New coal facilities are more expensive than solar and wind, even if the fuel were free. Look up EIA estimates. This has been true for several years now in the US.
Solar panels are cheap enough (0.6 $/kWh), and they will get ~35% cheaper over the next 3-4 years as new PERC cell upgrades improve efficiency for the same module cost. Installing them needs to come down to levels that exist in other civilized countries, anything but utility scale installation is still a rip-off by profiteers. 125 $/kWh for batteries is enough, that is only 7% reduction per kWh for 6 years. I bet we hit it by 2020. Especially if Chinese start making city-factories. With these two things, one should be able to hit 0.06 -.12 $/kWh anywhere in the US. You can already hit 0.12 $/kWh in the US with solar and rip off install rates.
it isn't common, but it is correct in this unit system. It is often replaced in favor of W (kWh) when dealing with electrical systems. IMO, its more irritating and prone to error when multiple unit systems are used simultaneously. kWhs are not used here probably because they likely deal with source fuel & combustion calculations, which is expressed in the US as BTUs or in SI as Joules. Watt hours are a contrived unit anyway, I don't know why anyone would make efficiency calculations using them when the final answer is dimensionless and they would just be adding a needless constants into their equations.
by the way, the unit is watt*hour Power*time = energy.
Your "well" distinction is just as arbitrary as the one you criticize. Why stop at the well? Fossil fuels are just a stop gap storage of extremely long geological processes that we are exploiting at an unsustainable rate. Eventually most of it comes down to solar energy for the earth system, or galactic/universal processes on larger scales.
Compare a Tesla from a solar panel to the fossil fuel pathway of ICE starting from algae 300,000,000 years ago. They share the sun's photons as a common ancestor. I have a feeling the Tesla will show a significantly greater than 4:1 advantage to ICE......,
any recent data to suggest that cars have bested are better than trains recently? I imagine aerodynamic losses per person is a greater handicap than friction for passenger vehicles (or greater advantage for trains).
Sorry what? Generously, they make 1.6b in revenue, allowing them a net margin equal to google and they need to increase revenue by 15X and somehow salvage 25% of that into net income. AKA they need 6x their current revenue as income. On just revenue At 2014 pace this looks like 15 years away, lol. Nice investment horizon. If things don't slow down, a number of absurd assumptions hold over this time, the value you pay for the company might be worth it in 2030. What a hilarious investment. Any proposals on how this will happen? They are going to get 15x paying customers or 15x revenue out of each customer? Presumably their are proportionately increasing operating expenses of this monitization, how do they generate profit? Keep in mind if they are less profitable than "insanely" they need even more revenue growth. Its patently absurd.
It seems entirely practical given that plants have done it for billions of years at lower inefficiencies. There are many high temperature based solar to fuel schemes using various redox cycles being researched by labs all over the world. Breaking the cycle up makes it easier to run at high temperatures and 20-40% solar to fuel net efficiency. Given that the major expense in these schemes are the fields of heliostats necessary to concentrate the solar radiation, the cost is likely to be similar to ivanpah. Now $4/W solar thermal array (plus genset etc) plus add an arbitrary +75% cost for the reactor and various fuel handling operations chemical and you get $7/W for solar-derived fossil fuels. Put a plant in the desert, capitalize the plant over 20 years, and I calculate something just shy of $8/gal diesel. This isn't that crazy given my generous allotment to the cap ex of the chemical operations. Build it on the coast and use the waste heat to distill the necessary water.
Not a problem...Just engineering. Research team generally assume widespread use of these cycles are ~20 yr away, of course they are developing all this tech on a paltry $10s of millions a year, combined R&D globally.
No, we should have (and still can) built intelligently. It is perfectly feasible and has lower lifetime costs (often lower capital costs by eliminating mechanical systems) to just build insulated buildings, with heating loads low enough so that 1 or 2 space heaters are needed 20 days a year. But our failure to build good buildings in the Midwest is matched my our bretheren in the desert southwest. Unfortunately their challenges are multiplied by developing an inhabitable wasteland.
I don't see how these descriptors apply to a large company without resorting to making wide generalizations and assumptions based more on hearsay than actual facts.
Read about it then. There is no dearth of material based on observation and fact. Peer reviewed research articles. Films. Investigative journalism.
you DO NOT need to be on ranting against something you can easily ignore, yet here you are. I don't need internet connected devices. I want them and I will have them. Russian hackers can turn off my lights or watch my cameras. Or maybe sell my occupancy data to a super high tech burglar team who can rob me of a few thousand dollars of old electronics and furniture. Even worse they could disaggregate my electric loads and discover my large appliance run times. truly frightening.
