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Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US
mdsolar writes "Renewable energy production has surpassed nuclear energy production in the U.S. according to the latest issue of Monthly Energy Review (PDF) published by the Energy Information Administration. ... During the first three months of 2011, energy produced from renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, hydro, wind) generated 2.245 quadrillion Btus of energy equating to 11.73 percent of U.S. energy production. During this same time period, renewable energy production surpassed nuclear energy power by 5.65 percent. In total, energy produced from renewables is 77.15 percent of that from domestic crude oil production."
Since solar-caused skin cancer kills more people every year than leaks from nuclear energy plants does.
Hydro-electric!
check out all that flooding!
I wonder how much of that biomass consists of wood-burning stoves. Considering the time period of this study (first three months of this year) that could definitely be a large factor.
EDIT: A quick look at the PDF shows that biomass is the largest renewable energy source, at 1.049 quadrillion BTUs. It even beat out hydropower at 0.618 quadrillion BTUs. However, a look at 2009 and 2010 does not show a seasonal variation that you would expect from wood stoves.
It just includes installed hydroelectric.
There ain't more big rivers.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
that would be costs after interest, this is costs before. Although with interest at ~1% for bonds the difference might be quite small for the short term.
Besides, a lot of the infrastructure involved (for example hydro electric) was built some time ago, as was the nuclear, but nuclear is being phased out gradually (whether part of a broader strategy or not), whereas renewables aren't.
Btus? Can't we just stick to standards?
Kilo/Mega/Giga/Tera Watt hours in this case.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Unless we want to try Tocks Island again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocks_Island
Hydroelectric has been a big part of the US electric grid for the better part of a century now (Roll on, Columbia roll on). I realize it's "renewable", but lumping it in with the newer renewables (biodiesel, wind, et. al.) - the electric production of which is miniscule compared to that of hydro - and then pretending it's us making strides towards a great green future is a tad misleading.
#DeleteChrome
Actually, the hard numbers, available in the second link, are in BTUs, not percentage points. comma
also, Renewable Energy(a)
a Most data are estimates. See Tables 10.1-10.2c for notes on series
components and estimation; and see Note, "Renewable Energy Production and
Consumption," at end of Section 10
actually, as long as that energy is replaced (ie, more farts are produced) then yes, by definition it makes it renewable energy.
"Notwithstanding the recent nuclear accident in Japan, among many others, and the rapid growth in energy and electricity from renewable sources, congressional Republicans continue to press for more nuclear energy funding while seeking deep cuts in renewable energy investments," said Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign. "One has to wonder 'what are these people thinking?'"
I have to wonder what he's thinking, because the best solution to US energy needs looking forward involves expansion of nuclear power as well as renewables. We still haven't really made a dent in the roughly half of US electricity production that comes from coal. And that huge base load need isn't going to be solved by intermittent power sources like solar or wind. Underfunding nuclear power development will only result in delays in bringing up safer newer plant designs.
We can basically say renewable energy fsckin works, now ?
Of course it works. The open question is, "can it scale?"
Good luck tripling the amount of hydro or getting woodstoves into cities.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No one has ever said that it doesn't generate power, just that it's cost ineffective, and requires traditionally generated power in any event to even out the peaks and valleys.
yes, now you just have to times it energy production by 7 and then you could run the entire country on renewable energy. but considering half of the renewable energy is made with "bio-mass", the additional farming burden & environmental impact its better to just use coal.
Ok, wow... did I miss it, or did they completely avoid using any
real numbers, that could be tallied and put in a spreadsheet?
Everything seemed to be something of something else.
RTFA is a horrible idea. RTFPDF, well, that's up to you, it's
214 pages long.
Anyone rationalize those numbers out yet?
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
We can basically say renewable energy fsckin works, now ?
Problem is we ran out of rivers to dam, and that's where most of this is coming from.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Being simple minded, cost per kW-hour is about the only comparative metric I can get my head around.
I found this table... warning there could be a renewable bias.
Will it BLEND?
Admittedly more effort would need to be put into load and supply management with a large proportion of renewable power. Hydro power is a good candidate for filling gaps in supply. It can operate around the clock and it can be brought on line quickly. It can also be used to store energy with reasonable efficiency.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It is possible to store energy, you know. A bunch of mirrors can collect sunlight to melt salt by day, and that salt doesn't magically become cold the moment the sun goes down.
a solar panel on a starlit night probably can't even light a fart.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No, but it still requires a massive area of mirrors, has the standard difficulties with long-range transmission, and now you have lots of waste heat to manage, since you're messing with the ecosystem. The costs and secondary effects kill the idea for large-scale rollout.
This sounds like great news for renewable energy buffs, except for one thing: if you're thinking this represents a success by high tech new power sources like wind, solar, etc., you're wrong.
The two biggest components of "renewable energy" in EIA's report are hydroelectric dams and biomass -- the biomass sector is mostly industrial wood and paper plants which run on waste wood, plus people using wood-fired stoves at home. Good for them, but it's not exactly high tech.
In 1990, before the wind-and-solar revolution, things broke down this way: .09 EJ
Nuclear: 6.1 exajoules
Hydro+biomass: 5.7 EJ
Wind+solar:
In 2000:
Nuclear: 7.8 EJ
Hydro+biomass: 5.8 EJ
Wind+solar: 0.12 EJ
In 2010:
Nuclear: 8.4 EJ
Hydro+biomass: 6.8 EJ
Wind+solar: 1.03 EJ
Or to put it another way: The "wind and solar revolution" that's taken place in the past 20 years now produces 1 EJ of energy per year. The nuclear power industry has managed to increase output by *twice* as much, without building a single new power plant, just running existing plants a little harder.
This isn't intended to support nuclear power or to knock renewables. My only point is that wind and solar are much less significant than people on both sides of the debate think they are, and if we intend to use them as serious industrial power sources, we're going to have to start building them in a serious industrial way. What we're doing now is making a mountain out of a molehill.
Percentages don't mean anything. Numbers can be skewed so many ways its not even funny.
