Today we have a new Green Prince poised to plunge the western world into a self imposed darkness. This Prince first creates the fiction that Carbon causes climate change, then adds the fable that green energy exists which can dispel this nonexistent problem. The entire range of ‘green solutions’ are all nonsensical. We’ll limit this discussion to just solar cells and batteries, saving bio-fuels and windmills for another time.
The Sun Gives Us Nothing for Free
As alluring as the premise may be, the promise of solar energy is not free. The first solar cell was created in 1883 by Charles Fritts using a sheet of Selenium with thin Gold facings. The Sun radiates approximately 1000 watts per square meter at maximum. The Fritts cell produced 10 watts per square meter or 1% efficiency. The Russell Ohl patent of 1946 is considered the first modern solar cell. Today’s solar panels are high purity Silicon with a light doping of Phosphorus and Boron to provide breaks in the Silicone for electron movement.
The Universe is a radiation chamber with EMR and particle emissions from all concentrated mass, and decay particles from individual atoms. Solar radiation strips protons from Nitrogen atoms, creating Carbon-14. Stripping exposed electrons is even easier. Silicon has four rather stable outer shell electrons in an orbit that can hold eight electrons. Boron has five outer-shell electrons, and Phosphorus has only three. Silicon forms a cubic crystal grid, and slightly impure Silicone matrix sheets can then be embedded with Boron and Phosphorus atoms.
When exposed to sunlight, the Boron atom losses it’s easily excited fifth electron, which travels the Silicon matrix using the Phosphorus “hole” to the conducting collection grids on both sides of the photovoltaic cell and permanently exits the cell.
Only segments of the solar spectrum activate this flow and it must be captured on both sides of the panel to create a circuit. The required capture grid blocks some of the incoming energy and the net result is 10% efficiency, or approximately 100 watts per square meter, and only within limited ambient temperature ranges which prohibit lenses or mirrors for simple amplification.
Efficiencies as high as 40% are available with exotic materials, but then one must address the ‘high cost of free’, which applies to every ‘green’ technology. Silicon, Phosphorus and Boron are common elements, but to mine, refine and bring on line has a cost. That cost is reflected in ‘cost payback’ of 5 to 7 years depending on the system and level of government forced subsidy. But these costs are based on low cost carbon based energy systems providing these materials. Regardless, this is a ONE-TIME, ONE-WAY EROSION PROCESS with a total system life of less than 20 years.
Solar cells produce only Direct Current, which is electric power by the migration of electrons, and in typical PV cells is only 1.5 volts. Alternating Current creates a voltage, but transfers power as a wave, rapidly cycled between positive and negative, with little actual electron migration. The first municipal Edison power systems were DC, but transmission loss and multiple voltage issues prevented success, and the Tesla-Westinghouse developed three-phase AC system became the driving force for modernization.
Converting DC to AC involves a conversion loss in an inverter, boosting to higher voltage and converting to more efficient three phase causes additional losses due to the Carnot Cycle. If you connect a hydro-turbine to a pump, you can only pump a portion of the water flowing from a dam into water pumped back to the dam. If you use the hydro-turbine to generate electricity, then use an electric pump to pump water back ablve the dam, then the losses are even greater. The combined losses converting 1.5 volt DC to usable 50 kV, three phase transmissible AC power is forever technically impossible.
Ignoring just these physical limitations, supposed science leading publications like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Discover, regularly show fanciful space based systems where vast arrays of solar panels, positioned around the planet, beam “sustainable” microwave energy back to Earth based antennas to provide 24 hour service. Never mind all the limitations above, now add the Carnot loss converting to microwaves on both ends of this system. Limitations to the field density of this transmission would require massive antennas, or large, “no fly zones” for humans, and instant on the fly cook zones for any stray birds.
To overcome solar wind and lunar gravity changes, these microwave transmitters would require constant realignment, or the transmissions would wander off the receiving antenna. The fact that this science fiction is presented as anything other than TOTAL FICTION, is proof that these publications are all “pop” and no science.
