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Relying on Renewables Alone Significantly Inflates the Cost of Overhauling Energy (technologyreview.com)
A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades. That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it's not. From a report: It increasingly appears that insisting on 100 percent renewable sources -- and disdaining others that don't produce greenhouse gases, such as nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology -- is wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult. In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand, but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts. Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farms -- or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices. Or some of both.
Renewables are always cheaper. The price of fuel for fossil fuels will go up. The price of decomishing a nuclear site will double again in the next 10 years.
What makes renewables bad is that we don't have reliable storage.
Long term is every home can cover 75% of their bas usage with solar and batteries then the need for large grid scale systems shrinks. The large grid is fragile and a mistake in Ohio, can wipe out new York City for 12 hours. (2003 blackout)
More distributed renewables and smaller but numerous storage. Would strengthen the grid with excess.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Because some countries over here in Europe have already switched to renewables long ago, starting with hydro power for instance, wtf is this about solar and wind? Every major river has a dam. They are necessary for agriculture, not just electricity. And yeah some days per year we hit 100% renewable energy.
Gee, it's as if overhauling an infrastructure which was built predominantly on oil might cost a lot of money to retrofit to handle solar, wind, water, and nuclear!
No fucking duh. However, once you've got the renewable energy sources in place and harvested, the cost will die out, quickly. It's called ROI, and the smart people have obtained almost insane ROI (on the order of 3 months in some related techs like LEDs powered by renewable resources up to 5 years for full solar+wind-powered farms) so they really don't have to worry about this.
Which means Americans have this problem, and not many other people.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm about as much of a greenie as you are likely to run across. I'm strongly of the opinion that we cannot get solar and wind power to be major parts of the grid fast enough. We also need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels (which we do globally to the tune of about $5 Trillion annually) and force them to cost the full economic value of the pollution they cause. That said, the notion that we can rely solely on wind and solar (and hydro where available) in the near future is preposterous. Doing that in a rational way would take a century just due to the cost alone. Fossil fuels simply aren't going away for many decades at minimum no matter what. Fortunately we don't need to get carbon emitting energy sources to zero. We need to get them to a level that the ecosystem can handle which is obviously much lower than it is today. Use nuclear to replace fossil fuels where possible and solar and wind for most of the rest. Yes we will need batteries too. The grid WILL need to be updated no matter what so I don't see that as a bad thing. But if we need to spend the money to keep the planet habitable then no real benefit to waiting.
One beef with the summary is that there currently is no such thing as fossil fuels with carbon capture technology. There is NO industrial scale carbon capture or carbon sequestration technology available nor any reasonable prospect of such technology in the near future. So take that off the table as an option until such time as it becomes a real thing.
SJW world cannot exist on logic and reasoning.
Solution - adapt devices to power output. Use them only when electricity is available.
aka "Clean Coal". There's a reason there hasn't been much traction here. Yes, you can make a zero emission coal or gas fired plant. It's just not economical when compared to wind & solar.
The costs get inflated only if you ignore cost externalization (subsidies for one, but medical costs due to dirty air are pretty massive too). Nuclear would be fine if we could trust it to stay safe. But until you can convince Americans to stop privatizing everything or make a nuke plant that's cheaper to run safely than to run dangerously then nuke's a non-starter. Sooner or later we'll privatize it to save money and those savings will come at the cost of safety like they did over in Fukushima. Meanwhile the folks responsible for the inevitable disaster get off scott free.
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The demand curve is really the important part of the equation; to make renewables effective you really need to minimize load when the sources are not available. That is a challenge with current technology in the winter, because you intrinsically have a large demand block between sunset and 9PM. In the summer you can have plenty of excess capacity from PV, but hot late-autumn days are a challenge.
So, what can you do?
It isn't that hard to make things work on renewables only if you have plenty of wind energy, but you need to reduce expectations of central grid reliability. Inter-connected microgrids have a lot of promise for being the prime source of end-user reliability and economic viability.
And, if you don't have the wind resources and have high heat and electric loads in the winter, what the hell... put in some gas recip engines with district heating.
...adapt devices to power output. Use them only when electricity is available.
What are the odds that a whole town would decide to run their AC on the same day?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology"
Which plants like that have been built or are in operation?
How efficient are they? I've heard of one project where CCS consumed ~25% of total plant power.