Just because some greeny stuck a hose up his ass and lit his farts to make sear his tofu doesn't make it renewable energy.
For example, this article says that coal power is cooling the earth...
Hydro is great if you happen to be somewhere where a hydro plant already exists. Dams are very hard to build now (at least in the U.S.) because of environmental restrictions. Dams have a tendency to drown things upstream.
It also requires a massive amount of salt. Sodium thiosulfate, one of the favored salts for thermal energy storage due to low cost, practical melting point, high heat of fusion, and low toxicity, takes over one ton to store the energy required by the average household for one day. You can reuse it each day, of course, but that's still a buttload of salt for just one city.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
I think that salt thermal-storage collectors are a great idea. The problem I have with non-PV collectors in general is:
1 - They tend to use large arrays of mirrors
2 - They are usually located in the desert
3 - Mirrors don't last long in the desert
I've yet to see a cost breakdown on replacement of these huge mirror arrays.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Plenty of medium size projects around the USA. We no longer have LARGE 10-12 GW hydro type projects, but we have plenty that are 100-500 MW sizes. And 1000s are available in the 50-100 MW size. Interestingly, there are many dams that require a re-build and can be turned into a hydro-generator at the same time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, of course it can't scale. Neither can oil, or any other option. Not a single one of them will be workable when our population reaches a quintillion.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Not really, this has been an extremely productive year for hydroelectric dams, hardly a typical year, we'll be lucky not to have a year this productive for quite some time. Now, if this were a normal year or the figures weren't so skewed from hydroelectric dams having to top out their capacity, this might suggest just that.
considering the only reason why the figures are what they are because of the increase in biomass aka ETHANOL I would say yes, nuclear is still the only viable alternative. Hydro is maxed out, wind blows (ha!) and solar is the promise which never lives up to the hype.
There is no more waste heat than would otherwise be there from the sun hitting the earth and heating that up, instead of the energy being focused onto a mass of salt.
No new plants to speak of so really what we are seeing is decades of overcapacity in nuclear power, basically waste of capacity since nuclear power is supposed to be baseload. And this is really what killed the nuclear construction industry in the eighties. Bad planning. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/25/244122/three-mile-island-accident-nuclear-power/
"It doesn't get much simpler."
Oh, the chart itself is simple. The problem is, it's incomplete info without much context.
You have to go to the EIA.gov web site and look at other tables than the one linked to find out that the big part of biomass used is wood.
That's been fairly steady for decades. A lot of that is paper and forestry products burning the waste wood to power their plants, and ignorant rural rednecks like me stoking up the fireplace among other things. (Gotta power those moonshine stills with something. The revenuers track electrical and fuel deliveries anymore.)
I'm not sure that's exactly what most people are thinking of as "green" energy. And chopping down a tree to burn it and release carbon immediately sure doesn't sequester carbon very well.
A lot of the rest of the biomass is ethanol in gasoline which is mandated more as a subsidy to farming and as an oxygenator rather than as a real competitor to gasoline.
Conventional hydropower is another huge part of these "renewables". Just try to build a new dam and found out how green the environmentalists think it is.
So, if you just take it as "simple" and only look at that one chart it's rather misleading.
Well, if you heavily subsidize (ethanol, wind) and/or mandate the use of renewables (again ethanol), and create a regulatory environment that makes nuclear more or less impossible, of course you'll see a greater use of renewables.
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over one ton to store the energy required by the average household for one day. You can reuse it each day, of course, but that's still a buttload of salt
Dude, you need to see a proctologist if you can get that much crammed up there!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
that would be costs after interest, this is costs before. Although with interest at ~1% for bonds the difference might be quite small for the short term.
Besides, a lot of the infrastructure involved (for example hydro electric) was built some time ago, as was the nuclear, but nuclear is being phased out gradually (whether part of a broader strategy or not), whereas renewables aren't.
Well, it's certainly part of SOMEBODY's strategy.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There are dams that do both power generation and flood control. But much of flood control infrastructure does not generate electricity. When there is flooding, usually extreme weather is to blame and it is the non-generating levies that give way.
Apparently that is exactly what renewable power is doing and nuclear power is not.
PROTIP: Operation DESERTEC.
Yes, it does scale. And with 400 km^2 of CSP we can power the entire world. (Including nighttime through hydroelectric pumped-storage and winters.)
(Connected with high-voltage DC lines to minimize losses btw.)
To be honest, I think this project is awesome. Cheap, simple, elegant, easy to repair, only made of abundant and recyclable materials, never (well, not in any imaginable time frame) running out energy source... It's hard to imagine a better solution.
And the best part: The mirrors allow water from the air to condense on them, moisturizing the ground below, which creates a whole flora and fauna thriving on it. So it's not only neutral to nature, but has a positive effect.
P.S.: I have nothing against nuclear power, and know pretty well how it works. I don't think it's bad. I just think this is so much better! :)
"We can basically say renewable energy fsckin works, now ?"
You can say whatever you want.
I can put lipstick on a pig and say it's Lindsay Lohan but I don't think I'd get many takers. ;)
Renewable energy certainly works. On some scales, in some markets, and in some applications.
The chemistry and chem engineering departments I work in do boatloads of work trying to make it and other energy technologies cheaper, better and more efficient. Better batteries, fuel cells, materials for solar cells, biofuels, etc. We have groups working on all of those.
We're getting there. But, there's still a lot to do.
(Disclaimer, I fix lab equipment and research instruments. I'm not currently doing research work, but I keep up with a lot of the work that's done here.)
They're called capacitors, and they've been around for a while now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What's funny is while everyone's pushing for renewable energy sources, they gloss over the fact that dams are an ecological disaster, and that nuclear power causes far less environmental damage. If we used breeder reactors, in fact, waste wouldn't be much of a concern, either. The reason we don't use breeder reactors? The products of them (which can be reused many times) are weapons grade. We were worried the ruskies would steal them during the cold war. So, instead of reactors which reused the same material over and over, we went with the crappy designs that exist now, which produce a large amount of waste that's difficult to deal with. And, because everyone's petrified with irrational fear over the use of nuclear reactors, we've never built any more reactors, which would likely be breeder reactors in this day and age. Those reactors would run happily for many years on the waste produced by reactors we have now.
