Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[billvon]

I agree. Cars kill more people in US than guns. We're trying to ban guns, not cars though

Well, I'd say we're trying to regulate both. Cars have seen more success with regulation than guns.

We are more likely to accept elevated risks when it is truly the only choice and/or a great necessity. I think that is what the whole argument is about here : you think we can't get away without using nukes, and then debating their safety.

There is no doubt we can "get away" without using nukes, by using coal and gas instead. That's worse.

 

[cricketo]

You don't seem to notice what I keep saying. 1.6 TW is already cut to half of what we are currently using in the USA. Resulting from every efficiency gain that is conceivably possible according to in depth (renewable darling) studies such as the "Roadmap to Renewables". It's interesting for me to see this same argument pop up from many different individuals who's confirmation bias prevents them from objectively looking at the scale of world energy use and it's relationship to population and human well being.

So because the study comes from the RE advocates, it's meant to serve as a gold standard of what is possible ? How about we stop fantasizing, and start working on things that are possible today and see where it gets us first ? Are you worried that it will be a waste of money ? But we have too much money, our defense budget is the proof. We can't take all of that money with us into the grave anyway.

In engineering we have to experiment and try out things, push the boundaries. There have been people like you in the past, who had well-supported positions of skepticism, and they were proven wrong many times.

 

[sendler2112]

How about we stop fantasizing,

Exactly what I have been saying here for 1 1/2 years. Get ready and guide a complete social shift. Debt/ growth based neoliberal economics is at it's end. The free market is not functioning for labor. Humans are several decades into overshoot of nonrenewable resources. Learn, think, talk. About all of the changes that are needed to equitably bend the human footprint back down to a level that can be sustained. For the next 200,000,000 years that the Earth will be in the habitable zone.

 

[cricketo]

Exactly what I have been saying here for 1 1/2 years. Get ready and guide a complete social shift.

Don't have to get ready for anything. Significant changes don't happen over night. Just need to relax, and work in the positive direction. Germans are already doing it, as described in this thread.

 

[cricketo]

Australia is already a huge market for Tesla Powerwall for many reasons. But now you can add one more: the South Australian government has approved Tesla’s home battery pack for an important subsidy worth ~50% of the battery pack for up to 40,000 homes.

https://electrek.co/2019/01/16/tesla-powerwall-boost-australia-discount/

 

[billvon]

How about we stop fantasizing, and start working on things that are possible today and see where it gets us first ?

Exactly, that's been my argument.

In engineering we have to experiment and try out things, push the boundaries. There have been people like you in the past, who had well-supported positions of skepticism, and they were proven wrong many times.

It's great to try to push the boundaries. That will get us results in 20-30 years. Meanwhile, we have renewables, battery storage, next gen reactors and combined cycle fast startup gas plants. Those are possible TODAY.

 

[cricketo]

It's great to try to push the boundaries. That will get us results in 20-30 years. Meanwhile, we have renewables, battery storage, next gen reactors and combined cycle fast startup gas plants. Those are possible TODAY.

Sure, but reactors aren't happening for non-technical reasons. I guess that's another major difference.

 

[billvon]

Sure, but reactors aren't happening for non-technical reasons. I guess that's another major difference.

Well, except they are happening, just slowly. We should start working on things that are possible today and see where it gets us.

 

[sendler2112]

Don't have to get ready for anything. Significant changes don't happen over night. Just need to relax, and work in the positive direction. Germans are already doing it, as described in this thread.

Yes. Germany is up to 5% of energy from wind and solar. USA is at 3%. Germany does have a slight downward trend in energy consumption which is good. Although they have reported negative economic growth for 17-18 also.

 

[cricketo]

Well, except they are happening, just slowly. We should start working on things that are possible today and see where it gets us.

We might be settling on Mars before that stuff happens Work on that is already ongoing.

 

[billvon]

We might be settling on Mars before that stuff happens

We are settling Mars within 3 years? Why was I not told?

Work on that is already ongoing.

Agreed. Vogtle 3 will be open by 2021, Vogtle 4 will be open a year after that. The Chinese AP1000's are already up and running.

 

[Hillhater]

Settling Mars ?
Even if we had a Nuclear Holocost, combined with double the predicted global warming....
The Earth would still be a far more habitable place than Mars .!
We couldnt even sustain an orbiting space station with only a few hours travel from support, let alone a remote colony base on a planet with a hostile environment.

 

[cricketo]

Agreed. Vogtle 3 will be open by 2021, Vogtle 4 will be open a year after that. The Chinese AP1000's are already up and running.

The day is still young, they can declare bankruptcy again. As for Chinese... those guys operate under completely different parameters, I wouldn't try to align with them.

 

[billvon]

The day is still young, they can declare bankruptcy again.

As a dozen solar companies have. That doesn't mean that the technology behind solar-PV is a failure - just that people made bad business decisions.

As for Chinese... those guys operate under completely different parameters, I wouldn't try to align with them.

I wouldn't either. But it's the same reactor, so we can learn from their experience.

 

[cricketo]

We couldnt even sustain an orbiting space station with only a few hours travel from support, let alone a remote colony base on a planet with a hostile environment.

What are you referring to ?

 

[cricketo]

But it's the same reactor, so we can learn from their experience.

Chernobyl was in operation for 9 years before the disaster. Fukushima was in operation for 40 ? That's one of the challenges with these things, you can't learn and iterate quickly and with minimal pain. Even after the disasters they don't get shut down right away, due to sunk costs.

