Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[billvon]

Mars doesn't have that much more going for it than the Moon and it is too far away.

Mars has:
-less radiation
-more gravity
-an atmosphere (thin, but enough to use to compress to get CO2 and oxygen - and enough for aircraft to use)

 

[sendler2112]

Actually, most of the satellites are superfluous. Do we really need several companies competing to bring us 2,000 tv channels? And 2,000 channels working to fill 24/7 programming?
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We are hoping for techno miracles of increased efficiency to save us from resource depletion but most techno advances lead to situations that encourage our brain's gratification systems to crave for more consumption. Not less.

 

[billvon]

Actually, most of the satellites are superfluous. Do we really need several companies competing to bring us 2,000 tv channels? And 2,000 channels working to fill 24/7 programming?

Most of the recent launches are either government (spy satellites, ISS resupply) or Internet provider satellites. There are billions of people in the world without communications access; LEO/MEO internet satellite systems could help change that.

We are hoping for techno miracles of increased efficiency to save us from resource depletion but most techno advances lead to situations that encourage our brain's gratification systems to crave for more consumption. Not less.

Don't make the mistake that all these advances benefit rich people who can afford to consume more.

 

[sendler2112]

Increased internet and cell service do result in increased consumption across the board as Jevon states. Rich or poor. But it is a big improvement in the quality of life.

 

[Ohbse]

Musk may not realise how "dangerous" some of his ideas are.
..Not physically neccessarily, but he has huge influence, so when he says something people respond and some blindly follow.
..such as the Solar+Storage battery total solution to utility power !
The whole Mars thing seems like a folly, or ego trip of little value, but thousands of people are now involved.
However, there may be some usful "spin offs" , such as the intercontinental transport via low orbit, and cheap satelite launchs.

How fortunate that your lack of vision doesn't have the same dangerous level of influence.

Everything is built on something else. Without incremental advance, we would stagnate. Clearly space is inevitable, either for expansion, exploration or just pushing our understanding of the universe. Musk saw an opportunity, or perhaps even an obligation to further the current state of space travel after years of stagnation. In no small way he jump started the era of private/public partnership in launch technology and has made quite revolutionary advances in cost to orbit, primarily by bringing it back to first principals. There's no inescapable reason that rockets need to be cripplingly expensive. The BFR is the latest iteration, incrementally improving on what came before, perhaps leading to revolutionary change.

Energy is the same. Solar is the fundamental power source of the planet, coal/gas/wood/oil are just manifestations of this. Logically we should harness it as directly as possible. We now have an opportunity to harvest this energy directly and to store that energy for later use. These technologies were built and improved after many years of investment (Grants, subsidies etc) with an ever accelerating pace of improvement. We have now reached a critical inflection point where this harvest method not only makes logical sense, but financial as well. As the use of PV and batteries increases, so does the pace of discovery leading to a rapidly iterating evolutionary process, massively reducing costs while delivering incremental improvements to function over ever shortening time-frames. This process has played out many times in technological disruptions as billvon and others have pointed out, most people were caught unawares, denying the new reality even beyond the point where it was all around them. Oil, roads, electricity etc all were niche novelties until suddenly they weren't.

You can argue the numbers all you like with costings based on irrelevant outdated figures, but the inescapable fact is that the people who decide what makes financial sense in all the profit driven energy companies are opting to deploy PV over most every other option. All of the same arguments apply to EV's for primary transportation, we are seeing the same disruptive change play out right now too.

 

[sendler2112]

Here is another essential written manifesto by the forward thinking chief of the Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg.
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http://noapp4that.org/
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And the dramatic short video he had made to preface it.
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https://youtu.be/ALugeRQbXAM
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[Ianhill]

Thunderfoot has a good video on launching a bfr rocket from a nearby city it's the most stupid idea I've heard of not only would you have to have a death wish to ride it any nearby city's would be next to a launch blast and then a sonic boom on any arrival and we all know what happened with concorde being slowed down over land so any nearby city best have toughened glass and ear defenders lmao.
When a rocket blows at launch not all the fuel will explode but you can still get a fair old boom expect this city to city travel to change vastly if take off at all rockets are not good for human transport pulling 10g on landing and feeling the weight of 1000's of lbs on your body I'd rather take the slow alternative myself even if it means walking to the other side of the world.
What a waste of young engineering minds and resources just facepalm this in with the hyperloop, anyone starting to see a trend with this guy ?
Next he will open a prison and maybe get involved in a robocop type device.

