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Flaky posted:It means I haven't seen anything like these claims from the nuclear proponents, so maybe they should take some time to investigate the claims of their competitors. You haven't seen nuclear proponents claim they can generate all of Australia's electricity for $25 million. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
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Nov 20, 2012 09:17
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ohgodwhat posted:You haven't seen nuclear proponents claim they can generate all of Australia's electricity for $25 million. Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The claim made in the video was that solar PV could generate 100% of Australia's 2020 renewable electricity target of 20% for $25 million within 10 years. That would mean for $125 million you could provide all of Australia's electricity with that technology. So it is only a marginal difference in price, and still way more cost efficient than nuclear.
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Nov 20, 2012 11:06
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Great thread here. Energy is one of the areas I unfortunately don't know much about, but probably should! So I have a couple of questions. First, the measurements used in the OP. Is this the amount of MW, GW, or TWh generated per year by these various methods? I'm also a bit unclear on thw scale too, how much GW is in a MW and so on.. Second, what is the output of the dirty methods of energy generation, like one that runs of coal, oil, or gas? It would be interesting to see how thins like the solar thermal tower compare.
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Nov 20, 2012 12:32
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Flaky posted:The claim made in the video was that solar PV could generate 100% of Australia's 2020 renewable electricity target of 20% for $25 million within 10 years. That would mean for $125 million you could provide all of Australia's electricity with that technology. So it is only a marginal difference in price, and still way more cost efficient than nuclear. You realize you are just pulling numbers out of your rear end here right?
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Nov 20, 2012 13:59
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Flaky posted:The claim made in the video was that solar PV could generate 100% of Australia's 2020 renewable electricity target of 20% for $25 million within 10 years. That would mean for $125 million you could provide all of Australia's electricity with that technology. So it is only a marginal difference in price, and still way more cost efficient than nuclear. And it's a claim so laughable we'll just ignore it, unless incredibly convincing evidence is made known. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You really fail to understand why it's a ridiculous claim? If we were to accept such 'video' proof, then we all should be circlejerking over magnetic motors, Rossi-Focardi cold-fusion schemes or whatever scam is around today. @Hobo and the megapost: I'm sorry, but the S&L predictions have proved wrong. They are not to be considered until they make another study, which starts off correct data from 2012. 3.5b for 1gw of solar is not real data, is wishful thinking. (They claimed costs to get at 12c/KWh in 2012, and today they are at 27c/KWh. I don't think the data will miraculously align with predictions in the next years, since there are no real hints that will happen - "scale" is especially not one, since we've now accepted that more plants will be made in modules of around 100mw, which have already been built) @Xmas: Welcome in the thread of "Humanity is retarded and so will die"! First, there's no "MW per year". a MW is a unit of power, while a MWh is a unit of energy. One plant with a power of one MW running for an hour produces one MWh. M/G/T are the prefixes for Mega, Giga and Tera, or 10^6, 10^9 and 10^12 (the same as bytes, except that those sometimes use 1024 instead of 1000 as multiplier) To make a comparison, further definition of "output" is needed. On a per-plant basis, coal goes all the way to 2GW, while solar/wind is normally around 1/20 that. On a same-cost basis, coal is typically around 10 of solar cost, 20% of wind cost, and 50% of nuclear cost, considering no carbon laws at all, and really cheap coal. Realistically, it can easily double. The numbers easily change. On a same-land basis, we're still searching for accurate data on coal mining. It's probably less land-intensive than Wind or Solar, and surely much more land-intensive than Nuclear. On a same-deaths-caused basis, coal is loving evil and should die already. nb: "Coal" is the flagship, but oil and gas are more or less the same on all comparisons, except costing a bit more.
