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Coal Market Set To Collapse Worldwide By 2040 As Solar, Wind Dominate (bloomberg.com)
Jess Shankleman reports via Bloomberg: Solar power, once so costly it only made economic sense in spaceships, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. That's the conclusion of a Bloomberg New Energy Finance outlook for how fuel and electricity markets will evolve by 2040. The research group estimated solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants in Germany and the U.S. and by 2021 will do so in quick-growing markets such as China and India. The scenario suggests green energy is taking root more quickly than most experts anticipate. It would mean that global carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels may decline after 2026, a contrast with the International Energy Agency's central forecast, which sees emissions rising steadily for decades to come.
The report also found that through 2040:
-China and India represent the biggest markets for new power generation, drawing $4 trillion, or about 39 percent all investment in the industry.
-The cost of offshore wind farms, until recently the most expensive mainstream renewable technology, will slide 71 percent, making turbines based at sea another competitive form of generation.
-At least $239 billion will be invested in lithium-ion batteries, making energy storage devices a practical way to keep homes and power grids supplied efficiently and spreading the use of electric cars.
-Natural gas will reap $804 billion, bringing 16 percent more generation capacity and making the fuel central to balancing a grid that's increasingly dependent on power flowing from intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
The report also found that through 2040:
-China and India represent the biggest markets for new power generation, drawing $4 trillion, or about 39 percent all investment in the industry.
-The cost of offshore wind farms, until recently the most expensive mainstream renewable technology, will slide 71 percent, making turbines based at sea another competitive form of generation.
-At least $239 billion will be invested in lithium-ion batteries, making energy storage devices a practical way to keep homes and power grids supplied efficiently and spreading the use of electric cars.
-Natural gas will reap $804 billion, bringing 16 percent more generation capacity and making the fuel central to balancing a grid that's increasingly dependent on power flowing from intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
Gods but that Dino sludge and other fuels in the ground for us. If he didn't want us to use them, they wouldn't be there.
for just about everything.
Because the verified warming trend will suddenly stop because we're slightly ahead of schedule to stop producing as much CO2 and other gases as we thought. It's like watching movies about spacecraft who, when they cut off their engines, magically come to a stop in space.
Same principle.
I can understand lithium ion batteries for portables and maybe for a home, but grid scale batteries will likely be flow batteries or other such tech. Why because they are big and stationary. You don't need particularly compact or space efficient batteries on that scale. It is more important to be durable, low toxicity, and inexpensive (relatively).
The US will be the number one coal producers, and coal consumers because no one else would be using it. The US will continue to try to delay green energy so the coal industry can get its money instead of advancing with the rest of the world. Capitalism is causing our country to fall into a 2nd world status and maybe even 3rd world if we do not watch it.
If techs didn't disagree with each other, then Microsoft would rule the world.
The rate of increase for CO2 is in decline. CO2 is not in decline and it will take hundreds of years for it to decline.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Well, this is the first I have heard this. The things to be considered are that coal fired plants are generally operated for 40 or 50 years. So, is the cost of solar cheaper than continuing to use the coal plants that exist? No. What is going to happen if they are correct is the construction of new coal plants will slow and stop by 2026. The remaining coal plants will continue to operate for some time.
Further, even if the CO2 emissions are lower than was originally predicted, no where in the article did it suggest that will happen quick enough to prevent some of the bad side effects of all the carbon released into the atmosphere. You seem to assume, because coal use will slow down the that everything will be hunky dory. I suspect that is wishful thinking on your part.
Just wait until other countries start putting a carbon tax on US products produced with dirty fossil fuels.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Not soon enough to stop massive methane leaks.
Tesla has already installed several grid scale lithium battery sites. One in S. California where they had that large methane storage leak. Others on some islands.
Lithium battery grid storage can be installed and provide energy for about 1.5 cents/kWh
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
All of the models that indicate signifincant warming are predicated on the continued rise of CO2 emissions.
Yet that is madness, The quickening rise in Solar power and electric cars mean that CO2 levels will be in decline by the end of this decade, never mind the ones after.
The push for renewables is precisely to avoid a climate catastrophe. The models are based on CO2 rise because, thus far, that's exactly what the trend has been.
Arguing that we don't need renewables because renewables will save us is circular reasoning.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
This is true but as the open source software people have shown us, it's hard to compete with free fuel for your power plant.
Oil is in trouble now because worldwide demand is declining and it's hard to keep everyone in line to keep them from pumping too much oil.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Yes, lobbyists for fossil fuels should be given free rein, renewable advocates should be silenced. We need to protect our $5 Trillion investment in recent conflicts.
...by drawing a straightish line on a graph. Doesn't mean it'll actually happen. Also, I doubt that "nighttime solar" (and no, we won't have world-spanning transmission lines either) and "calm wind" power is going to become available any time soon, and storage is still a problem.
Fortunately, there are strong economic forces now favoring renewable energy. Trump's push for fossil fuels will give them a temporary reprieve (and add more CO2 to the atmosphere along the way) but the fossil companies should be able to see the writing on the wall. Coal is dead. Oil is next.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
How many real problems could we solve with money being wasted on fear-mongering or redundant promotion?
"Waste" is in the eye of the beholder. The question to ask is, Cui bono?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Pumping water uphill? That would technically be a flow battery right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There are also some cool designs using molten salt. This plant "...has achieved continuous production, operating 24 hours per day for 36 consecutive days, a result which no other solar plant has attained so far." Pretty neat! And one advantage of molten salt (and perhaps flow batteries, too?) is that unlike, say, lithium ion, the energy can't really come out all at once explosively -- you'd get essentially a lava flow rather than an explosion, AFAIK.
So why continue to scare people with a future that will never come to pass, in order to get them to behave in a way they would have done anyway had you simply left them alone?
Uh, because the carbon levels are already high enough to start affecting us negatively. It is already passing. The alarmists have been trying to get us to cut back for 20+ years, way back when it would have made the biggest difference. If the fossil fuel industries had not fought so hard (like the tobacco companies before them), we could have avoided the affects we're seeing now:
Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.
But it's more than that. The alarmists have been reacting to the scientific research that says it will get much worse. What we decided in the 90's - to ignore the alarmists - affects how bad it will be in 2050 and 2100. Yes, technology is going to push us anyway, but if we just let it happen naturally, it will not be fast enough to avoid real consequences. This is not partisan or alarmist, it's just the best prediction that can be made with the evidence we have. Nothing has been proven wrong about the predictions since the 90's, except the results and new predictions have become slightly worse.
How many real problems could we solve with money being wasted on fear-mongering or redundant promotion?
No. The money invested in developing renewables is well-spent (this is an understatement). We're talking about a technological ~revolution, meaning there's a lot of money to be made. The countries developing the technology will be rich, while those ignoring it will be poor (this is an overstatement, but hopefully it illustrates the point). Germany proved it already - back in the 90's, making solar panels, and they saw a big bump in their stock market and real estate market. It's been very successful for a long time, although China is stealing the market share now.
CO2 levels may not decline until breakthroughs in nanotech allow CO2 harvesting on a mass scale.
Breakthroughs in nanotech?
How about plants?
sez the bird killer
We don't need any "Climate Accords." This will happen natural.
...except that basically every country in the world has signed the Paris Agreement, so it's not like this happened without climate accords. That is not to say that the climate accords had any effect -- good or bad -- but it's disingenuous to ignore them.
Development in flow batteries seems to be slowing, precisely because they are stationary. Long term though, I do think they make the most sense as well. Once wind farms need enough local storage to support production contracts I imagine we will see more of a grid scale growth in flow batteries.
Tesla somehow manages to be competitive now, but it really is the wrong tool for the job.
Solar and wind work in low % of overall generation. It doesn't work at high % of total generation. Same with net metering at home installs.
People will keep saying this until it does work in high % of total generation, and then they'll find something else to complain about.
Not that the problems with solar aren't real, but the people working to solve those problems are real also, and sooner or later (and more likely sooner, given the amount of effort being invested), they will solve them.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
.... causing our country to fall into a 2nd world status and maybe even 3rd world if we do not watch it.
You really shouldn't use terms you don't understand.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-First-World-Second-World-and-Third-World-countries
crony capitalism, driven by massive and biased regulations with friendly waivers and paid dispensations, is ruining the country
There was absolutely no mention of nuclear power in this article. Is not China and India investing in that technology too?
It would be great if solar could in fact be cheaper than coal in 20 years or so but I've already been told for 20 years that solar will be cheaper than coal in 20 years. I stopped believing these claims a long time ago. Solar has a lot of issues that merely lowering the price of the panels will not solve.
I do believe that wind can get their prices down to where it could compete with other energy sources. Like solar though it has problems of being intermittent. I hear claims that batteries and other storage systems can address this but I ask, what stops people from charging these batteries with cheap and reliable coal or nuclear? Batteries can follow load changes better then coal or nuclear can, so use those for peak load and forget about wind or natural gas.
One thing that puts a limit on the costs between wind and nuclear, wind takes ten times the steel and concrete of nuclear per megawatt of installed capacity. People ask, where is all that concrete? All I you are steel towers and a three big blades turning about. The answer is that the concrete is in the anchor that holds up that tower. If we can assume that the concrete anchors fatigue in 50 years or so, just like it would in a nuclear reactor, then we will need a continuous recycling of concrete to keep up with even an unchanging demand for electricity. If you need X tons of concrete for a gigawatt nuclear power plant then you will need 10X tons for a gigawatt of wind power.
Making concrete has a carbon footprint associated with it. That means that nuclear not only can have a smaller carbon footprint than wind but already does. Future nuclear reactors will likely require less concrete and steel than it does now with advancements in technology. So wind is already behind and the competition is not standing still.
So, it's great that we can look forward to cheap wind and solar in a decade or three. What should we do until then? We can keep burning coal. We can shutdown large sectors of our economy, which would likely delay this new wind and solar advancement. Or we can use nuclear power.
I believe that nuclear power is the only logical choice today. When or if wind and solar catch up then we can switch to that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Then they can get a good deal from Angela Merkel and go extinct with her victims.
I wish that people knew what "first world", "second world", and "third world" actually mean.
