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Author Topic:   2014 was hotter than 1998. 2015 data in yet?
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 286 of 357 (777970)
02-13-2016 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 284 by New Cat's Eye
02-12-2016 1:57 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
I'm not making it scarce, it's still abundantly available from the grid.
Sure you are. When you . Whether that scarcity is real or manufactured through manipulative pricing scarce is still scarce.
... it's the unneeded uses that are the ones that would get turned off.
Who decides what's needed and what's not?
There are people today who are off the grid.
Sure. But you can't run an entire society that way. I sure as hell don't have time to maintain a solar power system on my house.
I don't even have a house...
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.
At what expense?
Growing one's own food in modern society is a luxury hobby. The cost of it per unit is higher than getting food from the grocery store. The resources used, etc. It's an inefficient system; and you could never support an entire society like ours with everyone having to grow their own food.
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.
There other more interesting discussion to be had in the topic of solar energy.
Well let's have them then.
I think RAZD and LNA have given up trying to support their outrageous claims.
Jon

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 284 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-12-2016 1:57 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 292 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2016 12:35 PM Jon has replied
 Message 309 by RAZD, posted 02-20-2016 5:38 PM Jon has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 287 of 357 (777973)
02-13-2016 1:04 PM
Reply to: Message 285 by NoNukes
02-13-2016 2:37 AM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
In fact, in many locations, the power company will install devices that manage some of your large energy users for you so that they get cut off during peak demand
What is the plan? Turn off the furnace and hot water while people are at home making dinner or taking a shower?
Peak demand exists for a reason: it's the time when everyone needs power; typically during the twilight feeding hours (morning and evening) where power is used to light homes and cook breakfasts and dinners.
Access to that power is a huge part of the high standard of living we enjoy in the first world.
In impoverished underdeveloped nations, they use highly-toxic and inefficient fuels such as charcoal and dung for this and the barely-scraping-by poverty that results is hardly a surprise.
Of course Jon will tell you that conserving power results in having a Kenyan type economy.
If you want to conserve your power, conserve it. But the point is that it has to be up to you.
If it is not up to the end user to conserve, then you do indeed end up with a Kenyan economy where economic prosperity and the well-being it generates are constrained by the availability of reliable energy.
If folks want to live this way, that is their individual choice. But any energy policy that tries to compel such behavior - the "People can be trained to know ... when not to have a heavy load on the system" - is simply immoral and completely counter to everything we know about how societies become wealthy and raise happy, healthy citizens.
To get even further down to the basics: cheap energy is essential to the alleviation of poverty. The regressive energy taxes you and New Cat's Eye are throwing about are wicked to their core.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 285 by NoNukes, posted 02-13-2016 2:37 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 288 by NoNukes, posted 02-13-2016 1:15 PM Jon has replied
 Message 310 by RAZD, posted 02-20-2016 6:00 PM Jon has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 288 of 357 (777974)
02-13-2016 1:15 PM
Reply to: Message 287 by Jon
02-13-2016 1:04 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
Peak demand exists for a reason: it's the time when everyone needs power; typically during the twilight feeding hours (morning and evening) where power is used to light homes and cook breakfasts and dinners.
You simply are not thinking. How hard is it really to do your laundry at some time other than the peak time? While there are some activities that you won't want to shift around, it is pretty easy to spread some things around the clock. And with some automation, you don't even need to handle them personally.
Don't do your laundry at dinner time, and then your hot water heater won't run out of shower water when you take a bath or do dishes. If you are doing dishes using the dishwasher, why can't that happen while you are at work? Even some seemingly time bound things like cooking can be scheduled so that the major power consuming portions are off peak. I understand that most people won't want to turn off their air conditioners in the heat of summer, but many other activities can be delayed or advanced so that they don't occur together.
The idea that you cannot significantly shape your energy usage or that large groups of people cannot do so even with some technical help is simply ridiculous. Even if the total energy usage is still the same, reducing peak means reducing I2R losses and results in an increase of efficiency.
Now if what you are really suggesting is that you would personally be unwilling to behave in such a fashion, then I'll accept that.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 287 by Jon, posted 02-13-2016 1:04 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 289 by Jon, posted 02-13-2016 10:38 PM NoNukes has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 289 of 357 (777988)
02-13-2016 10:38 PM
Reply to: Message 288 by NoNukes
02-13-2016 1:15 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
You simply are not thinking.
I am thinking very clearly: Successful societies aren't built on the whims of electricity Nazis who make it their job to know when people 'need' power and when they don't.
How hard is it really to do your laundry at some time other than the peak time?
Very.
I have a job.
Don't you?
If you are doing dishes using the dishwasher, why can't that happen while you are at work?
It typically does. But waiting to turn the dishwasher on until right before you leave the house is hardly going to have any impact whatsoever on peak load times.
The few things that can reasonably be done on a population level will have little effect to relieve peak load stress.
But even implementing these sort of things is difficult, because now you're talking about building a system that rests on everyone synchronizing their daily tasks to avoid an overload on the system, and the only way to avoid that kind of devastating failure is to literally sit in everyone's fucking house and stop them from using a forbidden appliance outside its approved timeframe.
