I read the article and the abstract. Apparently you failed to comprehend it, go read it again. They talk about stripping the atmosphere/gases from a 7.5 Earth Mass (Me) clump at ~8 AU. So, my example still applies. The details may vary a bit, but a 7.5Me clump is going to have a significant gravity well/escape velocity, and for it to absorb enough solar radiation @ ~8 AU is beyond unbelievable, the math just doesn't work.
As this calculation for CoRoT-2b indicates, at 6M tons per second, a hot super-Jupiter would need more than 39B years (~3x the age of the universes) to be "blown/boiled away". Jupiter is ~1/3 the mass of CoRoT-2b, so at 6MT/s, it would last 13B years. The rate of loss of atmosphere would have to be at least a factor of 10 greater than on CoRoT-2b, or greater than 60MT/s just for a Jupiter mass planet to to reach an Earth mass core in 1.3B years. Our solar system is estimated to be ~5B years old and that Earth and Mars both appear to have been rocky for more than 2B years, so 1.3B years to blow off an atmosphere seems to be a generous estimate of quickly it must have happened.
Given that our sun is only converting ~600M tons/sec of hydrogen into ~594M tons of helium, a net loss of 6MT/s, therefore a Jupiter mass planet would need to be receiving a enough of the solar radiation to blow off 60MT/s. Yes, E=mc^2, and c^2 is large, but you're still talking about a lot of mass to move out of notable gravity well (first out of the Sun's gravity well, then move more mass out of Jupiter's gravity well). If jupiter were in earth's orbit, would it receive enough solar radiation to lose 60MT/s? Not from solar wind, the total solar wind mass is ~1.85MT/s. even if all 1.8MT were directed at Jupiter and Jupiter had no magnetopause to protect it from the solar wind, 1.8MT/s would not strip 60MT/s of atmosphere. So you have to come up with a theory where the EM radiation causes the the planet to eject it's own atmosphere, which is still going to be virtually impossible.
The figures I gave aren't multiplied 4x. They are multiplied ~ 2.2x for worst case month (Dec/Jan). There is no known way to store enough excess energy from the summer months to carry us through the winter months. Oct/March would be close to break-even, but probably still require some stored energy. Gravity, hydrogen, batteries, etc. we simply use too much energy to make storage of 30%-50% of the energy used from Nov-Feb practical. Therefore, you have to build capacity for the worst months.
You're correct that the the solar radiation is more consistent at the equator. But the US (and most countries) don't have any property at the equator, nor even in the tropics. Much of Africa and South America are in the tropics, but other than that, it's just bits of the Indian subcontinent, northern Australia, and a bit of North America. While that's a lot of land, Most of South America is out because you would destroy the rainforest (not exactly "green" energy policy), which leaves the bulk of Africa and part of northern Australia. Still a lot of land, but then distributing power from there to the rest of the world is a big problem. And that's just addressing the technical issues. The political issues and national security concerns of getting any significant portion of your energy from other countries is an issue now, even though most of our energy is from domestic sources (mostly coal). It's completely unrealistic to talk about solar energy from the tropics for the US and Canada. Mexico and the Central American countries could, but it's such a narrow strip of land that they would need lots of energy storage to get through the night, or through extended cloud cover, or a hurricane.
Putting all your energy production capacity into a small region creates huge issues with reliability and distribution. Energy production must be distributed around the world, for technical, reliability, and political reasons. And with that in mind, all of your comments about solar at the equator are completely useless.
Yes, building energy efficient homes and buildings is great. However, the fact is that you can't rebuild or retrofit most existing structures to make them energy efficient. It's too costly and too time consuming. The best you can do is increase the efficiency of new development. The energy production capacity and grid must adapt to what's already exists. Any plan that ignores that is yet another pipe dream doomed to fail.
As for storing energy using compressed air "lots of megawatt hours" is a joke. We're talking about needing thousands of TWh just in the US. That's billions of MWh. "Lots" isn't sufficient. Only 3% of US energy production is from hydro, so even if we could completely restock all our hydro reservoirs (a logical impossibility itself) and ignoring the energy losses involved, that would sustain us for perhaps 3-4 weeks in Nov-Dec. The same goes all other forms of storage, they don't scale to the the levels needed for what you've suggested. You're not actually looking at the scale of consumption.
If you go back and re-read my posts, I know a lot about energy in general, not just nuclear (which I've only mentioned a few times), most of my comments have been about solar and wind. Pick any significant energy source and you'll find I've done my research. Having done that research is the reason I can keep poking holes in all your suggestions. I know the scale of the problem, and I know what works.
And I keep ignoring your comments about land use for meat production because they're completely irrelevant. You have an anti-meat agenda, fine. It has nothing to do with energy production.
Yes it is, if you structure airport security correctly. Not that the below is what is being proposed, but it's what is needed to have it work.
It wasn't a failure of screening that allowed 9/11 to happen. The box cutters were legal at the time. The problems were inappropriate policies and training including: 1. Cockpit doors were not reinforced, nor always locked. Now they are. 2. Pilots were unarmed. Now they may be armed. 3. Federal Air Marshals were not used as extensively. 4. Airline crew and passengers had been trained to follow hijacker demands. This is no longer the case, now hijackers are to be stopped at any cost.
All of those problems have been addressed without the porno-scanners or "en-hands-ed pat-downs". The TSA screeners regularly fail to detect 80%-95% of contraband every time their tested. The scanners and groping have not improved their success rate. The passenger screening procedures in place by 2005 were just as effective as the screening today, and they were much faster, less invasive, less costly, and most importantly, they were Constitutional.
Additionally, you can't stop all attacks be a determined attacker, there will always be some that get through. It's up to the passengers, crew, and air marshals to be the last line of defense, and it will ways be that way no matter how much security or screening you do. No one wants to die, but now that they know that a hijack will likely end in their deaths (and many more) if they don't stop it, they have nothing to lose by fighting back. Right now, most cargo is not screened, so it's much simpler to get contraband into the cargo compartment than into the passenger compartment. That's actually the last place you want to have contraband. You want cargo and checked luggage carefully screened, so that if there is any contraband on board, it's in the passenger compartment where the passengers, crew, or air marshals have an opportunity to act and possibly prevent the attack, just as they did with the underwear bomber and shoe bomber.
The TSA should operate as an oversight and testing agency, with private screeners at airports. The airports should hire the security companies (or hire, train, and manage screeners). Then, the airports, airlines, screening companies, air marshals, NTSB, FAA, and TSA should collectively should establish nationwide screening and security criteria, including criteria for passengers, baggage, cargo, airport employees, and crew (should be different criteria for each). The TSA would periodically test security at each airport, fail the test and you get 30-60 days to correct it and get retested. Fail too many times or score too low and you get fired or lose the contract (depending upon if it's just a few screeners failing, or if it's widespread at that airport/contractor).
I have more TSA related info and recommendations on my blog (plus some TSA humor).
The concept that humans alone, or only primates have language or self-awareness is simply false. Dolphins, apes/chimps, cats, dogs, and clearly even some birds have (or can learn) language and cognitive skills that clearly demonstrate capacities far beyond what they've been taught. That animals learn human languages more effectively than humans learn animal languages suggests one or more of several things:
1. That something about the nature of human languages actually promotes abstract thought. 2. Animals are better students than humans. 3. That humans are better teachers than animals.
