Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[sendler2112]

You can get very high efficiency if you plan properly. I was looking at running a cogeneration plant, with waste steam going to heat residential and commercial buildings, as well as on site greenhouses.

From Natural gas yes. You are not going to heat Toronto with wood or solar either.

 

[Punx0r]

The entire UK and large parts of the upstate areas of the USA Eastern seaboard were almost completely denuded of forests for heat in 1800

This isn't true. Britain was covered in forest after the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, but clearance to create farmland was started in the Bronze age, 5000 years ago. The area covered by forest was steady at around 15% (low by European standards) from the year 1000 to 1900. It was the needs of the army during the World War that "denuded" the countryside of trees, with only around 5% remaining. Replating after the wars has restored things to around 13%.

The global population 5000 year ago was around 14 million. Extrapolating deforestation rates and population growth back then you'd tell us we had exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth and were only being sustained by a one-time "wood pulse" and the jaws of the Malthusian Trap were opening at our feet.

 

[furcifer]

You can get very high efficiency if you plan properly. I was looking at running a cogeneration plant, with waste steam going to heat residential and commercial buildings, as well as on site greenhouses.

From Natural gas yes. You are not going to heat Toronto with wood or solar either.

Nope, not on it's own.

And this is why I pipe in on these threads. I think the reason it was shot down is because people are convinced they don't need nuke, cogen and yes, even "clean coal", because they're under the impression we can throw up a few windmills and solar panels and that's the end of it.

Maybe we could get away from natural gas even. I don't know, maybe. What I do know is we can improve efficiency a lot more if people started to realize just how spoiled we are. The auto industry here is so dominant people tend to think along the lines of miles per gallon. The fractional increment in MPG is what people think amounts to improving efficiency, when it's not even close.

 

[sendler2112]

Britton was 85% cleared to grow food back to 1000 BC. The population was steady below 2 million until 1600. It spiked (as all things did with the advent of fossil energy) in the early 1800's with the discovery of coal.
.

.
.

 

[Punx0r]

Why are you repeating what I said when I corrected you above? You said Britain's forrests were cleared in 1800 for heating fuel in an attempt to prove wood cannot be used for heating.

 

[billvon]

It is not possible to heat great cities like Moscow in the dead of winter with enough wood or solar panels.

Of course it is. It's just cheaper to do it other ways.

As a thought exercise, how much heat would you need to heat a 1000 square foot house for a family of 5 that was perfectly insulated in the dead of winter?

 

[sendler2112]

Why are you repeating what I said when I corrected you above?

Thanks for prompting me to read up on that. The forests in England were indeed cleared thousands of years ago to raise food. The Forests in USA were cleared from 1600 when Euro settlers started increasing the population.

 

[sendler2112]

As a thought exercise, how much heat would you need to heat a 1000 square foot house for a family of 5 that was perfectly insulated in the dead of winter?

1 cord of hardwood per winter per family in the best catalytic stove. 1/2 cord / acre is sustainable. Moscow needs 25 million acres of hardwood for heat. 300 million acres to heat everyone in the country. But it seems they are the Saudi Arabia of wood with 25% of the worlds forests. 2,000 million acres. Mostly high Latitude softwoods though. They can sell wood 100 years from now when the gas slips away.

 

[Punx0r]

Passive house and/or ground source heat pump

 

[TheBeastie]

Here is the NEW video report from ABC, the report covers a commonly found roof-solar panel install where the solar-panels only lasted 4 and a half years.
Another report from ABC believes there are around 650,000 homes in Australia with seriously broken roof solar-panel installations with worthless warranties. I posted that one here a few weeks ago, and now reposted it below.

Again, ABC are normally extreme pro-renewables via wind/solar, they constantly broadcast stuff about how great renewables are, and pretty much how "we are all going to die" unless we migrate to wind/solar renewables soon.
ABC's constant reporting on renewables is half the reason I am on here and against it, I have gone half nuts from ABC's constant broadcasting/brainwashing on "how amazing renewable energy is". So its quite refreshing to see a negative report from the ABC, obviously they felt it was their duty to report the half-truth of what's going on out there.
As far as I am concerned ABC half created this mess by abusing broadcast media power. All TV should be IP-streaming only, otherwise, its power just gets abused.

