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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

My blog lacks planes

It is a freaking solar bonanza this week.  By that I mean my god, there is so many solar projects getting announced and discussed.  This post is brought to you by Pandora and this awesome jazz/blues playlist I'm rocking right now, oh yeah and the sun.  Because without that wonderful blackbody fission plant in the sky I wouldn't be able to talk about all this solar news today.

More love for this giant ball of awesome and more after the jump.



So because there were sooo many stories today, I decided to only talk about 3 solar stories because quite frankly there really is a thing as too much green.  The first, and in my opinion most relevant is a story about the recent boom of permits being rushed through to allow solar facilities to develop on state land.  Normally, I would roll my eyes at hailing a project for how much land it used(which is essentially the only way to make a solar plant have a better output) however I am all for the use of land in Arizona, especially the Mojave Desert.   So besides the fact that the development of 7 solar projects will create about 3000 megawatts of power(about 3 small old styled nuclear power plants) on about 7000 acres of land, the government has already taken steps to insure that the companies have to develop as to minimize their environmental impact.  How one minimizes 7000 acres of land usage I am not sure but at least they are trying to make sure they aren't going to cause undue harm onto the wildlife in the Mojave.  O yeah, this is also going to be the largest solar project in the world, which is pretty cool.


The other articles I am going to roll into an interesting discussion.  So Bloomberg is saying that the solar industry is about to begin a period of development never seen in the industry.  Which is good if it also means that some of that money goes into improving the power infrastructure in general.  However with growth of solar industries, a new European crisis brewing. With the exception of Spain and Germany, most of Europe finds themselves to be lacking the sort of solar development that most countries are looking to start.  This is mainly because as every movie we ever watched has shown us, Europe can't even see the sun most of the time.(I am clearly joking by the way)

So what does this have to do with Russia?  Simple, some European scientist wants to wean itself off of Russian gas by building giant solar plants in the Sahara.  Quite frankly I find this whole notion rather amusing.  Your going to switch to a new technology to avoid having to import a good so that way you can import a different(less transmittable) good.  Ehhhh good luck, but I'd figure something else out first.

What if the Sahara solar project doesn't pan out in time and millions take the the streets of England in their outrageously fast cars just to show the cops how pathetic their cars are?  Well meet the new cop car of England.  Yes, that is an BMW, and yes they are now making(diesel) cars for the British.  The models that will be included will be the 5-series, X1, X3 and so many others.  Now seems like an interesting time to make my fall back plan to being an officer of the law in the Queen's Country.

I mean if I had to choose between the charger or a 5-series... I mean my word, those two cars don't even belong in the same sentence unless you happened to say,"Why yes, I got rid of that charger and got myself a brand new spiffy BMW".


Finally, I managed to find another great engineering video on the now retired Lockheed Blackbird Aircraft.
One of the best aircrafts ever made, so many amazing stories and advancements came about solely because of the existence of this aircraft.  If you doubt it, read up about mission stories or the development of this aircraft.  It is worth it.

And on that note, remember to keep the moment positive everyone!

37 comments:

  1. love hearing about the solar projects, just out of curiosity, how many cities could 3000 megawatts power?

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  2. Generally you can see 1 megawatt can power 1000 homes, so 3,000,000. This is of course before you factor in losses, the fact that 3000MW is the peak generation, and whether the power system can use all of this power at the time it is available(they won't usually power down a plant that is already on because a solar plant that hasn't been producing all day suddenly has lots of sunshine. So really you still have to have 3GW of installed capacity to cover the solar farm's bad day.

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  3. Using deserts for solar plants should have been started years ago. It's been talked about for far too long and not implemented fast enough for my liking.

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  4. that plane is SWEET!!!

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  5. Problem with solar is that peak energy in is different than peak energy out. It still needs something else to work with currently to balance out energy quotas.

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  6. I love photos of the sun like that

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  7. Great post and like those sun pics! Theyre beautiful :D

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  8. oooh shiny.

    hydrogen + helium FTW

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  9. My country, Portugal seems to be on a financial crisis, even policemen are getting on strikes, something that rarely happens... if they gave'em bmw's i guess it would be a lot harder to be a thief or a vandal and the policemen would be more satisfied ahah

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  10. Interesting stories. I like the commie museum poster :)

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  11. image gets +1 internets for badassness.

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  12. that blackbird video is just pure awesomeness

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  13. Awesome video man! blackbird ftw.

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  14. Sometimes there can be too much green :D

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  15. dude i'm all for alternative energy stuff

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  16. and without the sun I wouldn't be able to comment on this sweet little post ;) thanks

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  17. the redness of the sun hurt my eyes

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