Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

billvon said:
Hillhater said:
Sure , raw generation costs . .
Correct. It does not, for example, add the costs in terms of deaths, sickness, infrastructure damage and waterway destruction from coal. If it did, coal would be far and away the most expensive form of power we have. Nor does it add in the costs of nuclear waste processing/storage. So overall, wind and solar are a lot cheaper over their lifecycle than that chart would indicate.
Insignificant compared to the cost of having no power supply.
(And there are similar consequential costs associated with solar and wind.)
Eg..
Estimates of the exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.

To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.

For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.
I could quote similar alarming details regarding Solar PV panel production and disposal....
billvon said:
But what cost do you put on power when it is not available ?
Zero. You do not pay for power you do not use.
No but you pay the consequential costs for loss of power ,..potentially disastrous, but ultimately economical suicide for a nation. (see below)
billvon said:
Or what cost when the unreliability of power forces your major industries to relocate offshore, and ultimately destroy your national economic viability ?
Given that here in the US, grid reliability has climbed as wind and solar have been added - not really an issue.
The US is not an example of wind and solar effects, It has only approx 10% wind & solar with much more gas to balance & support it.
Logicly, improvement in grid reliability is more attributed to the higher % of flexible gas generation (now approx 30%)
The best US example of Wind & solar effects, is CA where the grid is heavily dependent on import support from adjoining states.
 
Hillhater said:
Insignificant compared to the cost of having no power supply.
Unless, of course, you are the one being killed. It will feel less insignificant then.
Estimates of the exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.

To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. . . .That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.
Yep. And coal plants in the US generate 140 million tons of radioactive waste a year, or 280 billion pounds. So what's worse? 280 billion pounds of radioactive waste a year, or 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste a year?

That's one of the many reasons coal is failing.
I could quote similar alarming details regarding Solar PV panel production and disposal....
So solar panel production generates more than 280 billion pounds of radioactive waste a year? I doubt it. The only people you will alarm are the ignorant.
No but you pay the consequential costs for loss of power ,..potentially disastrous, but ultimately economical suicide for a nation. (see below)
Right. Good thing reliability has increased as renewables have become more prevalent.
The US is not an example of wind and solar effects, It has only approx 10% wind & solar . . .
Funny. I can remember back when people like you would say "solar and wind can NEVER supply more than a few percent of a country's power! It's IMPOSSIBLE! Do you know how expensive it is? And it's unreliable! And it's too hard! You can't use DC to power your house, you know."

Now you are claiming that 10% is nothing.

It will be fun to hear what you say when we hit 20% and grid reliability stays the same. "It's just being hidden because . . . uh . . . . coal!"
 
billvon said:
Funny. I can remember back when people like you would say "solar and wind can NEVER supply more than a few percent of a country's power! It's IMPOSSIBLE! Do you know how expensive it is? And it's unreliable! And it's too hard! You can't use DC to power your house, you know."
Now you are claiming that 10% is nothing.

It will be fun to hear what you say when we hit 20% and grid reliability stays the same. "It's just being hidden because . . . uh . . . . coal!"
Where do you dream up this rubbish ?
When have i ever said anything like..." "solar and wind can NEVER supply more than a few percent of a country's power! It's IMPOSSIBLE! ""... ?
10% W&S supply is not significant if you are looking for noticable effects on the grid .
... 30% Gas generation is much more relavent.
 
A lot of these energy models like EROEI and LCOE seem to be popular with the pro-renewables camp. But a lot of these models have flaws and seem dated.

These energy models were created before wind/solar renewables came around, including RE in them really is comparing "Apples and oranges" and shouldn't be included together because wind/solar don't include the incredibly advantageous ability of storability/portability/fungibility.

As well outlined in Zehners speech
https://youtu.be/v6uVnyjTb58?t=23m30s

Even nuclear reactors were first designed, developed in the 1940s because the incredible value providing portable energy on the go in transport. You can't plug a wind-turbine on a car or submarine, but somehow in these models the winds energy creation ability is equally as valuable in an ERORI or LCOE chart? No way, this is massive Chewbacca Defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#History

Probably the most useful thing on the Wikipedia page on EROEI is its "Criticism" section which really doesn't even explain half of all the problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Criticism_of_EROEI

It all boils together when you look at the end result "real-world" electricity bill that results everywhere in the world with wind/solar, just look at the spot-price in SA in the image below.
And that is that when you build around x3 times the energy generation infrastructure but only get at best one quarter the energy often when its not wanted (thus valueless), then you increase the prices by around at least 3 times, because someone, somewhere is going to want to get their money back on that infrastructure just like someone who buys a vehicle-infrastructure to provide a Uber/Taxi service.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=236295

Its like comparing the total value or the usefulness of a car if you can include its "availability".

