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Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants
Dr. Hok writes "As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base-load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people's basements in Hamburg starting early next year will feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home's water/heating. The "ZuhauseKraftwerk" (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL; they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating needed replacement anyway."
In case you didn't get the memo, Russians stopped being "Commies" almost twenty years ago and are now a good capitalist dictatorship. Plus, there's a second pipeline project on the way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline) that'll provide access to more suppliers.
Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant). Also, this move will help to break up the cartel the four large energy providers have held for decades, so yes, it makes perfect sense indeed
Normally I wouldn't feed the trolls, but OP is RIGHT. Nuclear plants themselves emit NO gases (unless there's a serious problem.)
Your link stacks up all the carbon emissions produced to mine, process, refine, enrich, clad (and the emissions from mining, processing, smelting, casting and welding the cladding), assemble, ship and swap a nuclear plants fuel source.
Fair enough, just let me in on the fossil fuels refill fairy and your secret's safe with me!
You're looking at it from a purely ideological standpoint, and you're missing the pragmatic side of the issue.
The fact is, nuclear power plants, today, in practice, in the real world, *can* and *do* deliver the kind of energy required to run the power grid. They can completely replace the burning of fossil fuels if necessary, and the fuel they run on is in fact VERY plentiful, particularly modern reactors that can run on U-238. This is partly because it goes so far. A pound of uranium generates a WHOLE lot more power than a pound of coal or oil. But uranium is fairly abundant anyway. There's more uranium in the earth's crust than there is tin, for instance. Enough to meet the world's power needs for *centuries* (and by then hopefully we'll have more cost-effective solar -- but I'm getting ahead of myself).
It is likely that no amount of research or investment will ever make wind and wave deliver enough power to meet the world's needs at the current power consumption rate. Falling-water power plants are very cost-effective where you have a generous amount of water at significant potential, e.g., at a dam or large waterfall, but there are relatively few such sites. We do use them where they are available, but there's a limit to how many of them we can build. We can't replace all the coal and oil plants with hoover-dam-style plants, because quite simply there just plain aren't that many large rivers.
Solar power can, in the long term, deliver the power we need, but at present it still needs decades of development to get to a point where it will be economically viable. I'm very much in favor of continuing that research, but it's not going to happen overnight. Today, the most cost-effective method we have for harnessing solar power involves using acres and acres of green plants to turn it into carbohydrates, which we can then burn as fuel. If we want to replace fossil-fuel and nuclear power generation with solar, we're going to have to do better than that. Further research and development is required.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Actually, I have a friend who's got a cabin up in the hills that's completely off the grid. Septic system, well water, solar power, electric everything (including stove and bbq). The in-house lines have a natural 16V system which powers major appliances and lights, and there's an up-converted 120V power supply for things like TV or computer.
He uses these things called "batteries" to store extra energy that's generated during the day in order to power things at night. Coupled with turning things off at night, his system generates more than enough electricity to keep things going, and can go for about 2 weeks if the weather's overcast before he has to switch to the gasoline generator to charge the batteries.
Now while it's unusual to have 2 weeks' straight overcast weather, it's not unheard of. But you can get past that by building a distributed network that covers a large land area. We may have about 60% cloud cover in our atmosphere, up to 80% on some days, but it's always sunny somewhere, and you can use generation from places where it is sunny to help supplement the needs/generation where it's not.
If we were to get serious about conservation and turning stuff off when we don't need it, then we could switch to solar tomorrow. more practically, as the GP said, we should be using solar as much as we can, and use something that's not clean to make up the deficit.
And before you start talking about how dirty solar panels are, and how much energy is required to produce them, I'll draw your attention to this. There's other ways to use solar energy to generate power. This one uses nothing more dirty than concrete and mirrors, coupled with a large water tank and a turbine. It's so efficient that on a bright day as much as 40% of the mirrors are directed *away* from the focal point, as it produces far more energy than the system can use.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
AT&T has "distributed generation", and not just in central offices. Some in-ground network nodes have a small engine fueled from a gas line. This provides backup power if commercial power goes out. In some areas, there's been grumbling about this; somebody in the subdivision gets stuck with the big green box in their yard.
It's mostly a problem in high-density suburban areas. In urban areas, there are underground vaults and commercial basements in which infrastructure equipment can be placed. In low-density suburban areas and rural areas, big metal boxes that make small amounts of noise aren't that bothersome. But in areas where everybody has their little patch of lawn and little else, there are complaints.
I have one of these nodes at the end of my driveway. I get landline phone and DSL through it. It's about 1m x 2m, projecting about 30cm above ground, with a big exhaust vent. I've seen the box open; it looks like a server rack. Normally, it just produces fan noise; the engine is only run for tests and power outages.
Being German, I can tell you that I have yet to meet someone who has AC in his home. Public buildings *sometimes* have it, but AC isn't common here at all.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?