Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[TheBeastie]

suck on it treehuggerz.
those tailing ponds are here to stay.
with a massive expansion possibly being announced at the end of this month.
i.e. oil companies ("managing" )

good to see Tara Nelson managed to escape Yegreville.
altho would have thought she made it little further afield, if not Turanna then at least Moose Jaw.
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1416343

That is interesting stuff.
Apparently with the oilsands business that first started such projects they did a lot of automation homework pre-planning to make sure they could continue even if oil got incredibly cheap. They have proven over 10 years now that they can ride through anything in oil prices.

At the thought they are using new technologies to now start squeezing lithium out of the process is great news for the EV industry, while at the same time having perfect irony of oil processing is now the core source of "clean EV batteries" :lol:
I see little reason based on the oil sands remarkable history to not believe their claims as a new major lithium source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_industry_in_Canada_(oil_sands_and_heavy_oil)

Patrick Moore the Greenpeace co-founder has consistently claimed these are great projects because they clean up these nasty oil-sands areas and make them better for wildlife while extracting energy.

Tesla valuation around $150 billion and delivered around 500 k cars
Toyota "" $225 billion 9M cars
Volkswagon "" $100 billion 11M cars

They had a nice little round up of Telsa on local broadcast today
https://youtu.be/LdyLX_4oW6Q?t=52 <-time-linked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdyLX_4oW6Q&list=PLn2RjxYNpcawXnVw1a1j4mfDDABpL8CPx

Like I was saying in this post here -> https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=103622#p1515561
I believe Tesla's crazy valuation is really based mostly on its claim of having fully self-driving cars by the end of this year via its AI and over-the-air-updates to its current cars.
Everyone says self-driving cars is worth a trillion dollars, so it's not unreasonable for Tesla to be worth 1/10th of that if people are using auto-pilot and getting more convinced it's going to really work all by its self one day in full self-driving.

The other more simple theory of Tesla's super stock price which I also agree with came from these podcasts https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/758369 or maybe this one, https://youtu.be/IQx-TeiTDrc?t=1203
Even if you don't like these people you can learn a lot from them.
The main theory is that Elon Musk and his inner circle own a huge amount of the percentage of shares in Tesla to the point where it's share price is controllable.
Investors keep expecting Tesla to issue/dilute more shares to raise more money to pay debts etc, but Tesla have never done it, instead, they have used convertible bonds etc which are similar to issuing shares but they are kind of locked shares that can't be placed on the market until many years later, Mark Spiegel believes all this is deliberate because if there is barely anyone left to sell any shares than someone can merely buy 1 share for $2000 and because no one wants to sell, the entire valuation of the company doubles from $100billion to $200billion, ultimately by one person spending $2000 to buy a single share, because no one else is selling, and no ones selling because there are barely any shares available to the general market.

Yes, we could argue it would only take 1 person to decide they want to sell their shares at just $1000 again but so far this is not happening, this is the incredible power of illiquid markets, a lot of people say this is also why BitCoin moves like it does, its illiquid, its a perfect setup for manipulation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saw this pop up on YouTube, Vestas which is one of the worlds biggest wind-turbine manufacturers talks about its stock price/earnings etc.
Just like an evil oil company, wind-turbine makers have teams of people/lobbyists thinking up ways to push more green energy and get more sales for their shareholders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSyMpxNQyew
[youtube]lSyMpxNQyew[/youtube]


They even asked the Vestas CEO why are so many people against Windturbines in Germany etc? https://youtu.be/lSyMpxNQyew?t=191

Victoria is building whole new sets of massive grid pylon entirely for all the new wind-farms that are being built that they voted for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_tower
But they probably never thought about all the huge new ugly electricity transmission lines that are going to be riddled throughout the countryside to make it happen, or all the SF6 gas that gets generated/released for new transmission lines these new wind-farms/solar farms that is incredibly greenhouse warming by ~24,000 times than CO2...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGpDFgTfRYU
[youtube]uGpDFgTfRYU[/youtube]

Sulphur Hexafluoride continues to rocket higher on the charts, despite all the baloney claims that its being reduced etc, with China's radioactive sludge lakes etc I would say China sees SF6 ability to be released into the atmosphere and disappear as nothing more than incredibly convenient and harmless, for their internal measures of things, but you could claim that for any country realistically.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/insitu/cats/conc.php?site=mlo&gas=sf6
https://www.epa.gov/f-gas-partnership-programs/semiconductor-industry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride#Greenhouse_gas

Climate change: Electrical industry's 'dirty secret' boosts warming
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49567197
"As renewable projects are getting bigger and bigger, we have had to use it within wind turbines specifically," said Costa Pirgousis,...