If you bought a renewable-energy-equivalent-car to drive to work/school that ran on typical 20% renewables reliability-capacity-factor (and had no energy storage) then you have a high chance of not being able to use your car at all because its possible the only 2 days out of 7 days per week the car "had energy" was on the weekend when work/school is closed.
This makes your renewables-based-car completely worthless, but these energy models don't include any "storage metrics" and instead focus on the idea that the ONLY time you want to drive your car is when energy inside it suddenly appears.

If the EROEI or LCOE model included storability or on-demand factor and even a portability factor, (like being able to put wind-turbine energy inside a submarine) then it would be fair to evaluate.
The best way to make EROEI model work to include stored-transportable-energy is to include battery or conversion of the energy via electrolysis to Hydrogen to make the energy storable.
If we included transportability/fungibility of the energy for flight then Lithium battery would look terrible and you would probably only want to use a EROEI chart based on all energy converted to Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen

While natural gas to Hydrogen conversion is the most practical way to get Hydrogen because its 4 hydrogen atoms for each single carbon atom, and the removal of the carbon atom is easy process ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Steam_reforming ),

The amazing thing is private industry is even doing coal conversion to Hydrogen as they still see it as more practical than using renewables to make Hydrogen.
World-first coal to hydrogen plant trial launched in Victoria
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/coal-to-hydrogen-trial-for-latrobe-valley/9643570
 
The Influence of Output Variability from Renewable Electricity Generation on Net Energy Calculations
Hannes Kunz 1, Nathan John Hagens 2 and Stephen B. Balogh 3
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http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/1/150/htm
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This paper examines adjusting the relative value to society of differing electricity generation methods depending on the intermittency, dispatchability, and storability. They chose to use concepts from optimal foraging theory of biological organisms to present the concept of ER/EI, and investment terms like volatility and risk. But the point is that all types of electricity generation do not have the same value to society.
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Gas turbines and large dams are the most useful. Coal also offers good storage but isn't quite as responsive. Nuclear has good storage but is less dispatchable yet. Wind and solar are intermittent so they require additional infrastructure as back up or storage which must be considered as a derating when discussing ER/EI.
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From the paper:
"the EROI for nuclear power would be discounted by 19.8%, whereas nominal wind EROI gets discounted by a factor of 49.4% (best case) to 70.5% (worst case). In other words, if wind has an undiscounted EROI of 19.2 [15], the effective EROI after adjusting for intermittency risk would be reduced by an average of 60%, down to 7.7. Similarly, if nuclear power is rated with an EROI of 5–15 [8], a handicap of 20% would reduce its EROI to 4–12, while a flexible source like natural gas (only the generation component) would not face further handicaps based on variability."
 
I get what you're saying, but gas becomes seriously variable when either supplies start drying up or mankind can't burn any more of it without causing a climate catastrophe.

Hillhater said:
Insignificant compared to the cost of having no power supply.

Why the false dichotomy? Why is the choice either death from air pollution or life without electricity? There is a middle ground, you know.


Hillhater said:
a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.
...
For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel.

a) If rare earth magnets in wind turbines become considered too scare, expensive or hazardous then alternatives will be used instead. Take a look at the current efforts by EV manufacturers to eliminate them from drive motors.

b) that's a specious argument that would only be swallowed by someone too ignorant to realise there are different kinds of radiation sources, of greatly varying danger and longevity.
 
Hillhater said:
When have i ever said anything like..." "solar and wind can NEVER supply more than a few percent of a country's power! It's IMPOSSIBLE! ""... ?
You never did. People _like_ you - people who want to hand onto the past, and can't understand how the future will be different - have said that.

No matter how much you complain, and no matter how much you badmouth renewables, EV's and the like, they will continue to grow and gather market share. If you are really going to go all in on the "renewables suck" theme you're going to be one unhappy camper in the near future.
10% W&S supply is not significant if you are looking for noticable effects on the grid .
... 30% Gas generation is much more relavent.
Then the 43% that my utility (SDG+E) gets from renewables must be even more relevant than gas.
 
Punx0r said:
Hillhater said:
Insignificant compared to the cost of having no power supply.

