Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

by billvon » Oct 15 2019 4:53pm
jimw1960 wrote: ↑
Oct 15 2019 4:40pm

Save your effort, Bill. Nothing will convince this guy to move away from the denier blog-o-sphere and to consider actual peer-reviewed scientific data and studies.

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I know; denial is his religion. But I figure other people are reading.

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Yes, others are reading!
deniers can't possibility believe everything is OK. It could be that they are just easily brain washed and just have no control over their own thoughts.

by jonescg » Oct 16 2019 11:10pm
Ahh good old carbon capture and storage. The holy grail of innovation to help keep the oil and gas industry doing what they're already doing, for longer.

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Yes, they can do it but it just cost to much and will never really happen.
I say lets CAPTURE what we have dug up and STORE it back in the ground and leave it there.

Past 10 years has seen a rise in methane that looks to be coming from fracking, ghg sat and methane sat are 2 seperate ventures that can combine data to achieve the same goal locate sources of methane release and if from industrial location action can be taken to clean up their act.

Through out the thread I've heard some crazy comments and it's challenged me to learn the basics problem we have not all will use scientific sources to gather an understanding or the data is misinterpreted to 12 years till the end as we know it when it's more like we are not sure exactly the time scale but its not long till its going to be a run away scenario it is serious we need to turn round right now and make full effort but that gets muffled out with all the panic screaming.

What we need is not democracy or governments with personal agenda that use persuasions to convince a majority but a desisive group that act today based on todays knowledge for the billions of people not 20 years to late in the interest of a few billionaires.

Ianhill said:

Through out the thread I've heard some crazy comments and it's challenged me to learn the basics problem we have not all will use scientific sources to gather an understanding or the data is misinterpreted to 12 years till the end as we know it when it's more like we are not sure exactly the time scale but its not long till its going to be a run away scenario it is serious

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Yep. It's like a lifelong smoker who hears that smoking will reduce your lifespan by an average of 12 years. "Oh, so I am going to die on the day I turn 60, just because I smoke? Just drop dead, even though I am fine? How ridiculous! I'm going to keep on smoking since there's no consensus on the risk."

I used to look at renewables and EV's as a way of saving money. All of that has changed to saving the Planet. I try to do my part as I have more influence over myself than others. Lead by example, conservation first, don't believe people know how wasteful they are and how there life style is killing them and everyone around them. Now that I do not own anything with a exhaust pipe the emissions really grab your attention. The fact that most of the fuel is used to move around couple tons of metal and plastic and not people is just crazy to me anymore. Yes when your doing it feels normal.

"the recently-emerged De growth movement advances the basic, fifty year old, ”limits to growth” case which has now accumulated a huge supporting literature. Its core point is that there is too much production and consumption going on, that this is the main cause of global problems, that eventually we must have stable or zero-growth economies, and that GDP must be reduced. For many years there has been debate between these two general world-views, that is, between those arguing that there are bio-physical-social limits to growth and those who believe that technical advance can solve any problems growth causes. This is a debate between those who believe that “tech-fixes” can solve the problems without radical change from a system committed to affluence and growth, and those who argue that only radical change to a very different, post consumer-capitalist society can solve the big problems." "in general if production, sales and GDP increase, then resource use and ecological impact increase. They emphasise that there are not good reasons to expect this to change or absolute decoupling to be achieved in future; in fact the trends are getting worse. This aligns with the fact that there has been a long term decline in productivity growth rates."
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-17/why-de-growth-is-essential-a-rejection-of-left-ecomodernists-phillips-sharzer-bastini-and-parenti/

sendler2112 said:

This is a debate between those who believe that “tech-fixes” can solve the problems without radical change from a system committed to affluence and growth, and those who argue that only radical change to a very different, post consumer-capitalist society can solve the big problems.

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As always, the solution will come from a place between these extremes.

TheBeastie said:

Sarah is like a mini version of Al Gore,

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it's funny how great minds warp along the same curve.
because that's my nickname for Gal Gore Greta.
the same snake just shedding its skin.

Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:

TheBeastie said:

Sarah is like a mini version of Al Gore,

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it's funny how great minds warp along the same curve.
because that's my nickname for Gal Gore Greta.

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Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

billvon said:

Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:

TheBeastie said:

Sarah is like a mini version of Al Gore,

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it's funny how great minds warp along the same curve.
because that's my nickname for Gal Gore Greta.