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Nov 20, 2012 14:17
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Xmas Pterodactyl posted:Great thread here. Energy is one of the areas I unfortunately don't know much about, but probably should! So I have a couple of questions. GW = Gigawatt. It's 1000 MW. A typical plant is therefore 1 GW. TWh = Terra-watt hour. Terrawatt would be 1000 GW (a LOT of energy being produced at one time!). Terra-watt hour is a way of collecting a per-time energy unit over a period of time. It'd be the energy equivalent of letting one terrawatt plant run for an hour. This unit would be used to measure the amount of energy produced in a nation over a year. Typically end-users will deal with kilowatt hours, a much smaller unit of measurement. A single reactor would deal with MWh. A utility might measure GWh. A large nation would deal with TWh. A large coal plant will typically generate 1000 MW. It can run most all the time, provided it receives shipments of coal. The largest of the solar plants currently in operation are on the order of 100s of MW. It can only run in the presence of sunlight (so definitely not at night, and much less efficiently depending on cloud cover). There are tens of thousands of coal plants. There are maybe dozens of solar. The coal plants cost maybe a few hundred million to construct for 1000 MW. The solar plants cost several hundreds of millions at minimum for their maybe hundreds of MW. And that's on the rare side, since most solar tech is currently in prototyping/theoretical stages. Most oil plants are smaller than coal (50-200 MW) and exist solely to provide extra energy during peak energy usage times (very hot days requiring lots of A/C). They aren't terribly expensive to build, the fuel costs are such that it's cheaper to leave them off unless they're needed. Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) are quick-firing high-power (~1000MW) jet engines that run off natural gas. They're also fairly cheap to build. A decade ago they weren't too feasible given the rising price of natural gas, but now natural gas has gotten quite cheap, making them economical if there are no carbon restrictions in place. They create a good deal of greenhouse gases, but not so much as coal, and without the radiation/horrifyingly-toxic chemicals that coal releases. In short, coal is horrible, natural gas is bad if you believe in climate change, oil is bad but useful, and solar is nice but expensive, land-heavy, and limited in deployment. Pander fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Nov 20, 2012 |
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Nov 20, 2012 14:28
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Flaky posted:The claim made in the video was that solar PV could generate 100% of Australia's 2020 renewable electricity target of 20% for $25 million within 10 years. That would mean for $125 million you could provide all of Australia's electricity with that technology. So it is only a marginal difference in price, and still way more cost efficient than nuclear.
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Nov 20, 2012 16:06
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QuarkJets posted:Australia's energy consumption in 2009 was 250 GWh.
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Nov 20, 2012 16:08
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Flaky posted:The claim made in the video was that solar PV could generate 100% of Australia's 2020 renewable electricity target of 20% for $25 million within 10 years. That would mean for $125 million you could provide all of Australia's electricity with that technology. So it is only a marginal difference in price, and still way more cost efficient than nuclear. That's not what you said (unless Australia's 2020 electricity usage is five times what it is now, which I believe contradicts another of your points): quote:Things like new solar PV under development at Melbourne Uni could provide 25GWH capacity in 10 years for only $25 million (that's the entire current demand of Australia). Either way, it's crazy. How much of the rest of the video is complete bunk as well?
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Nov 20, 2012 16:25
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Pander posted:I think everyone's allowed a bit of an unrealistic dream on certain issues, and mine is hydrogen fuel cell cars everywhere. I don't want to see renewable ethanol, I want to see an end to CO2 emissions across all major energy production mediums. Do you have a source on the 100 years until carbon neutral? I was under the impression that since switchgrass basically grew wild with relatively little water, it was a viable solution. Also, since ethanol can be created from waste product, that doesn't really create as great of an impact if we are still manufacturing on large scale (and I don't see that changing anytime soon). quote:I don't want to see "carbon neutrality", I consider that to be disingenuous environmentalism. I want zero loving emissions, nothing going into the air at all because nothing is being burned. No "clean coal", no "well it's not QUITE so bad" natural gas. Your dream of hydrogen fuel-cell cars are definitely not zero-emissions when you look at well-to-wheel. It's been a few years since I've been involved heavily in clean energy/transportation, so correct me if I am wrong, but the two main sources of hydrogen are compressed natural gas and electrolyzing water. In both those cases, it would be more energy and emissions efficient to directly use the CNG/electricity to drive the car directly. The only decent proposal I found for electrolyzing water was that it would be manufactured with excess base load generation (again, utilizing what would be wasted, so there's "no loss"). My dream would be electric cars with range extension based largely off waste-produced ethanol. I know that there are emissions from coal, but the well-to-wheels emissions of coal-fired electricity are significantly lower than gasoline and other fossil fuels, and there is at least the upside for true zero-emission electricity. Of course, this dream also includes a much greater public transportation infrastructure. Trains are so efficient it's ridiculous (500 ton-miles/gallon of diesel).