Why the false dichotomy? Why is the choice either death from air pollution or life without electricity? There is a middle ground, you know...
Since when was death from air polution part of the discussion ?..
But there are real issues with lack of reliable electricity supplies.

a) If rare earth magnets in wind turbines become considered too scare, expensive or hazardous then alternatives will be used instead. Take a look at the current efforts by EV manufacturers to eliminate them from drive motors.
Which efforts would that be ?
You mean like Tesla with the model 3 and the Semi truck , ..both of which are moving from induction motor to BLDC (magnet) tech motors.
Or the new generation of Direct drive Wind turbines which use even more RE magnets
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
..10% W&S supply is not significant if you are looking for noticable effects on the grid .
... 30% Gas generation is much more relavent.
Then the 43% that my utility (SDG+E) gets from renewables must be even more relevant than gas.
It might be if you were isolated and not so heavily supported by other surrounding states.
That 43% sounds impressive eh ?...but remember its an annual total, or average, ..and doesnt tell the full story of where your power is coming from at 5 am on a still morning ?
Maybe from those huge reserves of Gas generation that is kept on standby ( but still make up the bulk of your power supply) ,..or you will be sucking in some of that 30+% of power that CA has to import every year to keep the lights on when the wind and sun let you down.
Wait until (if) your neighbours all shut down their Coal and Nuclear plants , and are also trying to depend on Nature, then see how reliable your service is ?
Like i said , the US, even CA is not a high % RE example
 
Hillhater said:
It might be if you were isolated and not so heavily supported by other surrounding states.
That 43% sounds impressive eh ?...but remember its an annual total, or average
Exactly. You've been bleating that 10% is nothing, but if you went to some significant amount (like the 30% that natural gas supplies) you'd see all these massive problems.

We don't.
Maybe from those huge reserves of Gas generation that is kept on standby ( but still make up the bulk of your power supply)
Well, we _had_ huge reserves of gas, until Aliso Canyon blew out. Now we have small reserves of gas. Fortunately we have enough renewables to take up the slack.
Wait until (if) your neighbours all shut down their Coal and Nuclear plants , and are also trying to depend on Nature, then see how reliable your service is ?
They did. The San Onofre nuclear plant shut down years ago due to a leak. We were just fine.
Like i said , the US, even CA is not a high % RE example
Ah well. In 10 years we'll be at 70% and you'll be saying "that's not a high % RE example."
Since when was death from air polution part of the discussion ?..
Since the second page of the discussion.
 
We will soon have some new big batteries to gather data from. In CA. They are saying up to 6 hours at 185MW.
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https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1117516_pge-tesla-team-up-to-boost-battery-backups-for-power-grid
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Hillhater said:
Which efforts would that be ?
You mean like Tesla with the model 3 and the Semi truck , ..both of which are moving from induction motor to BLDC (magnet) tech motors.
Or the new generation of Direct drive Wind turbines which use even more RE magnets

BLDC does not equal rare earth magnets. There's plenty of research going on to replace them with non-rare earth magnets. Do you really think that a major car manufacturer is going to be happy paying hundreds of dollars per car for a few magnets, the supply of which is monopolised by a non-friendly country on the other side of the world? No. Time and money will be poured into finding a technical solution that avoids that.

Direct-drive wind turbines are a relatively new development that avoids the need for an unreliable and wasteful transmission. Ever heard of incremental improvement?
 
Punx0r said:
BLDC does not equal rare earth magnets.
Agreed. External-rotor ferrite magnets work just fine; they are just physically bigger than the same BLDC motors with rare earth magnets and have more rotational inertia. That's a big deal for things like servomotors but doesn't matter one bit for an EV (or a wind turbine.)

What will happen is that higher performance devices will continue to use rare earth magnets, while lower cost turbines, EVs and generators will use the lower cost magnetic material. The line that divides the two will shift up or down based on price, and market forces will decide which is used where.
 
Helium burns are the result of the product of DT fusion creating momentum transfers to reactant DT nucleons. Helium is imparting momentum after it is released, into the DT nucleon reactants. The chain reaction comes from burning helium.
 
billvon said:
What will happen is that higher performance devices will continue to use rare earth magnets, while lower cost turbines, EVs and generators will use the lower cost magnetic material. The line that divides the two will shift up or down based on price, and market forces will decide which is used where.
More likely,.... anything that is weight sensitive (ie, mobile devices), size sensitive, performance critical, and cost agnostic,..will use the strongest RE magnets .
So unless something better comes along , EVs and high power generators on poles will continue with the best magnets, because the cost is insignificant compared to the benefits.
 
Hillhater said:
More likely,.... anything that is weight sensitive (ie, mobile devices), size sensitive, performance critical, and cost agnostic,..will use the strongest RE magnets .
So unless something better comes along , EVs and high power generators on poles will continue with the best magnets, because the cost is insignificant compared to the benefits.
Perhaps. However, manufacturers are already betting on ferrite magnets increasing in popularity as a low cost option. Keep in mind that auto makers will want to make super cheap EV's at some point, just as they are making super cheap ICE cars now.

Also keep in mind that you can take a ferrite magnet and add a very small amount of rare earths (i.e. lanthanum) to get vastly better performance. Such hybrid magnets give almost the performance of neodymium based magnets for a fraction of the cost.
 