Ever watch a raccoon figure out how to get into a closed box or can? Ever watch a squirrel figure out how to get food from a squirrel resistant bird feeder? Ever seen a dog accidentally ring the doorbell, then train himself to do it on the first try every time he wants in? Ever see someone have a conversation with a cat, IN CAT LANGUAGE? Ever see a cat or dog recognize images of dogs, cats, or mice on TV? Ever see a cat look in a mirror and groom himself? I've witnessed all of those things.
It's mighty arrogant of us humans to think we're the only species with language, abstract thought, logic, or self-awareness. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary. Our abilities may be more developed than those of other species, but those abilities are definitely not exclusive to humans.
Valid concern, but 99% of plugins are crap. Eliminating all plugins is one way of addressing the problem. It's probably not be the ideal solution, but since users have the option of using another browser that does support plugins, thereby making it less convenient for users, it gives site developers a strong incentive to stop using plugins unless there's not practical way to operate without one.
Lenz did more than establish that copyright holders must consider fair use, in doing so, it established that the copyright holder has an obligation to determine with some level of certainty (i.e. in good faith) that a violation has in fact occurred before issuing a takedown notice. It basically said, you can't just issue takedown notices until you have put forth good faith efforts to verify that there is actual infringement. I cite it because USC 17 s512(f) only addresses that penalties may apply for "Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section", while Lenz establishes that failure to use good faith efforts to make such a determination is a knowing misrepresentation.
Let's assume for a moment that those numbers are accurate, even taking the high end 50GW, and assuming that's average power (not peak installed capacity), 50GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 438TWh, less than 44% of Japan's 2008 electricity consumption, and less than 10% of Japan's total energy consumption. But let's take a closer look at those numbers.
Total worldwide wave power potential is ~ 2700GW, of which 500GW can actually be tapped. 500GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 3180TWh/yr. Assuming 100% of that is electricity (an unlikely assumption), that's approximately 11x the amount given in the estimate I cited in my previous post, but it's still less than 16% of worldwide electricity consumption in 2009. If we tapped 100% of available wave power worldwide, it can supply somewhere between 1.5%-16% of worldwide electricity demand, depending upon which estimates you use.
How are those links you provided flawed? Let me count some ways:
Japan has a total coastline of 32,000 km, with estimated wave energy of 1.4 billion kW at peak times. A conservative view indicates that the usable portions of the coastline add up to only about 160 km. Even in this case, an annual average wave energy of 3.9 million kW would be available, generating an annual average of 1.3 million kW electricity.
32,000 / 160 = 0.005 (0.5%). 1.4BkW *.005 = 7MkW (7GW) peak. So, let's assume for a minute that 3.9MkW (3.9GW) average. With a 33% efficiency converting it to electricity, that's 1.3GW average. 1.3GW * 24h *365 days/yr = 11.4TWh/yr. That's ~1.1% of Japan's 2008 energy consumption of 1031 TWh, even less than the 1.5% low end estimate above.
Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a technology that converts solar radiation to electric power by using the ocean's thermal gradient between cold deep water and warm surface water. In tropical and subtropical regions, ocean temperatures are 27-30 and 7-8 degrees Celsius in the surface and at the depth of 500 meters, respectively. A temperature gradient of this magnitude is sufficient for power generation.
The major problem with OTEC is its heavy consumption of power for pumping water, resulting in a net electrical power output at only about 15 percent of the generated power after subtracting the power needed to run the system. This gives an estimated cost of 19-23 yen (15.8-19.2 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour.
It is estimated that at least 30 million kW of electricity could be generated by OTEC within Japan's exclusive economic zones, 200 nautical miles from the coast.
30MkW= 30GW. Now, since that should be pretty consistent production (less downtime for maintenance), theoretically that could produce a significant portion (~25% max) of Japan's electricity consumption. However, that's saturating Japan's oceans to tap all the ocean thermal energy available. The ecological and environmental effects of performing heat exchange of that magnitude in the top 500m of the ocean are frankly, pretty terrifying. Cooling the ocean surface and warming it's depths over an area within 200nmi (-365km) of Japan could have huge effects on the marine environment, atmosphere, and possibly even bigger climatic impact than burning fossil fuels. Tapping more than about 10% of ocean thermal energy is a high risk. And ocean based energy production is always expensive and high maintenance. So, realistically, Japan might be able to supply 2.5% of their electricity consumption from ocean thermal.
There is no efficient way to get distribute heat over a widespread area other than fossil fuels or electricity, therefore, if you want to convert off of fossil fuels, you either have to have direct solar thermal heat in every building, which is less efficient due to scale, or convert it to electricity, so my figures stand.
One of the links you provided elsewhere has them promising new PV panels at 18% efficiency, which while better, is still very low. And I did pick a bad example of solar thermal, one of the other towers on that page is about 2x as efficient. But, even if the better solar thermal and PV can cut that land use to 3%, that's still a whole lot of land, 3/4 the size of Arizona. And that still doesn't address the intermittent nature of solar during the day, the lack of any light/heat at night, and the storage and/or excess capacity you have to build to use it to replace base/peak load, nor does it address increased energy demand.
Solar roadways might reduce that somewhat, however, there are notable issues with those, lower efficiencies due to traffic, dirt, snow, rain, leaves, building/tree shadows, oil, and road film limiting the light reaching the cells, and even the lexan/plexiglass surface blocking 10% or more of the light. Then there is the cost of repairing or replacing the panels damaged by heavy traffic loads, tires, accidents, etc. Neat idea, but questionable if it'll ever be viable, and even if it is, it won't be as efficient so it won't reduce land requirements by very much.
Solar alone (or even solar and wind) will not work without massive building massive amounts of excess capacity and/or massive amounts of energy storage into the grid. Nothing you say will change that, no matter how many times say it or try to get around it.
Nuclear does have risks, and it does require oversight. But the same applies to fossil fuels, hydro, and geothermal. Fossil fuel (mining and plant explosions, not even counting pollution) and hydro (dam failures) have killed more people per TWh produced than nuclear. In fact, by that measure, nuclear is the least deadly power source. Of course, our current uranium fueled model uses too little of the fuel capacity and produces far too much waste. As noted earlier, it was chosen for it's ability to produce weapons. Thorium breeders produce far less waste, and there is far more thorium on earth, so more fuel, more power, less waste. And if you use fuel reprocessing, you can split the wastes into short term and long term isotopes, with the short term stuff essentially inert in 400 years, and a whole lot less long term stuff having relatively low levels of radioactivity. It's a very manageable amount of waste if you do it properly.
The US has terrible energy policy. And if you read my posts, I clearly want to see us move to sustainable energy using renewables. However, misinformation and overly optimistic predictions from renewable energy proponents and vendors aren't any more valid than the artificially low "cost" of using fossil fuels. Lies and misrepresentations from either side are still lies and misrepresentations.
