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Re:thorium == our only hope, obi wan by TheRealHocusLocus · 2013-11-04 00:44 · Score: 1 · on 4 Prominent Scientists Say Renewables Aren't Enough, Urge Support For Nuclear

An electricity grid needs either some big stable supplies or a lot of diversity and over provisioning to be able to keep up with demand spikes

The US was on a steady path leading to a nuclear grid until 1977, when Carter declared a moratorium on spent fuel processing. This caused more concern than alarm in the nuclear power industry, whose plants all had pools for temporary storage. Everyone thought it would be ironed out shortly, the government would step in to manage a secure facility to recycle plutonium and store long term waste. Then the China Syndrome [movie,1979], Three Mile Island [incident,1979] occured 12 days apart and everything came to a halt.

The only notable grid building that has occurred since then haas been the steady accumulation of coal-fired power plants over the years, a slight increase in nuclear, and only recently a shift to natural gas. That's it. There's your electrical grid.

Everything else has been incorrect projections and wasted money. Discussion of coal and natural gas power generation a topic? Nope, actually there has been twenty years of hype on solarand
wind, alternatives that are regiional at best, and upon any climate disruption that would generate cloud cover or disrupt wind patterns (no matter what the storage technology) would be a slate-wiper. Solar and Wind have presumed the building of branch feeders, there never was money for that. T. Boone Pickens lost his shirt on wind or let us say, provided a cautionary tale for other billionaires.

Solar subsidies will not just dry up... they will disappear overnight as the true crisis begins. Be it economic implosion or reigning in of government spending, the correction will be huge and sudden.

So now we are riding the crest of a natural gas glut which may last 30 years. I am hesitant to drop the 'hundreds' of years figure because it would be achieved with escalating difficulty and they wish to mass export it out of the country today. After that things looks pretty bleak. More coal??

That is why folks like me seem kind of desperately agitated on these forums at times. We're not adverse to personal self-sufficiency or conservation, we just see a terrible crisis ahead.

Part of the reason for the agitation in these discussions is that we are being presented with a steady stream well-meant suggestions for personally navigating the crisis, as if a little money ahead and a bit of ingenuity can mitigate the risk. And we do sense risk and danger.

That is why when we discuss the state of the grid we tend to sweep wind and solar off the table. Too aggressively, sure -- it is an aspect of our sense of dread, NOT an insensitivity to the usefulness and and cleverness of those sources.

We feel pressed on the matter. We are thinking of a long harsh Winter, just ONE country-wide ice storm which is possible, a serious further economic downturn, and the prospect of going to war over oil (again) or the dollar losing its reserve strength (happening!). All of these things, along with a hypothetical ~30 year glut of natural gas means there is perhaps still time to save the grid (and our way of life) if we get serious about fission and LFTR now, urgently.

Otherwise we are heading for THIS: a true blackout American Blackout. Never mind the unlikely cyberattack scenario, I do not even believe a Carrington Even EMP would take out that many points at once... and their time frame is a little extreme, "Day 10" events might occur at Week 10...

Thorium LFTRs would not in themselves save us if our lo

Wind sucks. Tidal doesn't exist. by Animats · 2011-09-09 18:32 · Score: 1 · on The Coming Energy Turnaround In Germany

Tidal energy is enormous.

No, it's not. The largest tidal plant in the world averages 96 megawatts. That's a tenth the output of a nuclear unit. There are only about ten good sites for tidal plants in the world, the Bay of Fundy being the best. You need a bay you can dam. Schemes with floats bobbing up and down to extract power cost too much for the energy produced.

Windmills can do a whiz of a job.

Only in specific locations. Here's the detailed wind map of the US for wind power siting purposes. There are four good locations in California, and all four already have wind farms on them. There are lots of good wind locations in the Great Plains states, but most of them aren't near areas that can use the power. Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio have real potential. East of the Rockies, forget it.

Like by Animats · 2011-02-18 04:56 · Score: 1 · on Stanford, UCD Researchers Say 100% Renewable Energy Possible By 2050

The paper is disappointing.

One of the assumptions of the paper is that some sources, like wind and tidal power, can be expanded as desired. That's not the case.

Tidal power is very limited; the geography has to be just right. There are about four really good sites in the world, the Bay of Fundy being the best. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near a big electrical load.

Wind power sites are more limited than most people realize. Look at the wind maps of the United States. The high wind areas are mostly far from the populated areas. The best wind areas are from the Texas panhandle north to Canada, the big empty space in the US. Illinois looks very promising.The Northeast and South, not much. California has four really good on-shore wind sites, and all four already have wind farms.

Wind power is also more variable than its enthusiasts realize. Check out the current California wind output graph. There's been a 3:1 variation in output just today, and that's with wind farms spread over an area 400 miles across.

Hydroelectric power is great, but all the good dam sites were gone by 1940. The ideal dam is Hoover Dam - plug up a gorge in a useless desert and fill the desert with water. Few other sites are that good.