Humans are very bad at gauging the damage and risks posed by nuclear reactors. It's one of the safest ways to produce electricity in the world, far, far safer than oil or coal industries. Also, it's a better "green" energy source than hydroelectric, and probably solar power once you factor in the damage caused just gathering the materials to make solar cells, not to mention the batteries they charge.
If you want to cause less damage to the environment, build more nuclear power plants.
Thanks to endless red tape, roadblocks by the enviro-nuts, what power company in good conscience build a nuke plant in the USA these days? Thanks to the stupidity of the average American, who thinks a problem at a nuke plant will turn it into an H-bomb, coupled with Three Mile Island, The movie China Syndrome,Chernobyl people think nuke plants are unsafe. Well, to quote a radio talk show host...I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant, than in a city with UNION government school teachers.
[off topic]
Clean coal will always be the major factor in any U.S. energy policy. Period.
Please stop ending your arguments with 'period'.
You are implying that your statement is the one and only definitive and correct end to the discussion. As the topic is about future event(s) this is a rather bold assumption; unless you have the super magic powers of the Oracle.
It also implies that you are not open to other points of view or consideration which is sad. By closing yourself off from alternative views and opinions you are removing most opportunities for growth and discovery.
How about:
It is most likely that lean coal will be the major factor in any U.S. energy policy for the foreseeable future.
And keep things downstream.
Then the advantage of hydro is that you need hydro if you want wind. Wind power is fairly cheap, but unreliable. Hydro is great for occasionally filling the gaps left by unreliable sources.
Now that's just silly. Whether or not hydro is green, it is most assuredly "renewable". It's not like you're about to run out of running water like you will with coal or even uranium,
You really need to read. Coal today is less than 45% of American electricity
More importantly, the question is what is the trend, Look here You will see that coal use rose through the time until 2005. Then it started falling. Now, part of that COULD be the neo-con's recession. But it is not. Look at the other energy sources. THey all rose except for one year with AE.
Coal is withering. Heck, here in Colorado, we are going to tear down something like 5 coal plants and replace them with natural gas and AE.
Coal's only real chance is to convert to natural gas by using GreatPoint or other means and then piping it around the nation. Likewise, you then pump the CO2 underground, or sell it for chemical use (for example, sugar beets need it for sugar production).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You can learn about relative support for nuclear, wind and solar here: http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/subsidies.pdf
Dunno, I once chucked an electrolytic cap into a fire. Not sure I want to see that happen with a capacitor which can power a state for an hour. Maybe nuclear power is preferred over that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Do you really really think that if the solar plant were not there the sun would not shine? You must really love the peek-a-boo game.
i don't know, ask the residents of fukishima prefecture
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Thermal solar produces power at night just fine. Solar also has the advantage of matching peak demand to peak production for most of the inhabited parts of the world. Oh, and with electric vehicles we'll all have enough storage capacity to last several days in a blackout or when there is a temporary drop in output due to something like a calm wind over a multistate area.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
According to every source on the internet the US produces
~20% of it's energy from nuclear. My own power company says it is 33% with 8% renewable (mostly wood burning).
So why does the linked article show US nuclear at 8%? Something is amiss here.
My guess is that we shut down a bunch of nuclear plants for upgrades as a result of Fukushima just long enough for a statistician to claim we reached some meaningless milestone.
How many tons of lumber are needed for a house? 10? Still, you get to reuse it every day.
Easy, go look at other places where they shoot environmental protesters. Nuclear isn't doing as well as the dreamers claim it can do but better than the outright opponents say it is. All the people here who talk about the "new designs" should be brought back to earth by the 1990s design of the AP1000 of which the first is still a few years away from completion. We really won't know until it's been running for at least a few days or months how good that design really is let alone the newer designs.
Because there is so much money involved nuclear become surrounded by political bullshit. As an example Germany had no desire to spend a lot of money on upgrades of their existing nuclear plants so got a lot of political goodwill for just doing what they were planning to do anyway for purely economic reasons - shut the aging plants down as they got near their end of life without major overhauls. It came off as a "bold statement" but was really free votes for effectively doing nothing.
IMHO what would be a good idea is more R&D and construction of prototypes (eg. what the Chinese are doing with pebble bed) BEFORE commiting to building a pile of things that just may not be good enough. The side benefit of materials for nuclear weapons even if the plant is not viable for other purposes is pointless now because the military have their own more economical ways of producing the stuff instead using defence money to prop up bably thought out commerical adventures.
For those idiots that scream "we have no time - we must build 1970s nuclear painted green now" the answer is that it takes well over a decade to build those large units from existing designs and the direction of research is towards smaller reactors that would take a lot less time to be built. It's likely that small submarine influenced reactors could be developed, a design finalised and then constructed in less time than an AP1000 reactor could be constructed in the USA even though we have the design and a partially completed example overseas.
It's a myth that large scale civilian nuclear power is only being held back by environmentalists. There are a lot of factors that have held it up and a lot of groups (eg. investors) that just do not think it is good enough.
Actually, if you read the table in TFA, you'll see that hydroelectric has been *declining* for the past decade or two, due to dam closures and environmental restrictions on river flow. Most of the increase in the past decade has been an increase in biomass energy -- mostly paper and lumber plants using their wood waste for fuel, plus more homes using wood and pellet stoves.
Wind power has grown from "utterly insignificant" to "barely worth mentioning", and solar power is still at the "cheap parlor trick" stage.
Hydro plants don't have to use reservoirs. We've got an almost 2GW hydro plant in Quebec that is a run-of-the-river type.
In terms of scale, I'd note that Canada, with 10% the population, generates 1.47x more hydro power than the entire US. HydroQuébec alone (36.8 GW) has ~5.4 GW of additional capacity and upgrades under construction.