Most importantly, renewable energy sources can't yet sustain us without nuclear and fossil fuels. Of those two, fossil fuels (especially oil and natural gas) will run out much sooner, leaving cleaner nuclear as part of the near to mid term solution, and potentially part of the long term solution if we can't resolve the energy storage issues presented by solar & wind. There are some promising developments suggesting energy storage may improve significantly in the next 20 years, but until those are demonstrated to be scalable and commercially viable, they too are just pipe dreams.
You may also note that I've made no reference to ethanol as a replacement for gasoline/oil. My blog has my thoughts on that.
Manufacturing cost per watt, and even installation cost per watt aren't particularly useful measures, except to the manufacturers and salesmen. Watt is a measure of power, but we don't by power, we buy energy, and we buy it in kWh, not Watts. We need watts for peak demand, but we use and pay for for kWh. That means we either need enough installed capacity to meet peak demand, or we need enough (real word 24hr x 365 days) kWh generation to exceed average demand, and some form of energy storage that can store the excess when overproducing and supply the peak wattage when underproducing.
"Grid parity" is a great start, but it's not a real measure of the cost. Intermittent sources are only useful when connected into a grid that can supply minimum and peak demand using other sources. The real cost of PV, wind, and other intermittent sources is far greater than "grid parity" would suggest. Another way to say it is that the real cost of wind and PV needs to account for installing at least 4x average demand, and have a way to store energy to meet minimum and peak demand. So, while it's great that some alternative sources are achieving grid parity in some parts of the world, and that more may achieve it in the next few years, that doesn't mean they're anywhere near ready to replace nuclear or fossil fuel for base/peak load sources.
So, before posting the "Brittle Power" link and other "green" misinformation again, go gather some real information with verifiable and accurate information. Then we can talk about "real cost".
You really have no idea what you're talking about or you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
The USA receives an annual average of ~6-7kWh/m2 per day, let's call it 6.5GWh/km2 per day, or ~2.37TWh/km2/yr. In 2008, the USA consumed ~ 4156TWh of electricity. 4156/2.37 = ~ 1754km2 will on average will receive enough total solar radiation to supply our electricity demand. Assuming a very generous 50% conversion efficiency (for a very high temperature concentrated solar thermal plant), you need 2x that much space, so we're at 3500km2. But that doesn't allow for access roads, the tower itself, etc, so let's add another 10%, and we're at 3850km2.
But wait, that's the annual average, we need to to produce that much all the time, so we need to use the average in the month with the least sunlight (Dec or Jan), and that's not 6.5kWh/m2/day, it's about 3kWh/m2/day. So it's now we're at ~8340km2. But we're not there yet, We need at least 20% excess capacity to allow for extended periods of low production and emergency maintenance, so now we're at ~10,000km2. Let's assume all scheduled maintenance will occur during spring/fall when solar radiation is higher and demand is more moderate.
The United States has about 9.8M km2 total area (including Alaska). 6.76% of that is water. That leaves ~9.14Mkm2 of land. But Alaska doesn't receive enough solar radiation to make plants there sufficient, we have to remove it's 1.72Mkm2, leaving 7.42Mkm2. So, 10,000km2 is about 0.133% of that land.
But we're not done yet, electricity is only 4156 of 19,841TWh total energy consumed in the USA, so we have to multiple that ~ 10,000km2 by 4.77 so now we're at ~48,000km2. ~ 0.6% of the land in the continental US. Looking pretty good, right? We're not done. 50% efficiency is only the efficiency of the turbine, it doesn't count the losses in the mirrors, heat loss, inefficiency in capturing the solar radiation, etc.
So, lets look at an actual CSP tower. The eSolar 46MW tower, assuming it manages the full 46MW 24hr a day (which is unlikely, but we'll ignore that for now), produces 1.1GWh/day, approx 73% the 1.5GWh/day (3GWh/day @ 50% efficiency) assumed above, however, that tower uses 8.1km2 to produce that electricity, so it's not 73%, its 9% of the efficiency estimated above. So now, that 48,000km2 needs to be about 10x as large, and now we're at 480,000km2 of ~6.5% of the land in the continental US. That's more area than California, and about 2/3 the size of Texas.
And that's assuming you can build all your energy storage capacity into the same space. It also doesn't account for growth in energy usage. Efficiency of conversion is critical to making solar (either CSP or PV) viable.
Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp., circumstances aren't the same, but they do establish that copyright holders must exercise good faith in determining that a copyright infringement has actually occurred before filing a takedown notice. They don't specifically set out what constitutes good faith, but clearly removing items that simply contained the words "The Box" wouldn't qualify given this "fair use" precedent actually included 29 seconds of copyrighted material and was deemed plausible enough fair use for the counterclaim to proceed. Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. was a 2007 case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet. Stephanie Lenz posted on YouTube a home video of her children dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy."[1] Universal Music Corporation (Universal) sent YouTube a takedown notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claiming that Lenz's video violated their copyright in the "Let's Go Crazy" song. Lenz claimed fair use of the copyrighted material and sued Universal for misrepresentation of a DMCA claim. The court held that, in violation of the DMCA, Universal had not in good faith considered fair use when filing a takedown notice. The court also explained that liability for misrepresentation is crucial in preventing abuse of the DMCA as a means to stifle controversial speech.
And USC 17 S512 subsection (f) establishes penalties for misrepresentation by either the copyright holder or the alleged infringer
They're already doing tons of research on PV, research which is being augmented by the advance in silicon wafer fabrication from the computer industry and the similar technology used in manufacturing LCD panels. And yet, PV still hasn't reached parity after 40 years of research. They're already producing panels in mass quantities. There is no reason to expect the price to magically drop or the efficiency to magically improve in the foreseeable future. There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen. Setting energy policy on hopes is just bad policy. When the breakthroughs happen, then reevaluate the policy, but you don't set policies based upon the hope that you'll someday have the breakthrough.
The current energy storage options are not sufficient to make intermittent sources like PV and wind viable base-load or peak-load supplies. They cost too much for a sufficient amount of storage to make those sources practical. Wind in particular has a major drawback, it's average output is lowest at the hottest part of the day when power draw is highest due to AC use. That means you need more capacity, more storage, and/or a higher capacity grid spread over a much wider area, all of which significantly increase costs.
Solar thermal has a much more predictable and stable output, so it's far more useful. It still requires massive amounts of land, but there are places like the southwestern US that have lots of land, lots of sunshine, and lots of solar heat, so solar thermal is very practical in some locations. It's not yet sufficient to replace the fossil fuel or nuclear plants already on the grid, but it shows the most promise for being able to do so eventually.
So, all hopes and pipe dreams aside, right now, what works is to use our existing hydro power, geothermal, fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, while building geothermal, nuclear, coal, solar thermal, and wind generator plants. At the same time, keep improving geothermal, nuclear fission, solar thermal, solar PV, wind power, and the grid so we can minimize fossil fuel usage. Also, keep researching better ways of implementing grid storage and improving usage efficiency. And continue researching fusion as a potential source (it's not yet a source, as still uses more energy than it produces).