They are not comparative standards of living.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
What do you mean by low %? Spain produced a plurality of their electricity with wind in the first few months of 2015 at >23%. For the year it looks like that number was >19%.
Nuclear already collapsed. Notwithstanding the technical merits, humans cannot be trusted to manage it effectively.
Troy Roberts,
This rather nice documentary deals nicely with grid batteries.
They've already got the vehicle to do it and the US has withdrawn from the group so if they go forward we won't even be able to negotiate or even attend the meetings. All they would need to do is reconvene the Paris working group and assess tariffs against non participating countries, as there's only 3 nonparticipating countries it would be trivial for the rest of the world to apply export tariffs to those countries.
And because we pulled out of the treaty we wouldn't even be able to attend the meeting. But that's what happens when you elect narcissistic ego maniacs whose entire decision process is dominated by how it can help him. He cares so little about this country it's astounding.
Look at the current US government and you will see that apparently the benefits are not so obvious to some.
Specifically which part? Do you dispute the current numbers (energy sources through today), the model(s) used for extrapolating, or...?
With non-renewable resources, on the one hand we have increasing technological ability, while on the other hand the difficulty for extraction goes up with time as the low-hanging fruit is preferentially depleted (there are of course special cases). Contrast this to renewable sources, where the former is true -- increasing technology drives prices down -- but the latter isn't really applicable (barring a scenario where we cover every inch of the globe with solar panels, which would produce way more power than we currently consume).
What he said.
I agree that we should be doing more nuclear.
But for my state anyway, wind production in Texas, not counting government subsidies, runs from $36 to $51 per megawatt-hour while an average national cost for coal-fired electricity ranges from $65 to $150 per MWh and for gas, depending on the type of plant, from $52/MWh to $218/MWh.
Much like the London horse sh*t crisis ended due to the progression of technology, not due to the hastily passed laws of the time. Henry Ford and his affordable automobile ended it in spite of not because of lawmakers of the day. Ironically, ushering in the next big crisis for lawmakers to panic over.
This is exactly my point. These numbers are just counting MW generated over a year and dividing by MW consumed over same period. Think about it for a few minutes. This is a very very different thing from actually running off of solar and wind.
That's great if you have a hill to pump the water up to. Out here on the Great Plains we don't have many hills.
An odd thing happened some time in my youth. We call this area the "wind corridor" now. Before that we called it "tornado alley". I don't think that change in nomenclature was because there was any real change in the weather patterns around here. It's hard to sell windmills in "tornado alley" but they sound great for a place called the "wind corridor". Too bad we don't have any hills so we have a place to pump some water to the top and store that wind energy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So all of these projects did/are doing "absolutely nothing for the environment"? (We've given them a few bucks related to the Paris Agreement.)
You're of course free to call it "politically-motivated bullshit," but when literally all but handful (two? three?) of countries *in the world* have signed it, the agreement -- for better or worse -- just doesn't seem that political to me...
Um, ok. Well, anyway, no technological breakthrough is going to change the number of hours per day the sun shines or the wind blows. So that means storage. And that means huge losses storing and retrieving the energy. There is an obsession about wind and solar, and it's religious. People obsess over the technologies and then later come up with these justifications for how "the tech is gonna get there eventually!!!". This is backwards. Why swim upstream and use variable power generation for baseline power? It's stupid and expensive.
Btw I say this as someone who spent a lot of money on a home 7kW PV system with batteries! I love it but the religious nutso-ism is amazing to watch
Actually it's a small fractional increase in carbon (dioxide) flux on a global basis. Increased turnover rates, increased greenery, including de-desertification, is already happening.
The thing that's fucked is people like you thinking your edgy sarcasm is anything but garbage to dump into discussions.
When plants die and decay their embedded carbon usually goes back into the atmosphere. You'd need to harvest them and preserve them and sequester down deep underground in a sterile environment for geologically long timescales.
An ideal form of carbon sequestration is known as "coal".
When the plants which created current fossil fuels were living, bacteria and fungi had not evolved the ability to break down certain key parts of the plants. Today, they have. So we will never be able to go back.
In a hundred years, the mining and burning of coal will be regarded like the present generation regards slavery: unspeakably evil and known to be a usual part of commerce of the day to their shock. It will be a capital felony.
When alarm is scientifically justified, alarmism is moral.
Molten salt energy storage? Could we use something else to heat this salt? Something "green"? Molten salt nuclear reactors sound like a great idea to do just that.
I like solar thermal. Not because I think that they'd ever be viable but because they'll do the research in materials and such that would be directly applicable to molten salt reactors. Solar might work for quite a large band of area at the equator, perhaps between 30 or 45 degrees north and south, but outside that area solar does not work so well. Nuclear power would work though.
That might work great for China and India but for large populations in the Americas, Asia, and Europe they don't have the same access to the sun.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Chairman Maoâ(TM)s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds
CO2 is not in decline and it will take hundreds of years for it to decline.
That is assuming that we don't actively do anything about it. There are plenty of things we can do to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, such as ocean fertilization, growing biofuel crops and sequestering the CO2, and enhanced weathering. It is also plausible that we can learn something new in the future and develop new technology.
Scale. And deforestation is a thing too.
Reforestation is also a thing. Deforestation is rapidly diminishing. It is still bad in Africa and Indonesia, but has fallen dramatically in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. Forests are increasing in North America, Europe, and China.
While your second point is quite valid, the estimated economic viability of a coal (or any other plant) could well change depending on a number of external factors. If coal demand drops, some mines will close which could make the transport economics of a particular plant less favorable. If grid demand drops because of on site power generation the even the maintenance / financing costs of a coal burner may not make much sense.
In many places you have to at least partially clean up your mess - which is another cost. It may be cheaper to convert the plant into a natural gas peaker.
It's complicated.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Market forces and simple exhaustion of supply will greatly reduce the use of coal to make electricity.
Bullcrap. There is no "exhaustion of supply". America, China, India, and Europe all have enough coal to last for centuries. Coal is dirt cheap and in many areas of the world it will continue to be the most cost effective source of power, as long as the emissions are ignored. Coal needs to die, and market forces alone are not going to accomplish that.
When alarm is scientifically justified, alarmism is moral.
Much past climate alarmism was not justified, and now that credibility has been eroded, many people are no longer listening.
Scientists should stick to the facts, and avoid becoming policy advocates.
A large number of recent coal plants are built right on the mine. Those will be the last to die. Transport cost on coal is a killer already, transmission lines are cheap in comparison, east of the Mississippi they don't generally have to go that far.
About the only thing you could use in a conversion is the line. Maybe a cooling tower/water plumbing, but most likely not for a combined cycle.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Agreed, nuclear should be in the mix.
Also another point: strip mines _should be_ going up in price as the land they are using becomes more valuable for other purposes (even wildlife preservation.) Eventually we should hit the tipping point where coal just doesn't make economic sense.
Combining replies here:
Btw I say this as someone who spent a lot of money on a home 7kW PV system with batteries! I love it but the religious nutso-ism is amazing to watch
That might or might not include yourself, but it does include some on the anti-solar/wind side too, I hope you can admit.
This is exactly my point. These numbers are just counting MW generated over a year and dividing by MW consumed over same period. Think about it for a few minutes. This is a very very different thing from actually running off of solar and wind.
Think about it for a moment yourself. Solar, even 10 years ago, was virtually flat, almost non-existent. Now? In Spain, it's enough to make a significant difference in their daily power supply, and that's AFTER a world-wide economic crisis put a severe crimp on their plans.
Yes, I know a lot of folks want to attack Spain (and Portugal) for their energy plans, but it wasn't quite what the message wanted you to think, any more than the California power crisis was the fault of environmentalists.
Um, ok. Well, anyway, no technological breakthrough is going to change the number of hours per day the sun shines or the wind blows.
The wind blows quite enough, thank you(there are maps already showing how much they can expect to get), and it isn't the hours per day that concerns solar generation.
So that means storage. And that means huge losses storing and retrieving the energy. There is an obsession about wind and solar, and it's religious. People obsess over the technologies and then later come up with these justifications for how "the tech is gonna get there eventually!!!". This is backwards. Why swim upstream and use variable power generation for baseline power? It's stupid and expensive.
Seems to me you're the one religious about your attitudes towards them. You haven't noticed how the sun is a useful source of power, what with it shining down during the day, or the availability of wind? Or perhaps you haven't noticed the frenetic level of objection people seem to have to the sun and wind power generation, finding them objectionable to a degree that borders on the hysterical? Or their apparent love for coal and other fossil fuels, or even nuclear, to an extent that is fanatical, even ignoring the expensive burdens those impose?
I get it, you want to think you're the reasonable adult in the room, but you are more off-putting than you realize, to the extent that you come across as worse than you may imagine. So if your efforts are genuinely well-meant, perhaps you might consider modifying your approach to appear less of a screaming martyr yourself?
I sincerely hope you think about the presentation you've made, and reconsider your approach. You might have some valid concerns, but the thing it might help you to realize is that there are nutjobs who say whacko things about EVERY possible idea. There is nothing so pure that somebody can't be insane about it.
And that isn't even counting those malignant in their behavior. They're out there as well. They want you to believe lies and falsehoods, and they're even more subtle about it.
Like these? Or these?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Much past climate alarmism was not justified, and now that credibility has been eroded, many people are no longer listening.
While I'm not a fan of "alarmism," I'd be interested in seeing your citation for "much past climate alarmism was not justified." Specifically what "past climate alarmism" are you referring to, who said it, when, what exactly did they say, and in what way was it shown not to be justified?
And, show me some actual sources, please. I'd like to see something more than just parroting some blog saying "past climate alarmism wasn't justified."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If all the fucking idiots in the world had listened 30 years ago we wouldn'tâ have to be scrambling to implement any of those mitigations now, at that cost of billions and billions of dollars, with no guarantee that any of them will even work.
I try to avoid some topics. If you do not mind, what definition of 'political' are you using?
To be clear, I point at the responses by the States and businesses, since drawing back from the Accord, to point out that I feel the Accord was not required. While I dislike Trump, I agree with him in is matter.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Alarmism or not, did you really think we could just keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with no consequence? Reducing our effects on the planet is always a good idea, regardless of politics.
36 days?!? That there is absolutely viable and we should do it everywhere.