I uploaded it to YouTube for super-convenient viewing.
https://youtu.be/dgFAj2_rDnc
[youtube]dgFAj2_rDnc[/youtube]

I find the bit where the ABC report speculates that Australia is a dumping ground for bad solar panels dubious, as if the Chinese are deliberately targeting the subsidies and all the government money handouts for wind/solar renewables, I think that claim is a bit of a conspiracy theory, I think this is just a natural effect of what happens with roof solar market due to its "fly-by-night" nature of being able to mushroom businesses up, make a lot of money and then just disappear.
Fact is if that is true, then its like everything else in Australia, people aren't willing to take responsibility for dumb ideas of handing out money for stupid projects that don't lower carbon emissions on a global scale anyway.

Solar is never going to be like established car companies like Ford or Toyota, where these huge companies stick around and have to pay for their mistakes, conversely, solar is the perfect market to just rip off people and disappear, and its literally impossible to fix that problem. Any small business can structure it so it overpays in salaries to its self but the company itself has no assets so there is nothing left to sue when solar panels go bad, that is literally impossible problem to fix, unless roof solar is only installed by giant billion dollar companies like Ford/Tesla etc that we can expect will be around in 10 years time.

The other interesting thing about the ABC report was they claimed that professional testing revealed that some solar-panel brands that came from the exact same manufacturer turned out to be half good and half duds, so its not possible to recommend blindly specific solar-panel manufacturers because some crank out dud solar panels along with good ones.

I think some folks see all the renewables stuff as all quite innocent, but the fact is this is big business, its billions of dollars changing hands every year just in roof top solar in Australia. Then there is all the industrial solar parks, then the wind-farm stuff.

There are hedge funds/billionaires from all over the world getting their investment teams to just raid the government/taxpayer handout subsidy money that is attached with the solar/wind deployments. They don't care if its actually helping the environment or not, its just about the money.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Edit/ADD*
Here is another negative report on solar-panels in Australia from the normally ultra-extreme pro-renewables ABC
And just like the report above claims, its the CORE panel that's stuffed, it can't be repaired/revived.

The idea that any solar-panel can last "25-years" should be considered as dumb as believing any car vehicle manufactured can be driven every day and last "25-years", everyone knows most cars don't get anywhere near that, also crucially cars are designed to be easily repairable.
Its just an IQ-test fail to believe that for solar panels in general.

https://youtu.be/0L_lzUhitx8
[youtube]0L_lzUhitx8[/youtube]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is another one from ABC that's mostly negative on Solar, for the sake of completeness, this is ABC's 3rd/final negative report the ABC has ever been made, as far as I know.
Again I can't stress it enough, 99% ABC reports on renewables are extremely/ridiculously positive on renewable energy technology. Most Australians would assume and bet their house that ABC has never negatively reported on renewables and its surprising to see. I believe ABC feel some kind of responsibility to the mess they helped create abusing broadcast media power to lie/brainwash people on renewables.
https://youtu.be/nZ05ZZfVxkE
[youtube]nZ05ZZfVxkE[/youtube]

 

[Cephalotus]

Passive house and/or ground source heat pump

1500kWh for the heat pump
+ 500kWh for hot water (via heatpump)
+2000kWh for household applications, lights, etc...
(+3000kWh for electric car)

So 4000kWh or 7000kWh incl a car for such an efficient house and one year. It could be even less in a flat.

one Energecon E-141 EP4 produces around 10,000,000+x kWh per year in low wind regions, most of the wind usually blows during winter time, I'm not sure about Moscow.

So one wind power plant can support warmth, electric applications and an electric car for each of 1,500 such households or 7,500 people. You would need 1,600 E-141 to power the Moscow households and electric cars...

Obviously there should be some room on the roofs for solar, too... On the other hand there is a lot more demand from industry, public infrastructure, etc...

 

[Cephalotus]

I find the bit where the ABC report speculates that Australia is a dumping ground for bad solar panels, like the Chinese are deliberately targeting the subsidies and all the government money handouts for wind/solar renewables, I think that claim is a bit of a conspiracy theory, I think this is just a natural effect of what happens with roof solar market due to its "fly-by-night" nature of being able to mushroom businesses up, make a lot of money and then just disappear.

Interesting. Germany has more than 1.5 million rooftop solar instalaltions, some of them 20 years or older and almost all of them work quite well.
The 4.92kWp system on my parants roof (made from Sanyo modules) was installed in 2006 and so far there is no measurable degradation at all. There is variance because of the weather, but there is no trend, even after 13 years. If degradation is happening it is below 2-3% cummulative during 13 years
Also the first inverter is still running fine.
I expect the moduls to last at leats 30 years and the inverter to be replaced once during that time. We have a replacement system where the old inverter will be fetched up and refurbished while you get a refurbished one as a replacment. Most time its only one or two electronic components that need replacement, so thrwoing away a defective inverter would make no sense economically and ecologically.

