Power and Energy Generation
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Power and Energy Generation |
Depending on circumstance and available technology and resources, various means of power-generating technology may be used. These include (but are not limited to) the following:
Burning wood, peat, and other vegetable matter provides an easily utilisable form of hydrocarbon for simple heat generation on low tech (neolithic and non-industrial) neo-primitivist worlds. However, because even a relatively small population can use a great deal of wood for heating, this practice is only viable if the population is very small and the local environment large (generally planet-scale ecosystem) robust.
A more popular, somewhat higher but still Lo Tech alternative that is widely used on less developed terraformed and part-terraformed worlds is the use of methane gases and synthetic fuels produced by decomposing or specially grown and processed plant material, which can be used to power internal combustion engines, much like fossil fuel.A more advanced method of extracting energy from biomass involves genetically modified organisms which directly produce fuels for consumption; even this strategy can have its drawbacks, see for instance the Algaehol Bloom Disaster
Burning of organic matter releases carbon dioxide and, without emplacements of atmospheric nanotech scrubbers, can very quickly destabilize the micro climate of even quite large orbitals. On planetary surfaces the result is a greenhouse effect, due to heat being trapped by carbon dioxide and methane gas. Although this is welcomed on cooler partly-terraformed worlds, it is quite undesirable on Earth-type fully terraformed planets.
Only short-sighted low/middle tech industrial civilisations, such as Industrial and Information age Old Earth, and a number of pre-space age alien civilizations, have engaged in the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil Fuels (like oil, coal, and natural gas) are extremely rare in the universe (due to the scarcity of natural garden worlds), and those garden worlds that have been settled almost always have very strict regulations regarding their use.
Although uranium and thorium, two elements which can be used to generate power by fission, are much more common throughout the universe than fossil fuel, fission power is not often used in hi-tech societies. This is because of the impact on the environment from mining radioactive materials, and from the build-up of long term radioactive waste which can be harmful to bionts, sybonts, and even some artificials. Once mining, transport and disposal costs are factored in. the energy returned over energy invested (EROEI) is generally quite low. However, fission is often used as an intermediate stage durin the development of a colony, especially in locations remote from populations of individuals likely to be affected. Many vec-only societies, such as the Metasoft corporate clade Shonbus Robotics in the Perseus Rift, do make extensive use of cheap and widely available fissionable materials for power generation and even short-range shuttles.
Almost all the energy used on most planets and sunward orbital habitats is collected by orbital solar power platforms. These convert incident light into electrical energy using vast sheets of nanobuilt solar cells. The energy is transmitted to the surface in the form of microwave beams which are collected by rectenna arrays in sparsely populated regions, or via superconducting wires in beanstalks.
Other renewable, low impact non-polluting energy sources are wind, tidal, geothermic, and temperature gradient power sources. These, together with widespread use of Solar and Nuclear Fusion, the adoption of non-polluting nano/bio-technologies has resulted in the human effect on most planetary and orbital biospheres to be quite minimal. One widely used form of power generation using a renewable energy source is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, using temperature gradients in the oceans of Earth-like worlds to produce power.
A good, middle tech and reliable mobile power sources are usually fuel cells or magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbines, both of which are powered by hydrogen produced by geneered algae on desert hydrogen farms.
Larger power sources, mostly for large spacecraft, ships and submarines, and large energy hungry cities, are muon-catalysed cool fusion reactors. The plasma is confined by a magnetic bottle of various geometrical configurations. Fusion is safer than amat and is very widely used as a power source in middle and high tech polities and worlds throughout the galaxy. Most Fusion reactors are supervised by superturing expert systems and AIs.
Fusion power is extensively used by Hider and Backgrounder societies, living on hydrogen rich icy bodies far from the local star. Many hider habitats use a so-called 'hotpoint' to generage the energy needs of the economy by fusion.
This technique extracts energy from the vacuum, providing a safe and near limitless source of power. Since the Interplanetary era of Old Earth it has been known that the amount of energy available in the vacuum is quite slight, contrary to earlier theories. Nevertheless, this can be easily extracted with picotech casimir field devices, using similar principles to that employed with drive sails. While this technology requires transapient Minds to design and construct it, it is safe and relatively easy to employ, and can even be operated by baseline equivalent bionts, provided the right computers and expert systems are installed. However the amount of power that can be harnessed is extremely small, and only applicable to nano-scale devices.
Amat is mostly produced in amat farms near stars, and is widely used throughout the galaxy in the form of pion-antipion, or hydrogen/antihydrogen reactions for powering spacecraft, large-scale industrial orbitals, and megastructures. Because of the danger of catastrophic explosion should the magnetic bottle collapse and all the amat interact with normal matter at once, amat power generation is generally not allowed on inhabited planetary surfaces or in populated orbitals
Monopole Conversion works on the same principle as the Conversion Drive starship. While providing near limitless power, and avoiding the danger inherent in amat storage, this method of energy generation requires a very expensive dedicated, specialised, and high toposophic hyperturing. For this reason, Monopole Conversion is used only a few of the biggest polities and worlds, usually those with a strong archailect presence, or in high level transingularitan civilizations
The basic lower tech (ultratech) monopole reactors involve the catalysis of fusion by monopoles in elements such as hydrogen and helium and the release of lots of heat. More advanced conversion reactors work by carefully applying the right sorts of bosons to individual nucleons. In this manner any element up to iron can be fused to produce excess energy, but the ultimate source of the power is essentially the same.
Amat Farming Vast banks of helio-proximate solar powered lasers that generate vast showers of particles; the matter and antimatter particles are collected and held in magnetic bottles.
Hawking's Knot - power generation system consisting of a quantum black hole nested in a complex geometry of small-scale Pitch field generators. The black hole's mass in controlled in such a fashion that it is near its evaporation point, and thus producing prodigious amounts of Hawking radiation.
Hotpoint- fusion generators used for illumination and energy generation in Haloist and Backgrounder habitats
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion - extraction of energy from the oceans of planets with oceans of any kind, such as Gaian or Panthalassic worlds.