boil water.
You'd just have 2 inefficient power generators
It would be a less efficient boiler (because the 'mirrors' would be much less reflective), and much more expensive (because solar panels -- especially custom-made curved ones -- are much more expensive than mirrors).
Overall, I suppose maybe you could come out ahead if you used very efficient solar panels for it, and that would let you generate slightly more watts per surface area used...
But we really don't need to optimize for surface area in 99% of cases. Almost everywhere solar power is used, space to install panels is abundant, and it would be much cheaper and more effective to just put one or the other of these solar collection methods over a slightly wider area if you want increased production. (And even then, most of the cases where production-per-surface-area is very important are on solar-powered vehicles, and these parabolic sun-tracking mirrors are impractical for use on a moving vehicle.)
wait these could be built with co2 turbines as well, right??
Yes, super critical CO2 turbines can work in such a system. As can sterling engines. Or thermoelectric solid state couples.
Any system that uses a temperature differential to generate power can be used. It’s just a matter of what you care about in a given situation. Upfront cost, mechanical reliability, noise/vibration, and availability of needed components play in to what makes the most sense.
With all the solar mirrors, won't we overhear the sun shooting all that light back?
there's a silencer on its gun, so we probably won't hear much.
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