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Nov 20, 2012 19:24
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Pander posted:You're off by several orders of magnitude. It was 250 TWh, not GWh. Whoops, read B as M. Yeah, it was 250 TWh e: Oh man, even if you were somehow able to generate 25 GW of power for 12 hours a day every day (absurd, 25 GW is probably the peak absolute-best-case-scenario), you'd still only hit 110 TWh in a year. None of this guy's claims even make sense 
QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 20, 2012 |
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Nov 20, 2012 19:34
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ThePeteEffect posted:Of course, this dream also includes a much greater public transportation infrastructure. Trains are so efficient it's ridiculous (500 ton-miles/gallon of diesel). That's why 40% of freight by ton-mileage in the US gets carried by rail.
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Nov 20, 2012 19:43
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PeteEffect: I investigated the biofuels during my thesis. That's where I found out that the goal for carbon neutrality was deferred for 100 years, basically involving planting extra trees (full scale trees) to offset the carbon burned during switchgrass. I'll look for my paper later and get the source. It might've been my university's hilariously flawed climate action plan. Also, why use coal-fired generation for electricity, ever? I'd rather seen CCGTs used over coal. I don't get how anyone could hand-wave a source of immolation that freely releases radioactive particles in the air, on top of the incredible quantity of greenhouse gases. Are you part of the anti-nuke Australian posters that seem to be pretty common in this thread, and therefore consider nuclear not-an-option? I'm a huge fan of rail as well. Something like France's TGV in America to link major population centers would be beautiful to help reduce fuel consumption. It's just not on a scale palatable to most Americans now, when the current high-speed rail (more modest) bills tend to face hard fights for funding.
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Nov 20, 2012 21:01
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Also for those arguing about solar, please be careful not to confuse GW, which is theoretical capacity, with GWe, which is generated electrical capacity. All power plants are affected by a capacity factor which is largely set in stone for renewables due to environmental conditions such as night time or lack of wind. Renewables also have to contend with immense problems when it comes to load-following. Not only do you need to instal a large surplus of renewable capacity to generate the required amount of real-world electrical capacity, but you also need to instal a large surplus of intermittent storage capacity if you want to use all that electrical capacity when you need it and keep the grid stable. Load-following is something that cannot be ignored. Diesel generators and open-cycle gas plants are our most used options right now, but they're expensive and happen to be more polluting than other options whenever they're used to support renewables. There's a myth that nuclear plants can't load-follow, but it is physically possible with some planned heavy-water designs getting down to 75% full power (http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionA.htm#load-follow). The main issue with nuclear isn't fuel either, it's building the reactors. Construction is a long-drawn and expensive process today. Developping current designs into small modular reactors would considerably shorten that time, and thus their expense, on top of everything else. If you think ahead of that, you get into fuel breeders and those things have practically no fuel costs due to the shear abundance of the fertile nuclear materials they use. They also tend to be far safer due to the finickiness of breeding cycles. LFTRs and IFRs are breeders, although my money is on the LFTR since plutonium breeders have a history of not working out very well (it doesn't help that plutonium breeding and fissioning requires 2 completely different neutron "speeds", which really limits your coolant choices and core geometry to less-than-ideal things like liquid sodium). Office Thug fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Nov 20, 2012 |
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Nov 20, 2012 21:31
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Pander posted:PeteEffect: I investigated the biofuels during my thesis. That's where I found out that the goal for carbon neutrality was deferred for 100 years, basically involving planting extra trees (full scale trees) to offset the carbon burned during switchgrass. I'll look for my paper later and get the source. It might've been my university's hilariously flawed climate action plan. Thanks!  quote:Also, why use coal-fired generation for electricity, ever? I'd rather seen CCGTs used over coal. I don't get how anyone could hand-wave a source of immolation that freely releases radioactive particles in the air, on top of the incredible quantity of greenhouse gases. Are you part of the anti-nuke Australian posters that seem to be pretty common in this thread, and therefore consider nuclear not-an-option? I didn't mean to imply that I was hand-waving away the pollutants of coal. I was approaching it from the perspective of the power mix we have now. A lot of the information on well-to-wheels emissions shows a definite improvement with electric vehicles even with coal-fired generation. My point was that, while I'd love to see coal-fired generation gone, moving to an electric fleet is enough of a good thing on its own that I feel it's a worthy goal independently. I also believe that nuclear is a great option. A few years ago I would have been anti-nuclear, but reading a lot about nuke plants has turned me around.