 

[liveforphysics]

Thunderfoot has a good video on launching a bfr rocket from a nearby city it's the most stupid idea I've heard of not only would you have to have a death wish to ride it any nearby city's would be next to a launch blast and then a sonic boom on any arrival and we all know what happened with concorde being slowed down over land so any nearby city best have toughened glass and ear defenders lmao.
When a rocket blows at launch not all the fuel will explode but you can still get a fair old boom expect this city to city travel to change vastly if take off at all rockets are not good for human transport pulling 10g on landing and feeling the weight of 1000's of lbs on your body I'd rather take the slow alternative myself even if it means walking to the other side of the world.
What a waste of young engineering minds and resources just facepalm this in with the hyperloop, anyone starting to see a trend with this guy ?
Next he will open a prison and maybe get involved in a robocop type device.

I watched a video by "thunderfoot" about how the hoverboard I had just riden earlier that day was a CGI hoax. The dimmer the mind the louder the voice and more frequently it shares its confusion.

The boat ride to the rocket pad only needs to be a couple miles at most, because the rocket takes off flying at an angle away from the dense population and at an altitude where the sonic boom is just a faint rumble.

Also funny you mention the hyperloop, I just visited the 4,000ft test track a few days ago and was blown away by the awesome vehicle.

Making a big steel tube is different but not more costly or difficult than making a big wide freeway. Soon enough people will wonder how they ever took traveling at speed through an atmosphere vs vacuum and laugh.

 

[billvon]

Thunderfoot has a good video on launching a bfr rocket from a nearby city it's the most stupid idea I've heard of not only would you have to have a death wish to ride it any nearby city's would be next to a launch blast and then a sonic boom on any arrival and we all know what happened with concorde being slowed down over land so any nearby city best have toughened glass and ear defenders lmao . . ..What a waste of young engineering minds and resources just facepalm this in with the hyperloop, anyone starting to see a trend with this guy ?

Other famous LMAO's:

"How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.” — Napoleon Bonaparte, 1800''s

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?" - The Quarterly Review, March, 1825.

"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." - Dr. Dionysius Lardner, 1830

"Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires as may be done with dots and dashes of Morse code, and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." - Boston newspaper, 1865.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." - Western Union internal memo, 1876

"Everyone acquainted with the subject [Edison's light bulb] will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." -Henry Morton, 1880

"I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, 1901

"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad." -The president of the Michigan Savings Bank,1903

"It is complete nonsense to believe flying machines will ever work." - Sir Stanley Mosley, 1905.

"The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic, carrying innumerable passengers. It seems safe to say that such ideas must be wholly visionary." - William Pickering, Harvard astronomer, 1910.

" . .After the rocket quits our air and and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics . . .That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." - New York Times, 1920

"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances. " - Lee De Forrest, 1957

At least you are carrying on a long tradition of doubters.

 

[Ianhill]

It would be better to not fight physics but engage it seek out how mother nature engages speed and emulate and advance it and then we meet our first problem the fastest things in nature act like bullets that we can not ride for comfort reasons so we accel and decel them slowly not to turn us inside out.
This is where Elon sees his major advantage is we can lower air resistance and then get a ride to the same speed for less given energy and maintain it for little extra and that's good if we can obtain a free vacuum but we can not on earth so the energy applied to the vacuum to create the extra speed is really what we would need to apply to the vehicle combined with its original purpulsion to obtain the same speed and like a vacuum loses its force over area and time so does a sled in air so that balances out too so the gains really ain't that big to have such a dangerous ride unless you plan on riding at speeds that will melt the air frame of your ride and we can comfortably travel at mach 2 continously in air so I don't see the big deal about this tube that will consume massive energy the fundamental laws of vacuums will kick his arse from Los Angeles to San francisco on this one.

I admit I don't agree with thunder foot on everything and I doubt I'll agree with anyone on everything it's good to be challanged it makes sure your in the realm of reality if you can actively engage and correct I've yet to see anything promising that can beat a traditional rail and wheel or magnetic system.
And as for the BFR it's clear his approach is to get this rocket payed for then he can drop the bomb she'll of how the timing and slight difference on launch distances etc again it can be done but I don't want to go from UK to Australia in 30 mins I'll need a 2 week holiday to recuperate if I survive at all maybe slow the ride a little and give a ride time that a spaceman can survive but it's a clever marketing trick to get him his rocket for Mars I will admit, even if the earth rides will pollute our upper atmosphere with rocket fuel kerosin to spread globally it's clearly a poor thought out idea to get a rocket for Mars funded.