Coalwashing may soon put greenwashing to shame.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The alternatives are just kicking-the-can-down-the-road... How much will it cost to retrofit or decommission that nuclear plant in 15 or 20 years? How much will it cost to get the carbon out of the atmosphere after it messes up our weather to the point where the growing season is unstable and it's hard to grow crops reliably?
There's an old saying... You can pay now or you can pay later, but it usually costs more later.
"that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices."
That's one of the good things of 'the future'. I doesn't have to pay 'current' prices.
Also, wind energy doesn't need any subsidies anymore, unlike coal, gas, oil and nukes.
This is just a way to prepare public to pay more so companies whom male already huge profit don't spend a dime on modernizing the grid. But we have Chile as an example to prove the affirmation false! http://fortune.com/2016/06/04/...
This is nothing new. But there is a large contingent of folks who insist renewables are a simple low cost solution. Of course, they are basing their conclusions on the existing renewable expansion which has been entirely dependent on non-renewable sources on the grid.
Germany is proof of the high cost with minimal benefits. If they'd simply kept their nukes running, they would have save a huge amount of money and made significantly greater progress in CO2 emissions reductions.
It does. Proper Environmentalism, isn't being a crazy hippy, but looking at the risks and rewards of all available options. And going back and reevaluating to see if any factors have changed.
Back in the early 1900's the Gasoline Automobile was an environmental benefit. Because of the health risk of keeping horses in a City Environment. The Toxic (much more Toxic then today) exhaust was known back then to be harmful, however being that it was in the open air, it was considered much better then the Environmental Risks of a lot of horses.
A century later, The automobile is widely used, and the Carbon from its exhaust is causing harm to the environment compared to modern alternatives where its harm can be more easily managed. This isn't to say in 100 years we say these electric cars are safe and clean anymore, but there may be a new technology. Or perhaps we have cleaned the air to a point where a 100 year newer Gasoline motor or engine, may be considered a better solution.
Right now I think the biggest problem is lack of energy diversity. We are relying on fossil fuels for too much, and not on others. However to say that Fossil fuel has no part of modern life, is just closing your mind to the complexity of the world.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What makes renewables bad is that we don't have reliable storage.
We have reliable storage, or at least the technology to make it. Tesla and others have seen to that. What we don't have is cheap and plentiful storage. Part of that is because we haven't ramped up battery production to full scale and part of it is that we're still trying to reduce cost in the face of subsidized fossil fuels which makes clean options seem more expensive than they actually are.
Long term is every home can cover 75% of their bas usage with solar and batteries then the need for large grid scale systems shrinks.
Yes, exactly. Every rooftop that can have solar should have solar. It would make the grid more reliable, cleaner, and eventually cheaper. It would require the grid to be upgraded in certain ways but that's not a bad thing. What we have now is rather outdated anyway. Yes we need batteries to do this but again, that's not a bad thing in the long run.
Pure FUD. The writer (in the summary) lost all credibility when he said carbon capture tech is needed because current battery prices are too high. Funny thing, though, that renewables and batteries are already cheap enough to drive fossil plants out of business. Carbon capture is important, yes, but we need it to drive our emissions *negative* in the second half of this century. To get to net zero in the first half of the century, demolishing smokestacks is the fastest way.
The need for renewable is a separate issue from the need for green energy.
The former is about the running out of fossil fuels, and the latter, pollution, and, specifically, greenhouse gases.
The latter has value, but the former not so much anymore as Julian Simon's undefeated predictive capability has shown a relatively free economic society can adapt to shortage stressors faster then they become the prognosticated problem, and prices continue to drop.
This is counter-intuitive, but makes successful predictions again and again and again since the shortage scares of the 1970s. Peak Oil, a reskin of such fears, predictably fell.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You seem to be assuming that there is never a need to run the A/C 24-7. Which is normal about seven months of the year down here in N'Awlins. Lows above 27C at night, highs above 35C in daylight. Every day except winter....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There are two sides of such an argument.
1. Just because it works in Europe it doesn't mean it will work in the USA.
2. Just because it works in Europe it doesn't mean it will not work in the USA.
We were able in the past make a trans-continental railroad, an Interstate system, That connects every state together. Nearly every home has access to Clean Water, Electricity, Telephone... These improvements while cost a lot, helped build the United States into an Economic Power house. Because the 325Million people have access to a wider infrastructure and be part of society, while having the property and space to utilize their own means.
