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Author | Topic: 2014 was hotter than 1998. 2015 data in yet? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
It isn't an irrational fear that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and will increase temperatures. It is rather solid science.
How much CO2 does it take to melt all that ice and raise the water by 216 feet? How much time do we got?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The real problem, as I said and as you quoted is that renewables like solar and wind just cannot provide the power our societies need. Yet. Just because we can't just switch now doesn't mean we can't look to them as/for alternative sources. You've been talking about the scalability problems and reliability concerns, but I haven't seen anyone address this issue:
quote: Have you looked into the Tesla Powerwall? It's just a big battery. But I think that kind of technology can offer the crutch that solar and wind need be able to provide the utility that you're saying is required. There's still plenty of work to be done, but we shouldn't disregard the renewables just yet.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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They differ in their reliability (always on or intermittent) and their power density (how much energy you can suck out per unit). They also differ in how their consumption impacts the atmosphere...
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Hence the challenge I've laid out repeatedly, here and elsewhere: Demonstrate the existence of those alternatives and show they are capable of providing the power we need. You guys keep harping on about the efficiency and scalability of the generators, but if you really want to be convinced then you should look more towards the storage. Battery technology is getting better. I asked you about Tesla Powerwall earlier, in Message 165. I ran across a Vox article here that goes into detail and has a bunch of graphs n'stuff about how you need solar plus storage to make it work. I still haven't seen you talk about that storage side much. Don't you think that's key to the capability you are looking for?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I know that my calculations don't account for the storage system, but certainly a storage system can't be that large that it would(sic) make solar power impossible on the islands. Or is the storage of electricity at even that scale simply not workable with current technology? I think you mean wouldn't. *ABE* wait, do you mean large as in capacity? Or large as in size? I was thinking you meant capacity, in that a larger capacity would mean more possibility, but upon re-read I think you might mean that a larger size would mean more impossibility. I wrote the following up on the first impression, it's not about the physical size of the battery as it is the capacity that it has (both in charge rate as well as amount) *ABE* Storage is important for off-setting the cost difference between peak and non-peak usage, as well as the between the generating and usage needs between peak and non-peak demand. In the case of soalr, peak is when the sun's shining bright, and non-peak would be when its dark or cloudy or whatever. The People can be trained to know when and when not to have a heavy load on the system. While I'm at work and it's sunny, and I have most of power consumption turned off, I can be charging my system up. And then when I get home, and it's dark, I can pull from the storage instead of the generators and get all the power I need. Having an "amount" of storage in your systems can help The People realize when they need to start considering lowering their consumption because they have unneeded uses and they're getting low on power (and will have to start buying it). The cost side of it helps the transition from the grid to not-on-gird in that you can "buy" the power that you're not getting and need to use to charge your system only during the times of the day or week when the usage and therefore prices from the grid are lower. Those are some of the problems with solar that aren't going be solved with the generators, but instead with the batteries. You should consider them more, and realize that it could make solar to not be a bad option.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The People can be trained to know when and when not to have a heavy load on the system.
That is not an option. Why not?
Having an "amount" of storage in your systems can help The People realize when they need to start considering lowering their consumption because they have unneeded uses and they're getting low on power (and will have to start buying it). Again. Not an option. You can't make power scarce and dear. I'm not making it scarce, it's still abundantly available from the grid. You just gotta pay the power company for that energy. The energy you get from solar is "free" (sans intallation costs), and The People will want to minimize how much they have to buy. I'm also not making it dear, it's the unneeded uses that are the ones that would get turned off. Like, you may decided to turn off the TV in the living room while you're making dinner so you're not wasting your "free" energy that you will then end up having to buy from the power company later.
The cost side of it helps the transition from the grid to not-on-gird ... What transition? The grid is the only way.
Not for everybody. There are people today who are off the grid.
The future doesn't involve me making my own clothes; building my own cars; growing my own food; spinning my own dishes; forging my own silverware; chiseling my own pencils. And it doesn't involve me generating my own electricity. Well, I do grow some of my own food in my garden, and I am intriged by the idea that I could rely less on the grid, especially if it is to the point that I hardly need it. I'm with you in that I just don't think the generators are there. But with the improvements to the storage technology that I am seeing, I beginning to see that solar is not an impossibility.
Part of the reason I've neglected the storage is that it doesn't really exist on anything near the scale required for calculating the kind of feasibility we've been talking about, like supplying large cities with power generated entirely from the sun's energy. You don't have to limit what you're talking about to just switching NYC into a fully solar operation. There other more interesting discussion to be had in the topic of solar energy.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Sure you are. When you . When I what?
Whether that scarcity is real or manufactured through manipulative pricing scarce is still scarce. It can't be scarce when there's plenty available. You just choose wiser times to use it instead of blindly using how ever much you do without thinking about it.
Who decides what's needed and what's not? The individual. You don't need the TV on when you're cooking dinner. And you can delay the start of your dishwasher for up to 6 hours so that it runs at a more appropriate time than when you also need the hot water for bathing.
Sure. But you can't run an entire society that way. I'm not talking about running an entire society. I'm talking about supplementation.
At what expense? My garden? Hardly any. Seeds are cheap and they last forever and I don't use many of them. I water a few times during the peak of summer. The cost is on the order of a handful of dollars per year, plus whatever time I spend out there (that I enjoy).
. It's an inefficient system; and you could never support an entire society like ours with everyone having to grow their own food. Sure, but it makes a nice supplement. Just like solar could.