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Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

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which is why you're discussing me.

Fusion. The energy source of the future. And always will be.
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"The most serious difficulty concerns the very high energy neutrons released in the deuterium-tritium (D-T) reaction. These uncharged nuclear particles damage the reactor structure and make it radioactive. A chain of undesirable effects ensures that any reactor employing D-T fusion will be a large, complex, expensive, and unreliable source of power."
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"But the scientific goal turns out to be an engineering albatross. From the engineering point of view, we should have started from the answer and worked backward."
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"Producing net power from fusion is a valid scientific goal, but generating electricity commercially is an engineering problem. The requirement is to develop a power source significantly better than those that exist today,
and D-T fusion cannot provide that solution. Even if the fusion program produces a reactor, no one will want it."
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"Fusion will almost certainly have a lower power density than fission and
therefore will require a larger plant to produce the same output. Suppose a fusion plant had to be ten times as big and therefore likely ten
times as costly — as a present-day fission plant to produce the same amount of power. Given the already intolerable costs of building fission plants, that would hardly be economically feasible."
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"Temperatures within the fusion reactor will range from the highest produced on earth (within the plasma) to practically the lowest possible (within the magnets). The entire structure will be bombarded with neutrons that induce radiation and cause serious damage to materials. Problems associated with the inflammable lithium must be managed. Advanced materials will have to endure tremendous stress from temperature extremes and damaging neutrons. The magnetic fields will exert forces equivalent to those seen only in very high pressure chemical reactors and specialized laboratory equipment. All in all, the engineering will be extremely complex."
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http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With-Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf

Some scientific studies on the "Electrification of everything".
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Be patient. Persistent. And accepting of the scale of the transformation. Wishful thinking and picking time frames out of a hat do not change the physical requirements on the ground.
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"Electricity’s share of total final energy in 2050 reaches 41 percent in the high scenario, up from 19 percent in 2016 and 23 percent in the reference scenario. The shift to electricity in the high scenario also found fuel use reductions of 74 percent for gasoline, 35 percent for diesel, and 37 percent for natural gas in 2050. Because electricity end-use technologies are typically more energy efficient to provide the same service per unit of final energy than other technologies,” noted Mai, “that leads to an overall final energy use reduction of about 21 percent by 2050.”
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https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/widespread-electrification-could-increase-u-s-electricity-consumption
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https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70485.pdf
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sendler2112 said:

Fusion. The energy source of the future. And always will be.

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Yeah, I don't really have any hope for fusion, this talk from Kirk Sorensen was really convincing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqXWdHyv1ps
[youtube]KqXWdHyv1ps[/youtube]

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On another subject Doosan has released their 2hour flight fuel-cell for drones, their tank looks a fair bit bigger than the Intelligent Energy fuel-cells.

Apparently its available for purchase now.
http://www.doosanmobility.com/en/products/powerpack/

They have a bunch of videos on their channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPfua9QlhibhQEJkVSivBFg/videos

This company is Korean but they have a USA sales team by the looks of this demo video
[youtube]IdOdyhNM4uk[/youtube]

Other recommended videos of theirs that are pretty new.
Every time some goes missing in the bushland areas in the Victorian mountains I wonder if these drones would be helpful. They always send out a bunch of people on dirt motorbikes and at least 1 helicopter but never have that much luck, maybe if this drone has a good heat sensor on it could prove useful, which it claims it can.
[youtube]culfv39oMv4[/youtube]

[youtube]z1UVtUQMmmY[/youtube]

[youtube]Cnjgy7HwHE0[/youtube]

[youtube]A9rjEASZiz0[/youtube]

There has been some man-sized "electric flying car" demos lately in the media but they still only fly in their demo for about 2 minutes.
When you watch them you get the feeling the folks behind the lithium battery only "flying car" designs have a mindset that a miracle battery is just around the corner...
Seems like they are of the same mind-set as folks were here 12 years ago in the "battery breakthrough releases thread"
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=57256
^This thread makes me laugh every time I go through it, all the announcements of 10,000 cycle/500c-rate/1400Wh/kg performance was not far away...
But 12 years later we are still all on the same chemistries they thought up literally 40 years ago according to this Wikipedia entry at 1979.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Invention_and_development

sendler2112 said:

“that leads to an overall final energy use reduction of about 21 percent by 2050.”

