Yes, it floats on water, and has a Fresnel lens from the local high school projectionist club, but what about typhoons and lesser gales? No mention of that. Somehow, this bullet point from the Overview page doesn’t seem reassuring:
Floating the system on water reduces the need for expensive supporting structures to protect it from high winds. The lenses submerge in winds above 60km/hr and the water also cools the cells which increases their efficiency.
I see deep water horizons in the future.
Sunengy, Australia partners with Tata Power to build the first floating solar plant in India
Indian trial of a unique Australian solar system will move it towards full production
0.28 scale aluminium prototype
Australian solar power company Sunengy Pty Limited has entered into a partnership with India’s largest integrated private power utility, Tata Power that will allow it build a pilot plant for its low-cost, floating-on-water, solar technology in India by the end of this year.
Sunengy Chairman and Executive Director of Business Development, Peter Wakeman, said that Tata Power, a flagship company of Tata Group, has partnered with Sunengy for its interest in its patented Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology. Mr Wakeman said the deal was significant for the future use of solar globally because it allows Sunengy to demonstrate the practicality of its technology in one of the world’s most promising solar power markets.
The LSA was invented by Phil Connor, Sunengy Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer and a passionate advocate for solar power for 45 years. Mr Connor said that when located on and combined with hydroelectric dams, LSA provides the breakthroughs of reduced cost and ‘on demand’ 24/7 availability that are necessary for solar power to become widely used. The LSA uses traditional Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) technology – a lens and a small area of solar cells that tracks the sun throughout the day, like a sunflower. Floating the LSA on water reduces the need for expensive supporting structures to protect it from high winds. The lenses submerge in bad weather and the water also cools the cells which increases their efficiency and life-span. According to Mr Connor, hydropower supplies 87 percent of the world’s renewable energy and 16 percent of the world’s power but is limited by its water resource. He said an LSA installation could match the power output of a typical hydro dam using less than 10 percent of its surface area and supply an additional six to eight hours of power per day. Modelling by Sunengy shows, for example, that a 240 MW LSA system could increase annual energy generation at the Portuguese hydro plant, Alqueva, by 230%. “LSA effectively turns a dam into a very large battery, offering free solar storage and opportunity for improved water resource management,” Mr Connor said. “LSA needs no heavy materials or huge land acquisitions and is effectively cyclone proof,” he said. “If India uses just one percent of its 30,000 square kilometers of captured water with our system, we can generate power equivalent to 15 large coal-fired power stations.”
Mr Banmali Agrawala, Executive Director, Tata Power said “In our quest to deliver sustainable energy, Tata Power is consistently investing in clean and eco-friendly technologies. We have partnered with Sunengy, Australia for a pilot plant in India, which is concentrated photovoltaic solar technology that floats on water. This nascent technology will be demonstrated in the natural environment; it utilises the water surface for mounting and does not compete with land that can be used for other purposes.”
Mr Wakeman said that the primary market for LSA is the provision of industrial scale electricity via hydropower facilities. Other markets include mining sites as well as villages and remote communities reliant on diesel power generators.
Construction of the pilot plant in India will commence in August 2011. Sunengy plans to establish a larger LSA system in the NSW Hunter Valley in mid 2012 before going into full production.
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I cannot enumerate the reasons why this will not work.
“. . . an LSA installation could match the power output of a typical hydro dam using less than 10 percent of its surface area . . .”
That’s quite a claim — will be interesting to see if the figures bear out.
“Modelling by Sunengy shows…”
That is the first thing that trips my BS alert.
I really get the impression that these things are designed with all the nifty tracking and submerging tricks just so they appeal to the innercity sandal wearers who are happy to lobby the government to subsidise projects which are unlikely to stand up in the real world.
I doubt they expect for a moment that this is going to be viable, it is just a tax milking device.
OT but I am very confused. This graph posted on the Blackboard purports to show global warming. What amazes me is that from 1980 to 1998 there seems to be significant cooling. I thought according to Hansen it was way above anomaly?
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
There is warming from 1998 to 2007 but then it cools again please help LOL
….trust me, the phytoplankton won’t like the competition for sunlight.
It might work if the rotating motors are durable enough and easy to repair or replace. Inexpensive is the key. I wonder if it is inexpensive enough. I don’t like calling it a battery. It obviously ain’t a battery. I’m not sure I can tell the point of such a statement. Anyway, I suspect solar will eventually be adopted in large scale economically, but it will still only be a specialist, never able to meet much of the overall need.
I can just imagine the clutter along the Indian coastline after a bunch of traumatized, and submerged, solar panels come ashore during a tsunami, scything their way inland on the front of the wave.
