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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeavenShallBurn" data-source="post: 3995224" data-attributes="member: 39593">Photovoltaics probably aren't the best means of generating electricity since they're so hard to produce.  On the other hand there are several other means of electricity production that could be used very well.First off, you can generate current very simply with a rotating magnet and copper coils, you only need a way to turn it.  This can be done with a mill-wheel that has the generating setup in the hub.  The ancient world was full of waterwheels.  Greeks invented the steam engine before the birth of Christ they only would have needed one more step to make it do work.  1.) I can definitely see a hot-springs based steam engine.  2.) Or a giant stirling engine as the centerpiece of a city built to produce the right conditions to power it.  The Expansion chamber on top of a huge ziggurat with bronze sun-disk focusing mirrors on top of tall obelisks that direct sunlight onto it.  3.) Or a forest of lightning rods tall as redwood trees built atop a mountain with their grounding cables instead running into a "storm temple" whose holy relics are vast tanks of fitted volcanic glass full of compunds that make them alkaline batteries.  (There is precedent for this, objects were found in the tomb of what appears to have been a metalworker that could have been primitive alkaline batteries.  Tests with replicas have shown that they provide enough current to do electroplating.)4.) How about a port city where a massive sealed tube runs out into the ocean depths well beyond the harbor, open at the bottom and top.  Temperature differences between the top at the surface and bottom far below create a current through the pipe that turns a series of internal generating wheels as the cooling water sinks.</blockquote>

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