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Nov 20, 2012 21:35
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Office Thug posted:is largely set in stone for renewables due to environmental conditions such as night time or lack of wind. This is untrue, at least as far as CST goes. Increasing the capacity factor of CST for a given region is as simple as building more salt storage and receiving towers. The pertinent information for solar towers is capacity factor per $ - not whether capacity factor is achievable, but whether or not it's economical. Currently the most economic capacity factor is ~70%, or about 15 hours of salt storage. Above this point, it becomes a better choice to hook more towers up to a new turbine, rather than use them for further storage.
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Nov 21, 2012 02:49
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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ThePeteEffect posted:Thanks! I'd just say that I'd rather have gasoline cars than coal power with electric cars. Gasoline you can trust to be a lot of hydrocarbon chains. Coal is a carbon with god-knows-what-else. Ideally fuel efficiency gains will continue and the Teslas/Leafs/etc gain market share. I just don't think that goal should provide impetus for a self-defeating move to coal. Regarding the biomass, the climate action plan of my university mentions burning biomass to offset the shutting-down of the local coal plant, but never went into the growing portion or anything. I found the information from a different link, something similar to this study. Some other sources agree, although this is a focus on wood-burning. Switchgrass is better in some respects (relatively high energy per unit area, less environmental impact). I'm still more of a fan of algal fuels. Eat up nitrogen, give out capturable methane and high-grade oil? Faster than plants? With less waste parts? Interested.
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Nov 21, 2012 03:41
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Electric cars get way too much hype. They sound good at first glance, but when you think about it, they don’t actually accomplish very much by way of solving problems at all. Imagine if we somehow instantly changed every car in the world to an electric motor. You’ve still got traffic, you’ve still got parking shortages, you've still got people not getting fit, and unless you’re getting your electricity renewably, (which in most Australian cities isn’t the case), you’re still burning fossil fuels, with an emissions intensity which as bad or worse than petrol or diesel, let alone LPG. The only problem they do actually solve is tailpipe particulate emissions. So the air on our streets will be a little bit cleaner, because the combustion which is the source of the energy happens in a power station a few hundred kilometers away, rather than under the hood. Push bikes 4 life.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:06
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Office Thug posted:All power plants are affected by a capacity factor which is largely set in stone for renewables due to environmental conditions such as night time or lack of wind. Renewables also have to contend with immense problems when it comes to load-following. This is just flat out wrong. Solar power directly cuts into the peak energy use period (the middle of the day) and displaces carbon emitting fuel sources 1:1. You will always use all of the renewable energy available to you, because it costs nothing. Then you will meet demand with fossil fuels until the point at which storage and network limitations of renewables are overcome. You never ever turn off a solar PV unit. If you had looked at the chart from the german energy regulator I linked to in the video you would see this happening in the real world right now. Aureon posted:And it's a claim so laughable we'll just ignore it, unless incredibly convincing evidence is made known. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I agree that it was extraordinary. I had never heard a claim (and it wasn't the only amazing one) like it which is why I linked the video. I was interested to see whether there would be any serious commentary on it by the posters in this thread. Clearly my expectations were too high. Let me reiterate. Three senior scientists are agreeing that the energy market in Australia is in the early stages of a transformation similar in magnitude to the industrial revolution. The only repeat only economic form of energy generation that they envisage in the immediate future is renewable. If you fundamentally disagree with this statement, then you should watch the video. Flaky fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 04:28
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The worst case scenario for an electric car is slightly higher emissions than internal combustion. It's generally better.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:33