This was all fine and good until the stupid Abortion Debates, where peoples view on the topic, painted the other side as morally deficient. Calling the Other side Misogynists or Baby Killers. Which after a few generations of this, has created a polarized society where working with the other side is considered bad. Even if it for all best interests.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Coal should have died in the 60s but groups like Green Peace saved it by driving the cost of nuclear through the roof. 60s nuclear technology was safe, we even knew how to safely dispose of waste in the 60s. We couldn't dispose of it with zero radiation leak but guess what the world is mildly radio active anyway and coal, that thing that replace nuclear, spreads radio active material more than nuclear does.
Ten years ago we solved a lot of the problems with renewables, it was called variable pricing for electricity. People and their appliances can be incentivized to use electricity when it is produced by changing less when the wind blows or the sun is shinning and charging over $0.70/kwh when it isn't. This saved consumers money and saved the utilities even more. Unfortunately the utilities that took a risk and tried this got fucked over by their public utility commissions. (Oklahoma public utility commission almost single handedly set back renewable energy by 5 years)
Last it will never make sense for urban homes to have battery back up. It is always better to share your capacity among several houses, or several thousand houses. Like maybe make it a public utility to store and deliver electricity
Also get white roof shingles!!!
These are all easy things, things that could have already done with a little leadership and maybe getting some of these Green groups to actually think instead of parade around trying to get attention for themselves.
Lastly fuck the pro-rail crude oil transportation advocates. They often go by the anti pipeline crusade.
It has also become clear that renewables are an equally poor tool for full power satisfaction.
Except actual studies show that grids get *more* reliable when renewables are added. Funny thing about the sun, it doesn't go out all at once the way a 500MW coal plant does when a turbine overheats. Tesla's Big Battery in South Australia has compensated for several fossil-plant shutdowns much quicker than spinning reserve can--eventually they will be able to reduce the amount of spinning reserve in favor of batteries. But you're absolutely right, we don't have anything to worry about until we actually hit that 80% mark, and by that time we're likely to have even more solutions available.
The model does not include the cost of nuke plants that melt down, even though we know they do that periodically. And will do it more often as they age. The model does not include the cost of the damage done by global warming. Or rather, it assigns that cost to renewables by failing to credit them for saving the Earth. The model does not consider the effect that radical energy use reductions would have on the overall cost.
This sounds more like the death knell of status quo energy interests and not so much like a reasoned appeal to fact. If these guys know so much, why didn't they tell us last year that alternative energy could provide 80% of needs. Wonder what the number will be next year.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Fossil fuel has no part of modern life because we will eventually run out of it, or it will be too expensive to extract and burn it.
Look at the fuel cost for an EV vs ICE/Diesel. EV's work out to be 10% of the fuel cost, for a vehicle that minimally costs twice as much to buy, and likely costs more to maintain, just less frequently.
Like if you can by an ICE for 12K, but an EV for 25K, no brainer, you go for the ICE, even if the EV saves you 3K per year in energy costs, because you need to keep the EV 10 years to justify it, where as the ICE you can trade in after 5 and end up breaking even with the EV.
As long as gasoline is subsidized, it will not be cost effective for everyone to switch to EV's. Fuel needs to still double in cost before that will happen.
That said, we shouldn't be burning oil. Save that oil for the plastics industry. Eventually we will run out of oil, currently predicted by 2088. I don't think I will live that long, but you know what? That's the problem, the people running these industries today, know they won't live that long, and basically "I got mine, fuck you" to future generations.
It is "wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult" to build sewer systems, when people could simply defecate in their own backyard, or toss their droppings out the window. Why should we depart from behaviors that were sufficient for humanity for tens of thousands of years?
this, 90% this (not sure on the genesis, but the out come is very real).
Now both sides on every single debate in politics see those who disagree with them as morally deficient and evil. :(
Once the grid gets stingy and/or unreliable, people/corps with resources will just start abandoning it in favor of their own local capacity. They won't be told they can't have air conditioning.
"Managing the grid" will just boil down to middle class and lower classes being blacked out because they don't have their own power sources or can't afford super-peak rates.
I predict the desire to enforce conservation (blackouts, brownouts, high cost rates) to meet renewable power goals will be a major political issue and probably a lot of backlash.
This is the study I have been looking/waiting for that gives a realistic assessment of what the future power grid for North America (and Eurasia) should look like.