Much like paying your Visa bill with your Master Card, this parasitic ‘clean’ energy cannot provide the ‘spare’ energy to avoid ‘dirty’ energy. There is a constant loss of electrons in this system and power production erodes over time until, at twenty years, they are useless. The Silicon sheets are protected with glass covers which require periodic cleaning and are subject to damage from hail and wind debris.
Solar cells efficiency is also a function of azimuth angle and reduces with higher latitudes, and seasonal tilt angle. Systems with tracking ability have higher efficiency, but not recoverable installation costs. You get progressively less energy at the poles, precisely at the time when you need the MOST energy. To have usable power over extended periods requires a storage system. The most common of these is the battery, which is the heart of that ‘other’ planet saver.
Dream Green Machine
Soon Electric Vehicles, aka EVs, will replace the nasty internal combustion engine and humanity will be in harmony with the Universe. The transition technology in this race is the hybrid auto and the front runner is the Toyota Prius. This undeniable marvel has a 120 pound Nichol-Metal Hydride battery that costs $3500 to replace or approximately $20 per pound. There again, a cost based on carbon energy providing the material production.
The ‘Metal Hydride’ portion of these batteries includes the rare Earth elements of Lanthanum, Cerium and Neodymium. These required green components do not willingly join the green cult movement. To have your treasured EV, this planet must be mined and those elements must be extracted and refined.
Due to chemical erosion thru use, these batteries have an eight year or 100,000 mile warranty period. You can save $450 per year on gasoline if you spend $450 per year on a battery. You can walk forever up the down escalator and still get nowhere. There is no way to improve or even ‘sustain’ our carbon-based life forms without expending some geologically stored carbon energy.
To the blue-green Hollywood Eco-Smurfs and Na’vi wannabe’s, we are NOT living on a green Pandora that needs rescue from the evil RDA mining company. Humanity will not be saved by mythical noble savages or a forced return to a primitive life style. It took most of the nineteenth century to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics. It took most of the twentieth century to apply those laws to the benefit of society. There will be no solutions to problems in the twenty first century that do not comply with these laws.
Curiously missing from the Climatology degree plan is any mention of Thermodynamics. Avoidance of these Laws must give license to break these Laws. Thus clouds can have a negative factor during the day, with their pesky ‘albedo’ effect reflecting sunlight back into space and then just hours later have a positive effect by blanketing the warmth at night….a reflector or greenhouse at the whim of a Climatologist.
Climatologist can ignore the specific heat and thermal mass of the entire planet and provide a computer model PROVING that the trace human portion, of a trace gas, in the trace portion of the Earth mass that is the atmosphere, is the single greatest climate forcing factor. They can then empower this three atom molecule the unique ability to radiate in a reverse flow in opposition to all proven Thermodynamic Laws. This is lawless behavior, which is by definition, criminal behavior.
Environmental Side Note
Every ton of pure Polycrystalline Silicon, refined for photovoltaic use, produces EIGHT tons of Silicon Tetrachloride and Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon TOXIC waste. Similar levels of toxic waste are produced in the mining, refining and production of all batteries and the rare Earth elements needed for DC motors in Electric Vehicles and windmill DC generators.
Western monarch-monopolists have no use for meritocracy and have been at war with freedom and property rights for eternity. When the Chinese democracy movement threatened Universal Democracy at Tiananmen Square, it was feudal elites who rushed to prop up the Chinese dictators with western capital and western technology. The trade off was Chinese slave labor and environmental degradation to destroy competitiveness.
The reason that China is the main producer of all of these ‘green products’ is that China has a vast slave labor population, no property rights, no land use restriction and NO environmental restrictions. Just more proof of the blindness induced by wearing green goggles. We are borrowing money to subsidize non functional green energy to supplant functional energy….taxing, regulating and inflating our way to extinction….the ultimate darkness.
Article source: https://principia-scientific.com/green-prince-of-darkness-exposed/