New Power generation Ideas and future Colony Adons or adins

[pad69]

Alright some thoughts I have had about power generation. I know some of you like the idea of nuclear some like solar some like wind but no one has considered a combination of several different ideas used together or as new idea.
I had a Idea long ago and read some Ideas and learned of some existing technology we don't use. One Idea is to anchor a massive solar array in geosynchronous orbit and convert the solar electric power into laser power. Turn the laser on a ground target which heats up water to steam same as nuclear power does now except we use the laser rather than nuclear fuel. The solar is on always and the orbit is easy since it is stationary. Also a supplement to the laser due to dust storms could be the array can also be used to transmit microwaves to the microwave collector and converted directly to useful power. We already use solar in today's deserts the lasers are replaced with the use of mirrors to track and concentrate the sun and solar power in the form of heat like a magnifying glass from the ground and they are making some more of these power plants right now. We could just use massive mirrors in space to generate the same thing to do the same job. Microwave power is a little dangerous to biological life forms so it would need an isolated operational area by the receiver but it is not radioactive. The Microwave works the same principle as a radio transmitter and receiver except the receiver doesn't convert the signal to sound so you can "Rock and Roll" but it is converted to electrical energy to use for power. You do get some loss with microwave due to hysteresis but that should be low and the heat can be used in some fashion.
Maybe some of these ideas could be used to purchase or make before the colony is set up or goal to do when the colony can afford it. Maybe the colony invents it. Maybe the colony makes it and uses it.

There future technologies like fusion power, singularity power, and permanent energized particle power.


Oh well just some thoughts for everyone to play with so have fun.

[Risugami]

That does sound like a possibility on Mars, what with it's thin atmosphere not diffusing too much of the beam. But I'd imagine during a dust storm it would be ineffective.

[thedubman]

Thats some real nice sounding ideas,.. maybe for the sim for a system that needs large scale power (like a unmanned far off mining outpost) it could be said thats how it gets powered rather than simulating the process. ie a cheap way of getting over a power problem ie 'that is powered that way' in its description.. but saying that Im allways a advocate for 'keeping it real' for MCO

[Hyper]

I think the power problem will be easily solved. Two things we can get on Mars is alcohol from black algae and Mars has chlorides we can extract so a alcohol/chlorine fuel cell will be the cheapest and easiest to sustain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

Other than that mini nukes using thorium will probably be around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

as always tho we have solar panels as a backup for trickle charging things at almost no cost.

[thedubman]

Sounds great Hyper- will algae farms be at bio hab? prob get some medical based materials from alage production also?

Mini nukes sound like a whole mission to me. Collection, installation, remote repair/ removal if they go wrong/leak- danger of rad poisoning.. (rad med cures?)

[pad69]

I think the power problem will be easily solved. Two things we can get on Mars is alcohol from black algae and Mars has chlorides we can extract so a alcohol/chlorine fuel cell will be the cheapest and easiest to sustain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

Other than that mini nukes using thorium will probably be around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

as always tho we have solar panels as a backup for trickle charging things at almost no cost.

True true but I think the nuke with thorium will be the cheapest for beginnings but I thought some of the other ideas could be considered just as game advances as in future type of alternatives. I am just having some fun with other ideas. 

[pad69]

By the way here on earth we have used and are using multiple ways to generate electrical power. chemical, wood, coal, oil, nuclear, solar, hydro as in dams waves and shoreline holes using the power of waves and most recently hydrogen as in fuel cells. We also have people using bio fuels and just recently using algae to filter of co2 and using it as food and bio fuel because the thought now is algae is what made oil in the first place . They are using the existing smoke stacks to make the algae and converting it to food and oil.

My point is there are many different ways to make electrical power and we use a lot of different ways now and have in ancient past so maybe some choices of a variety for different applications should be available as game choices. I DUNO

Some more food for thought to play with.

[Zaneo]

I agree with pad, i think there should be a bunch of viable choices available, each with there own drawback and advantages.

[profit004]

If we could make solar panels on mars using martian materials I see them as viable... Otherwise probably not..

This array would only produce about 700KW of power on mars:

http://www.wapa.gov/newsroom/images/FtCarsonsolar1.jpg (I put the image as a link since it was kinda HUGE!)

A french rubis class submarine's reactor produces 48,000KW's of power... and will do so for many years without refueling. It we shipped the entire submarine including the torpedoes and exocent SM39 Mines it carries to mars it would only be about the size of ONE of the panels in the picture.

(7M wide by 6M high by 73M long)

At 300,000 USD or so per lb.... which do you think they will ship to mars?


