On Electricity (Generation)

Engineer-Poet wrote a piece a few months back that focuses on electricity production; or rather how or what we will need to do to keep pace with people's demands while balancing that with environmental and economic impact. Lengthy but well-reasoned and good reading.

Comments

Simple solution

[nadamsieee]

Wait for the baby-boomers to die off. Suddenly energy, housing, and jobs will become plentiful. ;)

Related Reading

[CheeseburgerBrown]

For a science-fiction cant on some of the issues raised in TFA, take a look at The Bikes of New York which explores a post-energy crisis near-future in which impoverished people have the option of riding stationary bicycles to spin massive underground flywheels that top up the energy needs of commercial enterprises.

I think creative solutions to electricity problems are in all our futures. Personally, I live about 75% off the grid and am looking forward to be able to afford to get all the way off -- but I need to get my roof re-done before I can even think about solar panels or mounting a wind turbine up there.

At any rate, fiction for thought.

Re:They're typical media

[AKAImBatman]

They will not post what they disagree with. Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"

There's nothing wrong with Ethanol, save for studies 30 year out of date that are perpetuating the idea that it's energy negative. And it's not a "green" problem. It's a problem of finding an alternative fuel source before the rising prices of petrol cause too many economic problems.

As it so happens, Ethanol is being used as an ocatane-booster additive in the majority of gasoline today. In part, it's because it's safer than cleaner than most of the chemicals previously used to improve octane ratings. Another part of it, however, is that up to 10% Ethanol mixtures are helping to lower the cost of gasoline as the prices for gas surpass that of Ethanol.

What!?

[antifoidulus]

Lengthy but well-reasoned and good reading.

Dude, what the hell is something like that doing on slashdot? I need more psuedo intellectual rants about how the RIAA is going to eat my first born!

Similar Ideas

[rohar]

The article has some similar ideas to our project. A few comments on the article:

• The existing agricultural system is orientated towards edible food production. Growing, handling and storing crops for energy products is an entirely different industry that currently doesn't exist in North America. Using food production numbers for energy product potential isn't very accurate.
• If agricultural production of energy products had access to affordable and renewable energy, there is a lot more potential for increased production while improving the land as well as better use of by-products than is feasible with the current fossil fuel powered agricultural sector.

A couple more technologies

[mdsolar]

This is a really nice piece of work. A couple of technologies that were missed are marketing mechanisms related to solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/solar-power-am way-way.html and fly wheels http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html, described on the Real Energy blog.

Re:Wrong

[x2A]

You won't be laughing when the moon comes crashing into your house!

End carbon emissions in 30 years (how to)

[Spazmania]

How to end US carbon emissions in 30 years without damaging the US economy:

Step 1: Build nuclear power plants. Update the designs with modern technology and give tax incentives for every new nuke plant built.

Reason: 50's and 60's technology nuke plants currently generate electricity for less money than any other technology, even coal. They cost less than a third of what oil and natural gas plants cost. With modern technology its likely we could improve safety while lowering the cost further. Speaking of safety: the worst US accident in 50 years of opererating nuclear energey plants was three mile island, in which no radiation leaked and no one got hurt.

Yes, worse accidents are possible. That means that over a long enough period of time they will happen. But weigh the rare environmental damage from a meltdown against the continuous destruction of the atmosphere by hyrdocarbon burning plants.

Step 2: With the cost of electricty driven cheap enough by nuke plants, shift to hydrogen-based internal combustion engines. With electrolysis done at off-peak hours to generate hydrogen from electricity, every home can be its own fueling station. Hydrogen burns with oxygen to make water, so go drive a steamer.

Reason: Imagine a city, maybe the city you live in, where the only air pollution is the occasional methane from peoples' farts! Nuclear makes its possible and these technologies are economical now, not just in some hypothetical future after more research.

Actually, that's Wrong Too

[jfuredy]

This is an incredibly naive take on Ethanol consumption. The higher octane does have an effect. That effect is to burn the gasoline hotter and more completely, thus extracting energy than would have otherwise been extracted from a lower octane fuel.

Higher octane fuels actually decrease the temperature and speed of the fuel burn, thereby reducing knock, or preignition. There is virtually no difference in the total energy between a high octane and a low octane fuel. The difference is just in how readily the fuels are ignited.

I have a 2-Tank Car already.

[jlcooke]

But it's not a Ethenol hybrid.

It's a 2001 VW Jetta TDI. Diesel. Installed a GreaseCar system. Works well, but not in this weather (-20C..-30C).

Pretty much every other time of the year, I start on DinoDiesel and once things get hot enough I switch to Waste Veggie Oil I get and filter to 10 microns from a local pub.

The article puts things together in a clear way. Points out what's wrong with the nut-jobs who think the world can be run off of butterflies and rainbows.

To those back-and-forthing on Ethenol - think about how much energy there is in a litre of ethenol. It's very very small. Production is expensive ($$$ & energy).

I don't 100% agree with the article's view on charcol fuel sources. But I like the analysis, not many gems like that.

My thoughts on how to solve this? Okokokok I'll tell you anyways. Grow alge, crush it into oil and use that. Alge grows 100x faster than canola/soy/rapeseed, is 50% oil, and only requires sunlight, (non-)salted water, heat, dirt and shit. No expentive farming equipment guzzling diesel to harvest. Just settling ponds like at the local water treatment plant to skim off the alge.

Anyways. Alge == good. Alge has had about 3-4 Billion years head start on Solar-power. Don't believe me? Take a deep breath.

Re:What does nuclear energy cost?

[QuantumPion]

Hum, you've forgotten the incredible subsidy nuclear power gets: It's been promised not to have to deal with the waste. That promise is not at all realistic since Yucca Mountian can't go forward. So, we're in a postion where we'll have to pay back all the energy we've ever gotten from nuclear power and then some. How much more expensive can you get? See: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html

That article is a load of crap. Basically, what he is saying is that in order to clean up all of the waste we've generated, we need to use high energy particle accelerators to split apart every last atom of radioactive waste, and since the particle accelerator would require more energy to run then what we obtained from the nuclear power to begin with, it's therefore not worth the trouble. This is equivalent to saying that fossil fuels can't be economically used, because the energy required to rebind the molecules after they are combusted is greater then the energy used to burn them to begin with. It's a ridiculous argument and is wrong on so many levels I'm not going to go into it here unless you really want me to.

And your original point is wrong. You are backwards, power reactors don't receive subsidies to dispose of their waste. They've been paying into a DOE waste fund since 1982. The cost of waste disposal has already been factored into the economics of their operation.

Re:What does nuclear energy cost?

[QuantumPion]

It's true that Yucca mountain will most likely not be used as a commercial power reactor waste repository site. But it is not as if the billions of dollars in the nuclear waste fund will go to waste. The money will be used towards another storage solution or, more likely, waste reprocessing.

As for the insurance costs, it most certainly is not free. Power plants spend huge amounts of money for their liability insurance. What you are probably thinking of is the price-anderson act, which states that power companies are only liable for the first $10 billion in damages due to a nuclear accident, where the federal government picks up the rest. While the act makes it so that people cannot sue the power companies for _punitive_ damages in a nuclear accident, it also states that the power companies cannot defend any action for damages. It's a fair two-way street that makes nuclear power commercially possible.

According to the wikipedia article on the price-anderson act, the actual subsidy comes out to around $2 million per reactor per year. That seems fairly modest to me, considering the financial risk power companies invest in the plants and their benefit to the country via clean, reliable power.