Why are they comparing the production of ethanol (48% of "renewables") with nuclear? That doesn't make any sense. Nuclear is for electricity. Ethanol fuels cars. And what happens when they factor in all the petroleum used to produce all that ethanol. Last I checked, ethanol barely breaks even. Woops! And what would it even say if the comparison was meaningful? That people are scared of nuclear? No surprise there.
And then they go to compare "renewables" with domestic crude oil. First, why just domestic crude? Why not talk about ALL the crude consumed in the US? Why include anything but ethanol in that comparison? What sense does it make to compare hydropower with domestic crude oil? They're totally different markets.
You can't say I got it right. If I'd written the Bible, you are supposed to say I had and ax to grind.
Seems like naval reactors do OK so was it really deemed impossible?
Agreed..
A. Clean coal doesnt truly exist yet. There are a few trial plants around, but nothing commercially viable. Note that the industry does confuse scrubbing with carbon capture when talking about "clean coal".
B. The energy requirements for carbon capture will be huge.
The simplest way is to use your coal beds as unconventional gas resources. Coal Seam gas is much better than coal, easier to collect, transport and use. Coal Seam gas is becoming the major target of producers around the globe. Both Australia and the US are putting alot behind it, and that would be the direct reason for the reduction in coal use.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
it would be a shame if something happened to it.
Sincerely,
USA
Canada also has substantially more landmass. Much of that landmass is also unoccupied. It is easier to produce power when there are no pesky people in the way.
If you take a look at the numbers in the pdf, they only go to March, 2011. Spring runoff doesn't usually start until March and peaks around May or June.
There's more renewable energy coming on the grid because states have mandated a carve-out for renewable energy.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
This is a project I would love to see get off the ground; probably one of the coolest, achievable massive projects ever. I read there were plans to generate electricity from solar thermal in the Sahara on a large scale nearly 100 years ago but cheap oil killed that idea.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Perhaps but those pesky hydro reservoirs are a long way from where the pesky people live. Just building the (700 km) access road to the James Bay dam would cost $2B today.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
No, what you can say is that the US has refused to allow the building of any new nuclear plants for decades. If you have one technology essentially banned from being used in new structures, it's only common sense that something else will overtake it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Well, that is why I like the idea of Great Point Energy. They want to convert Coal into Natural Gas (syn fuel). What is interesting is that it will produce a CLEAN stream of CO2. The process even scrubs the rest of the chemicals into SEPARATE elements. All of these are sell-able. Now, you might not think of it as such, but there is a LARGE demand for CLEAN CO2. Shortly, it will form our plastics, rather than using Oil. That will be amazing if they get it working.
Finally, it can be sold to inject into the ground to extract natural gas and even oil.
And of course, GPE gets to sell the methane as well.
Smart operation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
a solar panel on a starlit night probably can't even light a fart.
I think that depends. If you adjust the oxygen pressure carefully, a very tiny spark could light it. A high-voltage/very low amperage current could probably be stepped up from the solar cell's output in such a way that you could achieve the spark you need.
Of course, you could probably get the same result by rubbing a cat on a dry day, but you get the point.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
What's your definition of large-scale? There are plenty of sunny places you can do this where the waste heat wouldn't be a big deal, like the Mojave. The plants take up a lot of space but much less so than an hydro reservoir.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Canada also has substantially more landmass.
Once you notice a big chunk of that landmass is useless islands in the Arctic Ocean, the comparison for hydroelectric purposes gets a lot closer. Also make sure you're not counting internal waters in whatever numbers you're using -- Hudson Bay is friggin' huge.
BTUs are useful, because your electric heater transforms watt-hours into BTUs.
If you stopped using BTUs consumers would get the impression, that all it does is heat up some wires...
I can put lipstick on a pig and say it's Lindsay Lohan but I don't think I'd get many takers. ;)
You'd get more takers if you left out the Lindsay Lohan comparison.
Good luck explaining that to mdsolar.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
The reason that talk about BTUs is that they are talking about all types of energy consumption even the burning of wood in home stoves. Wood is renewable but produces carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Just because it is renewable does not make it green. Take a look at this http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf
For three months in 2010 Neuclear produced 202,449 Million Kilowatthours. Hydro produced 63,295 MKwhrs. Solar, wind and geothermal combined produced 25,288 MKwhrs.
Hydroelectric scales badly (as another posted pointed out "Got any more big rivers?"), but it's also the cause of really significant ecological damage, due to habitat destruction, changes in silt flow in rivers, and problems like that.
Nuclear power is only financially viable if the government gives it ridiculously low limits on damage from accidents, basically unlimited nearly-free insurance, and if the nuclear industry doesn't have to pay for storing dangerous radioactive wastes for hundreds of thousands of years. On the other hand, the US government also blocked construction of nuclear plants, so it's messed up in multiple directions.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
More hydro, really? We really don't have any more big rivers to damn up. Also the impact of damning up rivers is real ( think fish and majorly screwed up bay ecosystems) not imaginary.
While a nice idea, Solar has some serious drawbacks as well. You needs kilo-hectares of space to build big panel farms and the chemicals used to created those nifty little wafers are toxic as hell.
Wind - Nice where you can get it. Having the wind blow reliably every day, day after day is a pretty big challenge.
Commercial, for profit, Nuclear scares the crap out of me since all you need to do is read most any news source to find where companies have cut corners and built things that blew up. I live in the SF Bay Area and watched the PG&E gas main explode from 30 miles away.
Nuclear power is safe if it is done right and about the only entity in the US that have done it right is the US Navy. They have 1000 and 0 record and that includes two reactors on the bottom of the Atlantic that did not melt or even leak. Both were in submarines. One hit the bottom at around 40 knots and the other had a hole blown in its bow big enough to drive a car through.
A basic submarine nuclear plant generates around 48 thermal megawatts from a reactor the size of a small SUV and it can do that for around 6 years before it needs to be refueled. But these are built to crazy tolerances and thus would need to be manufactured on a cost plus basis to meet or exceed specs and the Marketing Boys and MBA's are NOT invited to the party. Build em like that and you can put one in my backyard.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I think one of the major things that a lot of people are missing is that nuclear energy should be seen as a stopgap measure. We don't know if the climate can continue to support coal and oil based power sources. It might, but then again it might not and I don't think thats a risk people are willing to take.