Sorry, I am kinda stoned. But that is nothing to write home about. I got better uptime with Windows ME.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Except we should be world leaders and set a good example, not a bunch of whiny little babies who take their toys and leave when someone else doesn't play right.
The 1950's called. They want their ignorance back.
Bloomberg. There's your first hint that it's a load of horseshit.
There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I still call B.S. on the current incarnations of green energy. Wind and solar haven't been around long enough to reach their inherent lifespan which means nobody has come to grips with the replacement costs. Lots of people are seeing line items on their electric bill for decommissioning coal and nuke plants. That line item will be changed to wind/solar disposal and replacement fees. They aren't going to get more efficient either.
You mean like effectively abandoning nuclear power development?
Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as wind or solar but the world effectively stopped building nuclear power plants 40 years ago. Had they not stopped then perhaps we could have shut down a lot of aging nuclear power plants by now because we'd have the electrical capacity to replace them.
As it is now we can expect many nuclear power plants to still be in service 80 years after they were built, triple their intended life span. If we should see another Fukushima style incident then we'll get a bunch of people in a panic, plans for new nuclear reactors will get set back by a decade, and we'll keep burning coal.
Yep, if people had listened 30 years ago it is possible we'd be living in a nuclear powered world. Safe from the nonsense in the Middle East. Safe from nuclear reactors stretched beyond their limits. Safe from global warming.
We lost a lot of experienced nuclear engineers and technicians in that time. They're all retired, senile, or dead now. It's going to take a long time to get that back.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Alarmism or not, did you really think we could just keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with no consequence?
It doesn't matter what I think, because I don't live in a swing state. In 2008, most Republican presidential candidates, including the nominee, said that climate change was a real problem that needed to be addressed. In 2016, ZERO Republican presidential candidates said that, including the nominee who is currently our president.
Scientists may have facts and evidence on their side, but they are LOSING anyway, and lost credibility has a lot to do with that. As Cassandra learned, being correct doesn't matter if no one believes you.
That's not what SuperKendall wrote, and it's dishonest of you to imply that he did.
That's exactly what he wrote, and I stand by my statement.
For decades now, the deliberate creation of environmental panic has been used by unscrupulous alarmists like Al Gore to gain wealth and political power. The fear and hatred thus generated has been completely unnecessary, and done more harm than good.
And there it is, the unvarnished bullshit. Sorry, you're clearly far too biased to say anything meaningful in this conversation.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
However, Ben Franklin's quote that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" did exist 30 years ago. Alas, large groups of humans have never been very good at learning things.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
It doesn't matter what I think, because I don't live in a swing state.
Have you heard? There's a whole world outside the US of motherfucking A. They have divergent opinions, and they're doing something about it with or without you.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
The thing that's fucked is people like you thinking your edgy sarcasm is anything but garbage to dump into discussions.
And what, pray tell, did you contribute to the discussion?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
People will keep saying this until it does work in high % of total generation, and then they'll find something else to complain about.
At the moment, solar is competitive with coal on price, but it will never work at high % until the storage solution is solved (because of night and clouds). Storage is where the research needs to be, and the article seems to think we have solutions that will become viable sooner rather than later. No one knows anything though.
After that we can complain about the environmental damage from lithium mines.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
when literally all but handful (two? three?) of countries *in the world* have signed it, the agreement -- for better or worse -- just doesn't seem that political to me
That makes it sound like a completely political empty gesture........if it were something that would actually be effective, more countries would have opposed it purely on selfish grounds.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
funny how people like you will say anything that you feel requires you to do nothing at all to clean up your messes and expect to be believed.
or, rather than spend a fortune cleaning up your mess, how about we stop you from making it in the first place. My children learned this at about age 8. How old are you?
not letting people like you dump your crap into the air for everyone else to clean up has existed for quite some time.
So, in 10 years what will your excuse be. We already know that you will make one up, so why not say it now and save us all a lot of time.
Banks are never going to fund it. Power companies are never going to fund it. It's only going to happen with socialism. You do get that right? You are the last person I'd expect to be pushing socialism.
Maybe you should think before you cheer for something inherently opposed to what you believe.
Yes.
Expected design life for those 40-50 year old plants was around 25 years. It's not just a case of putting a few patches on them to keep them running anymore. Once you get to the point where it's looking like you have to replace turbine rotors on top of everything else a rebuild is looking cheaper, and then economics gets in your way even if the expected total is less than an alternative (long lead time and huge capital costs versus doing a little bit at a time with each bit costing a lot less and short lead times).
Of course it's not so obvious with the stuff that's less than 30 years old so not far beyond the design life, but eventually they'll get to a point where it's cheaper to replace than major rebuilds.
No - burning gas in a boiler is extremely wasteful compared with gas turbines.
The only things you can reuse are the switchyard and the building - even the stacks are unsuitable due to the very large difference in exhaust temperature.
No.
In every part of the world where people still live in reality, there is an understanding that climate change is happening because that's where all our observations and data point.
In bumfuck stupid conservative 'merica, true fucking morons who are so fucking stupid they think smart people are bad, but that their worthless, uninformed, uneducated, inbred opinion is somehow good... well, there's a lot of loudmouth fucking idiots who continuie to have their heads up their ass and listen to the people who would lose money if we did something to prevent climate change from disrupting the world. They basically are too stupid to give a fuck about the human species. The fact that their head-up-ass anti-science position has spread is because we have a lot of people in 'merica who are fucking stupid, and prefer themselves to remain that way.
Just telling it like it is.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Um, 30 years ago even Exxon knew CO2 was going to be a problem. Exxon. It was highly dismissed as we didn't have 30 years of data showing the really significant effects, but it was there to see.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Nuclear isn't anymore zero carbon than solar or wind. The coal lobby has claimed for years that solar isn't zero carbon because of all the manufacturing costs.
You don't get to make an argument only when it suits you.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Even a really good water pump is overcome by a tsunami. And that's what's happening CO2 wise and the wave is already moving inland, stopping the rise of the water doesn't change the fact that you're 30 feet under.
Where the CO2 is going now is into the oceans. In probably 20 years there won't be ocean seafood for the most part. The oceans are already acidic enough that the base of the food chains are having trouble growing. Won't take long for that to kill off vast numbers of ocean species.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Actually, natural gas is more cost effective.... and has been for some years now. That is the reason why so many coal jobs are disappearing, and coal mining companies are going bankrupt (at least, here in the US). The problem in the US is stupid fucking conservatives who can't understand the basics of the market, even though they continually flap their ignorant gums about it. That's obviously different for the parts of the world where they don't have supplies of natural gas, and for the small individual users.
Conservatives had this mantra of energy self-sufficiency (here in the US), but like everything else, once in power they forget they're supposed to actually govern.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
There isn't enough viable space to plant that many trees...every single year. And in 80 years, then what when all that CO2 goes right back into the environment...every single year.
Wood isn't nearly as energy dense as coal or oil. And we need to pull out the CO2 that came from coal and oil, so would need multiple times as many trees...every single year.
Simply not viable. Every little bit helps, but this won't be more than a few percent.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
People with severe cases of Cranial-Rectal Inversion Syndrome are that way.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
deserts are growing, not shrinking. Fast plant turnover is the last thing you want to remove CO2 because the fast turnover puts it right back. You need it to stay in the plant for a century or more...and even that isn't long enough.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I think that position is a strawman. So once you have infastructure to mine, refine and use a natural resource, you have a sunk cost into that resource. But unlike a low end retailer chain: The profits are actually great, so the company earns a lot of money.
Its not that USA doesn't understand the basic marked forces, its more about the leadership of those companies wanting to sit on their money instead of creating jobs. Quite simply because the US population isn't really earning money on the labor that is needed, its just earning a living(significantly less).
There is a reason they call it "The Rust Belt", and not "Coal mining area". There is simply no will to keep things running as they should, or invest in other areas to replace them.
T. Norwegian
Coal is only too cheap because the cost of the CO2 release isn't yet included. When you factor that into the price it gets quite expensive.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
India just scrapped plans for 15 coal plants and went with solar instead. The report is way behind on cost of solar power. Solar is already below cost of coal in India and China.
Just saying it like it are.
Actually it means you haven't been keeping up with current events. Being stupid is your right, just don't expect other people to think of you as anything other than a fucking idiot.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Salt tower... because so many people talking about solar powers inadequacies seem to not be able to use google, read, or keep up with current events.
https://www.scientificamerican...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
There isn't enough viable space to plant that many trees...every single year.
Good news for you then as there are plenty of artificial tree ideas to do the job.
Oklahoma definitely sucks, and Texarse blows..... it's kind of like inbreeding rednecks, with the results being Kansas.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Problem with nuclear is that it is getting too expensive. It can, maybe, do 5 cents per kWh for new installations, but uncertainties are huge. Solar can now, as today, do it at 20 cents, and it is rapidly declining. If it is cheaper than nuclear withing twenty years, building a nuclear plant today is "negative" investment.
And there will not be any "future" nuclear reactors, nobody can invest that amount of money to unknwon technology (unknown as "will it be cheap enough").
See Olkiluoto 3, see Tokamak ("future"?), see *any* current nuclear reactor being build (Toshiba announced $6 billion losses in USA this year), they all are too expensive to make sense.
Nuclear is passé.
Nah, there are plenty of ways to store solar energy over night, but none of them are economical, including salt towers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
While deserts may grow in some places, the satellites show a net gain.
Fast turnover as in removal. The carbon sinkage is longer term.
If it winds up in a 2 - 3 foot tree trunk, I'm happy. If it drops to the ocean floor as slime, I'm happy.
A new Ice age, naturally occuring, was predicted to start about the years 3000 to 5000, far away from the 2040 you claim.
If we had continued with putting that much dust and particles into the atmosphere as we did in the 1920ies to 1960ies, the layer of particles would have shielded a part of the sun light, cooling the Earth. Luckily we started putting filters in exhausts and chimneys, moved away from heating appartements with coal and wood, and thus seriously decreased the numbers of pneumonia, lung cancer and other diseases of the respiratory apparatus. As a side effect, we limited the probability of a global cooling.
