Chapter 274 Photovoltaics and Ecology
Chapter 274 Photovoltaics and Ecology
As time came to the end of January.
The Spring Festival of 2028 is almost here.
Although Hailufeng Company has started the holiday, considering that some industries cannot stop working, it has adopted a rotating holiday method.
The Xiaozhushan integrated pumped storage and aquaculture project near Magong Town also officially passed acceptance in January this year and is ready to start full operation after the Spring Festival.
At the same time, the Shanmei Maritime Airport Project applied for by Hailufeng Company off the coast of Nanhu Village, Magong Town, also received approval.
The airport is located on the sea just south of Magong Town, 300 meters from the coast. It is 2.3 kilometers long from north to south and 1.2 kilometers wide from east to west, with a total area of approximately 276 million square meters, or about 4144 acres.
The reason why the airport is not built in the Pearl River Delta region is that the airports and ports in the Pearl River Delta region are too dense, and the area required for the airship airport is very large.
Whether it is land acquisition and demolition or land reclamation, it is rather troublesome. Moreover, as an airship is a low-altitude aircraft, although the government has begun to set up a special department to manage the country's medium and low-altitude airspace to facilitate the advancement of the airship industry, it is still very troublesome for airships to pass through the airspace over large cities.
The main problem is that big cities are densely populated and have very tall buildings, so many people are still skeptical about hydrogen airships.
Therefore, in the current plan, the airship route should avoid overlapping with that of airplanes as much as possible, especially within ten kilometers around each airport, where airships are not allowed to approach; and the straight-line distance between the airship airport and the airplane airport cannot be less than fifty kilometers.
It also stipulates that the construction of airship airports should be avoided as much as possible on routes with busy aircraft.
These regulations are designed to prevent the two aviation systems from coming into too close contact, which would increase management difficulties.
Therefore, regions like the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin have no way to build airports, at least not in the short term.
On the contrary, airship airports can be built around these core economic zones.
After all, the cost of airship transportation is very low. Although it still needs to be connected by road transportation at both ends, this is actually something that can be considered for many companies that need transportation services.
For example, industrial products from Pengcheng, Echeng and Dongguan can be transported to Shanmei by road, and then transported to other airports across the country through Shanmei's Magong Airport, which can save a lot of transportation costs.
Of course, another purpose of Hailufeng Company to build Magong Airport at sea is to facilitate the logistics flow of part of the seaport.
After all, transporting goods from the ports in the Pearl River Delta to the Shantou-Meishan Magong Airport is actually quite fast. This plan is to prevent road transportation from being too congested, and there is no time to build new roads at once. The airship itself has no way to enter the Pearl River Delta region, so it is necessary to consider using near-shore sea transportation for connection.
For an airport built on the sea, as long as the airport area and seaport area are planned in advance during the planning and design, the two transportation systems can be efficiently and seamlessly connected.
In the spirit of squeezing out all the value of the land, this airport not only functions as an integrated sea and air port, but also has a large indoor aquaculture base underground.
That’s right, this artificial airport island is hollow.
Compared with the high requirements for runways at take-off airports, the airport itself does not need to consider aircraft takeoff and landing, so its overall strength does not need to be too high.
This hollow design, on the one hand, is intended to reduce the amount of earthwork required for land reclamation, and on the other hand, it can make full use of land resources.
After all, this is a site with an area of 4144 acres. Although dams and load-bearing columns need to be built underneath, at least 3500 acres of breeding area can be obtained.
...
Inside the airship manufacturing base located in Minqin County High-tech Industrial Park.
Blue Whale Airship and Minqin Group are working together to develop an ultra-large special airship.
Since the structure of this airship is somewhat different from that of the Blue Whale, it cannot be built in the docks for building Blue Whale Type 1 and Type 2 airships, and can only be built in the docks for building Blue Whale Type 3 airships.
Hou Xin, technical executive of Blue Whale Airship Company, is discussing the new airship with Li Yunpeng, technical director of the project.
Currently, Blue Whale Airship Company has a total of 10 docks in Minqin, which can be divided into three types according to size.