“effectively cyclone proof” Sort of like effectively unsinkable? And hey… it’s “like a sunflower”
Jeesh.
The water bodies that they will float those arrays on won’t have any waves?
I’m all for these trials as long as my tax dollars aren’t used to pick winners like an addicted gambler.
“It’s the 15th of December 2013, in the news today, the $125 million Sunengy solar power plant at Wivenhoe Dam was smashed to pieces today by debris rushing in with flood waters.”
“In what’s been called a one in a thousand year rainfall event, the dam levels rose from 75% to a critical 245% in just 48 hours.”
“A spokesman for Sunengy blamed the dam operators for opening all the floodgates causing the solar panels to be flushed out. Many panel parts were found 15km down river in numerous Brisbane backyards.”
Anyone who thinks that floating something on the water is the way to protect it from high winds is … well … breathtakingly ignorant of the real world. Submerged or not, waves will rip the carp out of that setup. And any wave will destroy the focusing of the system. What a joke.
It’s a scam to attract investors, it’ll never work. Tata Group should run, not walk, the other way.
w.
Anthony: thank for posting most of my OT postings. My dad was a meteorologist and I know he would be spinning in his grave with this AGW stuff. However this graph of satellite temps from 1980 (used to justify AGW) is very, very telling.
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png.
My bet is that it will also be removed by the person at the blackboard, even after he removed the other one. BTW not necessary to post this if is getting to heavy/irrelevant.
The sea gives and the sea takes. Oh wait Tata group, aha…. nuff said.
That submerging trick … how well does that work against ocean vessels and fauna?
Did they say how they were going to plug this into the grid? Whatever they said, don’t believe it.
Tata Group didn’t get where they are today though altruism. As the Indian government rarely use their own money, is the UN being tapped for development funding for the Indian project?
Can any of the Aussie posters give an idea of just how much Aussie taxpayers money is being poured into the Hunter Valley project?
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 30, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Anyone who thinks that floating something on the water is the way to protect it from high winds is … well … breathtakingly ignorant of the real world.
I can’t wait to see the “kite” effect of that lens when the wind is coming from the opposite direction to the sun.
Tata….hmmmm…now were did I hear that name before? Tata, Tata?
Why is it that the name Pachauri comes up in my mind? And “smutty novel” ?
Precision optics floating on impure water?
They evidentally have never owned a boat and would not have the foggy what I am talking about. ☺
Salt crystals anyone?
Even “fresh” water contains dissolved salts and splashes will result in them coating the photovoltaic cells.
I hesitate to pass judgement on the technical feasibility of the project simply because it looks like their *intent* is to have these built in Hydropower dam reservoirs… this would give easy access for repair, and if they have a bouyancy system that submerges them when the winds pick up, then it’s unlikely that hydropower reservoirs are going to *frequently* have large waves…
OTOH, I have almost zero confidence in the long term ability of this project to generate significant amounts of power… who is going to clean these lenses… and how, when they develop buildup from the things living the water they submerge in? Have these people ever looked at a boat hull under the waterline? It doesn’t take much or take long, either… And not just on top of the focusing lens, but on the actual photovoltaic cells as well… If we build them in the desert someone has to go around periodically and clean them off… it’d seem like it would be a *lot* harder working on cleaning a raft of these things.
This story was well worth posting even on the sole criteria of allowing Anthony to strut his stuff as a subbie.
“Sunengy, with a chance of typhoons”
They don’t come much better than that!
There are many reasons why solar generated energy (I know some will quibble about the word ‘generated’, but solar is no different than water in this respect) is good and beneficial, but transmission is not one of them. It is insanely expensive and wasteful. On the other hand, warming a swimming pool, hot wash water, etc, is an incredibly efficient use of solar energy. Likewise the micro-generation of electricity in calculators, similar electronics, remote communication devices and lights, etc is perfectly justified and market proven. I have several calculators in excess of 25 years that function perfectly with photovoltaics. And the same will work for single buildings, and I suspect as a booster for transmission and communication lines one day.
But the day when it is more than a “feel good” source of transmitted electricity for a city is a very long way away.
micro-lending to produce a micro-bidet
Oh dear!
The lens will last about one week before they are so coated in salt rime that they will be little more than useless.
It is nothing more than a pipe dream money siphoning technique, money goes in one end of the scam and when the scam is found to be unworkable the money has already mysteriously disappeared and the scamsters have come up with other far more fantabulistic ideas.
I have an idea for producing electricity with a magic wand and all I need to for this miracle to work is full funding, lets say a million bucks and ten years, if it doesnt pan out at least I got the million bucks.