You can subsidize research into technologies for producing power and improving efficiency. You can subsidize development of technology to make that research commercially viable. You can even subsidize upgrades to the distribution grid. But don't ever subsidize the actual commercialization or production of any form of energy, that's simply bad policy. If the technology isn't mature enough to be commercially produced without subsidies, it still needs more R&D, not subsidies or laws forcing it's use. As technologies mature, start building plants using those new technologies, and stop building those which are no longer viable. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that fossil fuels are running out, and that nuclear and renewable sources are the only long term sustainable sources, and we need to move toward using whichever sustainable energy sources are viable now. That's the only policy that makes sense. Any other policy is insane and almost certain to fail.
Yes. Worldwide energyIn 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).
Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured. Ocean (wave, tidal, etc.) is only 1/4 the electricity that Japan used in 2008. Not enough for one country, much less the world. So yes, we should just ignore it.
Worldwide energyIn 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).. Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured.
Japan alone produced 1,031TWh of electricity in 2008. That's 4 times the estimated total ocean energy potential worldwide. However, Since Japan is sitting on the edge of a tectonic plate, in fact one of the most active plates right on the "ring of fire", they have access to a tremendous amount of the potential geothermal energy, more than enough to replace all their current electricity production.
You start off by saying who cares if it's efficient, then write an entire diatribe based upon inefficiency. ICE do not waste 90% of the energy in gasoline, nor anywhere close to it, they're 30%-36% efficient.
The evnut.com page you linked contradicts itself multiple times, near the top it claims the electricity used by refineries is 2.73kWh/gal, below that says 1.55kWh/gal, and at the bottom says 0.218kWh/gal. There are numerous other inconsistencies and inaccuracies that I'm not going waste my time documenting. It's not a reliable source of information.
I never said storage solutions don't exist, in fact I cited several possible solutions. Storage needs to be added to the grid, as that infrastructure doesn't currently exist. And efficiency of storage solutions is always important as it effects how much power you have to generate in the first place. That's why converting electricity to heat for storage is a terrible idea.
They've been claiming PV solar panels would be "dirt cheap" in 15-20 for 30 years now, and you're still claiming they'll be dirt cheap in 20 years. While there are some recent discoveries that suggest it might finally happen, they're all university laboratory research projects, nothing has been commercialized. When they're being produced in quantity at "dirt cheap" prices, then we can talk about it.
Fusion "has been close 50 years away" for 50 years. Even with the latest developments, there still isn't a single, reproducible fusion experiment that shows a way we can build a plant that produces more energy than it consumes. When we get to that point, we'll talk. Until then, it's still a pipe dream and you can't plan infrastructure on a pipe dream. It's still just a research project. Right now, the only viable fusion is solar power.
Horse manure was an oversupply and waste disposal problem. Running out of oil is a resource availability problem.At the current rate of consumption, we've got around 30 years of proven reserves. Allowing for finding new sources and reduced consumption, we've got about 50 years to get off oil, not much longer for natural gas. The lesson here is that your examples have nothing to do with the reality of the situation, they're completely irrelevant to the problem.
Power plants are 40-80 year life cycle, and demand continues to increase. That means we have to build new plants now, and those plant need to be fueled using coal, nuclear, or renewables or the plants will outlast the available fuel supply. Fossil fuels are running out. This is not a problem that can wait 20-50 years to be addressed, we have to start addressing it now. Hydro is almost fully tapped now. Coal and nuclear are the most viable right now, and that's what we should be building now. Geothermal, solar thermal, and wind are viable (although slightly more expensive) now, and we should be using those as well. We also need to continue to develop wind, solar, geothermal, and thorium fueled nuclear breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing to bring their costs down and/or efficiencies up. And we need to continue researching fusion to see if we can ever create a self-sustaining reaction on earth. Wave power can't supply a significant portion of the worldwide energy demand, pursuing it is a waste of resources.
Converting electricity to heat and vice-versa is not very efficient. Converting solar PV to heat is a terrible idea for that reason. You'll lose energy converting electricity to heat, then even more converting back. Much better to just use solar thermal in the first place. Carnot's theorem says the efficiency of heat to work conversion is limited by the ratio of absolute temperatures of the heat source and heat sink (e.g. ambient temperature). With a cooling source at 300K (27C), you need at least 600K heat source to achieve 50% efficiency.
Thorium reactors are known to work. We've never demonstrated a self sustaining fusion reaction outside of the massive gravity well of a star. If/when we do, then maybe fusion will make thorium reactors obsolete, but right now, fusion is still a pipe dream.
Yes. Peak solar radiation on the ground is ~ 1kW/m2 in the summer (may be higher in the tropics), and you get that on a cloudless day for a few hours in the middle of the day. It drops off pretty quickly as the sun drops out of the peak. Clouds also lower it dramatically, and you get less in spring, fall, and winter. And less at higher latitudes. And of course, there is none at night.
Assuming a 2000 sq ft, 3 level home (upstairs, downstairs, and basement), that's about 667 sq ft (~62 m2) of flat roof area. That's a peak of 62kW radiation reaching the roof for a few hours a day in the summer. The best commercial PV solar panels are ~20% efficient, so that's ~12.4kW peak, and if the weather is good an average of maybe 50% of that over 12-15hrs of sunlight, you might produce 70kWh-100kWh on a good summer day You'll be lucky to get half that in the winter. Of course that will be lower as you go to higher latitudes. So, in the summer, with some type of energy storage to give you power when you use it most (early morning, dinner time, evening), a house with it's entire roof covered with PV panels might produce enough power to sustain itself. But that's only 3 months of the year. The rest of the year, you're operating at an energy deficit. If you live where it's frequently cloudy, or north of about 40 degrees latitude, you're not even going to break even in the summer unless you have a very energy efficient home.
It's not that it's impossible, but most current houses aren't built to be energy efficient enough, nor do they have energy efficient water heaters, heating systems, air conditioning systems, appliances, lighting, or electronics. People have built houses that are powered entirely from solar (usually a combination of PV and thermal) and/or wind. It's just very expensive to do it, and it still requires lifestyle changes.
And that's not counting industrial energy uses, workplace usage, street lights, traffic signals, or charging electric vehicles (which will be necessary to get off fossil fuels)
Japanese energy consumption is lower per household, but a home with 62m2 of rooftop space there is very rare, they probably don't average 1/2 that.
Solar is the ultimate renewable energy source, as long the sun stays in it's main hydrogen burning phase and the earth remains ~ 93M mi (150M km) from the sun, so it's probably good for another 5B years. But until we figure out how to efficiently convert solar to usable power and integrate the collectors into most of our buildings, and build a grid with lots of energy storage and that can transport energy around the world (it's always day/night somewhere), and do it for a lot less than current cost, solar isn't the solution. Long term, it's the best option, but we're at least 100 years off from that just in building the infrastructure to make it possible, and we need several technology breakthroughs to build and utilize that infrastructure. And the politics of power sharing across nations is a big obstacle to any worldwide power grid.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the article and the abstract. Apparently you failed to comprehend it, go read it again. They talk about stripping the atmosphere/gases from a 7.5 Earth Mass (Me) clump at ~8 AU. So, my example still applies. The details may vary a bit, but a 7.5Me clump is going to have a significant gravity well/escape velocity, and for it to absorb enough solar radiation @ ~8 AU is beyond unbelievable, the math just doesn't work.
