November 2, 2007 at 10:20 am
Steve Jones - Editor (11/2/2007)
Sure, I'll edit it down to the cursing, the missed logs, and a few huffing/puffing shots 😛
...and post it on YouTube!
DBA's Gone Wild!
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
November 2, 2007 at 10:31 am
We keep this up and I'll make it really, really scary... I'll take my shirt off
[SHRIEKS]
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
November 2, 2007 at 10:37 am
...for 3.99 a minute of course.....
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
November 2, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hi,
This may sound a bit mad but does anyone know if you could use a parabolic mirror to generate electricty?
I watched an experiment once which was designed to show how the greeks used parabolic mirrors as weapons against invading fleets.
A small satellite dish roughly 4 ft in diameter was covered in Aluminium foil. The dish was angled to catch the sun and a piece of wood ~8" thick was placed at the focal point. It caught fire in a matter of seconds.
I then watched a programme on SETI and it struck me that if a concrete bowl - the bigger the better - was covered in a mirrored surface with a collector placed at the focal point the light would be extremely intense. If this was returned through the centre of the bowl and focused on a ceramic block - to provide a receptor for the energy - immersed in water the energy would surely be enough to boil the water efficiently and produce steam for a standard turbine found in a power station? Some of the electricity could be used to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen and stored for burning during the night or periods of low light intensity to replace/suppliment the light or the gases could be piped to local power stations to be burnt. No CO2 emissions - apart from the concrete of course.
This would seem a relatively cheap and clean way of producing power using exisiting technology particularly in some of the fine desert environments that we lack in England 🙂
K.
PS if you do manage to do this and make millions you read it here first 😉
November 2, 2007 at 10:56 am
How efficient is nuclear after you take into account building and decommissioning over the lifetime of the reactor, and extracting the fuel from the uranium ore? And do we know yet what effect a decommissioned reactor has on the land upon which it stands... how long before that land can be used again?
I'd like to make an informed decision on whether I support nuclear or not, but I think there's "emotional claptrap" on both sides.
John
November 2, 2007 at 10:59 am
Well - the solar panels are designed to CAPTURE (absorb) the energy, not bounce it elsewhere. But - yes- once you get past the costs of the parts, it's a long-lasting renewable energy source.
And - it would even be SOMEWHAT efficient in England (doesn't care so much about the heat part as it does the sunlight part).
Makes you wonder if they need to start designing solar+geothermal solutions....hmm....
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
November 2, 2007 at 11:33 am
The whole package was about $15k - which included hauling out the old system, the oil tank, reworking the ducts, hiring a drill to drill 480ft down and hooking everything up.
Big initial expense - but my electric bill is now between $190 and $245 a month - all heating and cooling. I had friends who were spending 600-800 a month last year on just heating.
Doug
November 2, 2007 at 11:39 am
My well is over 700ft down. Can I just add a couple of pipes & use that?
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
November 2, 2007 at 11:57 am
You'd have to ask the contractor.
Doug
November 2, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Wow! $15k seems pretty reasonable, compared to prices I've seen for solar panels. Of course, geothermal won't run my computer! 🙁
Looks like a combo-system would be needed for complete energy independence, if you can get over the sticker-shock.
November 2, 2007 at 12:11 pm
If you have land, you don't have to go deep. You can go horizontal and get the 500ft in a loop that's 15 ft down. The catch is you need the space to trench 500 ft.
You can focus sunlight and I saw somewhere how there are some solar plants that focus the sun to create tremendous steam. I suppose that could be used to create electricity.
From what I understood with the old nuclear industry, if you could achieve uptimes over a year, then it was profitable despite all the costs. I don't know of any of the land being reused, so that probably hasn't been determined yet. Scheduled refueling/maintenance was every 18 months and so every effort was made at the 4 reactors I'd been a part of, to run them 18 months solid before bringing them down.
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