The way the current government in Australia is going, we will probably be using coal for a very long time. They somehow think that someone out there will actually build new coal fired power stations in Australia despite all the evidence suggesting that no-one is interested and everyone in the industry has plans to exit coal going forward.
But aren't all those models based on not doing anything (or not enough) to mitigate the problem? I do agree that the rate will slow but its because of the efforts being put into fixing/reducing the problem. Its a bit like the ozone layer hole that was a crisis a while back, solutions were put into place due to the modelling based on not doing anything. Some people on the planet need to prodded into action because they think its not affecting them then you don't have to do anything, they haven't grasped the need for forward planning yet.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
All those Republicans need training in critical thinking or at least, just thinking....
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Scientists should stick to the facts, and avoid becoming policy advocates.
The policy advocates just voted for Trump because they believe the celebrities are scientists.
No sig today...
Tesla is a mega manufacturer of a single battery technology. They will continue to tell you that their battery can do everything and is ideal in every circumstance. The existence of their product at grid scale doesn't necessarily mean it's the best one. Kind of like my nextdoor neighbour who owns a Dodge Ram (I live in a dense European city) who drives around for 15min after he gets home looking for two parking spots next to each other because he doesn't fit in a single spot. He has this car which is great for the purpose it's built, but not so good as a daily commuter.
Flow batteries are larger than Lithium by a factor of 2 currently. This is not relevant in grid scale applications. What is relevant:
- 100% depth of discharge.
- Hugely increased cycle count.
- End of cycle count means one cheap component needs to be replaced: the membrane.
- Estimated 20yr life span is much higher than lithium.
- No cooling required.
- Non-flammable, non-toxic.
- Expansion is as simple as dropping a container of liquid next to the existing battery and connecting a hose.
Lithium battery grid storage can be installed and provide energy for about 1.5 cents/kWh
The most conservative estimate for Tesla's grid storage solution which is the cheapest on the market includes daily cycling over 15 yrs is $0.15/kWh for wholesale cost of a Powerwall (double for retail), and $0.08/kWh for grid scale solution.
Vanadium flow batteries had that cost several years ago already due to their much longer life times and much deeper cycle capability. UET estimates they'll have grid storage available for under $0.05/kWh by the end of the year.
Speaking of because someone has something available it must be good: Redflow ZCell is a lovely little flow cell you can buy for your home. You can replace the Tesla Powerwall with it in a couple of years when the Powerwall is dead. The ZCell costs about 1.5x more and lasts nearly 3 times longer.
Development in flow batteries seems to be slowing, precisely because they are stationary.
Nonsense. Flow battery development hasn't been this active in many years. There are companies producing alternatives to Tesla's Powerwall for the home, more and more interest in flow batteries for grid development and they seem to be outpacing the Lithium movement in the same part of the industry. Not to mention we only ran an article on Flow battery development here on Slashdot a little while ago.
Oh that's where it hiding is it? Where it will do absolutely no harm to anyone because unlike you I understand what is actually happening..
That scare point was debunked way back in 2014, shame you don't understand any of the real science involved, and just want to spread fear to please your high priests.
Wait, your understanding of the real science is based on a single paper that studied a fresh-water lake and you assume that this is identical to salt-water oceans? You are happy to ignore all the other scientific papers that don't match your preconceived notions, but will accept as the truth a study that isn't even about oceans!
No wonder your link had to be to wattsupwiththat.com and not some reputable site. Where is the follow-up studies that replicate this 2014 paper? Where has the same test been done on other lakes to see whether this is just a local phenomenon? Where is the evidence that the effects on fresh-water lakes is directly comparable with salt-water oceans? Do you really understand the science, or did you just trust the completely unbiased interpretation of Anthony Watts? (Yep, he sure doesn't have an agenda!)
Um, ok. Well, anyway, no technological breakthrough is going to change the number of hours per day the sun shines or the wind blows. So that means storage. And that means huge losses storing and retrieving the energy.
By huge losses you mean a few %? Because that's basically where we're at with molten salt. Or maybe you mean that huge 15% you get from flow batteries?
By the way here's just one of many solar power plants that generated power day and night without break throughout 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I mean it must be really difficult to ignore the industry for 7 years. Gemasolar plant has been operational since 2011 and has no problem providing power at night.
No they have not.
Just because it is attached to the grid it is now "grid scale".
I expect form a storage that is "grid scale" to deliver some MWs of power and have at least a few 100 MW/h as storage.
No one is building or installing Li ion batteries that big. Why would they? Makes no sense!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
World HAS listened decades ago, and wanted to get away from coal and oil. This is why the world started building nuclear power plants.
But then there too many idiots appeared who opposed that and now we're going back to coal and oil/gas.
A hill is easy made. ...
Facepalm
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And that means huge losses storing and retrieving the energy.
So you are complaining about losses you don't have because you don't have the means of producing what you lose?
We also must have a very different understanding what the word "huge" actually means.
Did you ever look up the numbers about losses? Likely not ... idiot!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
One can see that this report is complete bullshit, as it does not address the aspect of storage.
Nuclear power produces constant load. Coal and gas power plants can produce on demand. Together they require only a minimum storage capacity to balance daily consumption patterns. Solar and Wind power however are produced with enormous random fluctuations and can only exist if there is capacity to regulate and/or store electricity is large amounts.
This capacity does not exist, and considering how long does it take to plan and resolve all legal issues for large pump storage facilities, it will never be built in any significant amounts. The article does not calculate this cost at all, therefore it's ripe for garbage bin.
It would be great if solar could in fact be cheaper than coal in 20 years or so but I've already been told for 20 years that solar will be cheaper than coal in 20 years. I stopped believing these claims a long time ago.
Wind and solar is cheaper than coal since 5 years or more.
No idea what there is to believe, just look at a newspaper.
Solar has a lot of issues
Care to point out such an issue?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nuclear has already been priced out by renewables + storage.
China has cancelled most of its new nuclear, its just finishing stuff that was already in the pipeline.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Lithium is gaining traction because production is ramping up fast and used cells are plentiful.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd be interested in seeing your citation for "much past climate alarmism was not justified."
The 2007 IPCC Report contains numerous wildly inaccurate statements.
My question-- the part you failed to quote--said "who said it, when, what exactly did they say, and in what way was it shown not to be justified?"
You didn't answer my question. You asserted that the IPCC synthesis report was "alarmism" with "numerous inaccurate statements," but didn't point out a single inaccurate statement.
So, I repeat: what specifically was inaccurate, and how and when was it shown not to be justified?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Lithium is gaining traction because production is ramping up fast and used cells are plentiful.
I'd be surprised though if it catches on for grid scale stuff. The batteries are kinda subtle and quick to anger, though with temperature controlled storage and good charging circuitry they're reasonably solid. But for stationary things, you don'y need the super high power and energy density that lithium batteries give.
You can go for more robust designs with cheaper components as well as designs that aren't really suited to portability like liquid aqueous electrolytes or molten salts.
Of course the massive R&D and production efforts for Li batteries for portble use may end up outweighing that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
humans cannot be trusted to manage it effectively.
Actually, I'd say that humans can't be trusted to htink about risks effectively. Even the ineffective management makes it by far the safest form of power generation currently as measured in terms of death per kWh, yet it has the reputation for being the most dangerous.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Has he actually invested in it anywhere, ever?
Maybe they say that because it's never been done. Maybe not impossible but it seems to be an incredibly unlikely thing for an insurance company to want to cover because they are extremely risk averse. Up until now governments have footed the bills one way or another and even partial payback of loans from governments has been very rare.
In the current investment climate I very strongly doubt that any nuclear power plant will attract full private funding.
That's great if you have a hill to pump the water up to. Out here on the Great Plains we don't have many hills.
New plan: use excess electricity to power robots to make some hills. Then pump water up hills.
I think what you're trying to say is, "(((Bloomberg)))"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yep, if people had listened 30 years ago it is possible we'd be living in a nuclear powered world. Safe from the nonsense in the Middle East. Safe from nuclear reactors stretched beyond their limits. Safe from global warming.
30 years ago, eh? Just a little over a year from April 26, 1986.
As a nuc power proponent, even you should recognize the irony in your post. People did listen. They just didn't listen to you.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Many industrial processes can be designed to soak up excess power and release it as needed https://www.greentechmedia.com...
A GWh here, a GWh there, pretty soon you are talking real energy storage.
An ideal form of carbon sequestration is known as "coal". When the plants which created current fossil fuels were living, bacteria and fungi had not evolved the ability to break down certain key parts of the plants. Today, they have. So we will never be able to go back.
aaaaaannnnnddd. Exactly.
Coal won't happen again. Maybe some peat - we have a local lake that emulates peat formation, and the methane it releases hardly makes for sequestration. And burning that crap is hardly commercially feasible.
In a hundred years, the mining and burning of coal will be regarded like the present generation regards slavery: unspeakably evil and known to be a usual part of commerce of the day to their shock. It will be a capital felony.
I look at coal as something that should have been abandoned a long time ago, but it was more of a bootstrap technology, similar how natural gas is a transition energy source. Not perfect by a long shot, but beats the hell out of rearranging the landscape, burying valleys and lopping off the tops of mountains. So I'm not really in favor of killing people over coal extraction. It will die a natural death all by itself.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
that is something that I think needs to turn around. We need Nuclear development and we need to get modern methods on line. If Trump and the Republicans could do one thing, it is pass legislation that will grant BLM land for free to companies who will build Nuclear plants, remove state and local barriers (nationalizing the permitting) and provide free or low cost insurance if they submit to rigorous oversight from the Department of Energy. If we could also get breeder reactors up and running near the primary reactors then we can solve the waste problem too.
You realize how stupid you sound right? the temperature increases are happening now and will continue forward as permafrost melts releasing Methane into the air and retaining heat even more. Its called inertia. We have been speeding to a red light and we are now 30 feet from the intersection. your solution is to simply take the foot off the gas....yeah..that will work well.... You need to apply the breaks. We need active measures to remove C02 at rates faster than we put it in.
Reforestation / deforestation aside, wood absorbs 1 tonne CO2 / cubic meter wood.
Burning high quality coal produces 2.3 tonnes of CO2 / tonne burnt coal. Most coal burnt have a far worse quota.
The US, alone emitted about 5.5 million tonnes CO2 in 2015.