As this calculation for CoRoT-2b indicates, at 6M tons per second, a hot super-Jupiter would need more than 39B years (~3x the age of the universes) to be "blown/boiled away". Jupiter is ~1/3 the mass of CoRoT-2b, so at 6MT/s, it would last 13B years. The rate of loss of atmosphere would have to be at least a factor of 10 greater than on CoRoT-2b, or greater than 60MT/s just for a Jupiter mass planet to to reach an Earth mass core in 1.3B years. Our solar system is estimated to be ~5B years old and that Earth and Mars both appear to have been rocky for more than 2B years, so 1.3B years to blow off an atmosphere seems to be a generous estimate of quickly it must have happened.
Given that our sun is only converting ~600M tons/sec of hydrogen into ~594M tons of helium, a net loss of 6MT/s, therefore a Jupiter mass planet would need to be receiving a enough of the solar radiation to blow off 60MT/s. Yes, E=mc^2, and c^2 is large, but you're still talking about a lot of mass to move out of notable gravity well (first out of the Sun's gravity well, then move more mass out of Jupiter's gravity well). If jupiter were in earth's orbit, would it receive enough solar radiation to lose 60MT/s? Not from solar wind, the total solar wind mass is ~1.85MT/s. even if all 1.8MT were directed at Jupiter and Jupiter had no magnetopause to protect it from the solar wind, 1.8MT/s would not strip 60MT/s of atmosphere. So you have to come up with a theory where the EM radiation causes the the planet to eject it's own atmosphere, which is still going to be virtually impossible.
And it produces zero energy. Just where does the energy to condense the steam, and to flash the water to steam come from?
Remember the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Or as Neil Peart wrote:
"You can't get something for nothing" - Rush "Something For Nothing"
I remember a feeling coming over me
I was hoping you might change your mind
I remember hating you for changing things
Riding on the Metro
with apologies to Berlin
The figures I gave aren't multiplied 4x. They are multiplied ~ 2.2x for worst case month (Dec/Jan). There is no known way to store enough excess energy from the summer months to carry us through the winter months. Oct/March would be close to break-even, but probably still require some stored energy. Gravity, hydrogen, batteries, etc. we simply use too much energy to make storage of 30%-50% of the energy used from Nov-Feb practical. Therefore, you have to build capacity for the worst months.
You're correct that the the solar radiation is more consistent at the equator. But the US (and most countries) don't have any property at the equator, nor even in the tropics. Much of Africa and South America are in the tropics, but other than that, it's just bits of the Indian subcontinent, northern Australia, and a bit of North America. While that's a lot of land, Most of South America is out because you would destroy the rainforest (not exactly "green" energy policy), which leaves the bulk of Africa and part of northern Australia. Still a lot of land, but then distributing power from there to the rest of the world is a big problem. And that's just addressing the technical issues. The political issues and national security concerns of getting any significant portion of your energy from other countries is an issue now, even though most of our energy is from domestic sources (mostly coal). It's completely unrealistic to talk about solar energy from the tropics for the US and Canada. Mexico and the Central American countries could, but it's such a narrow strip of land that they would need lots of energy storage to get through the night, or through extended cloud cover, or a hurricane.
Putting all your energy production capacity into a small region creates huge issues with reliability and distribution. Energy production must be distributed around the world, for technical, reliability, and political reasons. And with that in mind, all of your comments about solar at the equator are completely useless.
Yes, building energy efficient homes and buildings is great. However, the fact is that you can't rebuild or retrofit most existing structures to make them energy efficient. It's too costly and too time consuming. The best you can do is increase the efficiency of new development. The energy production capacity and grid must adapt to what's already exists. Any plan that ignores that is yet another pipe dream doomed to fail.
As for storing energy using compressed air "lots of megawatt hours" is a joke. We're talking about needing thousands of TWh just in the US. That's billions of MWh. "Lots" isn't sufficient. Only 3% of US energy production is from hydro, so even if we could completely restock all our hydro reservoirs (a logical impossibility itself) and ignoring the energy losses involved, that would sustain us for perhaps 3-4 weeks in Nov-Dec. The same goes all other forms of storage, they don't scale to the the levels needed for what you've suggested. You're not actually looking at the scale of consumption.
If you go back and re-read my posts, I know a lot about energy in general, not just nuclear (which I've only mentioned a few times), most of my comments have been about solar and wind. Pick any significant energy source and you'll find I've done my research. Having done that research is the reason I can keep poking holes in all your suggestions. I know the scale of the problem, and I know what works.
And I keep ignoring your comments about land use for meat production because they're completely irrelevant. You have an anti-meat agenda, fine. It has nothing to do with energy production.
Yes it is, if you structure airport security correctly. Not that the below is what is being proposed, but it's what is needed to have it work.
It wasn't a failure of screening that allowed 9/11 to happen. The box cutters were legal at the time. The problems were inappropriate policies and training including:
1. Cockpit doors were not reinforced, nor always locked. Now they are.
2. Pilots were unarmed. Now they may be armed.
3. Federal Air Marshals were not used as extensively.
4. Airline crew and passengers had been trained to follow hijacker demands. This is no longer the case, now hijackers are to be stopped at any cost.
All of those problems have been addressed without the porno-scanners or "en-hands-ed pat-downs". The TSA screeners regularly fail to detect 80%-95% of contraband every time their tested. The scanners and groping have not improved their success rate. The passenger screening procedures in place by 2005 were just as effective as the screening today, and they were much faster, less invasive, less costly, and most importantly, they were Constitutional.
Additionally, you can't stop all attacks be a determined attacker, there will always be some that get through. It's up to the passengers, crew, and air marshals to be the last line of defense, and it will ways be that way no matter how much security or screening you do. No one wants to die, but now that they know that a hijack will likely end in their deaths (and many more) if they don't stop it, they have nothing to lose by fighting back. Right now, most cargo is not screened, so it's much simpler to get contraband into the cargo compartment than into the passenger compartment. That's actually the last place you want to have contraband. You want cargo and checked luggage carefully screened, so that if there is any contraband on board, it's in the passenger compartment where the passengers, crew, or air marshals have an opportunity to act and possibly prevent the attack, just as they did with the underwear bomber and shoe bomber.
The TSA should operate as an oversight and testing agency, with private screeners at airports. The airports should hire the security companies (or hire, train, and manage screeners). Then, the airports, airlines, screening companies, air marshals, NTSB, FAA, and TSA should collectively should establish nationwide screening and security criteria, including criteria for passengers, baggage, cargo, airport employees, and crew (should be different criteria for each). The TSA would periodically test security at each airport, fail the test and you get 30-60 days to correct it and get retested. Fail too many times or score too low and you get fired or lose the contract (depending upon if it's just a few screeners failing, or if it's widespread at that airport/contractor).
I have more TSA related info and recommendations on my blog (plus some TSA humor).