Otherwise the whole system is just waiting for Martha to start the dishwasher at the wrong time and plunge her whole state into darkness.
Even some seemingly time bound things like cooking can be scheduled so that the major power consuming portions are off peak.
You do know what causes the peak load, don't you?
If you reschedule the 'major power consuming portions', you've only moved the peak, not eliminated them.
It seems to me that you are taking contrary and silly positions just for the purpose of continuing to defend the indefensible.
There is nothing silly about believing that people in free societies should be able to wash their hair as they please.
Especially when we are talking about something as stupid as getting rid of peaking in the electricity demand cycle.
Why the hell does it even matter? The same amount of energy is used regardless. If we're talking about building a system that generates renewable energy when able and then stores it for later use, as long as there is enough captured and stored, then when it's used really doesn't make much difference.
Now if what you are really suggesting is that you would personally be unwilling to behave in such a fashion, then I'll accept that.
I can't. I have a life. My life works around a schedule similar to those of other people. The times I am home are the times when I need lights on (morning and evening); the times when I can do laundry (weekends); or wash dishes (after supper).
...
Also, I think I replied to half of your pre-edited post and half of your post-edited post. I don't feel like sifting through your edits though, so if I missed something important in between clicking 'reply' and submitting this, let me know.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 288 by NoNukes, posted 02-13-2016 1:15 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 290 by Dogmafood, posted 02-14-2016 5:39 AM Jon has replied
 Message 300 by NoNukes, posted 02-15-2016 3:04 PM Jon has replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


(1)
Message 290 of 357 (777994)
02-14-2016 5:39 AM
Reply to: Message 289 by Jon
02-13-2016 10:38 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
If you reschedule the 'major power consuming portions', you've only moved the peak, not eliminated them.
If we move the peak into the valley then it is no longer a peak.
Why the hell does it even matter? The same amount of energy is used regardless.
A balanced load requires less generating capacity to satisfy. A 1 kw generator will supply 24 kwh in a day running at it's designed capacity. If you want 18 of those kw during 12 hrs of the day then you need a 1.5 kw generator that is running at reduced efficiency for the other 12 hrs. So it ends up costing more for the same amount of power. It is the same as the difference between hwy and city mileage in your car.
There is nothing silly about believing that people in free societies should be able to wash their hair as they please.
Actually, it is kind of silly to be washing our hair so much that the phosphate run off is endangering our drinking water. Maybe even worse than silly.
I agree that maximum freedom should be the goal but unlimited consumption is not sustainable. Not even for the few of us that have the option.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 289 by Jon, posted 02-13-2016 10:38 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 291 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 10:05 AM Dogmafood has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 291 of 357 (777996)
02-14-2016 10:05 AM
Reply to: Message 290 by Dogmafood
02-14-2016 5:39 AM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
If we move the peak into the valley then it is no longer a peak.
You mean midnight?
A balanced load requires less generating capacity to satisfy. A 1 kw generator will supply 24 kwh in a day running at it's designed capacity. If you want 18 of those kw during 12 hrs of the day then you need a 1.5 kw generator that is running at reduced efficiency for the other 12 hrs. So it ends up costing more for the same amount of power.
Our options are limited. We can either have a very stable system that runs somewhat inefficiently as load changes throughout the day or even year or we can have a very efficient system allowed to operate at maximum capacity but that runs into the problem of potentially crashing in on millions of consumers if Billy decides on having some toast at just the wrong time.
Though with large scale renewable energy systems, where the consumption of power is separated from its generation by the storage medium, these issues like peak load become less important. You just have to have enough power, period.
... but unlimited consumption is not sustainable.
It's not 'unlimited consumption' and it's not 'washing our hair so much' - it's just washing it at the time of our choosing.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 290 by Dogmafood, posted 02-14-2016 5:39 AM Dogmafood has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 311 by RAZD, posted 02-20-2016 6:16 PM Jon has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 292 of 357 (778004)
02-14-2016 12:35 PM
Reply to: Message 286 by Jon
02-13-2016 12:37 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 286 by Jon, posted 02-13-2016 12:37 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 293 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 1:24 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 293 of 357 (778008)
02-14-2016 1:24 PM
Reply to: Message 292 by New Cat's Eye
02-14-2016 12:35 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
When I what?
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.
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.
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.
I'm talking about supplementation.
In that case, you're talking about something that by definition can do nothing to reduce GHG emissions from electricity production.
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).
Right. You enjoy it as a hobby - that's why you do it. Not to get necessary food. Because if you did it for that reason you'd starve to death since the methods used in home gardening simply cannot provide the amount of food necessary to feed large societies. Alternatively, if we did use home gardening to supply our societies with food, we'd be running such an inefficient, wasteful, land-intensive operation that the effects on the environment would be orders of magnitude more severe than the effects our current food-production methods have.
Or to really cut to the chase, what we're talking about is economies of scale. Not only do fewer inputs per unit of output create more affordable goods, but since all inputs are ultimately derived from the environment, they create a smaller environmental footprint than producing the same number of goods without the advantages of economies of scale.