Trees generally have a lifespan of 40-80 years, after which they die and decompose, returning CO2 to the atmosphere.
You do the the rest of the math.
"Plants" are not a viable strategy. As pixelpusher pointed out in the sibling post, every little bit helps, but it's not a realistic solution.
Tesla built the largest grid scale battery in existence. Everything else is just hype.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
That apples might work doesn't change the fact that oranges won't.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Just like you, nothing, really.
There is no way solar or wind would provide enough power to fuel our autos. Coal and nuclear would thrive!
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
You're implying that increased greenery will cause increased long term co2 sequestration. It won't. Even a tree trunk isn't a long enough time as that's back in the environment in a 100 years. Any links to support your de-desertification claim?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
36 days?!? That there is absolutely viable and we should do it everywhere.
36 days, in 2011.
This plant along with others have far higher run times when you don't look at a 7 year old example of the first ever plant of its kind.
Crescent Dunes had 100% availability and continuous generation from Feb 2016 - Feb 2017 (and probably longer), and even in Jan 2016 they only took the plant down because they needed to for final commissioning steps before full handover.
That's what Mr Watts is best at and he Hoodwinked you. I will fully accept that temperature will do what he claims to ocean pH. That's not the factor involved here or at least it's a minor one wildly overwhelmed by the major one. Osmosis. When the atmosphere increases it CO2 content, that will start moving to equilibrium...in the oceans. While the ocean temp might want to move pH towards base the massive increase in co2 concentrations will push it far faster to acid. And that's what's actually happening.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I don't know where you live, and that has a huge effect on how efficient a PV solar setup would be for a residence. But I thought solar was a great idea too, and decided to purchase a system for our home in Maryland, a few years ago. (I wasn't willing to take a chance on any of these solar lease arrangements. Too many horror stories from realtors about issues transferring those contracts if the homeowner wants to sell the house, etc.)
I spent the extra money for more costly SunPower branded panels after we ran the numbers using several cost calculators. (I only had a limited amount of roof space facing south or east that made sense to put panels on, so the extra 20% or so efficiency of the SunPower panels over the cheaper brands was like having 20% more roof space to put them on.)
Since then? I'd have to say the whole thing will probably come out to little more than a wash. The initial calculations of how much savings I'd get over time were made using some incorrect assumptions, for starters. The biggest one was a false promise by the solar installer that special low rate loans were available to finance the purchase. There was, indeed, a "bridge loan" that financed the first $10,000 of the installation cost at 0% interest for a year. The point of taking advantage of that was the theory that it allowed paying for the project immediately, but letting you pay the loan off using the Federal tax rebate you'd receive the next tax season for going solar. (The Federal refund was supposed to be 1/3rd. of the total cost of your installation.) The problem is, I didn't receive my whole rebate back at tax time. It was split in half, so I could only claim the second half of it the following tax year. So then I had to scramble to try to pay off the bridge loan before I was hit with interest charges on it.
The remainder of the installation was paid for with a solar loan -- but not one with nearly as good of interest rates as the installer promised. They told me to go through a specific lender they had special arrangements with, but those arrangements were considerably different than what the salesperson claimed. When I tried to shop around elsewhere, I quickly found most banks consider solar panel installation something you have to cover using a personal loan, at an interest rate of at least 7.9%. A few lenders even pretend they offer special loans for solar, but the rates are the same as personal loans elsewhere.
So .... any savings my panels give me on power are eaten into by loan interest, until that 10 year loan is paid off.
Now, I understand this won't be everyone's situation. If you have the money sitting around to just buy something like this straight out, great. No loans to worry about. And others may have owned a home long enough to be able to use a home equity line of credit, with better terms. BUT, you still have other factors to consider. For starters, they talk about the panels lasting 25-30 years, but be more worried about the inverters. My home has 2 of them -- one for an array of panels on the separate garage roof, and one on the house itself. Those things aren't cheap, and they have an expected lifespan of little more than 10 years. I believe the warranty on mine only lasts 5.
And it's not necessarily a HUGE issue, but it's worth factoring in the fact that you'll get stuck paying an electrician to take the panels off your roof and reinstall them if you ever need the roof re-shingled or repaired. Over 20-30 years, this is probably going to happen at least once.
And beyond that, you just don't know what electrical rates will be 20 years into the future. The solar salespeople love to create spreadsheets or charts indicating a gradual increase in those rates due to inflation -- but those don't reflect reality that well. In reality, I've seen rates fluctuate but occasionally drop or hold steady due to such things as finding new natural gas deposits in the U.S. and power companies putting more natural gas powered generators online. If "Green" alternatives become
AND, the cost of that storage was NOT in the report. Add in the cost of that storage to provide the same level of availability as coal, gas, and nuclear and suddenly it's no longer cheaper... Hey, my ICE is cheaper than an electric car if I can ignore the cost of oil changes and gas!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Except in this case rather than coming to a stop after we cut the engines, it's claimed we'll start reversing direction!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Where is this big push for fossil fuels? I see a lot of talk about cutting subsidies which heavily skew the market, and I see the President pulled us out of a non-binding, unofficial, handshake-based agreement by the previous President (which legally cannot be binding upon any other Administration or branch of Government), but a push for fossil fuels? Where?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Add in the cost of co2 sequestration of your oil and gas emissions and it's far more expensive to use fossil fuels..
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You could read this
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Solar and wind have very localized fluctuations...across areas though it starts to be quite stable. The wind is always blowing somewhere, etc. Storage tech is growing by huge margins. linky. We need more work to get to grid scale but fortunately we're starting now and not waiting for it like you suggest.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Damn, that's gotta leave a mark....lol. Well played!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
SuperKendall is a troll. Calling them out is perfectly reasonable
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Energy usage is not constant. We use about 50% more power during waking hours, which correlates with the best generating times for renewables. Including about 33% solar and wind in the mix is likely the sweet spot for minimizing daytime the peak problem. The world generates about 14% by renewable today, so we do have quite a way to go before we need to focus on energy storage to minimize a newfound nighttime peak.
Of course, your mileage may vary as Africa, India and Brazil are already at 33%.
I believe that nuclear power is the only logical choice today. When or if wind and solar catch up then we can switch to that.
My believe is that a variety of sources is the only logical choice . If I were running the world's power supply, I would use...
1. Wind whenever available.
2. Solar to reduce daytime peaks.
3. Hydro and Geothermal to reduce nighttime usage.
4. Natural Gas to level out the minute-by minute load.
5. Coal and Nuclear to cover the continuous base load.
Oh, and just to throw a rock, Solar is the ultimate form of Nuclear power :-).
The technology did exist. ... same for wind mills.
There is no fundamental difference in solar cells at that time to ours
Around that time actually around the place I went to school people started to set up wind mills. They are still running and plenty of more, bigger ones, got added.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Maybe you don't have hills, but any elevation difference works. Maybe there's some underground caverns you can use instead. An exhausted oil reservoir perhaps.
"Has he actually invested in it anywhere, ever?"
He is spending vast amounts of money on philanthropic projects.
I think it might be out of a sense of guilt, as after his years of building Microsoft using very aggressive, often underhanded and sometimes outright illegal business practices he was a much-hated figure.
Deserts are growing in all places.
Arguable that is not because of CO2 but bad farming/wood harvesting habits.
Claiming that there are satellites showing a reduction of deserts is just idiotic.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Clearly you understand nothing about metallurgy, or science in general. Coal is still a very valuable and necessary hydrocarbon. (You kinda have to have it to make steel for your wind-turbines, dumbA$$), not everything can be made with plastics derived from unicorn turds comprised of hemp residue. Shill harder
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
The old "second world" is now on the level we where 30 years ago. Not much a difference to where we are right now. That is more or less true for the former third world, too.
The only third world countries left are those that are under war lords reign as e.g. in Somalia.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You have to see it from the perspective of the common person.
Which of these two perspectives are they going to agree with?
"Ok, I've got some numbers here, and I'm afraid we are heading for disaster due to science-science-science. I know it's hard to understand, but you have to trust us experts. A lot of people are going to die if you don't do as we say: We need to get rid of all the cheapest energy sources. I'm afraid it'll slow the economy, and everything you buy will cost more. Also we'll need you to get rid of that car and start taking the tube with all those stinky hobos on it - but that won't be a problem, because we're also going to triple the cost of gas, at least. Also we need a lot of tax money for mitigation efforts."
"Yeah, see that guy? He's a liar. Everything is great! America rules, we got cheap energy. Everyone in the country owns a car - it's our symbol of freedom, go where you want, when you want. Don't let the liberals drive us into poverty. And he says scientists are concerned? Well, don't worry about that, I had a hunt around and I've found at least twenty scientists willing to testify on television that it's all a hoax."
Every installed MW of wind and solar needs to be backed up with reliable on-demand capacity ...
No it does not.
1) They can be "backed up" (we actually call it supplement) by another wind/solar plant far away enough.
2) the oil and coal plants to "back them up" already exist
And in economies like Europe you simply can import electricity without the need of "special back up plants" ... facepalm.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The political mindset works differently from the scientific mindset. It's reversed.
First, you decide what policies you support - based on things like the party platform, and ideological alignment, and what the voters seem to support. Then you go looking for facts you can cite in support of these policies.
over 5% of the electrical energy production in the USA by wind...that's huge! Why would you call that insignificant, you are science and math challenged?
let's add in the costs of radiation deaths and maimings...no not of nuclear...but by *coal* and all of a sudden your cost argument becomes trash. non-polluting energy of course has less cost
Problem with nuclear is that it is getting too expensive. It can, maybe, do 5 cents per kWh for new installations, but uncertainties are huge. Solar can now, as today, do it at 20 cents, and it is rapidly declining. If it is cheaper than nuclear withing twenty years, building a nuclear plant today is "negative" investment.
That doesn't make sense. If I build a new nuclear power plant and a new solar farm, today, I'll need the loans for those and pay them off for something like that same 20 years it would take for solar to catch up. If the nuclear costs 5 cents per kWh today and the solar costs 20 cents per kWh today then in 20 years those two energy sources will still cost the same, because the cost for both is largely in stable costs like that loan for initial construction, labor, taxes, land, and so on. That same nuclear power plant will still be there in 20 years as will that same solar farm. For that solar farm to be profitable the price of energy would have to be above 20 cents per kWh for the next 20 years. If energy can be sold at that price then that nuclear power plant will make me a pile of money after those 20 years since my costs are 1/4 of what the solar cost.