The concept that humans alone, or only primates have language or self-awareness is simply false. Dolphins, apes/chimps, cats, dogs, and clearly even some birds have (or can learn) language and cognitive skills that clearly demonstrate capacities far beyond what they've been taught. That animals learn human languages more effectively than humans learn animal languages suggests one or more of several things:
1. That something about the nature of human languages actually promotes abstract thought.
2. Animals are better students than humans.
3. That humans are better teachers than animals.
Ever watch a raccoon figure out how to get into a closed box or can? Ever watch a squirrel figure out how to get food from a squirrel resistant bird feeder? Ever seen a dog accidentally ring the doorbell, then train himself to do it on the first try every time he wants in? Ever see someone have a conversation with a cat, IN CAT LANGUAGE? Ever see a cat or dog recognize images of dogs, cats, or mice on TV? Ever see a cat look in a mirror and groom himself? I've witnessed all of those things.
It's mighty arrogant of us humans to think we're the only species with language, abstract thought, logic, or self-awareness. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary. Our abilities may be more developed than those of other species, but those abilities are definitely not exclusive to humans.
There will always be more novices than experts. -- Bjarne Stroustrup
Stroustrup obviously never worked in a COBOL shop.
Valid concern, but 99% of plugins are crap. Eliminating all plugins is one way of addressing the problem. It's probably not be the ideal solution, but since users have the option of using another browser that does support plugins, thereby making it less convenient for users, it gives site developers a strong incentive to stop using plugins unless there's not practical way to operate without one.
They're coming. Run for you lives.
Lenz did more than establish that copyright holders must consider fair use, in doing so, it established that the copyright holder has an obligation to determine with some level of certainty (i.e. in good faith) that a violation has in fact occurred before issuing a takedown notice. It basically said, you can't just issue takedown notices until you have put forth good faith efforts to verify that there is actual infringement. I cite it because USC 17 s512(f) only addresses that penalties may apply for "Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section", while Lenz establishes that failure to use good faith efforts to make such a determination is a knowing misrepresentation.
Let's assume for a moment that those numbers are accurate, even taking the high end 50GW, and assuming that's average power (not peak installed capacity), 50GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 438TWh, less than 44% of Japan's 2008 electricity consumption, and less than 10% of Japan's total energy consumption. But let's take a closer look at those numbers.
Total worldwide wave power potential is ~ 2700GW, of which 500GW can actually be tapped. 500GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 3180TWh/yr. Assuming 100% of that is electricity (an unlikely assumption), that's approximately 11x the amount given in the estimate I cited in my previous post, but it's still less than 16% of worldwide electricity consumption in 2009. If we tapped 100% of available wave power worldwide, it can supply somewhere between 1.5%-16% of worldwide electricity demand, depending upon which estimates you use.
How are those links you provided flawed? Let me count some ways:
From link:
Japan has a total coastline of 32,000 km, with estimated wave energy of 1.4 billion kW at peak times. A conservative view indicates that the usable portions of the coastline add up to only about 160 km. Even in this case, an annual average wave energy of 3.9 million kW would be available, generating an annual average of 1.3 million kW electricity.
32,000 / 160 = 0.005 (0.5%). 1.4BkW * .005 = 7MkW (7GW) peak. So, let's assume for a minute that 3.9MkW (3.9GW) average. With a 33% efficiency converting it to electricity, that's 1.3GW average. 1.3GW * 24h *365 days/yr = 11.4TWh/yr. That's ~1.1% of Japan's 2008 energy consumption of 1031 TWh, even less than the 1.5% low end estimate above.
Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a technology that converts solar radiation to electric power by using the ocean's thermal gradient between cold deep water and warm surface water. In tropical and subtropical regions, ocean temperatures are 27-30 and 7-8 degrees Celsius in the surface and at the depth of 500 meters, respectively. A temperature gradient of this magnitude is sufficient for power generation.
The major problem with OTEC is its heavy consumption of power for pumping water, resulting in a net electrical power output at only about 15 percent of the generated power after subtracting the power needed to run the system. This gives an estimated cost of 19-23 yen (15.8-19.2 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour.
It is estimated that at least 30 million kW of electricity could be generated by OTEC within Japan's exclusive economic zones, 200 nautical miles from the coast.
30MkW= 30GW. Now, since that should be pretty consistent production (less downtime for maintenance), theoretically that could produce a significant portion (~25% max) of Japan's electricity consumption. However, that's saturating Japan's oceans to tap all the ocean thermal energy available. The ecological and environmental effects of performing heat exchange of that magnitude in the top 500m of the ocean are frankly, pretty terrifying. Cooling the ocean surface and warming it's depths over an area within 200nmi (-365km) of Japan could have huge effects on the marine environment, atmosphere, and possibly even bigger climatic impact than burning fossil fuels. Tapping more than about 10% of ocean thermal energy is a high risk. And ocean based energy production is always expensive and high maintenance. So, realistically, Japan might be able to supply 2.5% of their electricity consumption from ocean thermal.
From link:
Offshore wind is an obvious choice for Japan. One early study suggested that up to 12 GW of offshore wind capacity c
There is no efficient way to get distribute heat over a widespread area other than fossil fuels or electricity, therefore, if you want to convert off of fossil fuels, you either have to have direct solar thermal heat in every building, which is less efficient due to scale, or convert it to electricity, so my figures stand.
One of the links you provided elsewhere has them promising new PV panels at 18% efficiency, which while better, is still very low. And I did pick a bad example of solar thermal, one of the other towers on that page is about 2x as efficient. But, even if the better solar thermal and PV can cut that land use to 3%, that's still a whole lot of land, 3/4 the size of Arizona. And that still doesn't address the intermittent nature of solar during the day, the lack of any light/heat at night, and the storage and/or excess capacity you have to build to use it to replace base/peak load, nor does it address increased energy demand.
Solar roadways might reduce that somewhat, however, there are notable issues with those, lower efficiencies due to traffic, dirt, snow, rain, leaves, building/tree shadows, oil, and road film limiting the light reaching the cells, and even the lexan/plexiglass surface blocking 10% or more of the light. Then there is the cost of repairing or replacing the panels damaged by heavy traffic loads, tires, accidents, etc. Neat idea, but questionable if it'll ever be viable, and even if it is, it won't be as efficient so it won't reduce land requirements by very much.
Solar alone (or even solar and wind) will not work without massive building massive amounts of excess capacity and/or massive amounts of energy storage into the grid. Nothing you say will change that, no matter how many times say it or try to get around it.
Nuclear does have risks, and it does require oversight. But the same applies to fossil fuels, hydro, and geothermal. Fossil fuel (mining and plant explosions, not even counting pollution) and hydro (dam failures) have killed more people per TWh produced than nuclear. In fact, by that measure, nuclear is the least deadly power source. Of course, our current uranium fueled model uses too little of the fuel capacity and produces far too much waste. As noted earlier, it was chosen for it's ability to produce weapons. Thorium breeders produce far less waste, and there is far more thorium on earth, so more fuel, more power, less waste. And if you use fuel reprocessing, you can split the wastes into short term and long term isotopes, with the short term stuff essentially inert in 400 years, and a whole lot less long term stuff having relatively low levels of radioactivity. It's a very manageable amount of waste if you do it properly.
The US has terrible energy policy. And if you read my posts, I clearly want to see us move to sustainable energy using renewables. However, misinformation and overly optimistic predictions from renewable energy proponents and vendors aren't any more valid than the artificially low "cost" of using fossil fuels. Lies and misrepresentations from either side are still lies and misrepresentations.