The summary cites the two different options for dealing with the intermittent nature of wind and solar -- power storage (which is the go-to assumption everyone makes as the only option), and having a low loss national power grid to distribute power efficiently, but inevitably it only cites the cost of the more expensive of the two -- power storage. The report itself gives an estimate for the national grid option and it is only $410 billion dollars vs >$1 trillion for the storage option. Over a 40 year period this amounts to an investment of $10 billion a year. Currently about $70 billion is invested annually in electricity production and transmission, so this is in line with current and projected levels of investment.
It will be quite awhile before we have to really worry about going from 80% wind and solar to 100% - do we want to, is it worth the cost? In the mean time gas peaking plants can plug some of this gap. But nuclear energy at its current scale, about 20% of capacity, fits in very nicely. Currently licensed stations are looking at getting their licenses extended to 80 years, so they can cover this out to 2045 or so.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Wrong: Coal power is. It's destroying the planet, and yet we're still using a lot of it.
You have price confused with "cost"-- our energy markets are no where near sane about capturing externalities (with the possible exception of nuclear, where we insist on paying full-life cycle charges up front, including waste handling).
3. Every room inside a suite/unit of a building has it's own independent second source Heat/Cooling system. So if you like your unit 1 degree warmer than everyone else, you pay the extra money to run the gas fireplace or electric heaters (which waste a shit tonne of money)
Do you not have thermostatic radiator valves in the USA? Even in my small house I have different rooms at different temperatures with only one temperature of circulating heating water. While living in Scotland I have no requirement for air conditioning in my house the same is achievable for cooling with just one temperature of cold water too.
by "almost" I assume you mean cheaper than all coal, other than old super dirty coal (which is on par), gas and biomass. In fact nuclear is not really all that expensive. It is the startup costs that kill nuclear, not the TCO. Pretty much the only thing cheaper than nuclear is natural gas and geothermal currently.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The cost of that last 20% is steeper on a percentage basis, but the aggregate cost is definitely not more (much less "much more") than the aggregate cost of the first 80%.
And part of the solution is not to demand that only solar and wind be used. Nuclear should still be in the mix (licenses are available for any capitalist who wants to build one) for example. There are a lot of options that could cover that last 20% (biofuels, carbon capture, nuclear as cited) and competition and innovation will push us toward the lowest cost way of doing it.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
... (the rich, the Pelosi supporters, etc.) will be assigned July and August while the "bad" families (Trump supporters, NRA members, etc.)...
You have strange fantasies.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Please stop spreading your lies and take a little while to educate yourself
"The cost of producing nuclear-generated electricity in 2007 was 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 2.4 cents for coal, 6.7 cents for natural gas and 10.2 cents for oil. In other words, the cost of nuclear-generated electricity was nearly one-third less than power produced at a natural gas plant.Feb 24, 2009"
https://alternativeenergy.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001269
Agreed, and even their premise that nuclear is carbon free is flawed. Nuclear plants take a ridiculous amount of concrete to make, and concrete production is one of our most CO2 intensive activities. Uranium mining, refining, and transport is also very carbon heavy. Net energy production compared to fossil fuel use? Definitely much less carbon intensive, but it's not zero by a long shot.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
At 27C at night my AC would ne off, and most likely at 35C during daytime, too.
Can't be so hard to have a building that stays around 27C - 30C without need for AC.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Oh right, it worked in Germany, a country with a population density 2.5x the USA (which ranks 180th...)
Those numbers are more interesting if you look at the median population density (i.e. the population density where most people live). The clustering of the US population in costal cities means that it's often higher than European cities. Something may not work for 100% of the population of the USA, but if it works for 70% or so then that's a big impact.
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We don't.
Not generally anyway.
Most of our radiator systems are quite old, and rarely updated. Usually an update would be to forced air with a central furnace and AC.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
That would be every town in the United States from May to August.
I'm not kidding either.
WHOOOOSH is not just the sound of everyone's A/C being turned on in the summer...
This smells of propaganda. While the article makes much of the additional costs for power storage and load leveling it blithfully skates pass the cost overruns that have affected nuclear power plants which run into the billions of dollars, You can build a lot of batteries for that kind of money. Nor does it deal with the costs of spent fuel disposal, in part because the US has no process for disposing of spent fuel.