If the costs of solar is dropping as quickly as you claim then investing in it today is the negative investment. It would be better to invest in nuclear today and then invest in solar when or if it gets cheaper. That rapid decline in solar pricing is in itself an uncertainty, which as you point out is something investors want to avoid.
And there will not be any "future" nuclear reactors, nobody can invest that amount of money to unknwon technology (unknown as "will it be cheap enough").
This next generation solar is also unknown. For new photovoltaic cells no one will know if it can last for 20 years in the weather for precisely 20 years. For new thermal solar technologies like molten salts people will not know the wear life of the piping for 20 years. Solar is as much an unknown as nuclear. You can claim solar will get cheaper all you like but we cannot know for sure until it actually happens. As it is right now nuclear is less of an unknown if we use current designs that are very safe and profitable. Nuclear is cheaper than solar today, you admitted this already. We can make it cheaper in the future just like we can make solar cheaper in the future.
I might have believed you ten years ago that no private entity has the kind of money needed to fund a nuclear power plant. Today we have private companies investing in a lot of huge projects that even governments ten years ago could not afford. The next ten years will be very interesting.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Storage, and demand management. Demand management can go a long way.
And you of course have evidence of massive sequestration going on right now due to 'increased' greenery right? because without that you aren't getting any coal...which also requires a swamp environment. Something missing from the majority of the areas where 'increased greenery' is occurring.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Another 6+ paragraphs that could have been used to explain what the heck you're talking about, but instead droned on about my presentation or calling me mean or boasting that you've got me pegged. Ok!
People are way too excited about these one-offs. What's the storage solution for Texas? Pumping low lying water? Molten salt? If these are our solutions, power sources will be orders of magnitude more centralized than they already are. Wrong direction.
Your reply was pretty reasonable which is why I didn't ignore it. But what drives me nuts about this religious debate is that I can't criticize the ignorance of baseline/variable difference and how storage is a real issue without being called an idiot or fossil fuels lover. I generate more solar power than I use and I have batteries. But I still have a hefty grid bill because this is more complicated than on paper. And nearly everyone calling me an idiot has no home install, has never designed a systems and has zero practical experience with storage. I'm not calling myself an expert, but I certainly know more about this than people reading articles in a politicized information space.
Yes, if you match your usage to the variable generation, the storage problem goes away. This seems... impractical.
I'm not interested in debating the definition of a relative adjective
You anti-nationalists don't care about *any* country, that's how this ended up happening.
Wind and solar is cheaper than coal since 5 years or more.
Sure, in places like Hawaii and Arizona. Once all that cheap land in sunny places is "used up" then where can they go? There's a lot of that land so "used up" does not mean covered in solar panels, it means close enough to demand that it is profitable. Running wires to far off places costs money. Wind has a similar problem. It's cheap to put some windmills outside Chicago, St. Louis, and Dallas on some ranch and let the cattle graze underneath but at some point the windy places aren't so close to demand any more.
Solar has a lot of issues
Care to point out such an issue?
Sure. First is the well known issue of being available for about 8 hours per day. I hear people say that solar is cheaper than whatever in cost of new build capacity. This may in fact be true but solar capacity is not the same as coal capacity, or even wind. Solar has a capacity factor of about 30% while coal and nuclear have a capacity factor of 90%. If I build 10 nuclear power plants I can be assured that I'll get something like 80% of that maximum capacity at any time, day or night. To get that same assurance from solar I'd need 3 times the installed capacity with storage, and storage is not free. If I have a mix of wind, solar, and hydro, then maybe I can get away with not needing the storage (hydro is effectively the storage) but I'd still need 3 times the installed capacity over if I had a mix of coal, nuclear, and natural gas. This reliability problem translates into costs for materials, land, and just plain more money.
Second is the fragility of solar. For solar panels (and wind mills too) to work they need to be out in the weather. That means being exposed to things like hail, wind, and lightning. I remember a few hail storms around here and insurance companies had to bring in people from all over to handle the claims of broken windows, dented cars, and damaged roofs. What would a solar farm look like after that? How long would it take to repair? I'm sure with thick enough glass it could take quite a beating but that adds to the cost and reduces efficiency. Coal, nuclear, and natural gas don't have that problem. It's cheap insurance to put them in big concrete bunkers to hold up to even a direct hit by an F4 tornado. A nuclear power plant can likely take an even bigger beating since they've been tested against things like airplane collisions.
Land area. Solar power needs area and there is no way to get around that. Not only a lot of area but area free of obstructions. Solar can be put on rooftops but that adds to maintenance costs since now lifting up the panels involves cranes and more time than if on the ground. This land cannot be used for crops, grazing, hunting, or much of anything really. This land is going to be as lifeless as an asphalt parking lot. So you can park underneath the panels, which is nice I suppose but we need only so many parking lots. Nuclear power can be done anywhere, including under those solar panels, parking lots, and green spaces. We're not there just yet but we're close. The problem isn't so much the technology, we have nuclear power running under water in submarines, but more of the politics and logistics. Ignoring that we still can have a nuclear power plant in the middle of a green space where we can grow trees, crops, or whatever. It can be done on a frozen tundra in the Arctic circle, or in the shadow of a mountain.
Waste. Many people will make a big deal about the waste created by a nuclear or coal power plant. Not many people think of the waste from a solar plant. Those panels will wear out and break but we don't know yet how to recycle that. There's also the concrete pads they sit on and/or the steel and aluminum structures to hold them up. We know how to recycle steel, aluminum, and to some extent concrete too, but that is going to be a lot to handle. To keep up with demand and wear on solar we'd have to
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
5+ more paragraphs without any substance
Hydro-electric produces constantly, although not available to every part of the world. Geothermal constantly, but its practical cost varies widely depending on the geological activity in a region. Solar produces during the day, when demand is at peak. Wind can produce at night, but is only able to supplement a wider grid. Storage systems are already in production and on the market, and will continue to be developed. So how can you say that in 20+ years that there won't be storage systems?
The future is this:
* variety of energy sources. With different combinations for different regions.
* some regions will be zero nuclear, others will find nuclear power to be a practical option for high energy demands.
* non-renewable energy will be regulated into oblivion. Hardly an issue as costs for renewable energy continue to fall.
* households will use less energy than they did 20 years ago or even today. Efficient lighting, efficient heating & cooling, laptops instead of desktop PCs, and solar panels on homes because they last longer than roof shingles and pay for themselves
* energy costs for the end user will continue to rise. even though renewable energy is cheap and requires little capital to do on a small scale, the distribution of power is expensive on a large scale.
Tenewable may never be as cheap as fossil fuels were 30-50 years ago when we put all this power infrastructure in place. But that is in the past, and we can't go back to that.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
CO2 reduction will take 70 years to have an effect. Geo-engineering only takes two years to work, costs 1/1000th as much, and is actually feasible.
- in 2016, the earth will be a frying pan (http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/01/26/jan-26-2016-is-al-gores-global-warming-doomsday/)
- in 1985, half the sunlight will be gone 'Life Magazine in 1970 reported that “by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” '
- by 2000, the world is going to collapse from over population (various sources, pick one)
- by 1975, most of the world will be starving (Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, in a 1970)
- by 2000, no more oil - UC Davis ecology professor Kenneth Watt: By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a ratethat there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”'
So many more, but I'll stop. Point is, why would you believe anything they say?
As far as renewable...one hopes it will solve something..but right now, the only reason it even survives is due to subsidies (when it survives...how about all those failed Obama funded solar companies?) For every 'green' source out there, there are some large issues with it. None of them are as 'green' as they seem.
There's an entire industry that prices the 'unknowable'. It's called insurance.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
So a writer at the NY Times thinks that President Trump may push to change regulations that may give oil companies advantages? In other words, there's no action so far, no stated policies, but it's implied by a reporter who thinks it could be true - and thus, from that, you determine that President Trump IS pushing for fossil fuels to the detriment of other sources.
This isn't just fake news, this is worship of fake news...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Read the GP. Now apply context. You'll see your own fail...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Is it time to consider immigrating to India? Thats where the jobs are going to be for the next 50+years. The USA jobs are going to remain in coal, or some gasoline powered cars manufacturers.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It seems like you don't want to listen to any facts. Calling them "fake news" may make you feel better but doesn't change them.
Since you're too lazy to use Google here are some more references:
https://insideclimatenews.org/...
https://theintercept.com/2017/...
http://time.com/4709796/trump-...
https://thinkprogress.org/trum...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Speaking of because someone has something available it must be good: Redflow ZCell is a lovely little flow cell you can buy for your home. You can replace the Tesla Powerwall with it in a couple of years when the Powerwall is dead. The ZCell costs about 1.5x more and lasts nearly 3 times longer.
Your numbers appear to be obsolete. And also specific to Australia. ZCell's cost ~$17,000AUD installed for 10 kWh with a 10 year warranty and isn't available in the US. Telsa Powerwall 2's now cost $8,200USD installed for 13.5 kWh with the same 10 year warranty. Both products support 100% discharge of their nameplate capacity. The Tesla does it by overprovisioning cells. The ZCell does it inherently to the tech.
ZCell depended on a longevity advantage for their cost competitiveness with lithium. That advantage has evaporated. Tesla many-cell powerpacks are holding up far better than anyone anticipated. Even Tesla.
So that means storage. And that means huge losses storing and retrieving the energy.
Btw I say this as someone who spent a lot of money on a home 7kW PV system with batteries!
So... your own house proves that you're a blithering idiot? Lithium ion battery systems are 90+% efficient round trip, depending on ambient temperature and rate of charge and discharge. That's about 3% less efficient than the grid itself. So, what huge losses? Oh right, there aren't any.
People obsess over the technologies and then later come up with these justifications for how "the tech is gonna get there eventually!!!".
Eventually. Yah. Takes about a month after you place your order, most places. Ooo, such a long time.