Most importantly, renewable energy sources can't yet sustain us without nuclear and fossil fuels. Of those two, fossil fuels (especially oil and natural gas) will run out much sooner, leaving cleaner nuclear as part of the near to mid term solution, and potentially part of the long term solution if we can't resolve the energy storage issues presented by solar & wind. There are some promising developments suggesting energy storage may improve significantly in the next 20 years, but until those are demonstrated to be scalable and commercially viable, they too are just pipe dreams.
You may also note that I've made no reference to ethanol as a replacement for gasoline/oil. My blog has my thoughts on that.
Manufacturing cost per watt, and even installation cost per watt aren't particularly useful measures, except to the manufacturers and salesmen. Watt is a measure of power, but we don't by power, we buy energy, and we buy it in kWh, not Watts. We need watts for peak demand, but we use and pay for for kWh. That means we either need enough installed capacity to meet peak demand, or we need enough (real word 24hr x 365 days) kWh generation to exceed average demand, and some form of energy storage that can store the excess when overproducing and supply the peak wattage when underproducing.
"Grid parity" is a great start, but it's not a real measure of the cost. Intermittent sources are only useful when connected into a grid that can supply minimum and peak demand using other sources. The real cost of PV, wind, and other intermittent sources is far greater than "grid parity" would suggest. Another way to say it is that the real cost of wind and PV needs to account for installing at least 4x average demand, and have a way to store energy to meet minimum and peak demand. So, while it's great that some alternative sources are achieving grid parity in some parts of the world, and that more may achieve it in the next few years, that doesn't mean they're anywhere near ready to replace nuclear or fossil fuel for base/peak load sources.
So, before posting the "Brittle Power" link and other "green" misinformation again, go gather some real information with verifiable and accurate information. Then we can talk about "real cost".
You really have no idea what you're talking about or you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
The USA receives an annual average of ~6-7kWh/m2 per day, let's call it 6.5GWh/km2 per day, or ~2.37TWh/km2/yr. In 2008, the USA consumed ~ 4156TWh of electricity. 4156/2.37 = ~ 1754km2 will on average will receive enough total solar radiation to supply our electricity demand. Assuming a very generous 50% conversion efficiency (for a very high temperature concentrated solar thermal plant), you need 2x that much space, so we're at 3500km2. But that doesn't allow for access roads, the tower itself, etc, so let's add another 10%, and we're at 3850km2.
But wait, that's the annual average, we need to to produce that much all the time, so we need to use the average in the month with the least sunlight (Dec or Jan), and that's not 6.5kWh/m2/day, it's about 3kWh/m2/day. So it's now we're at ~8340km2. But we're not there yet, We need at least 20% excess capacity to allow for extended periods of low production and emergency maintenance, so now we're at ~10,000km2. Let's assume all scheduled maintenance will occur during spring/fall when solar radiation is higher and demand is more moderate.
The United States has about 9.8M km2 total area (including Alaska). 6.76% of that is water. That leaves ~9.14Mkm2 of land. But Alaska doesn't receive enough solar radiation to make plants there sufficient, we have to remove it's 1.72Mkm2, leaving 7.42Mkm2. So, 10,000km2 is about 0.133% of that land.
But we're not done yet, electricity is only 4156 of 19,841TWh total energy consumed in the USA, so we have to multiple that ~ 10,000km2 by 4.77 so now we're at ~48,000km2. ~ 0.6% of the land in the continental US. Looking pretty good, right? We're not done. 50% efficiency is only the efficiency of the turbine, it doesn't count the losses in the mirrors, heat loss, inefficiency in capturing the solar radiation, etc.
So, lets look at an actual CSP tower. The eSolar 46MW tower, assuming it manages the full 46MW 24hr a day (which is unlikely, but we'll ignore that for now), produces 1.1GWh/day, approx 73% the 1.5GWh/day (3GWh/day @ 50% efficiency) assumed above, however, that tower uses 8.1km2 to produce that electricity, so it's not 73%, its 9% of the efficiency estimated above. So now, that 48,000km2 needs to be about 10x as large, and now we're at 480,000km2 of ~6.5% of the land in the continental US. That's more area than California, and about 2/3 the size of Texas.
And that's assuming you can build all your energy storage capacity into the same space. It also doesn't account for growth in energy usage. Efficiency of conversion is critical to making solar (either CSP or PV) viable.
Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp., circumstances aren't the same, but they do establish that copyright holders must exercise good faith in determining that a copyright infringement has actually occurred before filing a takedown notice. They don't specifically set out what constitutes good faith, but clearly removing items that simply contained the words "The Box" wouldn't qualify given this "fair use" precedent actually included 29 seconds of copyrighted material and was deemed plausible enough fair use for the counterclaim to proceed.
Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. was a 2007 case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet. Stephanie Lenz posted on YouTube a home video of her children dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy."[1] Universal Music Corporation (Universal) sent YouTube a takedown notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claiming that Lenz's video violated their copyright in the "Let's Go Crazy" song. Lenz claimed fair use of the copyrighted material and sued Universal for misrepresentation of a DMCA claim. The court held that, in violation of the DMCA, Universal had not in good faith considered fair use when filing a takedown notice.
The court also explained that liability for misrepresentation is crucial in preventing abuse of the DMCA as a means to stifle controversial speech.
And USC 17 S512 subsection (f) establishes penalties for misrepresentation by either the copyright holder or the alleged infringer
They're already doing tons of research on PV, research which is being augmented by the advance in silicon wafer fabrication from the computer industry and the similar technology used in manufacturing LCD panels. And yet, PV still hasn't reached parity after 40 years of research. They're already producing panels in mass quantities. There is no reason to expect the price to magically drop or the efficiency to magically improve in the foreseeable future. There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen. Setting energy policy on hopes is just bad policy. When the breakthroughs happen, then reevaluate the policy, but you don't set policies based upon the hope that you'll someday have the breakthrough.
The current energy storage options are not sufficient to make intermittent sources like PV and wind viable base-load or peak-load supplies. They cost too much for a sufficient amount of storage to make those sources practical. Wind in particular has a major drawback, it's average output is lowest at the hottest part of the day when power draw is highest due to AC use. That means you need more capacity, more storage, and/or a higher capacity grid spread over a much wider area, all of which significantly increase costs.
Solar thermal has a much more predictable and stable output, so it's far more useful. It still requires massive amounts of land, but there are places like the southwestern US that have lots of land, lots of sunshine, and lots of solar heat, so solar thermal is very practical in some locations. It's not yet sufficient to replace the fossil fuel or nuclear plants already on the grid, but it shows the most promise for being able to do so eventually.
So, all hopes and pipe dreams aside, right now, what works is to use our existing hydro power, geothermal, fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, while building geothermal, nuclear, coal, solar thermal, and wind generator plants. At the same time, keep improving geothermal, nuclear fission, solar thermal, solar PV, wind power, and the grid so we can minimize fossil fuel usage. Also, keep researching better ways of implementing grid storage and improving usage efficiency. And continue researching fusion as a potential source (it's not yet a source, as still uses more energy than it produces).