Southern California Edison proposes to install 48,000 more charging points.
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https://chargedevs.com/newswire/southern-california-edison-proposes-to-install-48000-more-charging-points/
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When is a RE source no longer classed as renewable. ?
For those of you who insist that Dam Hydro is a RE source, how long do you give it between periods of renewal before its considered an " Finite" resource ?
Since our glorious leaders locked us into a kamakazi RE target and encouraged the destruction of much of our base load coal generating plants , with nothing much more than RT solar to substitute, our supply reserves have been getting stretched.
The more recent closure of the large Hazlewood plant has particularly impacted on Victoria's ability to keep the lights on such that they depend on those RE sources even more.
Their largest "RE" source is the Snowy Mountain Hydro system , but of course that need a reliable water supply..
...
...Graham Lloyd, The Australian

Snowy Hydro’s biggest storage dam has fallen to less than 25 per cent capacity due to poor rains and high electricity generation following the closure of the ­Hazelwood coal power station in Victoria.
Lake Eucumbene is now at its lowest level since 2010 and on its way to a repeat of 2007 when electricity generation had to be stopped in favour of a heavily ­polluting fossil-fuel generator in Victoria.
The Hydro chief said they had been generating more to “take advantage of tight market conditions.”
....... And we all know what that means.!
Unfortunately, Victoria doesnt have the same capacity of fossil fuel generators that it had in 2007 , to rescue the situation, so now there is going to be a panic to source some more of those portable Diesel sets that South Australia, and Tasmania , had to aquire quickly when RE failed them similarly.
Boy, are we slow learners !
 
Hillhater said:
When is a RE source no longer classed as renewable. ?
For those of you who insist that Dam Hydro is a RE source, how long do you give it between periods of renewal before its considered an " Finite" resource ?

Renewable energy is a source of energy provided by nature. Simple. If the power of the sun delivers a regular supply of water to a location where it can usefully be run through a turbine, then that is RE. The dam and turbines themselves don't have to be everlasting for it to be RE and there doesn't have to be a guarantee the resource will be available 24/7/365 for it to be valid RE. If you draw down your reservoir too fast, that is not nature's problem.

Running polluting generators a few days or weeks of the year as a stop-gap measure to cover seasonal extremes does not invalidate the principle of RE and is certainly a lot better than running them all year for your baseload!
 
Renewables overtake coal as Germany’s most important power source

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewables-overtake-coal-germanys-most-important-power-source

bdew-h1powermix2018-en.png


During short peridos RE production already is hugher than vverall consumption as it happend on Januray 1st and May 1st...

https://reneweconomy.com.au/germany-reaches-100-renewables-hours-42-far-year-30642/

No grid problems.
 
Hillhater said:
..will use the strongest RE magnets ...

"Rare Earths" are not rare:

4ccf0c49cadcbb2039020000-750.jpg


If you care so much about ressources (which I doubt anyway) stop buying and using cars with ICE. You need platinum or palladium for them (abvout 30% gets lost) and those are really rare.
 
Cephalotus said:
Renewables overtake coal as Germany’s most important power source
Electricity source. The words " energy" and "power" are bandied about with regard to Rebuildable Electricity as if this is the total of energy that we are using but electricity is just a small part. There is 5X very expensive work to be done to convert all of society's energy consumption to electric even after getting to 100% rebuildables for current electricity production. Just putting RE electricity instead of fossil fueled generation into the existing wires is actually the easiest part.
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Germany primary energy share forecast from RE has been downgraded from their goal of 18% to 16.7% by 2020.
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https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-miss-eu-renewables-goal-forecast-enbw-said-exit-coal/germany-set-miss-2020-eu-renewables-target-industry-association.
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Such a long way to go before liquid fuel price goes 3X in 20 years. Do not get complacent. Everything must change.
 
Cephalotus said:
Hillhater said:
..will use the strongest RE magnets ...

"Rare Earths" are not rare:

If you care so much about ressources (which I doubt anyway) stop buying and using cars with ICE. You need platinum or palladium for them (abvout 30% gets lost) and those are really rare.
The discussion was about the polution from RE magnet manufacturing...not their availability !
 
Hillhater said:
The discussion was about the polution from RE magnet manufacturing...not their availability !

Your part in this discussion is more about constantly denieing pollution from mining and burning coal and preatching the benefits of nukes.

Sadly this made it impossible to believe that you care even the tiniest bit about environmental or ethical concers, so I suggest you shouldn't even try to sing that song.

Evironmental impact of RE is an intersting topic worth a discussion, but you have worked hard to lose any credibility on that topic.
 
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