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Explore the Convective Hotspot Method for harnessing solar energy, including challenges like cloud formation hindrance and testing hot lake temperatures for efficiency. Learn about the current and upcoming approaches, potential simulations on forced convection intensity, and future development steps.
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Convective Hotspot Method • Review of Effort • Initial simulations –> Change Surface Albedo • Idea was to have solar heating drive convection • Great idea, real world is more complicated! • Clouds formed in area of hot spot quenched the solar heating. • Initial test region included a lake which stayed hot! • Current Approach • Create a (very) hot lake! • Lake temperatures tested thus far: • 335K (143F), 350K (170F), 365K (197F), 380K (224F)
Convective Hotspot Method • Current Approach • Create a (very) hot lake! • Interesting results for the three “cooler” lake temperatures tested thus far • A boiling lake [380K (224F)] didn’t work (yet?) • Still a bit too simple for controlling intensity. • Coming simulations will look at thermodynamic state in a region • Perhaps CAPE or Lifted Index as an approximation of forced convection intensity
Next Steps • Code is written to work on arbitrary size domain • Arbitrary location of hot spot is next • Development of throttling capability is being pondered. • WRF needs to be installed and tested on Solaris system • User interface for creating simulation needs to be designed and built (year 2).