Only a miserly 30% of all energy is consumed by buildings. Constructing buildings for less capital than conventional construction methods while using 40% less energy is such stupid "green" thinking. I'll continue supporting the mindless squandering of energy because "civilization is energy," energy waste is a benefit to mankind, and energy efficiency doesn't scale.
Besides capital and operating lower costs, improved comfort and control, and higher reliability aren't all that "better" anyway. Green idiots!
I'll never let them deprive me of my poorly designed, poorly constructed, expensive to operate, quickly depreciating traditional American construction.
And who the hell are those green idiots who think semiconductor based solid state energy conversion devices will scale? Total idiots, when did that idea ever work??
No need to insist China do anything, they are most rapidly greening economy on earth. They installed 40GW of wind and solar last year. Their 5 year plan will install as much wind and solar as the rest of the world combined (unless India grows serious about their plan).
How you otherwise shore up the necessary capital resources for global/monumental industrial change without charging for access to them. Risk is everywhere. Failure is frequent. How do you overcome that inevitability without assigning a cost to borrow resources to try? Who would lend the resources to create economies of scale necessary to make semi conductors, solar energy, and (soon) batteries affordable? Are you suggesting volunteers in their basement can collectively get together and somehow develop a billion(s) dollar battery factory or an entire city dedicated to the manufacture of polysilicon solar panels?
I think you are right. It has been surprisingly difficult for me to come to terms with that over the years. I guess win-win, if they win by squeaking out 6-9% margins on old assets while renewables grow to terrawatts by 2025, expanding 100x like the have over the past decade. Seems like a bizarre choice: 6x return over 10,000x, but I'm not complaining! Only 100x to go.
Slashdot Mirror
New coal facilities are more expensive than solar and wind, even if the fuel were free. Look up EIA estimates. This has been true for several years now in the US.
0.6 $/W
Solar panels are cheap enough (0.6 $/kWh), and they will get ~35% cheaper over the next 3-4 years as new PERC cell upgrades improve efficiency for the same module cost. Installing them needs to come down to levels that exist in other civilized countries, anything but utility scale installation is still a rip-off by profiteers. 125 $/kWh for batteries is enough, that is only 7% reduction per kWh for 6 years. I bet we hit it by 2020. Especially if Chinese start making city-factories. With these two things, one should be able to hit 0.06 - .12 $/kWh anywhere in the US. You can already hit 0.12 $/kWh in the US with solar and rip off install rates.
Texas is mostly plains. Wet to dry to mountains to plateau
it isn't common, but it is correct in this unit system. It is often replaced in favor of W (kWh) when dealing with electrical systems. IMO, its more irritating and prone to error when multiple unit systems are used simultaneously. kWhs are not used here probably because they likely deal with source fuel & combustion calculations, which is expressed in the US as BTUs or in SI as Joules. Watt hours are a contrived unit anyway, I don't know why anyone would make efficiency calculations using them when the final answer is dimensionless and they would just be adding a needless constants into their equations.
by the way, the unit is watt*hour
Power*time = energy.
Your "well" distinction is just as arbitrary as the one you criticize. Why stop at the well? Fossil fuels are just a stop gap storage of extremely long geological processes that we are exploiting at an unsustainable rate. Eventually most of it comes down to solar energy for the earth system, or galactic/universal processes on larger scales.
Compare a Tesla from a solar panel to the fossil fuel pathway of ICE starting from algae 300,000,000 years ago. They share the sun's photons as a common ancestor. I have a feeling the Tesla will show a significantly greater than 4:1 advantage to ICE......,
any recent data to suggest that cars have bested are better than trains recently? I imagine aerodynamic losses per person is a greater handicap than friction for passenger vehicles (or greater advantage for trains).
Sorry what? Generously, they make 1.6b in revenue, allowing them a net margin equal to google and they need to increase revenue by 15X and somehow salvage 25% of that into net income. AKA they need 6x their current revenue as income. On just revenue At 2014 pace this looks like 15 years away, lol. Nice investment horizon. If things don't slow down, a number of absurd assumptions hold over this time, the value you pay for the company might be worth it in 2030. What a hilarious investment. Any proposals on how this will happen? They are going to get 15x paying customers or 15x revenue out of each customer? Presumably their are proportionately increasing operating expenses of this monitization, how do they generate profit? Keep in mind if they are less profitable than "insanely" they need even more revenue growth. Its patently absurd.