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Hobo Erotica posted:Electric cars get way too much hype. They sound good at first glance, but when you think about it, they don’t actually accomplish very much by way of solving problems at all. Imagine if we somehow instantly changed every car in the world to an electric motor. You’ve still got traffic, you’ve still got parking shortages, you've still got people not getting fit, and unless you’re getting your electricity renewably, (which in most Australian cities isn’t the case), you’re still burning fossil fuels, with an emissions intensity which as bad or worse than petrol or diesel, let alone LPG. They're also less noisy, in low speed and stop-and-go traffic they use very little energy, and they do put out a shitload less pollution in total even if they were all powered solely by coal. Also you greatly drop the demand for petroleum, which we could really do with keeping around for other things like say planes and plastic production. I don't know about you Australians but in the US most car commutes are under 40 miles round trip a day. With electric primary hybrid engines it means most commutes could then be done almomst entirely on battery, especially in the most traffic-heavy areas. And then you get into how electric car batteries CAN help with load balancing electricity when they're plugged in with improved grids and all, which is very relevant to a heavy on the renewables system. hoboerotic posted:The worst case scenario for an electric car is slightly higher emissions than internal combustion. It's generally better. Not to mention it's much easier to filter emissions from power stations than from tailpipes.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:37
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Hobo Erotica posted:Electric cars get way too much hype. They sound good at first glance, but when you think about it, they don’t actually accomplish very much by way of solving problems at all. Imagine if we somehow instantly changed every car in the world to an electric motor. You’ve still got traffic, you’ve still got parking shortages, you've still got people not getting fit, and unless you’re getting your electricity renewably, (which in most Australian cities isn’t the case), you’re still burning fossil fuels, with an emissions intensity which as bad or worse than petrol or diesel, let alone LPG. I don't see what people getting fat and stuck in traffic has to do with anything  And again, Australia's inability to accept nuclear as a green source of mass amounts of power doesn't mean electric cars aren't feasible globally. Hobo Erotica, I think you should title every one of your posts with a giant bolded and underlined message like  IN AUSTRALIA because not a whole lot of what you post applies globally.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:39
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Hobo Erotica posted:Electric cars get way too much hype. They sound good at first glance, but when you think about it, they don’t actually accomplish very much by way of solving problems at all. Imagine if we somehow instantly changed every car in the world to an electric motor. You’ve still got traffic, you’ve still got parking shortages, you've still got people not getting fit, and unless you’re getting your electricity renewably, (which in most Australian cities isn’t the case), you’re still burning fossil fuels, with an emissions intensity which as bad or worse than petrol or diesel, let alone LPG. Centralized generation is much more efficient and makes it easier to scrub pollution other than co2. If every oil car had to be powered by a battery and an oil power plant, the efficiency gains from having a small number of large generators outweighs transmission losses. It's less obvious with coal in terms of ghg and pollution, but most (Western) countries these days carry a fair mix of coal, gas, and renewables so it's not as simple as assuming that every mwh used to charge an electric car is generated by coal. All the other issues that come with cars are still there, yes, but this is the energy megathread. Urban planning is somewhere down the hall.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:41
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Flaky posted:This is just flat out wrong. Solar power directly cuts into the peak energy use period (the middle of the day) and displaces carbon emitting fuel sources 1:1. You will always use all of the renewable energy available to you, because it costs nothing. Then you will meet demand with fossil fuels until the point at which storage and network limitations of renewables are overcome. You never ever turn off a solar PV unit. Even if you never turn off a solar unit, there's no guarantee the sun will shine. In fact, there's a guarantee it won't, usually at least 8 hours a day. Batteries are simply not cheap enough, efficient enough, or green enough to cover the down times. And it only takes a small amount of uncovered downtime to cause blackouts and brownouts that can devastate industry. America's grid in particular is built on a knife's edge, where a couple local transients can cascade into regional shut-downs. Being forced to adjust to unstable variations in sunlight/wind has been a major problem in allowing them to be incorporated to the grid here with any priority. Also, I've had a class with a fusion professor who asserted that fusion was currently able to pass breakeven energy, and that by 2050 there would be a manned fusion reactor on Mars. Just because professors believe something can be done doesn't mean it can practically be done.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:55