There's no such thing as base load. The phrase is a convenient shorthand for describing a theoretical approximation that is barely relevant in the real world, as any grid operator can tell you. The loads on the grid ebb and flow constantly, and even those nominally "base load" power plants fluctuate in output. Grid operators love the idea of storage buffers, even in the grid as it stands today. The ability to buffer a few megawatts over a 45 minute period would enormously simplify their jobs and they know it. They publish papers saying so. As prices of lithium systems continue to drop, grid operators are going to install more and more battery buffers, even if no one adds a single additional windmill to the grid, even if no adds a single additional solar panel to the grid. We know, because they've said so.
You'd think on a tech site people would understand that a temporary buffer is a bit different than a storage mechanism capable of capturing power during 4 hours and discharging for the other 20. Anyway you're following the script. I didn't say batteries don't exist. And of course it's possible to run 100% on solar, wind, and batteries. As I said, I could in my own home. But I don't. It is too expensive per kWh to cycle the batteries like that and far cheaper to use the grid as a battery, even though I only get about 40% credit for every kWh I sell. So you went on arguing with me as if I claimed it wasn't possible. That'd be pretty dumb since I designed a home system that makes it possible. I said it's not practical and won't be practical. I could be wrong. My crystal ball isn't any better than yours. But that's what I think based on what I know, taking all the hopium out of the equation. And for that I get called an idiot by people who have zero practical knowledge in this area.
And it's not necessarily a HUGE issue, but it's worth factoring in the fact that you'll get stuck paying an electrician to take the panels off your roof and reinstall them if you ever need the roof re-shingled or repaired.
Around here, the primary reason for roof replacement is hail damage. Covering your roof in solar panels shields it from hail damage, so the need for roof replacement is much reduced.
Maybe it will become foolish to try to generate your own power at home vs. the savings they're giving you due to economies of scale?
I don't want it for the savings. I want it for the independence. The grid around here is more stable now than it's been in years, but it's tornado alley; wind damage is unavoidable, even if tree damage is now much less likely since they went on a rampage and leveled every tree to the ground that was within 20 feet of the power lines. That helped with the reliability tremendously, and looks better too. No mangled trees by the side of the road. Still, depending on somebody else's power is annoying, and I have a 1456 day uptime to protect.
Now, I understand this won't be everyone's situation. If you have the money sitting around to just buy something like this straight out, great. No loans to worry about.
This is the reason I haven't pulled the trigger yet. I'll be paying off my mortgage first, then paying cash for solar. Electricity rates in my region are so low that there basically aren't any loan terms that are acceptable, and I even have access to a very cheap home equity line of credit. Another two, maybe three years. I'll get there.
People will keep saying this until it does work in high % of total generation, and then they'll find something else to complain about.
At that point they will suddenly have been pro-solar all along.
Seeing as though animals do not release fossil carbon that part is true.
And even if volcanoes do release more greenhouse gas then humans it is offset by the natural process (as shown by greenhouse gases not rising over history)
Which is easier to reduce. Greenhouse gases from humans or Greenhouse Gases from volcanoes.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
What about if you burnt the trees into a carbon rich ash, and then used the ash to increase carbon in soil.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Except for Australia. (although much smaller so you might be right)
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
In the question I asked, the word "it" is meant to mean "nuclear power".
Please try again.
That's for heat production, but when the aim is actually generating electricity you lose with each additional step. You cannot squeeze every last bit of energy out of the steam so the gas turbines with their single step win by quite a margin.
LOL Then why'd you cite 36 days, instead of a greater number of consecutive days.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
so, you will still be lying your morally bankrupt ass off then. Too bad, one would assume that even someone down at your level would eventually gain a small level of integrity.
Thought experiment: How much energy could you store by lifting very large concrete blocks, and then lowering them through a resistance when you need the energy back? Maybe having them push screws down that would spin generators on their way down. Or maybe use the energy to pump water up past a dam, and recover it through turbines when you need it. How efficient would that be, and what would the energy density be, compared to batteries?
Holes in the ground could work too.
For the amount of money and in the amount of time it takes you to construct a new nuclear plant, you can roll out wind and solar power across an entire region, completely with hydrostatic batteries (reservoirs and water towers). Creating far more jobs in the process in far less time.
And that's ignoring the costs of security, disaster preparedness, plant decommission, and storing the waste for hundreds to thousands of years for nuclear power. Disagree? Fell free to link to a statement from a nuclear power company, showing the fees charged up front to pay for those cradle-to-grave costs.
Uh huh. So how many humans have died from the failure of solar panels again? Wind farms? We're talking failures here, not industrial accidents.
ZCell depended on a longevity advantage for their cost competitiveness with lithium. That advantage has evaporated.
I wouldn't suggest anything has evaporated anywhere in an industry which is a battle of R&D to out-do each other. Lithium's cost effectiveness came from ramped up production. What makes you think that flow batteries aren't capable of the same?
But it goes back into what I was saying: I was talking about grid storage. I was just using an example of just because something is available doesn't make it the only and definitely not the "ideal" solution. Lithium for the home and for the car. Redox for the grid. If for no other reason than by keeping the grid guys away from consumer products the price won't be affected by strange supply and demand swings :-)
I didn't. I just looked into the 36days cited by the OP rather than simply posting crap on Slashdot. And here I am now to share my new found knowledge :-)
Changes little. You can still have your artificial reservoir, and use excess energy to pump water into it, then let water flow out through a turbine to generate electricity. Or failing that, water towers. And there are hydroelectric dams and water towers that have been in service for over a century. And the whole point of your phancy pants nuclear power plants is to heat water, to push a turbine to generate electricity.
Because it wanted the ultimate in corporate welfare while at the same time providing cover to nuclear weapons programs?
You idiots. Nuclear power cannot be justified based on cost alone. For a fraction of the time and cost, you can build out wind and solar across an entire region for a fraction of the price, while creating more jobs in the process. Disagree, feel free to link to a statement from a nuclear power company that itemizes the full cost of mining, construction, operation, security, disaster preparedness, decommission and storing waste for thousands of years into the rates it charges.
Claiming that there are satellites showing a reduction of deserts is just idiotic.
It may have been caused by improper reporting of a discovery last month. To put it simply, better quality satellite imagery have revealed that there is 378 million hectares more forest than previously thought... most of them in dryland areas that we considered as deserts. It's not that deserts shrunk, it's that we incorrectly labelled areas as deserts due to poor quality imagery.
The interesting thing -to me- is that we already have the ability to restore large-scale damaged ecosystems, but that somehow it doesn't seem to be a priority for western civilization.
Which frequently dovetail with capitalist hegemony. Like giving money to schools that is promptly spent on buying Microsoft products, or in supporting charter schools, the ultimate in corporate pork if monied shitbags like himself manage to privatize public education.
Only if you ignore or externalize all the costs of natural gas production/use.
Neither, as the hand waiving nonsense can be seen from a mile off.
Ignoring the facts that:
1) Climate models from 30 or even 40 years ago were prescient
2) Models have understated the rate of change
Go form a commune with the anti-vaxxers, wanker.
All of the FUD with regards to solar can be answered with 70's technology. And I mean the 1870's. Wind and solar generating capacity would be spaced across the grid - as coal and nuclear are spaced across the grid. Excess wind and solar power can be stored in hydrostatic batteries - artificial reservoirs and water towers that will outlast any nuclear power plant.
FTFY. Wind and solar are cheaper and faster to roll out than coal, much less nuclear.
The storage tech has been there for over a hundred years. Move water into an artificial pond (or a water tower in a dry climate) and let it flow out to push a turbine when needed. And before you sneer at that idea too, remember the only thing your coal and nuclear power plants do is heat water. To move a turbine to generate electricity.
You forget that building a nuclear is extremely expensive, running it is relatively cheap.
So in order to get the investment back, you need to get revenue for over fifty years. For solar you only need ten to twenty years.
Uh huh. So how many humans have died from the failure of solar panels again? Wind farms? We're talking failures here, not industrial accidents.
Right, so if you ignore the vast majority of deaths involved in solar power, you can conclude that solar power is the safest form of power. Well, that's a fun trick, but what's the point?
See this is why nuclear power is so problematic: people won't think straight when discussing it. For example, you've effectively declared that you believe the lives of people involved in merely building a solar plant are of no value.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Why do you insist to play an idiot?
Wind and Solar power is cheaper than coal all over the world.
Those panels will wear out and break but we don't know yet how to recycle that
Wow, you are indeed an idiot.
There is nothing to recycle, you simply put them again into a silicon plant, how retarded are you?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There was some news a few days ago, that in some asian country (I forgot which) volunteers planted 10,000 trees in a single day.
The kingdom of Bhutan, in the Himalaya, announced a few weeks ago it is carbon neutral now, however they claimed it is due to planting lots of trees, which indicates they are not doing the math correctly. But it is a great effort anyway.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Boilers lose a lot of heat, especially old ones, so no, that very lossy extra step means nowhere near as efficient as burning in the gas turbine even if you have a very large boiler and a turbines covering a very wide pressure range allowing quite a few passes with the same steam.
I should have mentioned that earlier but the proposed power station refurbishment where I thought about these things in depth was in 1994 so I'd forgotten all the details.
Not that impractical. A lot of power goes into heating and cooling - applications that are quite happy to wait for a few minutes. It's just a matter of communication and incentive. A protocol by which the grid operator can broadcast "Wind just died, turn off your air-con" and appliances will react accordingly. Much the same as the current on-peak-off-peak system in principle, but operating dynamically over minutes rather than a static schedule over hours.
Could even link it to smart meters - raise and lower the price of electricity by a few percent so end users have an incentive to buy appliances that track the changing price.
From your own first link:
"We're looking at deposits of coal, looking at nuclear, looking at renewables, all of it," said a senior administration official in a briefing.
I stopped at that point, as the others all contain the same thing. There is nothing in the executive order - and not a single bill or proposal - which is the big push for fossil fuels as you claimed. A lot of editorializing and theorizing and guessing - but nothing concrete or factual. In other words: fake news.
Again, please point to the executive order or bill language that gives fossil fuels an unfair advantage. If you can't - then perhaps your position is wrong, because there are no facts to support it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I think you are underestimating how much customers will react to what you're suggesting.
You forget that building a nuclear is extremely expensive, running it is relatively cheap.