*Smelting metals and the like could easily take a couple hundred KW of power on a decent scale.   IE More than a couple KG's of ore at a time.  On the bright side however, the waste heat from the process could at least keep a major hab complex on mars warm.

(I believe the Alcoa aluminum plant requires 820MW/hour to run)

*Going even smaller... Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.

They are entirely self contained, require no maintenance, and no observation.  You just set them some where and you have power for 40 years. (They recommend burying it to prevent someone from stealing it.)

Will be great for places that do no have an irrational fear of nuclear power but have desperate need of electricity for humanitarian concerns such as Africa.

*And going even smaller are NASA's Stirling reactors, No one knows their final weights and dimensions but from what I have seen they are probably looking at less than 200KG in weight and fit into a space 1M/1M/1M. Course they will only produce 10-40KW... but a still will weigh a lot less than a single solar panel.

I think the power problem will be easily solved. Two things we can get on Mars is alcohol from black algae and Mars has chlorides we can extract so a alcohol/chlorine fuel cell will be the cheapest and easiest to sustain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

Just want to point out, you will need to have about the same surface area of water exposed to sunshine to produce the algae as you would need for solar panels...  and you would need tens of thousands of liters of water too...

Just a quick calc...  400 Watts per meter solar iradiance... 7-10 percent efficiency of capture and conversion... maybe.. Might be lower but I will use 9% efficiency...  1 meter depth to capture most of the sunlight... So that is about 36 watts for 1000 Liters of water.  To produce 40KW of power then will take... 1,111,111 Liters of water.  And that is only heat power...

After converting that inside of a fuel cell at 40 Percent efficiency... you would need.... a 2,777,777 Liter pond covering 2777 Square meters.
Uhh I think that is big but I am really not sure My mind does not work well in meters. I think if you take the square root of the square meters it takes it would allow me to have dimensions... so that would be (I think I am not sure) 53 Meters by 53 meters in size for the pool... Once again I really don't know how big that is...

[Utini]

Couple minor potential issues with the solarsat power scheme: if the colony is at moderate to high latitudes, you'll get a probably unacceptable level of beam spread due to the rectenna being at such oblique angles to the normal of the beam. This is due to the fact that, to be geosynchronous, the sat must orbit the Martian equator, unless the array is so stupendously large as to function as a solar stator. At that point, you'd get issues with tidal forces and increased stationkeeping difficulties. Having dealt with commsats here, dust fade will be an issue, especially if there is entrained water ice with the dust storms. However, you will still suffer less LOS from atmospheric "smear" than you would on Earth. Of course, Bad Things^tm would happen from wandering too deep into the beam. Though, for short periods, wandering into the fringes might actually be beneficial to you, if not the electronics you're carrying around, due to microwave heating. Balance this against shorting and arcing through your electronic systems and it's still contraindicated to infringe on the beam .

[pad69]

I also thought geothermal but Mars shows no activity in its recent history so I guess no geothermal generation.

[profit004]

I also thought geothermal but Mars shows no activity in its recent history so I guess no geothermal generation.

Yeah as far as everyone knows mars is likely to be geologically dead until you get very close to the core.... They believe there might be a small liquid core left.... But no one has the tech to drill 1000KM wells yet.

[Ivanpet]

hey profit I have always like your exactly tehnical details about Mars 

[profit004]

Couple minor potential issues with the solarsat power scheme: if the colony is at moderate to high latitudes, you'll get a probably unacceptable level of beam spread due to the rectenna being at such oblique angles to the normal of the beam. This is due to the fact that, to be geosynchronous, the sat must orbit the Martian equator, unless the array is so stupendously large as to function as a solar stator. At that point, you'd get issues with tidal forces and increased stationkeeping difficulties. Having dealt with commsats here, dust fade will be an issue, especially if there is entrained water ice with the dust storms. However, you will still suffer less LOS from atmospheric "smear" than you would on Earth. Of course, Bad Things^tm would happen from wandering too deep into the beam. Though, for short periods, wandering into the fringes might actually be beneficial to you, if not the electronics you're carrying around, due to microwave heating. Balance this against shorting and arcing through your electronic systems and it's still contraindicated to infringe on the beam .

Actually the beam power would likely be low enough you would not be able to feel it or have it damage electronics, but due to beam dispersal unless we can discover some form of "Maser" or something, the collection area to gather most of a beam would be enormous.... (IE: hundreds of square miles.) Not that it is undoable... I believe if I am recalling right when I looked up the idea when I was playing simcity that the capture array could be mostly open space.

[profit004]

hey profit I have always like your exactly tehnical details about Mars 

LOL, I am only as knowledgeable about mars as Google is...