Hydrogen is, of course, a joke. It's a terrible way to store electric power. Inefficient to make, and dangerous to handle. Electric cars get that job done just fine with batteries.

Ethanol from cellulose looks promising. That works now, although it's still kind of expensive. It runs on agricultural waste and other unwanted cellulose, so it's a good renewable source. That's probably the liquid fuel of the future. Ethanol from food crops is a tax gimmick.

Solar power is very effective in the right climate. Realistically, that means the southern half of the US and points south, Spain, most of India, Africa, etc. There's also the nice property that peak electrical load in places that need air conditioning is guaranteed to coincide with peak solar power output.

The world will end up running mostly on renewable energy, though. The fossil fuels are running out. Oil at $100/bbl is the new normal. It's not going to be pleasant.

Wind power vs. Pickens by Animats · 2010-12-25 07:17 · Score: 3, Informative · on Pickens Wind-Power Plan Comes To a Whimpering End

To understand wind power, look at the wind map of the United States. Wind turbines aren't useful unless the average wind speed is in the 8 m/sec range and up. Note the huge high-wind area from the Texas panhandle up to Canada. That's where Pickens wanted to operate. Good place for wind turbines, but no nearby place that needs the power. So some long transmission lines were needed. The problem is not that "regulators" wouldn't let Pickens build transmission lines. It's that he wanted governments to pay for them. See Pickens' testimony before Congress. He wanted eminent domain powers and tax credits for high-tension lines. Back in 2009, though, he couldn't raise the $2 billion needed to build them.

Those wind charts come in much finer detail. Look at the California wind map. There are four really good wind areas in California, and they all have large wind farms operating. There's room for further expansion out at Mojave, but the other three sites are essentially full. Those are all successful operations, because they're reasonably near big loads.

Also, the Pickens claim that collecting wind power over a large area would provide significant base load capacity may be bogus. See the live data for the PJM grid. (This brings up a big Flash application showing what the power grid for the Northeastern US is doing. Switch one of the panels to "Wind Power" and set the scale to "All Data".) Within a 3-day period, total wind power for the entire Northeast US can range over an 8 to 1 range. That's from real, operating wind farms.

Wind power vs. Pickens by Animats · 2010-12-25 07:17 · Score: 3, Informative · on Pickens Wind-Power Plan Comes To a Whimpering End

To understand wind power, look at the wind map of the United States. Wind turbines aren't useful unless the average wind speed is in the 8 m/sec range and up. Note the huge high-wind area from the Texas panhandle up to Canada. That's where Pickens wanted to operate. Good place for wind turbines, but no nearby place that needs the power. So some long transmission lines were needed. The problem is not that "regulators" wouldn't let Pickens build transmission lines. It's that he wanted governments to pay for them. See Pickens' testimony before Congress. He wanted eminent domain powers and tax credits for high-tension lines. Back in 2009, though, he couldn't raise the $2 billion needed to build them.

Those wind charts come in much finer detail. Look at the California wind map. There are four really good wind areas in California, and they all have large wind farms operating. There's room for further expansion out at Mojave, but the other three sites are essentially full. Those are all successful operations, because they're reasonably near big loads.

Also, the Pickens claim that collecting wind power over a large area would provide significant base load capacity may be bogus. See the live data for the PJM grid. (This brings up a big Flash application showing what the power grid for the Northeastern US is doing. Switch one of the panels to "Wind Power" and set the scale to "All Data".) Within a 3-day period, total wind power for the entire Northeast US can range over an 8 to 1 range. That's from real, operating wind farms.

Re:Tornado Alley Could Be the New Middle East by eldavojohn · 2010-01-08 05:42 · Score: 1 · on Google Applies To Become Energy Marketer

"ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees."

Same argument for nuclear power in the 60s. 'too cheap to meter'. I predict the same results for windpewer.

Everything's got problems. And wind power isn't going to be our only solution. T. Boone Pickens demonstrated someone getting in too far over their head too fast in this market. I really wish he would explain to everyone what went wrong with his plans. Who knows? The cement for the bases could get too expensive? The farmers in Iowa that selling small plots of land for what looks like a lot of money to have a wind mill in the corner of your field might wise up, form a coalition and start gouging. The copper prices and turbines could explode in price with an immediate high demand. I don't know, but there's the obvious problem we now know about nuclear power and wind mills have lesser problems with wildlife, growing pains and natural elements causing maintenance headaches. We're a lot smarter than we were in the 60s.

"slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone."

Price has little to do with cost. It is the market. If oil- and coal-generated electicity is sold for 14/kwh, nuclear power can sell for the same, no problem. Why would windpower outfits sell for less than, say, 11/kwh? They are leaving money on the table. Not many corporations do that.

This leads to the second point of why I don't like vertical integration. If these wind fields remain independent of each other and owned and operated by different folks, they will at some point stop competing with coal and gas and start competing with themselves. That's distant but that's what I was talking about. After they pay for their equipment they'll take it down as low as they can go to undercut the other wind farm. Just like it should be with coal even though it's not.

"industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms"

Or different petroleum supplies. Or nuclear. Or something else. Don't think they will choose for any other reason than profits.

Ask someone from Iowa what they'd prefer: a nuclear power plant or a field of wind mills in their backyard. Unfounded fears do affect the markets. The petroleum process is as big and cut down to as cheap as possible as it is. More supplies ain't going to change much.

Um, California, Iowa, and a lot of other places have more potential.

Tornado alley stretches from northern Texas up to Minnesota and is very wide. See these NREL maps. You correctly mention the problems. They will be weighed against the problems we have now and will face in the future.

Cling to your optimism. If it is all you have left, they can't take it away from you. Of course, you can give up. I just howe you don't.

My dad helped pour the foundations for 71 windmills costing $100 million on Buffalo Ridge in Minnesota near Lake Benton. It's probably not paid for yet but you can bet that it will be soon, I wish I could know more from that company. That was funded by a California company sending the energy to people in Chicago to combat brownouts. Years later my hometown of Marshall built a smaller bank of windmills to increase our energy resources. I don't just have optimism, I have proof that the change has started. Now how far will it go?

Tornado Alley Could Be the New Middle East by eldavojohn · 2010-01-08 04:38 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Google Applies To Become Energy Marketer

Short disclaimer, I'm not an economist so what follows is largely my own opinion and prediction.

Google's stated aim is to be able to purchase renewable energy directly from producers at bulk rates, pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral.

Some quick observations about Iowa. Back in 2008, we covered Microsoft and Google opening up half billion dollar server farms in this state because energy was supposedly cheaper there and tax incentives. Now, if you look at the year end totals for Iowa's wind power capacity in MW you'll notice that through 2008 it jumped higher than any other year going from 1,273 to 2,791. It more than doubled. At the end of 2009 it was at 2,862 -- perhaps a result of the recession -- but also indicative of what's going on in the state. Put two and two together and I think it's obvious that wind power companies were looking to work with Google and were maybe even encouraged by Google.

You know, I was really glad to see this sort of thing happen. It was something that Google could spend money doing that would boost shareholder value while at the same time incentivizing companies to invest billions in wind power in Iowa with a lengthy ten year or more plan to gain that money back before they start to turn serious profits. If Google gets these wind power plants up and running, ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees. Think about it, a whole infrastructure springing up on Google's promises and investor's dimes being slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone. In addition to the slow and welcomed change, the industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms. If this model is proven successful, tornado alley could in fifty years become the new middle east and we'll be fighting wind wars over South Dakota and Kansas.

Now, back to the story, this vertical integration strategy is awesome for the company but I don't like it for two reasons. 1) In my opinion it is a step down the path to a weak version of a monopoly and competition deterrent 2) If Google influences these companies too much or worse buys them out, we might never see a price war I mentioned above. These are distant fears and after the Ma Bell and Microsoft monopolies/anti-trusts/Sherman Act prosecutions, I trust the DoJ won't sit idly by if point one or two become uncomfortable truths.

Google reportedly does not have plans to actively become an energy broker, a la Enron.

That kind of reassures me.

Overly optimistic? Of course. A little unrealistic? Well, a man can dream, can't he? A man can dream.

Probably Wind Incentives to Companies by eldavojohn · 2010-01-06 10:02 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Minnesota Introduces World's First Carbon Tariff

This will, of course, ultimately be passed on to the customers. Ultimately, this is a way to raise taxes to force a change in private industry. The government keeps the money, and we the people pay the taxes. It won't hurt the companies in this case because there is no choice in electricity providers. You can't switch electric companies like you can cell phone companies. How, exactly, will this force "cleaner" electricity generation? What will be done with the money from these tariffs? Will it only be used for environmental concerns, or will it just go into the general budget?

Minnesota has grown to be fourth in Wind Power generation. And if you look at time lapse growth they're really pushing that. The weird thing about it is that they're not even one of the prime wind resource states although I will testify that the wind gets ridiculous out there. Now, you probably already know this but Tim Pawlenty (Republican) is the governor of Minnesota and of course is going to try to get a bid for the presidential run in 2012. On his about page:

implementing a plan to Americanize our energy sources by generating 25% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2025

As a moderate Democrat, I was kind of afraid when he almost got a bid in 2008 ... because he's actually not that bad of a candidate. He doesn't talk like a moron and he's got his head in a lot of the right places. If he would cut the Christian God talk out of his speeches, I'd probably be on board. Sorry to get offtopic but I'm trying to say that this tariff would probably be a huge in road for him to moderates if he could pull it off. I'm certain he's not the prime motivator behind this but I would bet that they'd take the taxes from this and dump it into wind incentives. They're racing against Iowa in the wind department. California and Texas are too big and too prime locations to take on for Megawatt generation from wind power.

That is where I bet they would take this money: incentives to corporations for wind power.