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Impossible. You have taught me repeatedly in this thread that GDP, population and energy use an intrinsicly tied 1:1:1 (despite the current per capita energy use of first world countries of similar GDP varying massively. Yet this guy is claiming primary energy use will actually decrease while population and GDP continue to rise??? The doomsday preppers will be burning him at the stake...

Punx0r said:

sendler2112 said:

“that leads to an overall final energy use reduction of about 21 percent by 2050.”

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Impossible. You have taught me repeatedly in this thread that GDP, population and energy use an intrinsicly tied 1:1:1 (despite the current per capita energy use of first world countries of similar GDP varying massively. Yet this guy is claiming primary energy use will actually decrease while population and GDP continue to rise??? The doomsday preppers will be burning him at the stake...

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This is quite a bit more realistic than the 80%? reduction that you were proposing with your wishful napkin math. And the report doesn't say anything about taking into consideration any economic growth projections which would of course add to the total requirements.

TheBeastie said:

^This thread makes me laugh every time I go through it, all the announcements of 10,000 cycle/500c-rate/1400Wh/kg performance was not far away...
But 12 years later we are still all on the same chemistries they thought up literally 40 years ago according to this Wikipedia entry at 1979.

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In 1979 everyone was using lead acid. And even if we switch to aluminum air or liithium sulfur, we would still be using "chemistries they thought up literally 40 years ago."

In the past 12 years we have increased energy density by 2.5x, cut costs by a factor of 4 and can fast charge at a 10C rate (at least 5x faster than 12 years ago.) Teslas are reporting battery lifetimes of 500,000 miles - 1600 cycles. We don't need a new chemistry at this rate, we just need to keep improving at the same rate.

billvon said:

......In 1979 everyone was using lead acid. .....

....In the past 12 years we have increased energy density by 2.5x, ....
.... We don't need a new chemistry at this rate, we just need to keep improving at the same rate.

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In 1979, i had a 50Ah NiCad bank on a boat.and together with all my collegues, we were using NiCad in our experimental RC vehicles.
We could buy 250W/kg 18650s in 2009, so the improvement in energy density hasnt changed much , if at all since then.
The only things that have changed significantly since then are quality and cost reduction.

Ah, yes, I think we all remember those early ~250Wh/kg li-ion cells - circa 1C max discharge, weren't they?

sendler2112 said:

This is quite a bit more realistic than the 80%? reduction that you were proposing with your wishful napkin math. And the report doesn't say anything about taking into consideration any economic growth projections which would of course add to the total requirements.

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You think they calculated a global energy budget for 2050 and failed to account for any expected growth in population and the economy???

Punx0r said:

sendler2112 said:

This is quite a bit more realistic than the 80%? reduction that you were proposing with your wishful napkin math. And the report doesn't say anything about taking into consideration any economic growth projections which would of course add to the total requirements.

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You think they calculated a global energy budget for 2050 and failed to account for any expected growth in population and the economy???

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Did you read the paper? There is no mention of any calculated energy consumption or changes over time to the total. No figures are given or used regarding current or projected future energy totals. It's purpose is not to predict future energy demand, but to predict transformation rates and costs to the electrification of everything, based on the present states of technological progression and adoption and cost curves as much as they can be projected forward in three different adoption scenarios of current rates/ medium increased effort/ high increased effort based on values of available data from around 2015 when the research was started.
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No attempt was made to forecast and include growth of demand or state what the total end use energy requirements are currently or would be in the future. His statement in the interview of a 21% reduction in end use is strictly a statement of what the improved efficiency will be as applied to whatever total end use energy we are consuming at the time of achievable electrification. I'll have to leave the calculation of how much reduction in primary energy consumption this would result in for another study or another day to figure it myself. It seems reasonable that it would be at the 45% reduction that the "Roadmap To Renewables" study published.

TheBeastie said:

sendler2112 said:

Fusion. The energy source of the future. And always will be.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't really have any hope for fusion, this talk from Kirk Sorensen was really convincing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqXWdHyv1ps
[youtube]KqXWdHyv1ps[/youtube]

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He does touch on the complexity of creating a machine that can contain the nearly hottest temperature in physics, and the nearly coldest temperature in physics, within 5 meters of each other. And the fact that we are thus far barely achieving this for a few milliseconds. He didn't mention the real financial challenge to fusion electricity which is the neutron damage to the 1 meter thick reactor wall which requires a complete tear down of the machine from the outside, in, to access for frequent replacement. Which the material is too radioactively "hot" for humans to go near.
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Just because deuterium is plentiful doesn't mean the machinery or process to use it ever will be.

