Interesting parallelisms

[GyroGo]

quote:Originally posted by Casey

Gary, I think you can do better than cheap energy with that setup. As sunlight is completely free you would have free energy with only the cost of manufacturing the lens or dish used to concentrate the heat on the "hot" end of the Stirling.

I have envisioned this setup as well as inserting the "hot" end of a Stirling into a factory smokestack to capture the lost heat. Also hot springs or any other unused source of lost heat would do the trick. The wasted heat from volcanos etc would be a huge source of Stirling generated power.

Yeah, Casey. But of course we all know that nothing that involves human time and energy is free, even after you pay off the machine. We are talking economics here, because in the cost of physics, solar energy is still energy into the system and of course not free in the accounting of physics (how am I doing for a layman?)

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[Casey]

Maybe I should have said the energy to run the Stirling would be free. Of course with human nature what it is there would be the cost of labor to account for.

The solar panel on my house receives free sunshine, but the cost of the system including an 84 gallon water heater with electric backup was 1400 dollars 20 years ago installed. So the cost of heating that water was 1400X20 or $70 a year until the heater tank began leaking and got replaced with an all electric one. I kept the circuit breaker to the water heater turned off, so there was no electric use except to run a 1/100th horsepower circulating pump.

Even at that, $70 a year was far cheaper than having heated the water by electricity.