Is sustainable power unsustainable?

February 12, 10:20 AMPortland Gadgets ExaminerJohn Bartley

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(Wikimedia and JE Bartley)

Looks like the high-efficiency solar cells which forecasters have planned on require rare metals we may run out of in about 10 years. The best substitute expected, carbon nanofiber, is shown by two independent studies to pose a health risk similar to asbestos, as per a linked Seattle P-I story. Eek.

This only emphasizes the need for more basic research, not less, in energy generation of all kinds, such as these nuke-sized solar power fields (Link 1, Link2) which California's PG&E is studying. Combined, they would outproduce Trojan and have a lot better 'up time' to boot.

These sunpower fields are an array of tracking solar dishes powering Stirling engines (19th-century tech and cleaner than even biodiesel when using solar heat) and they work with any concentrated heat source. They don't use rare earth metals in volume, unlike solar cells. What they use mostly is steel and aluminum, which we have in abundance.

Gee, doesn't Oregon get a lot of constant sunshine east of the Cascades? Hmm... the 'golden triangle' of lower Malheur and Harney counties (see map, above, with marker at Baker City), including the hamlet of Fields, with its apex near the alkaline Alvold Lake, gets at least 4.5 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day, even in January, as per NREL (the National Renewable Energy Laboratory) before concentrated by the parabolic dish.  When it's sunny, the wind blows less, so Stirling-engine-solar there these would be a good partner to Oregon's windmills; when there's no wind and windmills don't turn, we now use carbon-emitting inefficient gas turbines to substitute for the wind turbines, for you can't quickly fire up a coal plant like Boardman or a nuke like Hanford's WPPSS #2. 

Find a nearby alkali lake to pump water uphill into, then reverse the flow to pull power out when the sun starts to go down, and you have a 24-hour power source to sell to California, without killing salmon. We could purchase and build a huge battery array like Alaska uses, but alkali lakes in that neighborhood have little other potential use and are much lower tech; pumps and hydro we understand very well, here in Oregon, and because homes and almost all businesses consume less power after midnight, we don't need to deliver as much power when it's dark as when the sun shines.

Clean energy jobs for Oregon. Anyone interested?

PS: Italicized items above address William's concerns.