Sure, but it makes a nice supplement. Just like solar could.
Okay... But how will that reduce GHG emissions?
The cost of power to the consumer can be lower when the grid is supplemented by a solar system.
This is only true when the price of generation isn't placed directly on the consumers. 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.
Regulations that establish buy-back programs simply prohibit power companies from charging those costs to their consumers - they don't make those costs go away.
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 292 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2016 12:35 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 294 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2016 5:21 PM Jon has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 294 of 357 (778025)
02-14-2016 5:21 PM
Reply to: Message 293 by Jon
02-14-2016 1:24 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
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:
The People can be trained to know when and when not to have a heavy load on the system.
...
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).
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 293 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 1:24 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 295 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 8:02 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 295 of 357 (778031)
02-14-2016 8:02 PM
Reply to: Message 294 by New Cat's Eye
02-14-2016 5:21 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
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.
I see what you're talking about.
But what is the point of getting rid of the peak?
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.
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 using batteries to flatten out the peaks and valleys in the consumption rates improves efficiency and reduces emissions.
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?
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 peaks and valleys aren't the same thing as the intermittency of renewable energy at all. They are predictable and rather steady - the peak 'ramps up' once and then 'ramps down' once.
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.
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.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 294 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2016 5:21 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 296 by NoNukes, posted 02-14-2016 8:14 PM Jon has replied
 Message 299 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-15-2016 10:11 AM Jon has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 296 of 357 (778032)
02-14-2016 8:14 PM
Reply to: Message 295 by Jon
02-14-2016 8:02 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
But what is the point of getting rid of the peak?
At least three favorable outcomes come from lowering the peak current/power delivered.
1) The available generating capacity required is based on the peak and not the average, so a more even consumption pattern means less generating equipment or less wear and tear on the same amount of equipment.
2) Transmission losses are lowered when peaks are lowered. This is because the losses vary as the square of the current delivered rather than proportionately.
3) For generation that is based on a heat cycle of some type, efficiency is greater at lower generation levels, so less fuel is required to generate the same amount of energy if the power level (joules/second) is lower.
And there can be some second order effects as well. For example shifting consumption of solar energy into daylight hours avoids energy storage losses if that technology is being used.
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.
If this were as hopeless as you make it sound, solar energy would never work, but of course you are ignoring energy storage technologies which can smooth out the power generation of wind and solar technology.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 295 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 8:02 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 297 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 8:45 PM NoNukes has replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 297 of 357 (778033)
02-14-2016 8:45 PM
Reply to: Message 296 by NoNukes
02-14-2016 8:14 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
... but of course you are ignoring energy storage technologies which can smooth out the power generation of wind and solar technology.
But on what scale?
Isn't that what this is all about? LNA made some bogus claims about entire populations running on nothing but solar power and I challenged him to prove it.
If you just want to talk about some renewable energy replacing some FF energy some of the time, I am not going to argue with you about that; but I'm also not going to pretend that that's at all meaningful or helpful in solving the problems of global warming.
If we want to make any kind of real impact on GHG, we need to be really upping the scale of our renewable energy sources. And I'm just not convinced the technology's really there yet.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 296 by NoNukes, posted 02-14-2016 8:14 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 298 by NoNukes, posted 02-15-2016 1:36 AM Jon has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 298 of 357 (778041)
02-15-2016 1:36 AM
Reply to: Message 297 by Jon
02-14-2016 8:45 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
sn't that what this is all about? LNA made some bogus claims about entire populations running on nothing but solar power and I challenged him to prove it.
Jon, this isn't strictly about what LNA claims. In fact, LNA hasn't made a single post since his suspension about two weeks ago. You're making your own bogus claims and assumptions and it is legitimate discussion to point out your errors. You've made statements to the effect that using solar power to generate large percentages of power (and not all of our current usage) will cause us to have an economy like Kenya, and you persist in talking about 100% replacement even when you are not addressing people talking about running on nothing but solar power.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 297 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 8:45 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 302 by Jon, posted 02-15-2016 6:22 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 299 of 357 (778047)
02-15-2016 10:11 AM
Reply to: Message 295 by Jon
02-14-2016 8:02 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
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?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 295 by Jon, posted 02-14-2016 8:02 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 303 by Jon, posted 02-15-2016 6:22 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 300 of 357 (778060)
02-15-2016 3:04 PM
Reply to: Message 289 by Jon
02-13-2016 10:38 PM


Re: Solar Power in Hawai'i
I have a job.
And your job prevents the washing machine from running when you are not watching it right? So you cannot wash your closes in the wee hours of the morning when most people in your locality are asleep.
It typically does. But waiting to turn the dishwasher on until right before you leave the house is hardly going to have any impact whatsoever on peak load times.
It's one of a collection of things you can do. Your dishwasher is one of the larger energy consuming loads in your house. Probably only your stove and heat/air system are larger loads.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams

This message is a reply to:
 Message 289 by Jon, posted 02-13-2016 10:38 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 301 by Jon, posted 02-15-2016 5:58 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
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