There are two docks that can build the Blue Whale 3 airship, and the two are currently in one of them.
Hou Xin looked at the nearly spherical new airship and asked, "Director Li, is this airship ready for a test flight?"
Li Yunpeng, who was wearing glasses, pushed up his glasses and said, "The No. 1 experimental airship is ready for testing. I plan to test it in the next two days."
"Aren't you planning to go back to your hometown?" Hou Xin asked curiously.
Li Yunpeng shook his head: "My parents have passed away, and other relatives don't have much contact. It doesn't matter whether I go back or not. I might as well stay in the company. There are still many colleagues here."
Hou Xin patted him on the shoulder and said, "Director Li is alone, and he still needs someone to accompany him in his daily life. Our company does not object to employees dating, getting married and having children during this period. If you have any ideas, I can introduce you to someone, but considering avoiding suspicion, I can only introduce you to female employees from other branches."
"Haha, thanks, but don't bother me. I'm used to being alone after so many years." Li Yunpeng politely declined Hou Xin's kindness.
"Okay!" Hou Xin just mentioned it casually and did not go into the topic further.
The two chatted for a while, and Hou Xin explained the other things clearly. Then he and some employees who needed to take annual leave left Minqin County and returned to their homes at Liangzhou High-speed Railway Station.
Early the next morning.
Li Yunpeng, who stayed behind to guard the site, started the first test with dozens of technicians and some auxiliary testing staff.
The dome of the airship dock slowly moved to both sides, revealing the entire dock.
Due to safety considerations, the utilization rate of the entire airship dock is very low, only about one-seventh of it is used.
Li Yunpeng is very clear about this, but it is too late to build a special dock at the moment. He can only use it as it is and consider whether to build a special dock later.
"Director Li, the dome has been deployed."
Li Yunpeng came back to his senses, looked at the time, and ordered: "All departments, take your positions, and start the first flight test."
"Roger that!"
Everyone held their breath, carefully following the steps agreed upon yesterday, and operated the airship into the air.
The design of this airship is completely different from that of the Blue Whale. It is completely spherical, so the amount of airbag material and skin material used inside is the least, and the skeleton part is also very small.
The spherical airship has a diameter of 85 meters, an internal airbag volume of 30 cubic meters, and an overall weight of 33 tons.
Half an hour later, the airship floated rapidly into the stratosphere at an altitude of 1.8 meters.
At the same time, it also flew over the nearby airship test site.
Through the surveillance camera carried by the airship, Li Yunpeng could clearly see the ground and the sun in the southeast direction.
"Adjust the position of the photovoltaic panels."
"Yes."
The movable center of gravity inside the airship, which is also the location of equipment such as the hydrogen storage tank inside the airship, is completely in an airbag wrapped by hydrogen gas, which is equivalent to a small airbag inside a large airbag.
By moving this small airbag inside, the center of gravity of the spherical airship can be changed, so that the flight posture of the airship can be adjusted so that the solar photovoltaic panels are always facing the sunlight.
About one-third of the entire airship's surface is covered with silicon carbide nanotube photovoltaic panels, covering an area of approximately 7500 square meters.
"The posture has been adjusted. The photovoltaic panels are now facing the sunlight."
"Turn on the automatic sunlight tracking system."
"Yes."
Li Yunpeng continued to instruct: "Begin the cable connection."
"receive."
The staff controlled the spherical airship and flew it to the cable interface temporarily arranged at the test site, while the staff at the test site manually inserted the cable dropped by the airship into the interface.
This high-strength cable is not a copper cable, but an aluminum cable, and it is not an ordinary aluminum cable, but an aluminum silicon nanotube cable. This is a material discovered during the research of superconducting mercury silicon nanotube substitutes. Researchers tried to use fused aluminum liquid to replace mercury or gallium, but naturally failed.
But it cannot be said to be a complete failure, because the conductivity of this aluminum silicon nanotube is very good, between that of copper and silver, and the overall strength is good. In addition, the unit weight is relatively light, and it has many important uses. At least it can replace the use of copper wire in conductive circuits.