Bridge fuel for the 30 year life of the plant and dispatchable load balancing to supplement future high percentages of wind and solar with the new Mitsubishi JAC gas turbine.
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“Enhanced Air Cooling takes our JAC to the next level, and establishes the JAC’s position as the new industry standard. In 1x1 combined cycle configuration, a 60 Hz JAC power plant will now have a generating capacity of over 600 megawatts, providing over 64% fuel efficiency and 99.5% reliability. According to a market survey report, the JAC now holds the top global market share for gas turbine orders in 2018(Note).
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https://www.mhps.com/news/20180625.html?_ga=2.189457583.526320215.1572044648-150091544.1572044648
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The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act H.R 763 is a very well thought out bill to implement a gradual phase in of carbon tax right where it comes out of the ground or first enters the country and is revenue neutral with the complete dividend to be repaid to all citizens to use as they see fit. This is a true market solution to the missing price signals of using fossil carbon as fuel. Right now we pay little more than the cost of extraction. Nothing is paid for the depletion of these nonrenewable resources from the commons. Nor for the sink of their waste. This bill attempts to phase in a more accurate market price to carbon as fuels to help the market drive us toward more sustainable types and levels of energy consumption. Write your congress person to support H.R. 763.
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https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/

Some considerations on the costs of a full transition to the electrification of everything that is required to switch to a 100% solar and wind energy system.
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https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Renewable-Energys-Inconvenient-Truth.html
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"the only way to prevent climate catastrophe is “degrowth” now, not in 2050: stop most flying, meat-eating and clothes-buying until we have green alternatives, ban privately owned cars and abandon sprawling suburbs. A long economic depression might be enough to keep the planet habitable. We’d also need to divert money from consumption to building green infrastructure. This is essentially Greta Thunberg’s argument.

But that would put us in a new world. Economic growth, democracy and CO2 have always been intertwined. Growth and democracy barely existed until coal fuelled the industrial revolution. Can democracy survive without carbon?

We are not going to find out. No electorate will vote to decimate its own lifestyle. We can’t blame bad politicians or corporates. It’s us: we will always choose growth over climate."
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https://www.ft.com/content/47b0917c-f523-11e9-a79c-bc9acae3b654
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Just came across the MIT lecture by Prof Don Sadoway on grid storage and the development of the Liquid Metal Battery. A well communicated explanation of both the issues around RE generation, grid design, and the progress of the Ambri Liquid metal Battery. They have had some setbacks, but have regrouped and developed a improved cell.
Well worth watching
If they can prove this out commercially (currently underway) it will be a major step forward, as it. Has several huge advantages over current alternatives.
https://ambri.com/technology/
https://youtu.be/NiRrvxjrJ1U
[youtube]NiRrvxjrJ1U[/youtube]

"we can break real wealth into two discrete forms. Primary wealth is the wealth of the land and its functioning ecosystems. It is clear air, fresh water, thick ore bodies, and rich soils:

Secondary wealth is a finished form produced from raw materials. It is primary wealth brought to market. It is fresh produce on the grocery shelf, cut lumber (or even a fully-constructed building), and rolled steel in giant coils:

Tertiary wealth, on the other hand, is not actually “real”. But most people mistake it as a comprehensive representation of “wealth”.

Similar to money, tertiary wealth is merely a claim on primary and/or secondary wealth.

We’re facing this approaching crisis for two main reasons. One, we’re repeating the forgetfulness and hubris of previous societies. And two, the complexities of our current situation are more challenging than ever before.

Many of our actions are driven by the strong human preference to push our current problems into the future. When problems and predicaments are compounding/exponential in nature like those we’re currently facing, every can-kicking deferment only makes the pain much greater when it finally arrives.

And as for the increased complexities, for the first time in our history as a global species, we are waking up to the fact that the world is no longer our infinite treasure basket with an unlimited ability to absorb our waste streams.

Instead, it is finite. And its already groaning under the weight of one unit of global GDP extraction and waste. The central banks are tirelessly seeking to double the size of the economy, and then double it again.

One can easily make the argument that 1x GDP is already ‘too much’ for the planet. Disappearing fishes, soil, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles and large animals all indicate that ‘too much’ was a while ago."
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https://www.peakprosperity.com/the-end-of-money-3/