 

[Ianhill]

Live for physics here's one for you,
If you took your ebike and run it down the hyperloop test tube you would of been the fastest on the day we should just ride an insane ebike in a low vacuum tunnel with a pilot suit with air and ride from city to city to near double your speeds.
Damn my $700 cheap budget scooter would have came a close second with just over 80kph I bet in the tunnel I would have came close to them and I would have been fine because he didn't pull a vacuum so I would have air just a bit dusty can't see where I'm going and it's gonna hurt big time tumbling down the tube.

 

[Ianhill]

Solar panels are around 20% efficient at best and get on average 5 hours peak energy but depedning on placement in the globe to howuch energy you can recive and they need to be kept cool
Wind turbine's are around 40% efficient at best and then you need to be in a frequently windy area to see a good return so ideally you can combine these two energy's anywhere on earth and obtain some level of energy granted some place may get a few watts others kilowatts from a small install depending on location etc.
But big supply utility 's have efficency of 50% for gas nearing that on coal and nuclear is around 33% but comes in abundance so we can not expect big solar installs to be able to compete on output alone as they will be dwarfed by GW's of gas or nuclear energy but they can still be viable in the correct situation it's not going to supply a mighty industrial city like nuclear can but it can power a modern city like dubai but again location location it's all about where you are not one plan fits all some all already sorted on geothermal tech so we have got many a great design with better efficency than wind or solar but everything matures with age and science moves things on.
With solar a 20% system at best that runs for around 5 hours a day will not make lots of energy so they have to assure all energy harvested is sold so the battery adds security to that to make sure any surplus energy is stored and discharged into a grid for so panels are doing nothing that way it assures over the 20 years or so it pays for itself long as maintenence is acceptable.
If you notice the battery size is normally around 20% to panels that makes sure there just enough redundancy so if it's a slow energy day on the grid the battery's swallow the excess so the panels production is 100% utilised to help pay the life of the system.

So to line these lot up efficency wise it goes solar nuclear coal wind gas and that not how it's been implemented over the world so it proves location location location.

 

[Hillhater]

.....
With solar a 20% system at best that runs for around 5 hours a day will not make lots of energy so they have to assure all energy harvested is sold so the battery adds security to that to make sure any surplus energy is stored and discharged into a grid for so panels are doing nothing that way it assures over the 20 years or so it pays for itself long as maintenence is acceptable.
If you notice the battery size is normally around 20% to panels that makes sure there just enough redundancy so if it's a slow energy day on the grid the battery's swallow the excess so the panels production is 100% utilised to help pay the life of the system.

So to line these lot up efficency wise it goes solar nuclear coal wind gas and that not how it's been implemented over the world so it proves location location location.

This just confirms my suspicion that most people do not read before they post.
Nuclear, gas, coal generators, efficiency is determined by operational requirements, IE ..controlled by human input.They can provide a CONTINUOUS supply
Solar, wind, hydro, etc are all controlled by nature and as such are unpredictable and unreliable.
Storage ..battery, pumped hydro, etc,..can improve the reliability to a limited extent, but the cost of storage is currently not financially justifiable...Typically, adding a battery to a solar system tripples the cost and distroys any cost justification...domestic or grid scale.
No realistic amount of storage can ensure solar or wind will provide a continuous supply.

 

[jonescg]

"Storage ..battery, pumped hydro, etc,..can improve the reliability to a limited extent, but the cost of storage is currently not financially justifiable...Typically, adding a battery to a solar system tripples the cost and distroys any cost justification...domestic or grid scale.
No realistic amount of storage can (currently) ensure solar or wind will provide a continuous supply."

I would only add the word currently in there because in recent years we've seen some massive changes in how much this stuff costs, and how much it can store. Not sure when or how much, but it will be a lot better than it is now, that's for sure.
I'm an optimist about energy, and I think things will be a bit volatile in the coming few years as we manage the situation - a mix between public assets, free-markets, technology advances, public acceptance and ultimate functionality. We might even see governments garner a mandate to re-acquire generation and distribution of electricity; changing the economics of the technologies on offer yet again.