"As we are putting in more and more turbines, we need more and more switchgear and, as a result, more SF6 is being introduced into big turbines off shore.

https://youtu.be/Hrxf9cBvUYo
[youtube]Hrxf9cBvUYo[/youtube]

World's most powerful greenhouse gas on the rise 'due to green energy boom'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/13/worlds-powerful-greenhouse-gas-rise-due-green-energy-boom/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wind farms, just so sustainable...
Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New IMSR® Molten Salt Reactor video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVHiUxYsAxw
[youtube]TVHiUxYsAxw[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOm40J8WVn8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the result of people who get all of their knowledge of the world from ABC broadcast news.
https://twitter.com/BNW_Ben/status/1225687171333382145?s=20
https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1183695628288827392?s=20

 

[jonescg]

The term 'silver lining' was invented for situations like these.

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

That means Albertans won't be as "emotionally balanced" since all the lithium carbonate has been extracted from the water.... :lol:

 

[Dauntless]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/us/solar-panels-work-at-night-scn-trnd/index.html

 

[Hillhater]

So... renewable, but not recycleable ?

he municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another.

“That’s the end of it for this winter,” said waste technician Michael Bratvold, watching a bulldozer bury them forever in sand. “We’ll get the rest when the weather breaks this spring.”


Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It’s going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.
“The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for the North American unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA,

 

[jonescg]

Unfortunate, but at least they are fairly inert.

Not like this stuff:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-one-of-australias-biggest-waste-problems/10886866

 

[Punx0r]

Fibreglass can be incinerated for energy or ground up and used in cement production:

http://yachtrecycling.org/materials-recycle/fibreglass-recycling/how-is-fibreglass-recycling-done/

Obviously, if you live in a country with lax environmental protection then the cheapest option is probably just to dump it into a hole in the ground.

The average lifespan of a boat is 30-40 years and there are MILLIONS of fibreglass boats currently headed for landfill:

https://boatingindustry.com/top-stories/2017/01/12/aging-recycling-hulls-a-looming-crisis/

 

[Hillhater]

Unfortunate, but at least they are fairly inert.

Not like this stuff:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-one-of-australias-biggest-waste-problems/10886866

Seems it must be a particular Australia problem, since much of the rest of the world have found multiple , highly valuable, uses for the majority of their fly ash/coal ash.. not least of which is as a substitute for cement which effectively offsets the CO2 production from cement manufacture.
Wind Turbine blades (and boat huls ?) appear to have the same issue as glass and plastic products.
Which is, whilst they could be processed and reused in various ways, the economics of doing so make it a non viable option....hence the cheap land fill result.

 

[ZeroEm]

Need to send them to Florida, use them as base for raising all there roads and bridges!

 

[Punx0r]

Fly ash can be used to replace some of the portland cement in concrete. With portland cement having a carbon footprint of about 1 Ton CO2 per 1 Ton of cement it makes sense. Until you realise the carbon footprint of 1 Ton of flyash is 20-30 Tons CO2!

So it works if fly ash is a given, but it's far better to not make it in the first place.

Oh, and recycling must vary around the world, because here at least, recycled glass bottles get made into new bottles over and over as glass doesn't degrade. UK recycles around 50% of bottles & jars. Switzerland and Finland recycle 90%!

 

[Ianhill]

I'd like to add UK wants to recycle 100% of its glass bottles but the youngsters keep smashing them and shoving them in eachothers faces.

What crack a me up is plastics and bean tins must be washed before collection so we then use heat to warm the water and add more c02 to the problem.

There's no connectivity or broad approach been taken it's just hype train what country can shout the loudest, let's build tons of clean infrastructure from fossil fuels plain old political dribble time and time again for me the clean option is to not waste so much and live with in our means but that would destroy a consumer based economy so the survival of a country goes against the needs of its very citizens.

 

[Punx0r]

What crack a me up is plastics and bean tins must be washed before collection so we then use heat to warm the water and add more c02 to the problem.

I give them a swill in the dishwater just before it goes down the sink. Minimal effort, zero additional water and energy used and my recycling bin is clean and odour-free.

 

[billvon]

Fly ash can be used to replace some of the portland cement in concrete. With portland cement having a carbon footprint of about 1 Ton CO2 per 1 Ton of cement it makes sense. Until you realise the carbon footprint of 1 Ton of flyash is 20-30 Tons CO2!

So it works if fly ash is a given, but it's far better to not make it in the first place.

Fun fact - if fly ash somehow came out of a nuclear power plant, they'd sound the alarm and evacuate the area due to the radiation leak.

 

[amberwolf]

i must be missing something...but why toss out all those blades in the first place?

 

[Ohbse]

Likely not economic to reuse, given how much larger newer wind turbines have become. There's also been a lot of iterative improvement in blade profile over the last 15 years.