 

[TheBeastie]

Australia is already a huge market for Tesla Powerwall for many reasons. But now you can add one more: the South Australian government has approved Tesla’s home battery pack for an important subsidy worth ~50% of the battery pack for up to 40,000 homes.

https://electrek.co/2019/01/16/tesla-powerwall-boost-australia-discount/

Some research has shown that battery-based storage adds, at best, an extra 200 gCO₂-e/kWh, but around 400 gCO₂-e/kWh if sourced from China.
The 200gcoe is based on if the battery solution was entirely built in the USA, but because most battery production comes from China where they think 400gcoe kWh is more likely because electricity generation emissions for China are an incredibly high coal-based 1170 gCO₂-e/kWh
https://medium.com/@ActinideAge/batteries-emissions-7e54ff9e018a

Once you are at "400 gCO₂-e/kWh" for your "Green Energy" it's possible you are just greener using natural-gas/methane because natural-gas often trickles to the surface anyway and then becomes a 60x times more powerful GHG than co2 went not burnt.
And then there is the toxic industrial waste connected with green energy, which you don't get with natural gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values

 

[sendler2112]

High embedded carbon energy content of batteries also raises another question beyond atmospheric emission: Can batteries and solar panels make and store enough energy to mine, refine, transport, and manufacture more batteries? Or will our capacity to do these big things slip away as oil leaves us over the coming decades?
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[Ianhill]

High embedded carbon energy content of batteries also raises another question beyond atmospheric emission: Can batteries and solar panels make and store enough energy to mine, refine, transport, and manufacture more batteries? Or will our capacity to do these big things slip away as oil leaves us over the coming decades?
.

I don't think this will be an issue as we can make endless amounts of stationary energy that can be transferred through the grid to manufacture on a global scale, the issue is the logistics of the raw materials needed and then delivering that final transformed product to the consumer, that's where oil and fossils have been almost priceless to the point of our own climates destruction.

We need clean repeatable storage that is mobile and extremely energy dense more than we need the energy itself, there lots of ideas but at the moment we are trapped by the technical limits of the elements we use there's only so far we can push before we need a major change like crt tv to upcoming microled, lithuim has made a major step it would be the the lcd tv so we still need that final giant leep to get a future that's truly much cleaner and better in everyway than our past.

 

[sendler2112]

I don't think this will be an issue as we can make endless amounts of stationary energy that can be transferred through the grid to manufacture on a global scale,

Scale is hard to comprehend. Replacing even half of 17 TW requires major high tech build out at 30X the current total. And then keep rebuilding it every 20-30 years. It takes energy to build energy. Let's get busy.
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[billvon]

I don't think this will be an issue as we can make endless amounts of stationary energy that can be transferred through the grid to manufacture on a global scale

Given the problems countries have with blackouts, high power prices and grid stability - I don't think that's true. And much of it depends on fossil fuels.

 

[Ianhill]

I don't think this will be an issue as we can make endless amounts of stationary energy that can be transferred through the grid to manufacture on a global scale

Given the problems countries have with blackouts, high power prices and grid stability - I don't think that's true. And much of it depends on fossil fuels.

Its easy to use today's eyes to look at tomorrow's energy climate and tech, those in the 50's would have said 10 years to the moon no way, I see science to be progressing like Moore's law so 2 decades from now no one really knows what will be online and powering the future same as when I watch tomorrow's world from the 70's and 80's that it's really hard to predict the future, most experts get it wrong and even those that have an idea of the possibilities from 50 years ago could never have invisioned the tech we have would be so wide spread and influential in so little time.

 

[Cephalotus]

Some news from the last days:

1. Siemens introduced its new 10MW offshore wind power plant:

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/newsroom/2019/01/new-siemens-gamesa-10-mw-offshore-wind-turbine-sg-10-0-193-dd


2. Hitachi canceled construction of new nuclear power plant in Wylfa Newydd, UK.

Hitachi already spent 2.3 billion Euro on it, all that money is lost now. Reason: Nuclear is to expensive.

In November 2018 Toshiba cancelled construction of their nuclear power plant in Moorside, UK. Reason: Nuclear is to expensive.

Money they lost: ?

So from 6 planned nuclear power plants in Uk only one power plant is still in the process to be built and this is Hinkley C. It is already 8 (eight!) years behind scedule, much more expensive than planned, built mostly by the Chinese and they only reason why this hasn't been canceled is the guaranteed FIT of 92.5 pound/MWh plus compensation for inflation and this for 35 years.

UK now could face a crises in the electric grid, because they do not have enough generation capacity in the future, unless they come up with another plan. So far British policy has more to do with their Brexit theatre.

 

[sendler2112]

12 MW GE turbine.
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https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/turbines/haliade-x-offshore-turbine
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[Cephalotus]

High embedded carbon energy content of batteries also raises another question beyond atmospheric emission: Can batteries and solar panels make and store enough energy to mine, refine, transport, and manufacture more batteries? Or will our capacity to do these big things slip away as oil leaves us over the coming decades?

Oil will not "leave" us in the coming decades. If we are not able to keep 50% of the already discovered oil resources in the ground and most of the coal, we are frocked anyway. Our limit is not the amount of fossil fuels available, but the amount of CO2 the atmosphere and seas will absorb and the results of that.