Burning coal produces, in additional to carbon dioxide, noxious oxides, sulfates, particular matter, heavy metals (Mercury, lead, cadmium, and more) and soot, which is cancer-causing. Pollution control devices only reduce the amount of these being discharged, cost millions of dollars to install and millions more to maintain.
Mandating 100% renewables by such and such a date may be optimistic but relying on coal and nukes is hazardous to our heaslth
Yes, you can make a zero emission coal or gas fired plant.
Multiple companies have tried, and all have so far failed. Clean coal was pushed in Europe long before the orange monkey ran for president. Currently most of the projects are being sued by their respective states for reimbursement of the government incentives that often failed to produce even a single kg of sequestered carbon.
Coal is dying, clean coal on the other hand has gone through multiple stillbirths and abortions.
and competition and innovation will push us toward the lowest cost way of doing it.
You still believe that myth?
It worked wonders for the american fast food industry. ...
For housing/rent in the center of NYC not so much.
Neither for health care or student tuitions
Most bills in the long term go up, they don't go down.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It might be inconvenient, but it removes problems and gets the job done so that the technology is much cheaper much more quickly. I'm actually a little disappointed to read this on Slashdot without some acknowledgement that nuclear and fossil fuels, though currently used and useful, aren't really needed if we CAN get everything from renewable sources. It's as if the poster or author is saying that we shouldn't update to the latest computers or other technology when it's still cheaper and more convenient to use old technology, even if old technology is inconvenient and expensive longterm and switching to the latest technology will introduce far greater efficiencies that everyone will be ready to enjoy. It's not like everyone is trying to use the latest smartphone here. It's more like they're switching from alkaline batteries to lithium. Or nuclear and fossil fuels to wind and solar. THAT'S WHY. And while old technologies SHOULD be used where needed and practical, switching to renewables should DEFINITELY be encouraged and even demanded where the pain of switching is WORTH IT.
In my limited experience, radiators are not common in the USA. Most houses where I have lived use central air heating and cooling systems. I haven't seen thermostatically controlled air outlets for such systems.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Coal, NatGas, thermal solar, and offshore wind seem to be quite a bit more expensive than nuclear...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Not to mention that Germany pays about 2 to 4 times for power what the US pays...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
just how well are your properties insulated? a well insulated property shouldn't have much temperature fluctuation whether that be heat or cold.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
They'll be piloting a zero CO2 emission natural gas plant that has the potential to be cost comparative to other fossil fuel plants. The tech may also be usable for coal. Look into Net Power and the Allam cycle. Not proven yet, but could be a big deal if it works. It effectively produces, heats, and pressurizes CO2 as it burns fuel/oxygen, then uses the heated CO2 to turn the turbine. This instead of heating water and using the steam to turn the turbine. Since the CO2 is already at high pressure, the excess CO2 in the system can be captured, transported, and sequestered. The only thing vented is water vapor.
The real question is where the CO2 would be sequestered to... and of course whether the tech actually works without the heated / pressurized CO2 corroding / destroying the machinery.
Now both sides on every single debate in politics see those who disagree with them as morally deficient and evil. :(
I think it's a bit of an overstatement to blame both sides equally for this trend. You don't see conservatives screaming themselves into a frothing rage when a liberal speaker is invited to a college campus. You didn't see conservatives whimpering and crying when Obama got elected -- twice. Most conservatives and right-of-center people I know of or can research online seem to welcome open debate on sensitive topics and are happy to engage in a spirited dialog about such issues.
It's primarily a leftist phenomena where you find "tolerance" like boycotting, "hate speech codes", selective moral outrage, doublethink, doublespeak, threats if you dare challenge the orthodoxy, open calls for violence against those who think differently, and in some cases actual violence.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
a. Privatization in America is pretty much inevitable because Americans do not trust government. It's cultural. It's hammered into you when you're young and impressionable.
b. Nuclear disasters are much, much worse and they affect everyone around for miles, not just the people in the immediate vicinity of the disaster.
There's a reason NIMBYism exists. It's irrational rationality. Running an unsafe nuclear power plant because you don't like paying taxes and don't trust the government is irrational. But if you've already accepted that level of irrationality then the next rational thing to do is not run the plant in the first place.
It's a catch 22 in the literal sense of the word. You'd have to be crazy to do it but you'd have to be crazy to not do it.