 

[ZeroEm]

I have been alarmed but the last number 412 ppm for carbon dioxide enables me to see the end of the human race as we know it. Our bodies will not be able to deal with the heat. Don't even care about the naysayers anymore, just does not matter anymore.

The last documentary and the data of our increasing usage has really hit a nerve with me. It's not just about reducing usage, the number has to be brought back in to the 300's and nature will not be enough.

 

[Ianhill]

I have been alarmed but the last number 412 ppm for carbon dioxide enables me to see the end of the human race as we know it. Our bodies will not be able to deal with the heat. Don't even care about the naysayers anymore, just does not matter anymore.

The last documentary and the data of our increasing usage has really hit a nerve with me. It's not just about reducing usage, the number has to be brought back in to the 300's and nature will not be enough.

Nature is a clever beast she can be a calm beauty but we just keep on pressing her in the wrong way and she will show who is boss slowly she is getting more and more pissed till it will be humans won't have such favourable global conditions as a whole for expansion,

That's when we see mass migrations and fights like never before as resources becomes to short to support the whole of humanity, there's people trying to push for a vegan future for the planet but it's to far gone for that and it's not really appealing to most.

If we look at the panda bear it migrated from a bear species to asia and got stuck with its diet as a consequence it's limited the size and reproductive success but it's also calmed the temper of the beast too.

In the long run best we can hope for is a thinning of the hurd with that drastic change forcing us to live closer and closer to the poles then as long as those lower numbers don't do nothing drastic its possible earth can recover over many millennia to a postion humans can thrive and it happen all over again

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

i must be missing something...but why toss out all those blades in the first place?

Damage for one from hitting birds, or from being hit by debris like hail. The other reason is that a better replacement came out that is more cost-effective, and it was cheaper to replace them wholesale and chuck the old ones.

You know how America is with recycling. Heck, I've been on a kick of Dell Optiplex gaming PC builds off youtube- dudes are making 60FPS 1080p gaming computers for $300 bucks!

 

[Hillhater]

i must be missing something...but why toss out all those blades in the first place?

put simply..
Blades from existing 1-3MW turbines, are not suitable for the new generation 5-10-12MW turbines.
They simply are not big enough !
The same goes for the Towers, not tall/strong enough..
The concrete base pads, not large or heavy enough for the bigger towers.. ( bases are being abandoned & left burried in the ground)
Or the Electrical infrastructure, Cables, Txformers, etc
....all junked !

 

[Punx0r]

Thereby proving that renewable energy just doesn't work. Unlike coal plants, where the first ones built a century ago were already the optimal size and efficiency and have never had to be replaced or added to.

 

[amberwolf]

i must be missing something...but why toss out all those blades in the first place?

put simply..
Blades from existing 1-3MW turbines, are not suitable for the new generation 5-10-12MW turbines.
They simply are not big enough !
The same goes for the Towers, not tall/strong enough..

seems like they would recycle them to other locations that need some power but either don't need or cant' afford the newest biggest stuff?

or maybe they just get better tax writeoff value than the money they would get from selling them to someone else?

 

[billvon]

The concrete base pads, not large or heavy enough for the bigger towers.. ( bases are being abandoned & left burried in the ground)
Or the Electrical infrastructure, Cables, Txformers, etc
....all junked !

Just like 90% of all cars ever built!
Just like 80% of all power plants ever built!

They're in good company.

 

[Hillhater]

Bill, go check out the metal recycling industry. For anything with metals in it...is valuable !
My point was they cannot reuse the existing towers or bases for the newer wind turbines.. the metal components are recycled, but the blades are uneconomical to recycle , and the concrete bases too difficult.
AW.. generally those older turbines are at the end of their useful life.
The blades do wear and fail, the gearboxes wear out, and the towers fatigue.
There is so much susidies and tax benefits, that is more financially sensible to replace rather than repair.
Many of these units are less than 20 years old.
Norcal has whole valleys littered with abandoned wind farms that no one want the responsibility (cost) of dismantling !
A fitting end for a dumb system of power generation...They are NOT the solution to an energy supply system.

 

[Dauntless]

It seems like they would recycle them to other locations that need some power but either don't need or cant' afford the newest biggest stuff?

or maybe they just get better tax writeoff value than the money they would get from selling them to someone else?

Depending on how far you ship it, the transportation of a 27,000 pound 3mw blade can cost over $100,000 and take a year to plan. Rather than reuse mechanical parts you could expect to rebuild and that's a percentage of the cost of the new one.

The worst would be the inspection, which would probably include ultrasonic. This is only so effective. If you've ever seen video of the self destruct of the blade, you'd know nothing is left when that happens. You rip out the wreckage and start over on the base.

The savings in reusing blades probably doesn't cover the increase for insurance. If it's insurable.

 

[Ianhill]

Chin up guys, least there's a ton of massive potential for modern art.