Geothermal Power Cost
Using geothermal to cool solar cells?
Do solar cells work because of a heat differential? If that is so, would it be feasible or cost effective to use geothermal to cool part of the cell, thus boosting the power output of the cell?
There are solar “cells” that use the sun for vapor evaporation and condensation and these do rely on a temperature differential.
Instead of cells being used, (which convert the photon energy of light directly to DC electric power), the solar boils a liquid in a copper or aluminum tube. The tubes are painted black to absorb as much of the sun’s energy as possible and often have glass over the tubes to concentrate the heat even more.
Then the fluid which is either a freon, CO2 or propane is boiled by the sun energy and either goes thru a vapor compression motor (similar to a refigerator compressor run in reverse) and then the fluid is condensed in a cold sink.
Your idea to use geothermal would be an excellent cold sink. Since ground temperature is around 55F in most places and the sun heating the tubes gets around 250F there is enough differential to generate some power. The farther the differential is apart the more the power and efficiency goes up. So of course geothermal at 55F is more differential than air temperature in the shade at 80F.
There is a guy named Minto that designed basically a water wheel that runs purely off the sun’s heat and has no moving parts. It evaporates propane on one side of the big diameter wheel and the vapor condenses on the other side of the wheel and the weight imbalance causes the wheel to turn. Using cold pond water on one half of the wheel makes efficiency go way up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minto_wheel
Solar Power, Wind & Geothermal Cost & ROI Part I of IV
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From the ground up: cutting costs by using geothermal energy.: An article from: Units $9.95 This digital document is an article from Units, published by National Apartment Association on October 1, 2011. The length of the article is 2079 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation DetailsTitle: From the ground up: cutting costs by … |
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Cumulative impacts study of the Geysers KGRA: Public service impacts of geothermal development : staff draft … |