Augustin MOUCHOT (1823-1912), French Professor and Inventor


« if in our climates, the industry can avoid to directly use the solar heat, it will necessarily happen a day where it will be forced well to come back to the work of the natural agents, because of the lack of combustible. That the reserves of coal and oil provide it a long time again their enormous calorific power, no doubt about that. But these reserves will exhaust themselves undoubtedly: hasn't wood become rarer than once, altough it's renewable ? Why wouldn't it be the same way one day with a provision of fuel where one draws so extensively without filling the emptiness ever which appears in it ?[...] One must conclude that it is prudent and wise not to fall asleep in this regard on a misleading security ".


Designer and builder of a 20 m² solar parabola in 1860

In full first industrial revolution, 150 years before the events that the World knows or will soon undergo, Professor MOUCHOT predicts the crisis intrinsically contained in the massive and blind recourse to the fossil energies. However he proposed a big part of the solution. Today, Mankind is at the hour of energy savings, of the anguish generated by the climatic warming up and (especially!) by the medium-term weariness of the fossil oil ; as Professor MOUCHOT explained it, Mankind must orient his choice toward what the nature offers of more abundant and ecological:

One can read and can see in the medias that the path of the nuclear fission solves all problems of climatic warming up for 150 years and again more with the emergent surgenerating technologies.


One can read in some articles that the Mankind, by different ways, tries to tame the thermonuclear fusion (the energy of the Sun!) in laboratory to merge the dihydrogen that doesn't even exist on Earth... Without talking about many almost-insurmountable technical obstacles; only think up that a thermonuclear fusion requires at least 100 000 000°C, no material resists there for a long time...

In the domain of the development of the renewable energies, 

strength is to note that the developed societies, at best make

the proof of a regrettable most elementary common sense lack,

and at the worse, the demonstration of an indifference as troubling as guilty.

 

What one knows how to make already with the Sun ! The photovoltaic panels

In France, while covering only half of the existing surface of roofs with photovoltaic solar panels, we can have an electrical production that is the same or our yearly electric consumption, that is a fraction of about 20 to 40% of our total energy consumption.

Results quite remarkable yet doubly restrained by 2 factors :

    * France is not known to be excessively exposed to the sun... 

    * the photovoltaic panels have a very weak "solar to electric" output (about 14%)

Very good article on this link (in French): http://www.manicore.com/documentation/solaire.html

What Mankind has the moral and economic duties to exploit! 

The direct solar radiance is generated by the Sun, our star, whose S center is situated to 150 000 000 kilometers of the center of the Earth. The diameter of the sun is worth about 1 350 000 km. It is seen therefore since the Earth under the angular diameter DA = 0.52°. When the cloudy cover is absent, the direct solar radiance is the easiest to exploit and to stock with the best output.

     The Sun is the most natural and ecological thermonuclear fusion power station and without it, life on Earth would be totally absent. Although it is a modest sized star, it releases enormous quantities of energy, dispersing themselves mainly in the space as radiance. The Earth only intercepts a tiny fraction of this radiance, on the half of its surface, and yet, the perfect catchment of this tiny fraction would provide 10000 times the present human energizing needs.

What means, while taking an output of conversion of 50% (that permits the SYCOMOREEN's  PHRSD Concept , at the same time as it solves the storage issues), it is sufficient to install some collectors on 1/5000th of the terrestrial surface to drop completely fossil energy or others which generating very cumbersome garbage.

For an electric production equivalent to the total middle electric power currently produced in France (54 GW), a calculation gives for an output of 50% (possible with the PHRSD Concept) and an average yearly solar powering flux of 120 W / m² : 
   
900 km² of catchment to soil, either a square of 30 km of side. France counts 551 000 km²... it would be necessary to dedicate 0,16% of the territory therefore to this hyperthermal solar catchment. Very few in comparison that the built surfaces which already represent about 2%

For a production equivalent to the one of a nuclear power plant, (1 GW) the square has a side equal to only 4,1 km for 16,7 km².



...And in order to guarantee a semi-decentralized production, a lot more reliable, nothing would prevent to distribute these 900 km² almost everywhere on the territory, to valorize currently huge areas well sunny but very few exploited (rocky crests, oceans, roofs of buildings, of factories, and even of dwellings...)...


It lets think up to the huge potential of any desert, nearly counting the millions of km² sunny 2 times more that the South of France (> 300 W / m²)...