So why do solar moduls in Australie die so early, as you claim. Any idea?

Solar is never going to be like established car companies like Ford or Toyota, where these huge companies stick around and have to pay for their mistakes, conversely, solar is the perfect market to just rip off people and disappear, and its literally impossible to fix that problem.

Sanyo PV was bought by Panasonic, itself not a small company. There is 25 years warranty, some manufacturers now provide 30 years warranty.

There have been defective modules, too. I know about Antec (ca. 15 years ago, insolvency), DASA and Kyocera (both more than 20 years ago). Also firts solar had their problems and there was the PID effect on some early moduls with Sunpower cells.

But this are the exceptions.

Most modules just work perfectly fine and you never have to care about them, you don't even have to clean them, at least in our climate.

 

[cricketo]

1500kWh for the heat pump
+ 500kWh for hot water (via heatpump)
+2000kWh for household applications, lights, etc...
(+3000kWh for electric car)

So 4000kWh or 7000kWh incl a car for such an efficient house and one year. It could be even less in a flat.

one Energecon E-141 EP4 produces around 10,000,000+x kWh per year in low wind regions, most of the wind usually blows during winter time, I'm not sure about Moscow.

So one wind power plant can support warmth, electric applications and an electric car for each of 1,500 such households or 7,500 people. You would need 1,600 E-141 to power the Moscow households and electric cars...

Obviously there should be some room on the roofs for solar, too... On the other hand there is a lot more demand from industry, public infrastructure, etc...

How would you roll out heat pump technology for apartment buildings ? There is also limited room for solar in many of them, as they're built out vertically to 12-15 stories to save land.

 

[sendler2112]

Passive house and/or ground source heat pump

1500kWh for the heat pump
+ 500kWh for hot water (via heatpump)
+2000kWh for household applications, lights, etc...
(+3000kWh for electric car)

So 4000kWh or 7000kWh incl a car for such an efficient house and one year. It could be even less in a flat.

one Energecon E-141 EP4 produces around 10,000,000+x kWh per year in low wind regions, most of the wind usually blows during winter time, I'm not sure about Moscow.

So one wind power plant can support warmth, electric applications and an electric car for each of 1,500 such households or 7,500 people. You would need 1,600 E-141 to power the Moscow households and electric cars...

Obviously there should be some room on the roofs for solar, too... On the other hand there is a lot more demand from industry, public infrastructure, etc...

These consumption values are quite low. But anyway. A quick fact check came up with:
"The additional watts come from the free energy in the ground. Let's estimate the cost to heat your home and domestic hot water with a geothermal heat pump: You still need 24,750kwh of heat, but since geothermal heat pumps are 400% efficient, you'll only need (24,750/4) 6,187kwh of electricity to extract that heat."

 

[sendler2112]

How would you roll out heat pump technology for apartment buildings ? There is also limited room for solar in many of them, as they're built out vertically to 12-15 stories to save land.

Population density in these Northern megacities is an issue for heat. Vertical wells for Geopump heat in my area are spec'ed at 500 feet for a single family house in order to get enough run. Large buildings would have to go much deeper and drill more wells which starts to crowd out the available geo energy

 

[billvon]

1 cord of hardwood per winter per family in the best catalytic stove. 1/2 cord / acre is sustainable. Moscow needs 25 million acres of hardwood for heat. 300 million acres to heat everyone in the country. But it seems they are the Saudi Arabia of wood with 25% of the worlds forests. 2,000 million acres. Mostly high Latitude softwoods though.

All valid numbers. However, not the answer to the question. In a perfectly insulated house in the dead of winter, the temperature will keep rising until you have to vent the house to cool it down.

Now, no house is perfectly insulated. But you can come arbitrarily close. R-80 is a common standard in cold US climates (Alaska.) So let's see how much heat you need:

Our example house is 1000 square feet by 10 feet high. So the total area of that is 3200 square feet. Let's say we are planning for an _average_ winter temperature of -10F. (Moscow averages around 14F in winter so we are talking somewhere way colder than Moscow.) 3200 sq ft * 80F differential / R80 insulation = 3200 BTU's/hr needed to keep the house at 70.

5 people, each person releases about 300 BTU's/hr. So that's 1500 BTU's/hr of heat from the people. Halfway there.

