Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/21/thermophotovoltaics.html
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Antora Energy, in Fremont, California, will heat “inexpensive carbon blocks” (to 2000° C!). Antora is somewhat unique in that it will get the energy back out not through a turbine, but with “thermophotovoltaic” solar panels “specifically designed to efficiently use the heat radiated by the blocks.”
Your welcome USA, cordially the Rebel State of California!
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Don’t boast about it, you’ll just remind the orange clown that it exists…
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But renewable energy sources don’t work at night! That’s why we need clean burning coal to make the heat! I mean, look at this sad coal miner and his family. Your renewables are making them sad!
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Hey! I passed that billboard on the PA Turnpike - on my way to California! 
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Yeah, I heard that song before!
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Great inspirational video. Unfortunately, their first direct to market product was this early warning helmet system.
(just kidding)
Man. I’m torn. If he fails to kill it, and they make some HUGE breakthrough before his time lurking in the Oval Office comes to an end, he will claim he knew it the whole time, it was all thanks to him, and all of his followers will cheer all the louder and we will end up with another four years of him fucking lurking.
On the other hand, sustainable renewable energy sure would be nice.
So torn.
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The question gone begging here, is. “how spectacular a breakthrough?”. Calling it a moon-shot agency brings to mind something that’s so good, the market will fall all over itself to replace a hundred years of sunk costs in Petro, and it’ll happen so quickly that we wont need to do any of the actual difficult stuff, like prioritize our energy usages.
In other words, not likely.
Said like a person with a drawer full of fidget switches that each microdose GRU or Trump officials with stem cells or things to make them take.
anansi133>> “how spectacular a breakthrough”
NIST apologized for their “weaksauce” AES Crypto Standardization Work and vow to interleave wives and follow squirtle to better emulate ARPA-E.
All the mom-n-pop pizza joints in ___'s town have changed to differing implementations of the thermal energy storage in order to knock down refactory product overhead and find the best pizza oven co-implementation first. The whole place smells like cashews, then spiced aged meat, then lovage on first mondays.
Kids are diving for magnesium pellets in Sri Lanka and optioning local micro-licenses.
Engineering firms are filling with heliostats in efforts to make their own brands in thermal loop insulation, passthroughs, and such.
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In some ways the petroleum industry is in a similar situation today to what the whale oil industry was facing in the mid-19th Century. It’s gonna run out sooner or later at the rate we’re using it, the only question is how long the old guard will try to prop up an unsustainable status quo before moving on to a better energy source.
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“When will it run out” is a bit of a wrong question, though.
If we extract and burn known reserves, we’re absolutely toast. The climate can’t take it.
We need to leave it in the ground.
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I agree, if we wait that long the environment is trashed. But oil is still getting more expensive at the same time alternative energy sources are getting cheaper, so there’s still hope that economics will push a major shift to renewables sooner rather than later.
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That’s an interesting comparison, it has me curious just how important whale oil was in that economy. Hard to imagine it capturing as much political clout as big oil today though.
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Maybe it’s because its 5am, and I was just awakened by the news that my daughter’s car was stolen, but I have no idea what you are trying to tell me with your comment. I have a “drawer full of figet switches”?
Whatever.
To clarify my own comment: when I posted it, I realized that my hatred of Trump - and my certainty that he is the kind of man who will flip on a dime and take credit for a positive outcome from a department he was trying to end - is so strong that I would rather they fail to improve the world while under his watch, came as a surprise to me. I don’t hate easily, but apparently I hate deeply. It’s nice to learn something new about myself.
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In many parts of the world we’re already there or damn close. Storage is getting there, but really the last hurdle left.
Er, hope the car got some good vinyl and a ground effects kit and is back where it belongs.
Yeah, that’s too much concern for a reputation of a person-ish thing who can’t possibly have the monopoly on not practicing peace he seems to have, let alone appreciate it. Septic gas for the toxic lord and all that.
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