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Not at all; you just need to build a thermal mass during the daylight hours and discharge it at night. It can be passive like a stone fireplace and floor, or an active system such as an ice tank. Your primary obstacles are humidity control and solar heat gain, which can generally be done with a separate dehumidifier (assuming you are using radiant surfaces), and a proper radiant barrier and overhangs.
You can also gain thermal efficiency by using a ground-source heat pump to provide the cooling, so you don't get as much of a penalty running during maximum outside temperature. If you use enough hot water, a heat pump hot water heater can help out on the dehumidification too.
You know, it's rather interesting, but I think that I see worse intolerance on the right than on the left. Both sides are intolerant, but the folks on the right are more likely to swing into violence while the ones on the left are just screaming. Given historic trends I suspect this is because the police look the other way when the right gets violent, but come down hard when the left does, but whatever the reason, that's what I see reported.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That 9-year-old article is dead wrong. The levelized cost of electricity for nuclear is 11.2-18.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. More expensive than coal, NG, and most renewables. https://www.lazard.com/perspec...
There is an economic benefit to being connected to the grid-- most of the time. It gives you a marketplace to sell your excess capacity, and a buffer for instantaneous peaks.
While I am not a fan of real-time pricing, it can effectively compensate or incentivize good behavior.
Pretend a company could year-round exactly match their load to the real-time output of their solar panels. That means they need to have more people working in the summer than winter, and need to operate 365 days per year-- with much shorter hours in the summer. But, since they likely don't want to schedule people around cloud cover they are going to need some battery storage. Now they need excess PV to cover the charging energy for that battery... but the battery is only needed on cloudy days! Well, they now have an opportunity to re-sell capacity at night when other people need the capacity-- provide the day was not cloudy.
Economically, you end up having everyone with some battery storage, but supporting different needs. I might have enough to run the fridge and water heater for a day and a half, while my neighbor sizes theirs to run the air conditioning for a day as well. These different needs (and means) gives the tools needed for a grid with ~99% availability. To go from 99% to 99.95% availability, you are going to need to add in geographic diversity and diversity in power sources (wind). If you want more than that (economically), you likely need to add in natural gas plants.
The natural gas plants will likely end up providing 5-10% of total annual energy.
My house has it, air ducts to every room have electrically-controlled valves. You can also easily retrofit a house that doesn't have zonal AC by using motorized air vents, like https://keenhome.io/
Probably very highly correlated. But the AC units don't run constantly. A simple version of this is already in place where the demand can be smoothed out by scheduling the AC units to not run all at a time but still keep the buildings cool.
There is a question about whether these actually save any energy.
Monetary cost is just one factor. There are long term costs to health, environment, and so forth to be taken into account. Then there is the major problem that non renewable power is... not renewable. We WILL run out of coal and oil someday. Do we want civilization to collapse when this happens, or do we want alternatives to ramp up before this happens?
100% carbon capture from coal does not solve that problem, or other problems with coal. The big political push for coal is only about jobs, and those jobs aren't coming back - if coal makes a resurgence it will use much more automation with fewer workers.
Supply and demand for oil are such that we're expending enormous costs to get more of it, including piping down low quality oil from Canada so we can ship it to China. We've found all the "easy" places to get oil, now we're working on the hard to get oil.
We need renewable energy soon, and dependence on fossil fuels is a temporary interim to tide us over and it needs to ramp down over time. We also need as a society to use less energy (and water, etc), and that's a difficult problem to solve.
They most certainly do. For example, my bedroom is sandwiched between two heated floors and it rarely needs to be heated. Meanwhile, the attic room has to be heated very often. With zonal AC the hot air is delivered only to it, without causing other rooms to become uncomfortably hot.
You can run the heating system in fan-only mode but it's usually too slow to equalize temperatures by itself.
nuclear is safer than coal. there is more energy in the radioactivity of coal ash than was gotten by burning the coal...
nuclear. modern reactors could burn the current "waste" from which only 10% of the energy has been extracted.
the lighter radioactive products of alternate designs besides the one from the navy currently used are shorter lived and useful in medicine and other applications.
nuclear.
-pyrrho
https://www.energyvanguard.com...
>Please identify any actual gas subsidies
Every war in the Middle East for the last century? We weren't there for the weather.
Every tax credit given to fossil fuel companies? Sure some will argue "tax credits aren't subsidies", but at the end of the day they give the same economic advantage to a particular business as they would get by leaving the taxes in place and adding a subsidy, so the end result is pretty much the same.