No, I did not. The material expense is nearly identical to that of a coal plant, I've seen an engineering analysis of this. The regulatory expense is high right now but that is merely a matter of politics and politics can change. Other one time costs like design and engineering can be spread over multiple reactors.
Material costs for wind is higher than nuclear, many times higher. They can save on things like assembly line production but nuclear reactors can be built assembly line style too. Finding real world numbers on the costs of solar is nearly impossible. Everyone likes to talk about how much solar will cost in 10 or 20 years but few will give actual numbers for today.
So in order to get the investment back, you need to get revenue for over fifty years. For solar you only need ten to twenty years.
Which will supposedly happen 20 years from now. In that 20 years we could also have small modular reactors built on an assembly line. The engineering and licensing costs would be minimal, a lot like how commercial aircraft are built and licensed. As of right now, today, solar still costs more than nuclear so investing in solar right now, today, is not a good bet.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's great if you have a hill to pump the water up to. Out here on the Great Plains we don't have many hills.
With high voltage DC power lines (a technology that has been in commercial use for 80 years) you do not have to have the hill nearby. Transmission losses for 800 KV lines is a only a 8% percent loss going from San Diego to Portland Maine, the longest possible CONUS distance. Going from the Midwest to a location with pumped storage is probably going to be 1/3 that distance with losses of 2-3%.
The actual losses in using pumped storage (energy in-energy out) ranges over 14-25%. Battery losses (depending on technology) range over 5-35%
This these two efficiencies reveal something very important that almost everyone on /. ignores. The principal means to deal with power load mismatches with a renewable grid is having a better grid: one that can ship electricity from where it is being produced to where it is needed. Long-distance transmission is more efficient than any storage technology. This grid should include Canada and Mexico too, for even greater advantages. Canada can build and sell pumped storage capacity, Mexico can generate solar power.
Once you create a continent-wide power grid load balancing gets a lot easier and the need for storage shrinks dramatically. When the is a high evening load in the East where most Americans live, the sun is shining out west, and the wind is blowing somewhere in the Midwest.
Currently pumped storage in the U.S. is 2.2% of total grid capacity, and plans exist to increase that to 6.2% in the years ahead. That provides a lot of load shifting capacity.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Wind and Solar power is cheaper than coal all over the world.
I don't live all over the world, I live in the American Midwest. Solar and wind is not cheaper here, therefore it is not cheaper all over the world. If it was cheaper than coal then my electric utility would not have mailed me an offer to increase my electric rate to fund more windmills. Instead they'd be mailing me a letter that they've reduced my rates because of all the windmills they built.
There is nothing to recycle, you simply put them again into a silicon plant, how retarded are you?
Citation needed. I've searched the internet for how PV cells are recycled and all I've found are articles that say that PV cells contain heavy metals and therefore must be disposed of as hazardous waste, and people that claim they can recycle PV cells real soon now.
This has been a problem for electronics for a long time now. No one has figured out how to recycle silicon once it's been doped. After that all they can do is leach out as many heavy metals as they can and dump the remains in a hole.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest..."
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
All our first generation wind mills shut down. Without huge tax incentives, they couldn't cover their maintenance costs. That was on Altamont pass, one of the most consistent wind locations in North America.
Many sat idle for 15 years or so, corporations that owned them were 'broke' so weren't torn down until the new windmills started going up.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The ocean is a _buffered_ solution. Pull out your chem 101 texts and rework with that knowledge. You'll have one less thing scaring you to death.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You turn the trees into cardboard and paper, then bury them where they will decompose adiabatically, sequestering carbon.
Done.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Once you create a continent-wide power grid load balancing gets a lot easier and the need for storage shrinks dramatically.
How much is this continent wide power grid going to cost to build and maintain? I know we already have some very large electric grids but there is a reason that they are still separate.
Then there is still the issue of wind and solar having capacity factors somewhere around 30%. Meaning that for every gigawatt of capacity built the grid sees only 1/3 of a gigawatt-year annually. Coal, nuclear, and natural gas have capacity factors of about 90%, which means 9/10 of a gigawatt-year annually for every gigawatt of capacity.
People get all excited when there's a news article on how solar is cheaper than coal when they really mean the cost of the new install of solar capacity is lower than that of coal capacity. That's nothing to get excited about. When it gets to be 1/3rd the price then we can get excited. Until that happens solar is not going to replace coal in any real way. All the solar power we have now are government subsidized money pits or privately funded greenwash advertising.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You must be an idiot indeed. ...
We are talking about new installations and the cost of production energy with them.
At your place setting up a new solar plant is cheaper than setting up a new coal plant.
And it will produce energy for a cheaper price.
No idea why you refer to old contracts that obviously don't change
Citation needed.
Citiation needed for a no brainer?
What is next? If I put shit on a field it works as fertilizer? Citation needed?
You are an idiot, how dumb do you think I am?
PV cells are recycled and all I've found are articles that say that PV cells contain heavy metals
PV cells don't contain heavy metals, hence you never searched the internet and hence you never found an article claiming they can not be recycled.
How do you think a silicon cell is made? They melt SAND, and then purify it to an absurd amount of purity. ... WTF, get a damn clue.
It does not matter if I melt an old solar cell or simple sand from a desert or the sea
Recycling a silicon based PV cell is probably the simplest thing in the world. And completely pointless as you can deposite them safely as nothing of its ingridients can easiely get out.
Stop contributing to that 'can not be recycled myth'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, I'm just reading peer reviewed studies. Maybe you should too before spewing ignorance. Coal is the deadliest energy source and causes the most cancer deaths per year.
so you're saying that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the air won't start absorbing into the oceans?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Would you care to try that again, without the willful obtuseness this time? If Billy Bob trips over his shoe laces, falls down the stairs and breaks his neck at his local nuclear power plant, obviously that is a workplace death. But just as obviously, his death had nothing to do with nuclear power.
Same thing if Bob trips and falls down the stairs at Solar City as opposed to the nuclear power plant. So, again, just how many deaths have there been from the failure of wind and solar power.
Businesses would love it. Buy tis $199 air conditioning upgrade (it would, naturally, be obscenely overpriced) and save 2% on your energy bills.
For residential users to follow would need regulation, but nothing more invasive then the Energy Star certification scheme.
I'm sure there would be political backlash just the same - someone would end up here posting "Big government is coming to steal your air conditioning!"
I bet that sounded super smart in your head! Hahaha!
What ever will they fill the cars with if the workers in Siberia can't fill the train cars with coal? Wind?
You would need to implement this as demand based pricing in any state where the population isn't already full of mindless drones used to being told what they can do with their own property.
There's a few interesting small-to-medium scale ecosystem restoration projects going on at the moment, trying to improve on the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation projects. While the Loess Plateau projects didn't achieve all their objectives, they have still seriously improved the lives of 2.5 million people at a cost just below $200 per head... more than doubling their income, increasing harvest yield, reducing unemployment and reducing soil erosion.
Ecosystem management/restoration is a career path I actually considered while at school, and I'm currently reconsidering it for the second half of my career. The Science Faculty in my hometown has been 100% focused on ecosystem management and ecosystem restoration since 1971... attracting students from 25 countries to a tiny city.
Actually no, you are mistaken.
Solar and wind are diffuse sources of power. As a result you need an awful lot of it, physically.
Nuclear power tends to to be concentrated in a small number of "large" power plants. But they're not that bit. Compare the size of a 3.2GWe (Hinkley Point C) nuclear power plant to 3.2GWe of solar or wind. After of course accounting for the capacity factor of both.
If you think Hinkley Point C is large, you might be pretty surprised how big the wind or solar plant comes out at.
You will find they are many many times larger. That means a consequently larger construction effort, a much larger effort in mining the materials (and coal and oil required in the processing) and not only that but a much larger programme of ongoing maintenance which particularly in the case of industrial wind is somewhat dangerous since it's up high towers. Also, rooftop solar has a startlingly high accident rate because dicking around on a roof is dangerous.
You can do the calculations for nuclear too, including mining the yellowcake.
The thing is that the rather compact nature of the plants and extremely energy dense fuel means that overall less effort goes into generating the power than just about any other source. That means few fatal accidents. And the regulation means that the place where nuclear can really go wrong are very, very rare, to the point where it's the safest form of power in the only reasonable way of measuring it.
The thing is, if you only account deaths due to failure of the plant while it's running, you can also conclude that coal power is extremely safe, because you fail to account for the thousands who die in mining accidents and the millions who die early due to respiratory problems.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hm, very interesting.
Perhaps you are interested in the books of King Rama IX of Thailand.
He studied agriculture, water engineering and land scaping.
Thailand would be a deforested third world country, if he had not intervened.
Most of his topics about agriculture and soil preservation are about special grass plants that hold soil and water and make rice fields possible, calming floods etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Collectively, we aren't much better than we are as individuals. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So, you can't be bothered to find a citation so you shout the lie louder.
My citations:
http://www.greenmatch.co.uk/bl...
Silicon powder is useful in cast iron foundries but it cannot be reused for the construction of new photovoltaic cells as it still contains a certain percentage of glass.
http://earth911.com/eco-tech/r...
Panels contain metals, such as lead, copper, gallium and cadmium; an aluminum frame
I'm pretty sure that lead and cadmium are heavy metal that people don't want in their drinking water.
These are recent articles so you can try to tell me someone figured it out since then but I won't believe you unless you give a citation.
how dumb do you think I am?
Do you really want an answer?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Panels dont contain an aluminium frame.
It is a frame.
Panels don't contain lead or cadmium. They use copper as conductors and that is outside of the panel, on top of it. Gallium is not a heavy metal. Gallium is mainly only used in the most expensive PV cells used in space crafts.
PV cells can not be recycled because they continue to much glass?
How retarded is that? PV cells are glass. Glass is silicium, molten sand, or more precisely, silicium oxide. PV cells are made from pure silicium.
I suggest to google for some stuff that gives you an education instead of googling for stuff you fear and get fake answers.
Silicium based PV cells are probably the most easiest thing to recycle on the planet, just behind glass bottles.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
More shouting and still no citations. You obviously do not know how photovoltaic cells are made.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm currently re-reading Bill Mollison, Sepp Holzer and Masanobu Fukuoka.