It seems entirely practical given that plants have done it for billions of years at lower inefficiencies. There are many high temperature based solar to fuel schemes using various redox cycles being researched by labs all over the world. Breaking the cycle up makes it easier to run at high temperatures and 20-40% solar to fuel net efficiency. Given that the major expense in these schemes are the fields of heliostats necessary to concentrate the solar radiation, the cost is likely to be similar to ivanpah. Now $4/W solar thermal array (plus genset etc) plus add an arbitrary +75% cost for the reactor and various fuel handling operations chemical and you get $7/W for solar-derived fossil fuels. Put a plant in the desert, capitalize the plant over 20 years, and I calculate something just shy of $8/gal diesel. This isn't that crazy given my generous allotment to the cap ex of the chemical operations. Build it on the coast and use the waste heat to distill the necessary water.
Not a problem...Just engineering. Research team generally assume widespread use of these cycles are ~20 yr away, of course they are developing all this tech on a paltry $10s of millions a year, combined R&D globally.
Its more efficient than a plant derived fossil fuel, if that's the comparison your itching to make.
10% Atacama desert in Chile could produce enough fossil fuels from solar input to displace petrol and diesel.
Only a moron would infer someone's beliefs from the videos they watch.
haven't all of these things replaced vast amounts of teacher student interaction?
Sorry I'm an internet millionaire too, with preferred private capital investments. It is you who work for me.
mtbf on the led array is probably an order of magnitude or 2 greater than a bulb, what the hell are you complaining about?
No, we should have (and still can) built intelligently. It is perfectly feasible and has lower lifetime costs (often lower capital costs by eliminating mechanical systems) to just build insulated buildings, with heating loads low enough so that 1 or 2 space heaters are needed 20 days a year. But our failure to build good buildings in the Midwest is matched my our bretheren in the desert southwest. Unfortunately their challenges are multiplied by developing an inhabitable wasteland.
and at the end of the day you waste your time commenting on slashdot same as me. Glad you use that financial freedom so wisely.
I don't see how these descriptors apply to a large company without resorting to making wide generalizations and assumptions based more on hearsay than actual facts.
Read about it then. There is no dearth of material based on observation and fact. Peer reviewed research articles. Films. Investigative journalism.
go red team! http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
But it uses all of them, which makes it easier to spot errors, discrepancies, and agendas, which can then be the focus of additional investigation.
you DO NOT need to be on ranting against something you can easily ignore, yet here you are. I don't need internet connected devices. I want them and I will have them. Russian hackers can turn off my lights or watch my cameras. Or maybe sell my occupancy data to a super high tech burglar team who can rob me of a few thousand dollars of old electronics and furniture. Even worse they could disaggregate my electric loads and discover my large appliance run times. truly frightening.
Oh yes share your wisedom
Only a miserly 30% of all energy is consumed by buildings. Constructing buildings for less capital than conventional construction methods while using 40% less energy is such stupid "green" thinking. I'll continue supporting the mindless squandering of energy because "civilization is energy," energy waste is a benefit to mankind, and energy efficiency doesn't scale.
Besides capital and operating lower costs, improved comfort and control, and higher reliability aren't all that "better" anyway. Green idiots!
I'll never let them deprive me of my poorly designed, poorly constructed, expensive to operate, quickly depreciating traditional American construction.
And who the hell are those green idiots who think semiconductor based solid state energy conversion devices will scale? Total idiots, when did that idea ever work??
No need to insist China do anything, they are most rapidly greening economy on earth. They installed 40GW of wind and solar last year. Their 5 year plan will install as much wind and solar as the rest of the world combined (unless India grows serious about their plan).
How you otherwise shore up the necessary capital resources for global/monumental industrial change without charging for access to them. Risk is everywhere. Failure is frequent. How do you overcome that inevitability without assigning a cost to borrow resources to try? Who would lend the resources to create economies of scale necessary to make semi conductors, solar energy, and (soon) batteries affordable? Are you suggesting volunteers in their basement can collectively get together and somehow develop a billion(s) dollar battery factory or an entire city dedicated to the manufacture of polysilicon solar panels?
I think you are right. It has been surprisingly difficult for me to come to terms with that over the years. I guess win-win, if they win by squeaking out 6-9% margins on old assets while renewables grow to terrawatts by 2025, expanding 100x like the have over the past decade. Seems like a bizarre choice: 6x return over 10,000x, but I'm not complaining! Only 100x to go.