The major problem with current wind, solar, and basically any other power source dependent on the sun is that its only on-line for half the day. The other half has to be taken up by coal and oil plants. It's not easy to spin up or down a generator on the fly so most of the time they just leave them running even if no one is burning the power. Compounded by the unpredictability of solar power (wind, wave, and various light based technologies) "backup generators" have to be left running for the event that there is a break in the supply (cloud) or spike in demand. That said, I would like to see numbers stating how much oil / coal is burned to backup the "green" tech. This is also why net metering is such a problem for both the gird and the environment. Not to mention the truly horrible chemicals used in PV fabrication or any other IC for that matter.
It's my hope that in twenty years we will have better solar panels and battery technology. There are research groups making great strides in both directions. However, without higher efficiencies in both categories these alternative power sources remain largely nonviable. Further, impact of manufacturing and disposal needs to be considered. That is not to say we shouldn't invest but we need clean sources to get us from here to there.
Personally I'm sticking with high MPG pure gas cars and nuclear power for now and hoping for a brighter future.
Hydro plants don't have to use reservoirs. We've got an almost 2GW hydro plant in Quebec that is a run-of-the-river type.
But this sort of plant can not be used to store energy. The basic idea is that when a solar/wind plant is producing extra energy, that energy is used to pump water up into a reservoir. When solar/wind can no longer produce enough energy to meet demand, the hydro plant generates power from that stored water.
So the run-of-the-river type hydro plants really do nothing to help solve the load and supply management problems as described by the GP.
Wind power has grown from "utterly insignificant" to "barely worth mentioning", and solar power is still at the "cheap parlor trick" stage.
So wind power went from "A waste of time" to "A waste of time", and solar power just recently reached the stage of "A waste of time"?
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I really have to wonder if it's even practical to move to an all renewable energy source infrastructure?
Wind and solar take a LOT of space. As it is, bird people, environmentalists and "I don't want to see it but I want the benefits from it" people don't want wind and solar stuff all over the landscape. Geothermal energy is one usually of opportunity and while technically it's everywhere, tectonically, it's not quite as available everywhere. And hydro electric? Do we have enough rivers?
And here's a thing -- even if we shut everything down now, we're already past the point of no return where global warming is concerned. We are going to see a continuation of a change in global weather patterns which mean rain, wind and water will all continue to change movement patterns which will transform where farming is done and more. What is a good location today, will not likely be a good location tomorrow and we don't really know yet where the good locations of tomorrow will be.
We don't need figures saying what we can and are doing today, we need to know if it's even possible to do what we wish for. Can we get 100% clean? If so, how can we do it? Is it sustainable? I'd really like to know.
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It's not just hard with solar and wind; nuclear and coal are also useless for dealing with variations in demand. Gas and hydro do that best, as far as I understand.
However, at the moment that's still plenty of room for renewables to grow. And coal just needs to disappear completely. (It's still the biggest source of energy, and by far the biggest source of a wide variety of pollution.)
Only temporarily, until it rains down as acid rain. Really not a terribly attractive trade-off.
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I guess that's why they've already rolled it out? 19.9 MW plant that can run 15 hours without sun. more info
And for how long will they require it? You know, to store the nuclear waste.
Energy stored in a capacitor is 1/2 * C * V^2. 1 kWh is 3.6x10^6 joules. so we have C = 2*3.6x10^6 / V^2. So for 220v electric you need 148.5 Farads of capacitance for every kilowatt-hour. If you are only storing 110v you need 4x as much storage for the same energy. Also you need to do AC->DC->AC conversion. And capacitors leak.
If it was that simple and it made economic sense, then someone would be doing it, rather than pumping water up hills and heating up salt.
Wind and solar are not the only kinds of renewable energy. For example, tidal power produces quite deterministic output - unless someone moves the moon or sun while you're not looking - and can potentially be used as base load for a large part of the day.
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How many tonnes of coal does it need to run a typical house from a coal-powered power station? Unlike the coal, the salt doesn't get used up; with coal you keep having to add more and more.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Note that an square of 400 x 400 km equals 160,000 km, not 400 km.
The amount of materials needed to cover such a square with a solar plant probably exceeds the world's production capacity for iron, aluminium etc in a calendar year (I made some rough numbers some years ago).
That is without counting the energy needed to build such a plant...
160,000 km -> 160,000 km^2 (seems slashdot doesn't like superscript, ASCII code 253)
I don't mind the fact he submits so many stories it does beg the question, why do so many of his submissions make it to front page?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Both new nuclear and coal can be load following. Nuclear more so. Just because 40 year old designs couldn't doesn't mean they can't.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Not only can it scale, but eventually you get a very distributed power network (think solar panel on every rooftop & mini windmill in every backyard)
Reality has a liberal bias
my thoughts exactly. how come we're not getting this kind of treatment?
-timothy
You would need a capacitor the size of the US just for NY. Capacitors have crappy energy dentistry and are very expensive. I need some 2kJ of 10kV+ caps and that is going to cost thousands. 1kWh is 3.6 MJ, or more that 1000 times more energy--so try millions for 1kWh. Low voltage super caps are cheaper per unit energy, but are sill very poor compared to even just lead acid batteries. And batteries are still way to expensive for solar/wind load management.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
This is not true*. A 1-5GW *average* solar plant would need much more area than the equivalent hydro facility. (* I am wrong by a factor >10, see below)
......
Lets run the numbers.
Lets assume that the sun shines at midday summer brightness for 8 hours a day (the average would be *much* less). Or about 800W/m2. Most places it is less than this. So 1 GW would need a area of 1.25 million m2, or about 125 ha (just over 1x1 km) if there is zero free space. But that is just for 8 hours. So if we can store massive amounts of electricity in the same place (not bloody likely), then we need something just 3x bigger, or 375ha (almost 2x2 km). So lets assume with things like shadowing etc its 2x what we have here... still only 750ha, or 7.5 km2.