Therefore, Li Yunpeng, who needed extra-long and high-strength cables, found this material from inside. He replaced the copper cables that previously weighed about 8 tons with new cables made of aluminum silicon nanotubes, silicon carbide nanotubes, and insulating rubber sheaths. The overall weight was reduced to 2.6 tons, ensuring that the overall weight of the airship could be controlled at around 33 tons.
"Director Li, the cables are connected."
"Start transmitting power." Li Yunpeng stared at the data display screen.
As the staff pressed the power switch.
The spherical airship began to supply electricity to the ground power system.
More than an hour passed by unknowingly.
Li Yunpeng asked the power engineer beside him: "Team Leader Xie, what is the power generation capacity?"
The power engineer raised his head and replied, "Director Li, the current power consumption is around 681 watts per square meter."
"681 watts?"
"That means each square meter of photovoltaic panels can generate 681 watts of electricity per hour."
"Continue testing."
"Yes."
The sun sets in the afternoon, but the sunlight at an altitude of 1.8 meters is still relatively strong. This is mainly due to the angle of the sunlight caused by the altitude. If it is in high latitudes in summer, this time will be even longer. Even near the poles, you can use the polar day to generate electricity around the clock.
“How many hours of electricity was generated today?”
Hearing Li Yunpeng's question, power engineer Xie Bohui looked at the record and said, "Today's power generation totaled 8 hours and 24 minutes. Because we took off at : in the morning, we lost more than an hour."
“How much electricity was generated?”
"Let me take a look." Xie Bohui looked down at the data: "43158 kWh."
"More than 40,000 degrees? Not bad."
Xie Bohui expressed his opinion: "Director Li, if it is ground-based solar photovoltaic panels, the efficiency is only about half. Only places like Sunlight City in the southern part of the Snowy Plateau can barely compete with high-altitude photovoltaics."
Li Yunpeng did not comment. He lowered his head and calculated some data.
Based on an average of 10 hours of power generation per day throughout the year, that's about 5 kWh of electricity per day, or 1825 million kWh per year.
At present, the on-grid electricity price of solar energy has been lowered, and it is only about 0.15 yuan at one point, and it will continue to decline in the future.
Just selling electricity can generate revenue of 273.75 million yuan a year.
Li Yunpeng estimated the cost of a spherical photovoltaic airship to be around 200 million yuan. This is mainly due to its simple structure and less equipment and materials than a transport airship, which leads to the overall low cost.
Of course, he estimated this price under the condition of large-scale mass production, so that the research and development costs can be shared. Otherwise, if several ships are built, the cost will soar to tens of millions per ship.
Based on this cost, the investment can be recovered in about a year.
The advantage of stratospheric photovoltaic airships is that there are no clouds in the stratosphere, there are very few particulate matter in the air, and it is not easy for dust to adhere to the photovoltaic panels. In addition, the illumination time is longer than that on the ground, and the amount of solar radiation received is also greater than that on the ground.
These advantages combined together make for an ultra-stable photovoltaic power generation system during the day.
In addition, the low cost of the new airship further increases the feasibility of stratospheric photovoltaic airships.
In the past, domestic solar photovoltaic power generation projects were generally built in the northwest and snowy plateaus, because these places have longer annual sunshine hours and therefore more abundant solar energy resources overall.
However, the amount of stratospheric light resources is the same everywhere, whether it is the snowy plateau, the south of the Yangtze River, or the traditional photovoltaic forbidden area of the Bashu Basin, the amount of stratospheric light resources above these areas is similar.
However, this type of photovoltaic airship is not without its disadvantages. Once a stratospheric photovoltaic airship project is really deployed locally, aircraft and airships cannot approach within a radius of more than ten kilometers in the area to prevent the cables from getting entangled in passing aircraft and airships.
Li Yunpeng put down his tablet and looked at Ai Sikuo, a climatologist who also stayed to work overtime. "Doctor, do you think that the large-scale deployment of photovoltaic airships in the future will have serious environmental impacts?"
