Comments for PG&E Signs Deal for a New Kind of Solar Plant at http://www.ecogeek.org , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.ecogeek.org Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:31:10 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/768#comment-3459 Concentrating solar and conc. PV have massive potential to provide peak loads for aircon, however building better insulated, shaded and white houses will reduce the need for energy in the first place. Conservation and efficiency must come first, but we will still need renewable energy and lots of it. The benefits of PV is its modular, and could one day come as part of the aircon unit itself removing the need for transmission and losses associated with (~10%) - Matt Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:44:58 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/768#comment-3414 I work for the company, and this is the first I've heard of this. I'm both proud and excited. Every megawatt that we can get for California is needed. As I write this today, it is 111 degrees F. All those air-conditioning units will be running. I'm glad that the company is under leadership that values the renewable sources of energy it has at its disposal. Currently, PG&E gets a majority of its power from hydroelectric, wind, and thermal sources. The company is also actively seeking sources of power from the kinetic energy in waves and tidal flow. - Nick Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:49:03 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/768#comment-3408 Again we sacrifice space and money to produce tiny amounts of 'token' energy from a source that is FAR from perfected. I agree every little bit helps but I can't endorse these solar and wind farms. Wind occupying hundreds of thousands of acres with noisy turbines, solar's exotic materials and production methods have a remarkably inefficient and costly ($$$ and environmental) production quotient. Yet in 20 years when this technology is actually viable we will be tearing down all these useless PR stunt plants. 5MW? Honestly... I challenge anyone to investigate the carbon output involved in manufacturing photovoltaics, and see how many YEARS you could run a super efficient 50MW gas turbine. We have not perfected solar, we HAVE perfected diesel, gas turbines, LPG TPPs, etc. While I agree development should continue on emergent technologies, I think we should use what we know works. Often times because the methods and techniques behind these new technologies just haven't had the 100 years combustion deveopment and refinement, you'll find the stuff that already exists is more efficient. Give it 20 years and we'll either have very efficient solar or some type of fusion. However, now, we do have nuclear, which will produce 400-1200MW PER REACTOR with no output other than steam and spent nuclear fuel which even then is derived from natural stores of Uranium. - Keiichi Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:54:27 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/768#comment-3400 I met one of the engineers from GreenVolts at a recent bay area networking event. They won the CA cleantech Open entrepreneurial event in the RE category last year (which I also entered, to no avail)... looks like they have a promising spin on technology! - David Anderson Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:48:48 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/768#comment-3399 they also seriously need to go green, and cut down on those major future polluter like nuclear stations.... they leave tremendous amount of waste that's costly. And the bottom line is they don't go away, they just get buried. - Shu Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:45:47 +0100