The Alicurá Dam reservoir has an area of 67.5 km2 or about 6750ha. So i was totally wrong. Solar is more "dense".
But you need to *build* all 750ha of these solar panels/mirrors, while a reservoir kinda makes itself. Also if the energy storage is via pumped water, then you still have a reservoir for that. And lets not forget location location
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
20MW? That is a toy. You would need more than 50 of them to be equivalent to just a average coal plant (assuming 1GW).
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Only problem is that there is about 3 good locations for tidal in the world (yes i exaggerate a little). All would involve significant habitat change/removal and all would be massive engineering projects costs 10s of billions for not a lot of electricity compared to costs.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Actually, if you read the table in TFA,
I did read it, and chose to ignore it. They are counting ALL energy, including biomass. So if you raise a field of corn with petrochemicals and then burn the resulting ethanol in a car, that's renewable! LOL.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The clean up costs for the molten salt reactor were staggering. Going over budget does not even begin to describe it.
Yes, powering Europe with solar plants in Tunisia and Libya. What could possibly go wrong (well, there's of course other countries like Algeria, that are also known for their boundless political stability). At least with oil we have a 90 day strategic reserve (currently 140 days to be precise).
And with 400 km^2 of CSP we can power the entire world.
You fail 5th grade math.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Ironically the troll at the top of the comment tree is correct.
The growth in renewable is actually primarily in biofuels, the majority of which is corn ethanol, which is produced, as Paul Gigot pointed out, by combining corn and taxpayer dollars.
I've been a nuclear advocate for years but right now, I need some reassurance about the state of the art before I can bring myself to call nuclear "perfectly adequate" anymore. I am finding it increasingly difficult to contend with the following concerns:
1) The public and political will isn't there to deal with waste in a responsible way. We COULD build breeder reactors but we won't. We're using just a small fraction of the energy in the fuel and letting the remaining energy pose a public health hazard instead of using it to produce electricity.
2) Nuclear power plants don't seem as "fail safe" as we've been promised. I understand that the Japanese plants were NOT state of the art but there still appears to be problems with the model to me, highlighted by the failure of the plants in Japan. Namely, mechanical damage to the plant can result in the plant being unable to shut down safely. Perhaps this can be solved just by zoning plants more effectively. Nonetheless, this doesn't really fit my definition of "fail safe."
3) There are big problems with current energy generation methods. I don't dispute that. The model as a whole is unsustainable and could be doing irreparable harm to the environment. Considering concern #2, though, I no longer feel like the repercussions of a nuclear power plant failing can be ignored. The damage may be more localized but depending on the mode of failure, it could be equally irreparable. Parts of Fukushima Prefecture will be contaminated for a long time. I've seen estimates that at least in the vicinity of the plant, it may be uninhabitable for 20 years. (That doesn't mean the contamination will be gone in 20 years; just that it may drop to tolerable levels in 20 years time.)
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Hmm, did anyone notice that the conclusion (renewables surpassed nuclear) is only based on the first 3 months of 2011? I am all for extrapolating, but shall we wait with celebrating just yet and wait for the year to be out?
I could make an article about my new power system that produces power out of Rainbows and Moonbeams. Would the Slashdot editors publish a story on that? This article has no basis in fact. There is not the slightest possibility that renewables are even within an order of magnitude of nuclear. Really, is the state of science education in the United States really that bad that stuff like this gets credibility?
If you click around the EIA website, you can get a breakdown of the renewables. The growth is in ethanol, but other biomass is still the majority of it (presumably waste wood used for power generation is a big contributor, if they include firewood, it would also likely be a big contributor).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How come I'm not seeing any reduced costs at all? Inflation is rising. Our national debt is a worldwide joke. Democrats have controlled the government since they took over the House and Senate in 2006. It's time for something different.
The world actually has a huge (3-4 times) overcapacity in steel production. So it would not, in fact, be a problem :)
Different? Cause republicans will do...better? You crack me up. We need the things republicans are against. I support neither party, but oil has got to go.
I'm going to say that again, and I'm afraid I'm going to have shout it, because I am pretty tired of reading about how much extra energy we're apparently getting from burning the renewable strawman: fossil use is the only number that matters.
Jan-Feb-Mar 3 months totals for fossil use:
When that number starts to come down, then we can talk about how great renewables are doing. Until then, they're just expensive greenwashing for the coal plant hidden over the next hill that's keeping the lights on 24/7.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If every new house came with solar shingles, it would make a huge difference. Even a small percentage of houses with a small set of battery banks, hooked up to the "smart grid" could really help with usage.
Because renewable power, like solar and wind, can cause fluctuations, someone could make a device that you plug into any all outlet. The device could just be an ACDC system with a battery pack. It just listens to the "smart grid" and when demand is low and energy is high, it charges itself, and when demand is high and supply is low, it discharges. Power companies would have do something like "when supply is above x, then it's half-price and when it's above y, it's free" or possibly a curve.
Anyway, we got this promise of efficient batteries with 10x-100x the charge/discharge rate of current batteries and 10x the storage capacity. Suppose to be starting to appear in the market in the next 5-10 years in various forms.
The project isn't sensible.
1. A good thing about solar is that it can be decentralized. This isn't.
2. Transmission loss
3. Terrorist target
4. Have to deal with the whim/blackmail of foreign gov'ts.
5. Not necessary. We can make solar at home.
PV and wind are not constant. So we should never use it?
Tide, wave even infrared go all the time.
For storage there are water reservoirs, flywheels, etc.
Yes, let's ask them. And, while we are at it, let's ask them when was the last time a Richter 9 earthquake and a 40 foot tsunami hit them as well. I am sure everything you do is done expecting something that happens once a millennium.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
don't require retirees to go in and shut down a breeze.
But what about the poor birds too stupid not to fly through the blades of an active wind farm?
Also, as I indicated above, weather patterns are changing on the planet. That is the most simple way to describe global warming or "climate change." So what may be a good location for a wind farm today may not be a good one tomorrow.