After taking a sip of the coffee produced by the company in southern Yunnan, Dr. Ai Si Kao frowned and said, "If they are deployed at a high density, it is inevitable that the climate will be affected, because these photovoltaic airships are like artificial dark clouds that are always covering the sky. This will reduce the amount of light and heat received by the ground, thereby reducing the annual accumulated temperature of the ground."
"Then what density do you think is appropriate?"
In response to Li Yunpeng's question, Dr. Ai Si Kao shook his head and said, "I need to use the company's supercomputer to simulate and calculate before I can give you an accurate answer. However, I roughly estimated that the area of stratospheric photovoltaic panels cannot exceed one ten-thousandth of the ground area, which is a relatively appropriate upper limit."
"One in ten thousand?"
"Yeah." Ai Si Kao took another sip of coffee: "Take Minqin County as an example. The local area is 1.59 square kilometers, which means that the photovoltaic airships here can be equipped with a maximum of 159 million square meters of stratospheric photovoltaic panels."
"In other words, our entire country's land and sea areas can only accommodate tens of billions of square meters of stratospheric photovoltaic panels?" Li Yunpeng fell into deep thought.
Ai Si Kao knew that Li Yunpeng was unwilling to give up, but he still persuaded him: "Director Li, in fact, this scale is already very large. If it is 14 billion square meters, it can generate about 3.4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year."
"Sorry, I lost my composure." Li Yunpeng was indeed feeling unwilling just now.
However, ecology and climate are issues that must be considered.
Once the area of photovoltaic panels exceeds the limit, it may cause climate anomalies, which will be counterproductive.
Dr. Ai Si Kao continued, "In fact, Director Li, your project is relatively lucky. At least it can be put into commercial operation in the future. However, the Sun Chaser Project being carried out by Western University of Science and Technology and the outer space solar power generation project being carried out by the Chinese Academy of Sciences have almost no hope of success."
"Oh? Why?" Li Yunpeng was not clear about the details of these projects.
"The Sun Chaser Project is to verify the microwave power transmission technology." Dr. Ai Si Kao has participated in part of the project. He mainly studies the ecological impact of photovoltaic power generation. He took another sip of coffee and sighed:
“Alas, the ecological risks of microwave power transmission are probably even more serious.”
Li Yunpeng also reacted: "Will microwaves continue to heat the atmosphere?"
"Well, just as Director Li said, microwaves will continue to heat the atmosphere. Whether it is microwave transmission or laser transmission, only about 32% of the energy obtained from outer space reaches the ground receiving station. The rest is consumed during the transmission, and the atmosphere is the section with the greatest transmission loss."
Hearing this, Li Yunpeng understood Dr. Ai Si Kao's concerns based on what he knew.
About half of the energy entering the earth from outer space is absorbed by the atmosphere. Obviously, this energy will not disappear out of thin air, but will remain in the earth's atmosphere.
This is indeed more terrible than the hazards of stratospheric photovoltaic power generation projects.
After all, the energy from stratospheric photovoltaic power generation is meant to enter the earth. It is just converted into electrical energy in advance and is still used in the system inside the earth.
However, a large part of the energy generated by photovoltaic power generation in outer space is extra energy. This energy would not originally enter the earth's energy system. Now it is input into the earth's energy system by humans using microwave and laser technology. This extra energy will obviously bring huge variables.
Therefore, Dr. Ai Si Kao is not optimistic about photovoltaic power generation in outer space.
To be more precise, we are not optimistic about the transmission of electricity from outer space to the earth's interior.
If it is used on the spot in outer space, then there is nothing wrong with it. However, inputting electricity into the earth is definitely the worst option.
The two chatted all night.
The next day, Jiang Miao also took the time to send an internal email to Li Yunpeng, encouraging Li Yunpeng's team and also giving this airship a new name.
Because it is a spherical airship, Jiang Miao gave this type of airship a new code name: "Jellyfish".
Jellyfish-shaped airships can not only be used for photovoltaic power generation, but also for sky communications, earth exploration, and climate monitoring.
(End of this chapter)