solar notebook

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Check out these two quotes, both in terms the amount of energy stored in a portable battery pack. The first is from an article in the New York Times on the generation of solar thermal:

"The idea is to capture the sun's heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a thermos of coffee and a laptop computer's battery store about the same amount of energy, bold [said] said John S. O'Donnell, CEO of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $ 5 and the laptop battery $ 150 said, "that's why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form."

The second is the IEEE Spectrum article by Christina Lampe-Onnerud, President of the lithium ion battery Boston energy supplier, "She ruffled a few feathers ... saying in a speech that the energy density Lithium ion batteries in laptops, the 40 watt-hours per kilogram, and was uncomfortably close to that of its basic hand grenade. bold type [Said] that the density, the amount of energy stored in a certain mass, had been skyrocketing as manufacturers competed fiercely for a growing market. "

So here we have two ways of looking at energy storage in a battery pack: A model is a thermos of hot coffee-and-fuzzy, while the other is extremely nasty, violent hand. How can they be accurate models of a laptop battery?

The two systems using energy to make two very different things. Ausra's chief executive is quite derogatory about our knowledge of how to store electricity, but it is much easier to store energy at a relatively low temperature. On the other hand, it is difficult to get any power point at low temperature. In addition, stored energy as heat can only be done to do the job through a heat engine (you need a sink too cold), and is limited to the Carnot efficiency. A battery, by contrast, stores chemical energy and is not limited by Carnot efficiency.

The analogy grenade hand makes the point that it is an amount of energy could be confined to your lap, however, can be extremely destructive - especially when in the sensitive environment of a turn instead of a battlefield. The difference here is the rate at which energy is released. A grenade of chemistry is such that the total amount energy is not huge, which can cause as much harm because of the speed at which it is released. During normal operation, the laptop battery releases energy slowly. In practical terms, a laptop battery will not go boom like a grenade, because a grenade is designed to release their energy almost instantaneously. So that analogy is a bit inaccurate as well.

So, two very different models of a common storage device energy. We are entering a time when there is no one size fits all, all the energy storage, and we must adapt our energy sources - and their storage - Very carefully for your application in order to squeeze maximum efficiency in a cost-effective manner.

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Two very different models of a laptop battery, which would you like.

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