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Hobo Erotica posted:Electric cars get way too much hype. They sound good at first glance, but when you think about it, they don’t actually accomplish very much by way of solving problems at all. Imagine if we somehow instantly changed every car in the world to an electric motor. You’ve still got traffic, you’ve still got parking shortages, you've still got people not getting fit, and unless you’re getting your electricity renewably, (which in most Australian cities isn’t the case), you’re still burning fossil fuels, with an emissions intensity which as bad or worse than petrol or diesel, let alone LPG. Power generation efficiency at a power plant is much higher than in an automotive engine: combined natural gas/steam cycles easily reach ~60% thermal efficiency (up to ~80% or more if they're cogeneration plants), and steam cycles alone reach ~40% efficiency, compared to ~25% efficiency for your average car engine. Even accounting for distribution and storage losses, centralized electrical generation with distribution to electric vehicles is going to be substantially more efficient than individual combustion engines for every vehicle.
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Nov 21, 2012 05:43
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Without energy you just stay still, so options for transport infrastructure are completely relevant in this thread. I forgot about noise, yes, thats another benefit. And their engines do work better in stop start traffic. It's just a thing for me because I was at a conference last week and one of the panels was 'rethinking transport infastructure', and all they did was talk about cars. And the operations manager for the Nissan Leaf came right out himself and said powering your car with electricity produces more emissions than petrol. Power plants might be more efficient, but they're still more emmisions intensive. Must be cos of the fuel I guess. So it's frustrating when people talk about electric cars as if they're going to save the world (which you guys weren't necessarily doing, it's more the companies and whatnot), when they actually save very little. Seriously, we need more bikes. Which is relevant becaus the energy comes from your legs trees rather than dead dinosaurs. And the effects it has on our lifestyles (traffic, health), are therefore also relevant, albeit more tangentially. Also yes 80% of people in Aus drive less than 100 km a day. On a phone, hope that made sense.
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Nov 21, 2012 07:23
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Flaky posted:I agree that it was extraordinary. I had never heard a claim (and it wasn't the only amazing one) like it which is why I linked the video. Even then, your summary was misleading. The $25 million pitch was the capital cost of a single new printing facility (it was also secondhand information; I tried to find a firsthand source on the University of Melbourne website but didn't get any results). Printing 25 GW of nameplate capacity (over a ten year period) would require additional money for operating costs and raw materials (probably wages also, but maybe they could get undergraduate students to work in the factory for partial course credit). 25 GW of nameplate capacity is not the same thing as 25 GW of grid-available power, since you lose a bit of output with every instance of inefficiency: suboptimal installation geometry, urban haze, dust accumulation, etc. The $25m also excludes the deployment cost. Buying a half-kilowatt worth of magic plastic at the Home Depot and slapping it on your roof and windows is awesome; wiring it up, fighting city hall for zoning and permits, waiting for the electrician to show up, installing an inverter + feed-in meter + battery array... less awesome (and also fairly expensive). You've also omitted an important caveat which was mentioned in the context of the $25m claim: Professor Mike Sandiford: "This ([thin-film Si photovoltaic]) hasn't gotten there yet. This is in the development phase. There's huge challenges in taking this sort of technology from the laboratory to the market. To scale what you can do in the laboratory through industrial-scale processing. Having the facilities to try and get that learning going is the challenge."