You can subsidize research into technologies for producing power and improving efficiency. You can subsidize development of technology to make that research commercially viable. You can even subsidize upgrades to the distribution grid. But don't ever subsidize the actual commercialization or production of any form of energy, that's simply bad policy. If the technology isn't mature enough to be commercially produced without subsidies, it still needs more R&D, not subsidies or laws forcing it's use. As technologies mature, start building plants using those new technologies, and stop building those which are no longer viable. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that fossil fuels are running out, and that nuclear and renewable sources are the only long term sustainable sources, and we need to move toward using whichever sustainable energy sources are viable now. That's the only policy that makes sense. Any other policy is insane and almost certain to fail.
Yes. Worldwide energy In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).
Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured. Ocean (wave, tidal, etc.) is only 1/4 the electricity that Japan used in 2008. Not enough for one country, much less the world. So yes, we should just ignore it.
I think you need to check some facts before making such assertions:
Several countries are already at 25%-30% geothermal power.
Worldwide energy In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).. Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured.
Japan alone produced 1,031TWh of electricity in 2008. That's 4 times the estimated total ocean energy potential worldwide. However, Since Japan is sitting on the edge of a tectonic plate, in fact one of the most active plates right on the "ring of fire", they have access to a tremendous amount of the potential geothermal energy, more than enough to replace all their current electricity production.
You start off by saying who cares if it's efficient, then write an entire diatribe based upon inefficiency. ICE do not waste 90% of the energy in gasoline, nor anywhere close to it, they're 30%-36% efficient.
The evnut.com page you linked contradicts itself multiple times, near the top it claims the electricity used by refineries is 2.73kWh/gal, below that says 1.55kWh/gal, and at the bottom says 0.218kWh/gal. There are numerous other inconsistencies and inaccuracies that I'm not going waste my time documenting. It's not a reliable source of information.
I never said storage solutions don't exist, in fact I cited several possible solutions. Storage needs to be added to the grid, as that infrastructure doesn't currently exist. And efficiency of storage solutions is always important as it effects how much power you have to generate in the first place. That's why converting electricity to heat for storage is a terrible idea.
They've been claiming PV solar panels would be "dirt cheap" in 15-20 for 30 years now, and you're still claiming they'll be dirt cheap in 20 years. While there are some recent discoveries that suggest it might finally happen, they're all university laboratory research projects, nothing has been commercialized. When they're being produced in quantity at "dirt cheap" prices, then we can talk about it.
Fusion "has been close 50 years away" for 50 years. Even with the latest developments, there still isn't a single, reproducible fusion experiment that shows a way we can build a plant that produces more energy than it consumes. When we get to that point, we'll talk. Until then, it's still a pipe dream and you can't plan infrastructure on a pipe dream. It's still just a research project. Right now, the only viable fusion is solar power.
Horse manure was an oversupply and waste disposal problem. Running out of oil is a resource availability problem.At the current rate of consumption, we've got around 30 years of proven reserves. Allowing for finding new sources and reduced consumption, we've got about 50 years to get off oil, not much longer for natural gas. The lesson here is that your examples have nothing to do with the reality of the situation, they're completely irrelevant to the problem.
Power plants are 40-80 year life cycle, and demand continues to increase. That means we have to build new plants now, and those plant need to be fueled using coal, nuclear, or renewables or the plants will outlast the available fuel supply. Fossil fuels are running out. This is not a problem that can wait 20-50 years to be addressed, we have to start addressing it now. Hydro is almost fully tapped now. Coal and nuclear are the most viable right now, and that's what we should be building now. Geothermal, solar thermal, and wind are viable (although slightly more expensive) now, and we should be using those as well. We also need to continue to develop wind, solar, geothermal, and thorium fueled nuclear breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing to bring their costs down and/or efficiencies up. And we need to continue researching fusion to see if we can ever create a self-sustaining reaction on earth. Wave power can't supply a significant portion of the worldwide energy demand, pursuing it is a waste of resources.
Converting electricity to heat and vice-versa is not very efficient. Converting solar PV to heat is a terrible idea for that reason. You'll lose energy converting electricity to heat, then even more converting back. Much better to just use solar thermal in the first place. Carnot's theorem says the efficiency of heat to work conversion is limited by the ratio of absolute temperatures of the heat source and heat sink (e.g. ambient temperature). With a cooling source at 300K (27C), you need at least 600K heat source to achieve 50% efficiency.
Thorium reactors are known to work. We've never demonstrated a self sustaining fusion reaction outside of the massive gravity well of a star. If/when we do, then maybe fusion will make thorium reactors obsolete, but right now, fusion is still a pipe dream.
Well, technically speaking, he was famous for saying "billions and billions" even though that was only a caricature of what he said.
Perhaps if we built a large wooden badger.
Yes. Peak solar radiation on the ground is ~ 1kW/m2 in the summer (may be higher in the tropics), and you get that on a cloudless day for a few hours in the middle of the day. It drops off pretty quickly as the sun drops out of the peak. Clouds also lower it dramatically, and you get less in spring, fall, and winter. And less at higher latitudes. And of course, there is none at night.
Assuming a 2000 sq ft, 3 level home (upstairs, downstairs, and basement), that's about 667 sq ft (~62 m2) of flat roof area. That's a peak of 62kW radiation reaching the roof for a few hours a day in the summer. The best commercial PV solar panels are ~20% efficient, so that's ~12.4kW peak, and if the weather is good an average of maybe 50% of that over 12-15hrs of sunlight, you might produce 70kWh-100kWh on a good summer day You'll be lucky to get half that in the winter. Of course that will be lower as you go to higher latitudes. So, in the summer, with some type of energy storage to give you power when you use it most (early morning, dinner time, evening), a house with it's entire roof covered with PV panels might produce enough power to sustain itself. But that's only 3 months of the year. The rest of the year, you're operating at an energy deficit. If you live where it's frequently cloudy, or north of about 40 degrees latitude, you're not even going to break even in the summer unless you have a very energy efficient home.
It's not that it's impossible, but most current houses aren't built to be energy efficient enough, nor do they have energy efficient water heaters, heating systems, air conditioning systems, appliances, lighting, or electronics. People have built houses that are powered entirely from solar (usually a combination of PV and thermal) and/or wind. It's just very expensive to do it, and it still requires lifestyle changes.
And that's not counting industrial energy uses, workplace usage, street lights, traffic signals, or charging electric vehicles (which will be necessary to get off fossil fuels)
Japanese energy consumption is lower per household, but a home with 62m2 of rooftop space there is very rare, they probably don't average 1/2 that.
Solar is the ultimate renewable energy source, as long the sun stays in it's main hydrogen burning phase and the earth remains ~ 93M mi (150M km) from the sun, so it's probably good for another 5B years. But until we figure out how to efficiently convert solar to usable power and integrate the collectors into most of our buildings, and build a grid with lots of energy storage and that can transport energy around the world (it's always day/night somewhere), and do it for a lot less than current cost, solar isn't the solution. Long term, it's the best option, but we're at least 100 years off from that just in building the infrastructure to make it possible, and we need several technology breakthroughs to build and utilize that infrastructure. And the politics of power sharing across nations is a big obstacle to any worldwide power grid.