It's like hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles - I think it's hopelessly inefficient and full of problems, but I'd hate to see the research stop. Likewise with nuclear - I have been hearing about fusion, thorium reactors and the mythical Gen IV reactor. All great stuff and I hope the gains are made to add yet another option to the mix.

 

[Ianhill]

Hillhater of course I read before I post I wouldn't know what to reply to you, There's many forms of storage to add to solar or wind in the grid, mostly pumped can be a cheap add on to make the system's production more effective but that only applies to a grid that has over production most country's will be more than happy to even reach that situation of over supply.
I agree jonesc the research that comes with meeting a deadend normally gives a greater understanding of something that can be implemented elsewhere so it's this trial and error thats got us hear today it's also about not forgeting the lessons of generations past.

 

[Hillhater]

Whilst pumped hydro, is currently the only proven method of storage on grid scale, ( multi GWh). But it is no remotely cheap, and it is sadly inefficient.
Batteries are cheaper per MWh, and much better efficiency, but none have been used yet on a true grid scale ..GWh+ application.
Jonescg...i fear that in Australia the costs of solar etc will become much easier to justify due to the retail cost of power increaseing, rather than the reduction in capital costs of solar.

 

[sendler2112]

Natural hydro is similar to pumped hydro but nature does the pumping and you only need one reservoir. It has the same ability to balance intermittents on a near instant control. The addition of the intermittents to the grid boost the capacity of the hydro.

 

[sendler2112]

A very interesting Prog Metal song I have admired for many years now takes on a fuller understanding as it applies dead on syllubus.
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https://youtu.be/sNPLaabTu24
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Tears escape from my eyes
As I'm reminded once again
Of the failure of our kind
We're closing up this shop for good
Since we plundered all that we could
What will it take for you to open up your squinting eyes

It's who we are
It's who we are

You can't own what you loan
A short time we've claimed this soil
Which really is no mans land
Time is short, we're running out
But not of ideas of how to squeeze out
The last drops of this borrowed world we call our own

It's who we are
Can't we accept and just go on?
It's who we are
We're trading of the breaking dawn

Unknowing you blend into the dough
Handing your votes to those who are thought of to know
What is left to say

It's sickening me how they're raking in
And couldn't care less as long as they win
It's sickening me when those who have it all
Elbows others to get some more
It's sickening that they'd rather rake the earth
And claim that they're just quenching out thirst
It's sickening how we choose to neglect
How it all unfolds

A vestigial prophecy
Of tomorrows floating orb of debris
A faded memory
Drained out it monument
The echoes of ashamed lament
Of what evolved from silent consent

As a phantom of the past
Holding the cast

As the shadow of a lucent moon
Burned out light years too soon
Benighted we fail to attune
This acheronian state, is it our fate
Way out of sight
Absorbed by night

An endless line
Running past the signs
Thus condoning the fall of all

Shadow of a lucent moon
Burned out light years too soon
Benighted we fail to attune
This acheronian state, is it our fate
Way out of sight
Absorbed by night

It's sickening me how we're wearing down
What is in our care to hand it on
It's sickening me how we fail to see
That all of this just ain't meant for you and me
Ain't meant for you and me

 

[Hillhater]

?...... The addition of the intermittents to the grid boost the capacity of the hydro.

Providing you have sufficient surplus intermittents tp power the pumping, and only if you have invested in the pumping infrastructure ( pump turbines, lower reservior etc.
...and it wont add to existing hydro capacity if the existing natural water supply is sufficient for continuous operation.

 

[sendler2112]

You can save more of the natural hydro during the day when the sun is out or when the wind is blowing and save it for later. Natural hydro and intermittents fit perfectly hand in hand. North West USA has areas that can maintain 25% from wind with no problems because they have 65% hydro. Wind force is actually measured off shore to give 15 minute prognostication as it approaches the wind turbines so the hydro can easily balance the base load.

 

[billvon]

No realistic amount of storage can ensure solar or wind will provide a continuous supply.

There are thousands of off-grid homes out there that prove that wrong.