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Nov 21, 2012 09:10
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GulMadred posted:Your video involves a team of scientific and policy experts talking to a funding group. Of course they're going to present an optimistic view of their technology and make extraordinary claims: they want the dudes in the audience to sign cheques when the presentation is over! You'll notice that one lady in the audience, upon seeing the professor hold up a sheet of printed PV film, during a presentation about renewable energy, has to be told what the abbreviation "PV" means. This isn't necessarily the most sophisticated, bullshit-averse audience; you shouldn't take the claims at face value. I realise all of this. Yes it would cost more to produce. Of course it will take time to produce. I wouldn't take his word on this alone, he works for the research group developing that particular product. I never actually said that that product was 100% stone-cold unavoidable reality. It just illustrates the potential of the new renewable technologies. I mean he mentioned covering windows with it (as it is translucent), as well as incorporating it into corrigated iron. I assume the same could be done for vehicles, so they recharge a fuel cell while they are sitting in parking lots. I just think that the range of possibilities for such a material could hardly be exaggerated. Who knows what the result of having every human manufactured sun-facing surface covered in this stuff could be. Thanks for taking the time to confirm my own suspicions about the video though. Don't worry I am not holding my breath for anything like the scenario presented. What about the rest of the claims? Do they paint the same picture to you as they do to me? Sorry, I promise to stop harping on about this now. Flaky fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 11:25
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I'm not going to watch that video. I just don't have the time or inclination. Could you bullet point the major claims? I still need some clarification, too, unless I missed something. The 25GW for $25M sounds either (1) absurd on it's face if that GW means GWe and we'd all be completely loving dipshits not to immediately buy the world thousands of them to supply all the world's power with nary a concern (2) or it's 00.0001% of the energy produced in Australia (and therefore completely negligible and pointless for $25M) if it's in GWh over 10 years. I like solar, but I think people in this thread are being far too sunny about it and completely ignoring the capacity issue, storage issue, and grid implementation issue. I think the inconsistent sources of power (wind, solar) would be best deployed solely to charge batteries and electrolyze water for hydrogen cells, not contribute to baseloads. Using solar as a baseload is like trying to use a screwdriver to ineptly hammer in a nail when you have a nice nuclear hammer over there, which you ignore because you're deathly afraid you might somehow miss with the hammer and cave in your own skull.
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Nov 21, 2012 15:03
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Quantum Mechanic posted:This is untrue, at least as far as CST goes. Increasing the capacity factor of CST for a given region is as simple as building more salt storage and receiving towers. Overbuilding to compensate for capacity factor does not change the capacity factor, just the capacity and in turn the electrical outputs achievable. You still need to build in excess to make up for the intermittent nature of renewables and that's my point when I'm talking about how theoretical capacity does not equate actual averaged-out electrical capacity. If your goal is to replace peak-time and intermediate sources in the grid, then solar is not a bad deal despite its capacity factor because its peak production times coincide with some of our peak demand times (if you can make it cheap enough to even be an option). However, for around-the-clock baseload production you are going to need to build way more than what is ideal one way or another because of the fact that the sun sets at night and your thermoelectric storage systems are far from perfect in terms of efficiency. Flaky posted:This is just flat out wrong. Solar power directly cuts into the peak energy use period (the middle of the day) and displaces carbon emitting fuel sources 1:1. You will always use all of the renewable energy available to you, because it costs nothing. Then you will meet demand with fossil fuels until the point at which storage and network limitations of renewables are overcome. You never ever turn off a solar PV unit. Solar is not free and it turns off at night so I don't know what you're on about. You need to build solar plants, and like nuclear, construction costs can be very high although for very different reasons. Renewables can be more economical than peak-time energy generation like diesel and closed-cycle gas turbines. But unlike renewables, you can keep those running around-the-clock just as well as baseload sources, however diesel/open-gas are less cost-efficient than coal/closed-gas/nuclear. The reason we use them instead of baseload options is because you can throttle them fast enough to keep up with grid demand, basically out of necessity. If peak production time on renewables matches that of diesel/open-gas, then it's not absurd that renewables would win out even if they needed a little bit of backup capacity just in case. They don't need to run 24/7, just at times when you need them. Replacing baseload options like nuclear and fossil fuels is assuredly not economical because renewables can't run around-the-clock without installing far more capacity than what's actually needed, on top of having to instal intermittent storage, all to make up for their uncontrollable productivity. Germany realized how expensive their renewable dreams would be and had to build more coal plants instead of "smart grids" and all that rubbish after they shut off a good chunk of their reliable nuclear electric generation. In the meantime they have to import electricity from France, ironically enough. People still contend that renewables may one day be cheap enough to replace everything after problem X, Y, Z, and whatever else are somehow solved in a perfectly economical manner. While I contend that nuclear is already more economical if you're willing to restructure regulations a little to support standardization (see France), which is both much safer and several times more economical than building "special snowflake" plants everywhere. And if you're bold, develop SMRs to speed up deployment and further reduce cost. You wouldn't even have to touch anything particularly new like Gen 4 designs, just change the way you build plants.