Every environmental impact indemnification we give to fossil fuel companies? Oil spill cleanup and recovery, especially from something like a deep-sea well failure, is outrageously expensive, and yet the cost is born almost entirely by the government rather than the companies that caused the problem. Coal is mining and waste is hideously bad as well, but has been grandfathered in so that none of the industries involved have to pay the environmental remediation costs, nor even manage their waste in a safe manner. Nuclear actually has the same problem - if a company had to pay for waste storage/reprocessing "until harmless" there would be no profit to be had in the industry.
Meanwhile your tax issue is disingenuous - mileage taxes are already being experimented with in several areas, specifically to address the fact that a gas tax promises to stop being a an indirect substitute as EVs become more common.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think I know who funded this research/article........
safety regulations you're not paying very much attention. There's been widespread movements to eliminate regulations in all levels of government. I think we've been lucky that they haven't gotten that far yet. A lot of regulations come down from the EPA. Bush Jr was too busy with wars and Clinton/Obama were both the sorts not to allow it. But this newest administration has literally put someone in charge who has questioned whether the EPA should exist at all.
As the economy gets worse the pressure to cut costs will to. Meanwhile folks will turn to the kind of politicians that promise them quick answers and easy fixes. And I don't see our economy doing anything but getting worse.
Bottom line, I don't trust Americans. Make nuke plants cheaper to run safely than not or I'll oppose them. As mentioned I'm well aware this isn't rational behavior. But that's the point. None of this is rational. If human beings were rational we'd stop making tanks and build solar farms & desalination plants instead.
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They still own the State Legislatures, local offices and all branches of government. There's a lot of talk of a 'blue wave' but with few exceptions they're still winning most of their elections. More importantly they own the main stream media, since they're completely pro-corporate (as opposed to the Dems, which are only pro-corporate in the corporate wing of the party). Hell, the Dems big victory was winning one extra state legislature seat so the Republicans couldn't call a Constitutional convention.
Also, even if the Rs lose a bit they're mostly losing to those right wing 'corporate' democrats who vote exactly the same as Republicans except on social issues.
If somebody like Bernie Sanders or Liz Warren wins the Whitehouse we'll talk.
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Definitely much less carbon intensive, but it's not zero by a long shot.
Nuclear power is as close to zero emissions as solar, wind, and hydro.
Nuclear: 28 tonnes CO2/GWh
Wind: 26
Hydro: 26
Solar PV: 85
I'm not a fan of solar PV because it produces three times the CO2 per energy produced than wind, hydro, or nuclear. Solar is also expensive, and unreliable. Still far better than natural gas at 500 tonnes of CO2/GWh, or coal which can vary from 700 to over 1000 depending on the coal quality and the plant efficiency. Using solar when better options exist is nonsensical.
I see nothing wrong with the increasing use of natural gas because it cuts CO2 output in half from coal, it's cheap, it's reliable, and it's plentiful. Solar is not cheap, it's not reliable, and in many places not so plentiful. If we are going to go through the expense of reducing our CO2 output beyond that of natural gas then the smart money is on wind and nuclear. We're out of rivers to dam up so hydro is not really an option for any significant growth. Wind is not particularly reliable but it is cheap, or at least cheaper than solar and about the same price as nuclear and natural gas. I'll hear complaints on how nuclear is so expensive but it's half the price of solar for the same energy. If you live in a place that is lacking in sunshine then the price difference gets much larger. I'm sure there are places where solar is cheaper than nuclear, in which case solar might make sense, so long as there is sufficient wind, hydro, and natural gas to make up for when the sun doesn't shine.
Oh, but solar will get cheaper, you say? When it gets cheaper than nuclear then I'll change my tune. Until then we should invest in nuclear. Also, it's quite possible nuclear could get cheaper too. This is a moving target, and now that we've actually started building new nuclear plants I do expect nuclear to get cheaper.
Anyone want to complain about the safety of nuclear power? Nuclear power is ten times safer than solar power, based on deaths per energy produced. Go look it up. Yes, this does include the deaths from the meltdowns at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Nuclear power is also safer than wind but by a smaller margin.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It would appear that the best way to ignore putin's news zombies is not to react, but to ask a question about it. But has anyone ever considered that maybe these red zombies have drank their own cool aide?
So an HVAC company wants you to buy expensive multi-zone systems. Duh.
