Bigger And Biggerer
June 30, 2010
When we talk about solar power, we’re not always thinking big. It’s exciting to discover, for example, that there’s actually a species of ocean-bound bacteria that can photosynthesize just like land-based plants, and we’re always hearing about solar-powered devices like solar backpacks that can fit just about anywhere. But sometimes, bigger really is better — at least when we’re talking about megawatts.
At 100 MW, the Shams 1 solar power plant will certainly be producing more power than even the most incredible solar backpack. The plant will be built by Total (a French oil firm) and Abengoa Solar (a Spanish solar firm), and its 768 collectors will eventually cover 2.5 square kilometres. The project is intended to be the first of three, to be followed by Shams 2 and 3, and will take about two years to complete.
Despite being one of the world’s largest producers of oil, the UAE is no stranger to large-scale, headline-grabbing renewable energy projects. The largest of those, Masdar City, will eventually be the home of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), showcasing a variety of renewable energy and energy efficiency-related features.
Like Masdar City, Shams 1’s size provides two main benefits: a critical mass of energy production and, perhaps more importantly, a very public environmental offset to the emirates’ main export. But is it big enough?
When it comes to solar power, it can always get bigger: every day, the Earth receives the equivalent of 174 petawatts of energy from the sun (though over a third is reflected immediately by the upper atmosphere). The UAE are going to need a much, much bigger solar backpack for that one…
Bona Fide Water Power?
May 10, 2010
Generally, when we talk about generating power from water, we’re talking about hydroelectricity, a source of energy that uses the force of water’s movement to turn massive turbines. But what if we could actually derive energy from the water itself?
It’s already the way that plants and some microorganisms feed themselves, through photosynthesis. Sunlight is used as a catalyst to split water into its constituent molecules, with oxygen being released as waste and the remaining CO2 being converted into usable organic compounds. As a result, the fossil fuels that we use every day still ultimately depend on photosynthesis, given that the decaying organisms originally storing that sunlight have since been converted into hydrocarbons.
And all that brings us back to water.
A recent innovation by a team of MIT researchers allowed them to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The result: a ready source of hydrogen that could be used in the production of fuel cells and even liquid fuel.
It’s not the first time that MIT researchers have been able to split water molecules, but it is the first time that they’ve been able to initiate the process without electricity. In this new process, a virus is used to construct a biological “scaffold” that can assemble the nanocomponents necessary to split the water molecule.
Like so many new and exotic energy technologies, MIT’s water-splitting virus is a long way from being able to do its work at an industrial level. Even though the photosynthesizing organisms we’re used to using in our gas tanks are millions of years old, it would be many more years before this particular technology could replace them. We don’t have the technology to create water-powered cars yet, unfortunately.
Still, with more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface covered in water, it’s hard not to be tantalized by the promise that, one day, we might also be able to use it to power our homes and vehicles.
