Submitted 1 day ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to [deleted]
https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/5b5c026e-12dc-4c24-989f-72856f2d9326.png
I know this is supposed to be a joke, but it’s important to understand how it really works:
(these are solar thermic power plants, their panels are black and usually assisted by mirrors leading to a similar look)
They also function as adequate bird-zappers from what I’ve heard.
Parabolic plants also exist w/o a tower of sauron.
Didn’t this exact plant go bankrupt due to solar panels being so much more efficient?
This is not how solar panels work.
You sure?
This very scientific image looks very convincing to me.
I knew that photons pushing electrons around was a scam!
FR. How can photons push if they don’t even have arms?
Each panel has it’s own little steam turbine inside it in reality.
Are gou calling Lemmy Shitpost liars?
Some do. Not photovoltaic panels but there are plants designed around this principle.
i was coming in here to say that while this post is a joke, there is a non zero number of solar farms that use hyperbolic mirrors and glass tubes to super heat water generating pressure to spin a steam turbine
Where is the shitpost, solar panels do work by heating up water, unlike photovoltaics.
Solar panels are good to get a baseline amount of heated water for your home.
Solar panels do not, solar thermal conversion does, but they use mirrors.
By ignoring the second half of their comment you’ve missed the subtly that “panel” is an overly broad term and there are several different kinds of panels that collect energy from the sun for human use, among them photovoltaics, panels for heating residential water (often seen as black roof panels with pipes), and complex mirror (aka reflective panels) arrangements for melting salts. All of them use panels in some form.
My cousin (not Vinny) has solar panels to heat his water to like 50 C all year long.
And also photovoltaics for electricity.
There are also combo units that’s solar and PV in one, supposedly the water cooling down the PV panels should help keep it at optimal temperatures
I’ve seen non-photovoltaic solar panels for heating pools as well which is just a coiled black hose on a black panel.
Because I think the graphic missed the parts about the MC4 cables & the solar charge controller & the Lithium battery & the power inverter, a few little details like that.
There are literally some kinds of solar panel to generate heated water for things like home use.
They’re just boxes painted in black with a pipe with water also painted in black sneaking back and forth inside of it, rather than being photovoltaic panels.
Were I live now - Portugal - something like that works fine even in Winter to generate hot water for things like showering.
That said even during the Summer something like that won’t generate steam (or at least, not with enough steam pressure to drive a turbine), unlike what the meme shows, though there are solar power concentrators that use sunlight to melt salt which then boils water to generate steam for a steam turbine, but those use a ton of mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a central tower were the salt is being melted. (For example).
That would be for photovoltaics not solar, no?
CCGT - A gas powered jet engine but instead of spinning to produce thrust it spins to produce electricity with a turbine. Then the hot exhaust is used to boil water to make steam to spin a turbine.
Appart from using solar power to metal salt as a energy storage solution, you also have water cooled solar panels that store that heat as warm water.
These are cool because they add efficiency by both preheating your water for your water heater and help cool the photovoltaic cells so they can run more efficiently too. Downside of course is that there’s now a bunch of water pipes on your roof too
Where sadam Hussein
It’s always a steam turbine?
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Wait till this dude learns about mitochondria
I think you forgot the oil powered generator under the boiling water.
It’s coal powered, so it can double as a bbq grill
Can you connect that to ai data center that can generate an image of Trump with Clinton?
If only we could figure out a way to harness the power of the Giant Fan on the other side of the sun.
What about all the gay rainbow light spectrum that powers the entire thing?
Lotta loss in that system.
Should’ve put the water tank on the left to avoid loss
It seems like we could make this a lot more efficient by using pistons and having the sunlight push the pistons, turning a generator.
In all fairness, you need to install a magnet at the far end and keep pluging and unplugging it to generate power…
If you plug a power strip into each one of those empty plugs, you could power the whole house!
holyshitwhatthefuckhowisthishappening
Good idea! We’ll just need some steam turbines to help sunlight move the pistons in order to reach peak efficiency!
I want us to build a Dyson swarm which is a bunch of ginormous pistons with attached even more ginormous solar sails. The solar sails pull the pistons which make generator go brr, and we become a K-2 civilization.
Just like modded Minecraft.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
There is actually a Solar Power Generation system were a solar collector uses sunlight to melt salt which then circulates through pipes to a place were it heats up water to boiling and that steam then goes through a turbine thus generating electricity.
However to reach those temperatures a simple panel isn’t enough so what you have is a ton of mirrors over a large area all pointing to a central tower were the salt-melting happens.
Here is an example.
By the way, this stuff actually has benefits over solar such as the ability to generate power at night (basically you don’t extract all the heat of the molten salt during the day and just keep using it to boil water to feed the steam turbine during the night), plus it’s still a bit more efficient than solar panels and like solar panels it’s also improving throught things like using different salts.
sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
You can also choose to divert power to either new Vegas, the people, or a giant space laser which is really quite nice compared to traditional methods
halvar@lemy.lol 10 hours ago
you can’t just shoot a hole into the surface of mars!
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
It’s pretty much a required upgrade to be able to protect yourself from dropped or balistic nukes.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Solar collection like this can also explode birds if they fly through the wrong area as it’s essentially like a magnifying glass and ants.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Also Helios One from Fallout: New Vegas is based off of those, though I don’t think we’ve figured out how to make an Archimedes mirror out of one and a reflection satellite yet.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
How hot does heat need to be to salt melting?
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Depends on the salt used.
If you check here on table 5 you’ll see that common table salt (NaCl) melts at 801º C.
As for what’s used, in Chapter 2 of that paper they say “Molten salts consist of alkali metal or alkali metal halides and oxygen-containing salts”, no it’s not actually table salt for Generation 2 of those kind of power generators.