 

[sendler2112]

The confirmation bias is unbreakable here. It's like a mass hypnosis. Open your mind. I keep telling you again, and again. But you can't hear it. And you refuse to read any of the links I supply to help you learn.
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Domestic electricity is only a fraction of energy consumption that any household relies on in our current civilization. The fact that some people have been able to get by with no wires on their house has no relevance to the discussion of the other 66% of electricity that is for everything else that they rely on for goods, services, infrastructure, ect. Their electrical footprint is actually 3 times what shows on their electrical bill. And any dwellings in Northern climates are burning something for heat which we will have to replace just for basic survival. And most people live in multiple occupancy dwellings in crowded urban settings . There are many villages in underdeveloped nations that have no electricity.
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This does nothing more to prove your point than to talk about a few houses with no wires. It only shows us which way we are headed back toward after the age of fossil fuel. I'm just trying to educate people so we can make smart decisions to use what we have left wisely to build a sufficiently resilient energy grid to ease the population back down over hundreds of years. Instead of being caught totally unprepared. Having blindly gambled on one technology that came up short for maintaining what we need in order to smoothly get there over time. And falling off a cliff.
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Including all energy , home electric is just 1/9th in the USA. 1/20th in most other markets. You are not grasping the scale of total energy consumption and what happens to agriculture and industry when fossil energy gets too expensive or fails to supply enough.
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We need to focus all remaining fossil energy toward it's replacement. And quit wasting resources on trying to get to Mars. Build as many dams as there are river valleys. Build as many solar panels and wind turbines as we can. Build as many batteries as we can. Which are more useful for transport and agriculture and mining vehicles than grid storage. We are going to need millions of tons of batteries to convert all of our farm and mining equipment to electric. Build as many nuclear power plants as we can to balance a steady base load. Run as many wires as we can. get everything in place before fossil fuel becomes too expensive.

 

[spinningmagnets]

I would be pleased if we achieved acquiring half our energy from renewable resources. However, regardless of what I may want...progress marches forward, with or without me...

 

[billvon]

Domestic electricity is only a fraction of energy consumption that any household relies on in our current civilization.

Yep. There's also commercial electrical demand, ground transportation energy, fuels for aviation and marine use, heat for industrial processes (aluminum smelting, cement manufacture etc.)

The fact that some people have been able to get by with no wires on their house has no relevance to the discussion of the other 66% of electricity that is for everything else that they rely on for goods, services, infrastructure, ect.

It has relevance to your claim that "no realistic amount of storage can ensure solar or wind will provide a continuous supply." People prove you wrong every day there at the scale of their own homes.

Their electrical footprint is actually 3 times what shows on their electrical bill.

Literally true, since for many of them their electrical bill is zero.

And any dwellings in Northern climates are burning something for heat which we will have to replace just for basic survival.

Or doing passive solar for most of their heating needs.

This does nothing more to prove your point than to talk about a few houses with no wires. It only shows us which way we are headed back toward after the age of fossil fuel. I'm just trying to educate people so we can make smart decisions to use what we have left wisely to build a sufficiently resilient energy grid to ease the population back down over hundreds of years. Instead of being caught totally unprepared. Having blindly gambled on one technology that came up short for maintaining what we need in order to smoothly get there over time. And falling off a cliff.

Fortunately, then, no one is "blindly gambling on one technology."

We need to focus all remaining fossil energy toward it's replacement. And quit wasting resources on trying to get to Mars.

We heard the same thing during Apollo - and times for most of the world's population were worse back then. We are fortunate that we did it anyway.

Build as many dams as there are river valleys. Build as many solar panels and wind turbines as we can. Build as many batteries as we can. Which are more useful for transport and agriculture and mining vehicles than grid storage. We are going to need millions of tons of batteries to convert all of our farm and mining equipment to electric. Build as many nuclear power plants as we can to balance a steady base load. Run as many wires as we can. get everything in place before fossil fuel becomes too expensive.

Sounds good. Who is going to pay for all those nuclear power plants? Even with the massive subsidies, incentives and laws in place now they're not economically competitive. If you have a plan to pay the premium for all that nuclear power, awesome.

 

[speedmd]

Domestic electricity is only a fraction of energy consumption

The molding plant I was in ran a cooling tower at near full capacity and heat parts of the building near full time half the year. Owner did not want to invest in a few pipes and valves and save $$$$$. No recovery on a host of processes. Compressors ran full time no matter if we were calling for air or not. No talking sense to them. Industry in general wastes a major share of the energy they draw. It would be good for most of them to start with a fresh look.