Still, I would really like to know what a world or even a nation like the US would be like if only renewable and clean energy sources were used. And we would have to presume right-of-way for all forms of power conversion and collection. Will if be able to generate enough power for all of the US? Will it be more or less expensive? Like everyone else, I like the idea of clean and renewable energy, but for wide scale deployment, is it practical and workable?
Hydro plants that don't use reservoirs can't/shouldn't be used to fill in gaps.. they can't "stock pile" the water to use later they either use it as it passes or not at all.
you need a damn and reservoir to use as a gap filler
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I thought all the nuclear fans have been saying that there was no way that renewable energy could get anywhere close to the amount of power generated by the nuclear plants. Is everything they have been telling us just a bunch of lies, or do I have something confused?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Sure, but that problem is "over the top"; there's always going to need to be a minimum load that must be supplied at all times, so any calculations made as to total greenhouse gas emissions should include both reservoir and run-of-the-river plants.
As opposed to powering American suburbia with oil from the middle-east and Venezuela?
Energy density is really not the issue with stationary storage plants. Price, however, is, and capacitors haven't managed to shed their high price tag yet. Right now the best "dollarmetric energy density" is in batteries (especially flow batteries) and flywheels (and pumped hydro, of course, but that doesn't lend itself to small distributed substations.)
Someone had to do it.
Well, depends on what color the ground is, as reflected visible light leaves the planet with no ill effect. At any rate, the amount of heat we are talking is insignificant on a global scale. What's being referred to here is the need for a cooling tower to keep the cold side of the heat engine cold. That could be done responsibly with air cooling, or irresponsibly with a water-hogging system.
Someone had to do it.
Then don't use them to fill gaps, use them for the base production. Virtually all of Quebec's power comes from hydro, and we've got a mix of run-of-the-river and reservoir plants, because there's always going to be a minimum that you've got to generate 24/7/365. And since we sell significant amounts of our power to other provinces and countries, that helps keep minimum demand up too (while turning a substantial profit despite prices among the lowest in North America).
It certainly doesn't include the cost that air pollution from conventional energy plants would cause. Those health costs are murder! How about the cost of securing our oil as it travels all the way from the Middle East? Or keeping those dictators in power so our corporations get the sweet oil deals? Wait...what about the cost of the transmission lines, because who wants those dirty old power plants so near their house?
Oh and if its debt your worried about. Three letters: DOD
I'm sure the designers of these systems are just plopping mirrors they bought at home depot in the middle of the desert. Oh wait, they have materials engineers?
Someone had to do it.
but you replied to a comment that was saying it's an issue of load and supply management (which for hydro requires reservoirs) and your response/answer was to use hydro that didn't use reservoirs (aka a solution that doesn't fit the problem)
now for baseline replace/supplement/provide when available like solar and wind sure - but that wasn't the problem you where responding too.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Skin cancer from the sun, wouldn't matter if you used CSP or PV to harvest, would still get skin cancer, so no correlation... ...UNLESS... ;D
You built yourself a nice PV covered patio, then used that to relax INSTEAD of speding too much time exposed to the sun!
For nuclear, only way to get increased cancer risk is radiation exposure is from contamination or direct exposure: is from nuclear bombs, nuclear reactors, or the rare direct exposure from nature (i.e. radon gas seeping up from basements in areas that have the risk).
Therefore, I say 'full speed ahead' on society increasing its use of Solar energy via PV, CSP, and such.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
We can basically say renewable energy fsckin works, now ?
If you mean "It produces electricity", then yes, it works. But that's no great trick. Any kid can produce electricity from simple lessons taught in grade school.
If you mean "It's cost competitive and scales well and can supply all our energy needs", then no, not even close.
The headline is kind of meaningless anyway, as the US doesn't get a lot of it's power from nuclear. It's like saying "KDE passes Gnome in America". Compared to the computer user base as a whole, it doesn't mean much.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
>
In terms of scale, I'd note that Canada, with 10% the population, generates 1.47x more hydro power than the entire US. HydroQuébec alone (36.8 GW) has ~5.4 GW of additional capacity and upgrades under construction.
In terms of politics, I'd note that environmental movements have put a kibbosh on any further dams, and are lobbying to actually dismantle and remove the ones we already have, in the US and Canada both. And politicians are listening to them.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm not making stuff up, it's really a problem they have. Think about it - what material maintains it's optical clarity even after being blasted by sand? Diamond, maybe?
"Without constant cleaning, the Daggett Solar 2 power tower heliostats degraded in quality as the mirrors became sand-blasted. This ended up reducing the efficiency of the system, and it produced less electricity than hoped (Romero-Alvarez and Zarza 2007). Developers wanting to build these delicate systems in the harsh desert may not be taking this into consideration."
http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/Ivanp-FSADEIS-summary.html
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Yup. That's why solar and wind are going nowhere. Yup. Yup. Yup...
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
lol, nice, i'm using that quote... Also considering how subsidized corn is, its like combining taxpayer dollars with more taxpayer dollars...
Also what is with measuring in Btus VS Giga Watts? When did that start happening?
Also in case no one noticed, everything is flooding, which likely helps out hydro over production.
Also this renewable is likely 95% Hydro and 5% everything else.
Also this is about produced energy, not consumed. So its nice that all those windmills are generating all that excess unused power at night, and all the other inconsistent renewable, when what people have to understand, is it is the constant hum of nuclear at 5pm Wednesday, when everyone comes home and turns on their AC and every other appliance in their home and peaks power consumption, that keeps the distribution system electrified, and not under collapse every day of the week. Hydro is awesome, but there are finite rivers.
I think you'll find it's ASCII that doesn't like code 253, or any code over 127.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
"There ain't more big rivers"
We don't need big rivers. Even a small spring with good head can power a small town. We have enough water flow on our land to power our entire town. Using that pressure would not disrupt the environment or cause any pollution or other problems. Micro-hydro can solve the macro problem. This works great in the areas like ours that are mountainous. In other places such as the plain states wind makes more sense. In the sunny places solar electric. And truth be told, nuclear power has its place too - unfortunately the current model is wasteful.