It doesn't matter how cheap solar becomes, it will always be cheaper to run a grid system of mass-production and distribution than to run on a subsistence model of electricity generation. Supplementing the grid with solar can make your total expense less. It requires a good storage system, which Tesla is getting us towards, and a good way to manage the usage - much of which can already be automated. So then, yes, you can use your solar system at midnight even though there's no sunshine, because you're drawing from the battery at that time, and then when it's sunny and you're at work, you have your major uses programmed to go into low-power mode so you can use the excess for charging your battery back up. If you do need help from the grid, then the system is programmed to buy that power when the prices are lowest. The cost of power to the consumer can be lower when the grid is supplemented by a solar system.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I forgot to finish my thought. And I don't know exactly what I was going to say, but the jist of it is that it is made scarce either by limiting it directly or enacting pricing policies that limit its use. Scarce is scarce - however the scarcity is created. You're misunderstanding me, it all started with this:
quote: Forget the solar panel for a minute and just consider the storage battery. It is hooked up to your house and the grid. Your house has the option of pulling from either the battery or the gird, except when the battery is too low, then you have to pull from the grid to run your house and charge the battery. When the average usage to the grid is low, the battery gets charged by the grid, and when the average usage to the grid is high, your house uses the power from the battery. This spreads out the peaks and valleys in usage into a more flat line. It is more efficient and costs less. If your power company charges different rates for peak and non-peak usage, then you can directly impact your cost by only buying when it's cheapest. There's still the exact same amount of power available, and you can use it from the grid whenever you want, you just also have the option of using it from the grid more when there is less demand.
It's already up to the individual. And individuals don't behave the way you think would be best for them to behave. So how are you going to get them to behave the way you think best? Be specific. Show them how it's worth it, that they can reduce their cost enough to make it worth doing. Provide them the incentive of having more direct control over the amount of their cost, and give the the tools they need to monitor and implement a plan to reduce it a lot. A simple visual indication of how much is left in the battery, and how soon the power is going to start costing more, would influence people to think about what they really need to be using power for. Programmable appliances take all their thinking out of it. Adding a solar panel to the situation allows you to generate and store your own power that you don't have to buy from the grid. You can still buy from the grid all you want, but now you have an additional option of not to. That in no way makes the power more scarce.
In that case, you're talking about something that by definition can do nothing to reduce GHG emissions from electricity production. Simply using batteries to flatten out the peaks and valleys in the consumption rates improves efficiency and reduces emissions. Supplementing the generation with solar panels can only reduce that emission further. Each of them, solar and storage, by themselves don't have too much of an effect, but combined they start looking like a pretty good deal. There's still improvements to be made before I'm buying in, but as I've been saying I think the solution is going to come more from the storage side than the solar panel one.
Home-sized renewable power being put on to the grid, because it is unreliable and intermittent, requires the cycling on and off of the power companies primary generation devices - which run on FF - and the expenses of monitoring and scrambling to do these things. This cycling is inefficient and actually increases the costs of the electricity. No, the cycling off and on is the inefficiency that we are currently dealing with. We already have problems with peaks and valleys in the usage. Those slopes can be smoothed out with batteries, and smoothed even further with batteries and generators.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
But what is the point of getting rid of the peak? It reduces the cost of the grid, by making it more efficient and predictable, as well as the lowering direct cost of power to the consumer.
Sure. But what you're talking about is something that is not really going to have any effect on GHG emissions - the topic of this thread. Simply making the grid more efficient reduces GHG emissions. Adding solar generation on top of that reduces the need to burn fossil fuels.
A small amount, yes; because you are basically increasing the baseload, which allows more generators to run non-stop at max capacity. But how much is saved? And at what additional environmental costs? Shallowing down the peaks allows for FF generators to not run non-stop at max capacity. The amount of power they calculate to have "on hand" is measured from the peak. If the peak is lower then they don't need to keep as much on hand, and don't need to run the generators as much. That can only reduce GHG emission, there is no additional environmental costs. Calculating savings has a whole lot of variables you'd have to control for to get any meaningful numbers. You can come up with some and we can do some math, or you can just read the Vox article I linked you to for some examples.
Those peaks and valleys aren't the same thing as the intermittency of renewable energy at all. Of course not. They're one of the benefits of supplementing traditional energy with renewable ones.
They are predictable and rather steady - the peak 'ramps up' once and then 'ramps down' once. Actually, there's a shorter peak in the morning and then a larger peak in the evening. And then on top of that the height of those peaks varies by day, by week, by month, and by year. An ideal perfectly flat demand is the best scenario for the generators and anything that moves us closer to that is an improvement.
When it comes to renewables, you have one minute where there is a bunch of power, then a cloud comes over head and you're 'generators' are knocked out so you have to kick on a few gas turbines; once the cloud moves, you've got to shut the gas turbines back off or you overload the system. Then you're good for a while... until the next cloud. And this goes on and on all day long. That's why storage is such a key component, as I've been harping on.
The ramping up and ramping down of the peak power period causes some inefficiency, but it is nothing at all like the inefficiency caused by the constant and unpredictable on and off of renewable generation. And the one word solution is: Batteries. Have you looked into the Tesla PowerWall yet?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
That's why storage is such a key component, as I've been harping on. I agree. But the storage technology isn't there; not at a cost that makes it feasible for the majority of people anyway.
Have you looked into the Tesla PowerWall yet? Yes. Remember? I pointed out how ridiculously expensive it is and how little power storage you get with it: Message 279. Okay, so you do understand the concept I'm trying to get across. Thank you.
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