Rain could be a clean way of generating lots of electricity
Rain could be a clean way of generating lots of electricity
In an experiment, one tube produced 440 microwatts. When the researchers used four tubes at once, they could power 12 LEDs for 20 seconds.
Remarkably, I was just reading some old xkcd "What If"s during lunch, when I happened across this one (third question).
tl;dr: at 2012 energy costs (and assuming perfectly efficient turbines), capturing kinetic energy for electricity on a house's footprint in the rainiest place in the US takes about a century to be worth the cost of manufacturing and installing it. That's in the best-case scenario.
Edit: turns out OP's article is about charge separation, not driving turbines.
I can't replicate the findings of that equation even after doing the omitted conversion from ft²×m to L. That said I don't understand what the unit of energy even means from its SI conversion lol, so obviously don’t take my word over that of a rocket scientist.
12 LED's for 20 seconds is bad. The CO2 released just in production and even transporting them to your house will counter this.
Its a cool thought, but this is counter productive.
I can't claim to know the manufacturing but this sounds just like the "The production of EV batteries is worse for the environment than burning fossil fuels" argument that ignores the fact that batteries are reusable
It is the same argument, but you cant even start to compare it. EV emits less than manufacturing, this wont at its current state.
Lets just look at the transportation.
These will probably be manufatured in Asia. Lets just say its not, and its only 20km from your house. How much energy would it take for you to get these with a car, or how much energy would the truck require to get them to the store.
Even if the car/truck is electric, these tubes would never in 100 years generate enough for the product to move to you.
And this is only if its manufactured nearby.
I have no problem with the work these scientists are doing establishing the basic research and proving the principal works. Basic research is the foundation that leads to future large scale projects. However, at this time we are a long LONG way from any large scale practical application of this. The amount of power generated is very VERY small, and that assumes everything goes perfectly.
In a real rain storm dirt could easily block the tubes cutting off the effect and stopping power generation, as an example. This doesn't mean the underlying principal is flawed, but more work will have to be done to make a practical application out of this, now proven, principal.
I wonder if this could be used with existing solar arrays to kind of use the panels as rain collectors to funnel into something like this. Would have the benefit of giving some extra power when solar is weakest.
We already use rain to produce lots of electricity, it's called a hydroelectric dam. I wish people would think before they produced stuff like this.
The article is talking about an entirely different way to generate electricity from water
Others have explained why this is inefficient and useless elsewhere in the thread, I suggest looking at those conversations.
What’s wrong with getting some more out of its kinetic energy?
Unless you are harnessing a box store, factory or warehouse roof you aren't going to have the throughput to generate any really useful amount of energy. Also hydro works best where there is constant flow. So sewers would be a better place if you could solve the solids issue.
That's exactly what hydroelectric dams do.............
At least it's better than solar roadways. I think?
Yes, but you screw up the ecosystems in rivers when you use hydro power.
Yes and the production of millions of tiny plastic tubes to stick everywhere is a wonderful alternative.