I don't understand the enthusiasm for nuclear in the light of the above, or the recent disasters.
I can think of only one recent nuclear disaster. It didn't dim my enthusiasm for nuclear in the least because, you see, I'm not enthusiastic about 50-year-old reactor designs like the one used at Fukushima. I'm enthusiastic about the new designs that are orders of magnitude safer. Unfortunately the general public isn't aware the new designs exist -- they think that when "Republicans continue to press for more nuclear energy," they're pressing for more Fukushimas, and the media of course does nothing to fix that perception.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You created a fake timothy and kdawson just for a joke like this? wow, just wow...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yes, we still measure potential energy output in BTUs for things like water heaters, furnaces, etc. However, we generally measure electrical output in kilowatt hours or megawatt hours, so this list is just as much confusion for us as it is for you.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
how much land mass?
The problem with solar is energy density.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
tl;dr: Environmental movements are not having any real impact in Canada, or at least not in Quebec, which produces a third of the Canada's power.
This does not appear to be true in Quebec, which is the province producing the most hydro in Canada. While there is certainly opposition to individual projects, it appears to have had no impact on HydroQuebec's general plans for new dams and upgrades to existing dams (there are substantial plans or actual construction underway). The fact that essentially all of our power comes from hydro (so, no acceptable alternatives to add large amounts of capacity) and that most Quebecers see the crown corporation as a source of pride (and are therefore generally unopposed to further expansion) limits opposition.
The idea that politicians in Quebec are actually listening to people saying that HydroQuebec should dismantle Quebec's electrical infrastructure is silly. In fact, the politicians see HydroQuebec as a cash cow since it produces billions and billions of dollars of additional revenue for the government every year, despite having among (if not the) lowest electrical rates in North America. I can't speak first-hand about the situation in other provinces, but my understanding is that there are projects underway in other provinces too. HydroQuebec produces about half of all hydro in Canada, and about a third of all electricity in Canada in general, but several other provinces have high percentages of hydro power. Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, and British Columbia are all at 85%+ for hydro.
Hydro might be niche in the US, but in Canada, it's the dominant source (61%), and in Quebec, it's virtually the only source (92%). I figure HydroQuebec only maintains their tiny collection of alternative sources of energy (one nuclear, one thermal, three gas, one wind, etc) so that they can maintain the capability.
Maybe he's the goatse dude.
OK, I LOL'd on that one! Well played, good sir, well played!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The best spots for dams in North America are mostly all taken although there's lots of potential for run-of-river power generation. But, I see great potential for solar in 2 forms - solar thermal in desolate, desert-like places where you can build storage tanks and PV in cities and communities as there are no shortage of flat, unshaded rooftops and the cost of PV seems to be falling rapidly and the efficiency is slowly getting better. I don't think much is needed in the way of incentives, either - local generation puts less stress on the grid so the utilities should be the ones driving PV installs in cities as it'll (should?) reduce their running costs for peak demand, slew rate and wear-and-tear
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So what can go wrong? Care to point something out?
After all we are not stealing their oil, or? We are not conquering their lands and put military bases everywhere like in Saudi Arabia.
You are as clueless as the rest of the /. crowed.
Do you really think we go and build a DESERTEC system over 50 years, and finally when it is finished we switch off the north european power plants, sell our oil reserves and switch on the DC lines from north africa?
Your friend you are commenting on is failing 5th grade math? So, and you? Did you visit 5th grade? My 6 year old nice would debunk your post.
What about: we build a 10GW solar plant in Tunesia? It consists of 4 Towers to create power, 2.5 GW each. When the first tower is finished, it starts producing 500MW when the first 20% of the mirrors are placed. As the power is to expensive to be sold in the local area, the whole 500MW is sold to Italy. While more mirrors are build up to get the first tower to its projected base yield the other towers are build. Over a period of 5 to 6 years the plant is increasing its power output from 500MW to 10GW. While in the meantime also the local grid got improved it is now feasible to sell power to the local industries.
While more plants like this are build up, nuclear plants in the 4GW range or coal plants in the 4GW range are decommissioned in north europe.
Jobs and energy are now available in Africa. The desert is becoming greener. They can export food/fruits as well. The countries are developing. The EU and North Africa is coming into negotiations to expand the EU Free Trade Zone into the EU+NA (north africa) Free Trade Zone.
In 50 years North Africa will produce about 50% of the energy needed around the mediterranean see. That wont be one singel company or one single country.
Your problem basically is: you want to rule the world. So you fear that someone has power. As you are used to abuse your own power you fear the other ones would do the same. However in developed world like the EU everyone is depending on the other ones. When the EU is merging with the North African trade zones it will just be the same, only bigger. Tourists coming to north africa, or elderly who retire there. Power that is coming from north africa to europe. Etc etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Those problems are already solved. Or do you think your current grid does not have it?
Furthermore, you don't need a river and a dam to build a pumped-hydro storage plant.
You need to think a little bit bigger anyway. "Base load" and "peak" and "excess generation" are basically only local problems. Your base load in a town like Springfield (MA) is going up because a factory is starting its early shift. However in California it is still night. Your grid should be able to handle that just easy. After all: the power grid operators KNOW that the factory is powering up now. There is no surprise. The same is true for the opposite. When the factory is powering down the power companies know that as well in advance. Or you have solar plant in California that is reaching peak power production between 10:00AM and 04:00PM, you exactly know how much power that is, and you exactly know which part of your "nation wide" grid will consume that power. There is no need to have a hydro storage power plant next to the solar plant. You have a grid, use it!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Touché. ;)
Depends what you mean with that. First of all, every nuclear plant can do that, if it is not running already at 95% capacity. And second: both nuclear and coal plants have a significant delay in following. Coal plants about 4h and nuclear plants about 30 mins. While nuclear plants can be fine grained controlled (like adjusting yield to 1% accuracy) coal plants are designed to be adjusted in steps, e.g. 125MW steps (that comes from the feeding mechanism etc.)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.