Let's say you have a cord of wood. How long will it last? Average 25 million BTU's in a cord of wood, assume a stove efficiency of 70%. 18 million BTU's. That means that cord of wood will last 14 months - at least 3 years worth of winters.

Want to do better? Build a condo complex with 16 families per building. Now they share most of their walls, and those walls no longer need to be insulated. Wood use per family goes way down.

Or insulate better. R-80 is simply a common standard; you can easily do better than that.

Too expensive, you say? OK then. You trade off heat for insulation, and choose the ideal point along that curve.

 

[billvon]

Interesting. Germany has more than 1.5 million rooftop solar instalaltions, some of them 20 years or older and almost all of them work quite well.

Yep. I have some Arco panels which are now 30 years old. Still working just fine. You'd never use them in a new installation, of course, because modern panels are so much more efficient.

 

[Cephalotus]

How would you roll out heat pump technology for apartment buildings ? There is also limited room for solar in many of them, as they're built out vertically to 12-15 stories to save land.

The example was about a house.

Heating of apartment buildings is similar to heating of houses. You just use one heating system for more people. It propably would not work for entire Moscow, because the amount of heat you can extract from near surface geothermal up to around 400m of depth is limited. (depending on ground water flow, etc...)
You could transfer summer heat back into the ground...

It doesn't matter. I city neither needs to produce all its energy within its border, nor does it need to produce all its food within its borders....

 

[sendler2112]

So is there a plan for geo district heat farms to come from far outside Moscow?
.
Environmentalist won't allow Ithaca, NY to use Cayuga lake for geo district heating and cooling beyond a 2C discharge temp even though the heating and cooling degree days could be programmed to be seasonally equal (if heat is kept at a sustainable lowish but servivable level).The overall lake temp could be kept the same on an annual basis.

 

[cricketo]

The example was about a house.

Heating of apartment buildings is similar to heating of houses. You just use one heating system for more people. It propably would not work for entire Moscow, because the amount of heat you can extract from near surface geothermal up to around 400m of depth is limited. (depending on ground water flow, etc...)
You could transfer summer heat back into the ground...

It doesn't matter. I city neither needs to produce all its energy within its border, nor does it need to produce all its food within its borders....

If I'm not mistaken, their heating is all based on co-generation, hot water too. Just makes it a bit more tricky to retrofit.

 

[Punx0r]

Environmentalist won't allow Ithaca, NY to use Cayuga lake for geo district heating and cooling beyond a 2C discharge temp even though the heating and cooling degree days could be programmed to be seasonally equal (if heat is kept at a sustainable lowish but servivable level).The overall lake temp could be kept the same on an annual basis.

Sounds like the there's no technological problem there.

 

[sendler2112]

This is the same issue as we see whenever a new hydro project is proposed. There are trade offs to nature that environmentalists will not accept. Yet they still want energy.

 

[furcifer]

This is the same issue as we see whenever a new hydro project is proposed. There are trade offs to nature that environmentalists will not accept. Yet they still want energy.

Exactly. "Environmentalism" has become another ism that is chalk full of ideology and very little critical thinking. More often than not they seem very self righteous and can't see beyond their own pet projects they're demanding money for. They tend to believe they are the only ones that know and the only ones that care. It's all very distracting.

 

[billvon]

More good news today:
==========================
Renewable Energy Costs Take Another Tumble

Forbes May 29, 2019, 07:00am

The cost of renewable energy has tumbled even further over the past year, to the point where almost every source of green energy can now compete on cost with oil, coal and gas-fired power plants, according to new data released today.

 . . .

The ability of renewable energy to compete effectively against the older fossil fuel technologies is coming as a result of consistent falls in the cost of new plants. Last year alone, the global weighted-average cost of electricity from bioenergy fell by 14%, while solar PV and onshore wind costs dropped by 13% and hydropower fell by 11%. The sharpest fall came in the cost of CSP plants, which dropped by 26%. The cost of geothermal and offshore wind appeared to plateau though, with costs edging down by just 1%.

IRENA says these trends are likely to continue over the next decade, particularly for solar and wind power technologies. According to the organisation's database, over 75% of the onshore wind and 80% of the solar PV capacity due to be commissioned next year will produce power at lower prices than the cheapest new coal, oil or natural gas options. “Crucially, they are set to do so without financial assistance,” it noted.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/05/29/renewable-energy-costs-tumble/#653dd105e8ce
===============================

 

[Hillhater]

But still no cost allowance for the essential back up generation sources or additional infrastructure cost necessary to facilitate these intermittent, unreliable, unpredictable, generation systems. !
Just more short sighted green spin.