Keen vents actually have a duct pressure sensor and will unlock if the pressure exceeds the threshold. It doesn't happen even if a couple of vents are open in the whole house.
As for scary tales of air conditioners blowing up because condensed coolant enters the pump, it simply can't happen. Evaporators in air conditioners are designed to hold all of the liquid coolant. And vapor is always removed through the high port.
I had Keen vents in my previous house. They provide very real savings and comfort improvements.
The damage to the planet through the use of fossil fuels and having to deal with its repercussions far outweighs the cost of switching to renewables.
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People are stupid so slowing down the proliferation of nuclear so people can learn from others lack of foresight was a good thing.
How many people did bad things with nuclear plants? A lot.
Don't put it all on Greenpeace. Put it on lack of oversight and careless people that caused Greenpeace to be fearful.
I am all for the earth
A/C is needed at night, at least occasionally, as far north as Cleveland, Chicago, or New York. Mainly due to humidity. 30C is bearable without humidity, but add in the humidity and it becomes nearly impossible to sleep.
Nonaggression works!
I don't think that condensed coolants entering the pump is the issue. Coils can freeze with lack of proper air flow due to dirty filters, having all of the vents closed, or for many other reasons. It certainly seems that such a system *should* be possible but reasonable that an end-to-end design would be better. There are good dual-zone systems that aren't terribly expensive. As an example, many houses in my neighborhood have attic rooms that have much different heating/cooling requirements. The solution is to use a 5ton multi-speed compressor with two air handlers. Usually a 3.5 and 1.5. Then you can turn off the AC to the attic room at will. I'm sure that's more expansive than a standard 5 ton system and some Keen vents. But it also lets you do things like go upstairs to the attic and turn on the AC to cool it down even if the rest of the house is already at the correct temperature. I've actually looked at adding mini-split systems to auxiliary rooms. PITA to get the HOA to approve it, though. A full mini-split system is about the same cost as a dozen keen vents. I'm not saying the keen vents are bad as I don't have experience with them. But they also aren't super-convincing for what they do unless your primary goals are cheap and easy and you're dismissive of airflow concerns.
Anyone check out the journal?
No citation of accredited academic backing, nor indication of where / who publishes.
List of where cited includes trade magazines in fossil fuel energy and the "Journal" itself
Mmm. Sounds like Heartland Institute again!
True that. But the peak load for AC comes during the day when solar is cranking out power, making it less problematic than it might be. Winter use for heating is a harder problem because the peak comes at night, and at a time of year when solar is less efficient overall.
It can also be a building in a location where weather cold enough to require use of the baseboards is rare. If they only get turned on a few nights a year they may make economic sense despite their lack of efficiency.
Radiators are common in New England, where the housing stock is older.
So far, no place in the US has reached the point that this article talks about. (Some other countries have.) By the time we do we may have more cost effective power storage systems available.
The thesis is that in fracture or new solutions for filling the gap are expensive. But since the backup is nearly always in place -- the power grid from which renewable users are "escaping", why is there much of a problem? And who's actually behind the study?
True, but since it is only needed to cover that last 20%, when we are already have 80% wind and solar, it is not needed now.
Not needed now? It certainly is needed right now but that's irrelevant because it's NOT POSSIBLE. If it were available it would be needed immediately but there is no such technology in existence nor any reasonable near term prospect of it being developed. Companies that produce carbon have no incentive to work on the problem and there is no profit in it for anyone else. Carbon capture/sequestration is a bogus marketing term used by the fossil fuel industry to try to prevent regulation and taxation of the pollution they cause.
It is normal for a technology that is not yet needed not to be already deployed.
There is NO SUCH THING as carbon capture to deploy. You cannot deploy something that does not exist.
Keen vents really take it to another level. I had a two-zone system for a house with 5 rooms and several heated closets/bathrooms. I could never really achieve balanced heating. For example, my favorite bathroom was too cold in summer and too hot in winter. With Keen vents I could make all rooms to be at comfortable temperature all the time. In the end I had something like 5-way system using Keens. It's really a great invention, simple and easy to use.
My current house has a real 4-way system which is good enough, the attic room too hot in summer but I can live with it. It's actually not terribly more expensive to put a multi-way system if you're building a house from scratch, you just need to add separate ducts and air valves. Nothing too expensive or exotic. But you can't really retrofit it into a house.