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Nov 21, 2012 17:08
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Hobo Erotica posted:Without energy you just stay still, so options for transport infrastructure are completely relevant in this thread. I've heard the part I bolded a couple times recently, but this goes against a lot of what I read on the subject. I had read that well-to-wheels emissions of EVs are lower with the exception of sulfur oxides (and not to be dismissive, but those are more local emissions and can be more easily cleaned when centralized at a power plant. I'm wondering why this is counter to that. I completely agree with you that bike-friendly cities would be a huge boon for transportation and health. Increased public transit would help that too.
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Nov 21, 2012 17:32
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Climate change is coming. Pretty dire stuff. Even ignoring how goddamn safe new nuclear plants would be, the trade-off of potential localized radioactive contamination is a goddamn small price to pay to curb CO2 emissions immediately and permanently. Time is running out.
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Nov 21, 2012 18:09
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Speak of the devil. Department of Energy to fund SMRs. Looks like a grant matching half the cost for a combined TVA-Babcock & Wilcox venture. For those unaware, B&W has been developing the mPower design SMR, a 180MW factory-constructed PWR. I'm hoping this signals a willingness of the powers that be to fix regulatory problems.
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Nov 21, 2012 21:00
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UK Labor party commits to ~zero carbon by 2030:quote:Ed Miliband commits Labour to 2030 decarbonisation target http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/22/ed-miliband-labour-decarbonisation-energy?fb=optOut
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Nov 23, 2012 01:16
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Wait, wait, last I remember the UK was hyping up switching everything to natural gas that they could (because they had a lot of natural gas from the North Sea) - that seems like a bit of a reversal doesn't it?
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Nov 23, 2012 02:26
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Install Gentoo posted:Wait, wait, last I remember the UK was hyping up switching everything to natural gas that they could (because they had a lot of natural gas from the North Sea) - that seems like a bit of a reversal doesn't it? It's the opposition party, so could well be, yeah. Interesting to see what the government does. As I understand there's been a lot of back and forthing over Wind Farms in the public domain, which is now being reflected in the government, which is creating uncertainty in the investment sector. So the (centre left?) opposition has come out with this plan today, so that the industry can move forward with confidence. It's what Needs To Happen.
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Nov 23, 2012 02:39
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Aureon posted:China can't build solar plants more cheaply, because it really can't import desert land into their confines.  (Source)
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Nov 23, 2012 02:54
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Cartoon posted:It isn't just 'The Sahara and Australia'. Specific to China, Takla Makan and the US, The Great Basin. Which are already down from 270 to 220. Which are nowhere as near to the main energy need as Australia's plants are. (Long-ranged power transmission is a costly.) Which are not as near to the Equator (Being near gives you shorter nights during the winter, and having to build for the worst case, this is very relevant) This brings us to an interesting point: Solar has to build enough reservoirs and power to be able to run on under 10h/day, since during winter, that's the duration of the day (In Spain, atleast, in Australia varies around 10h-10h20min depending on latitude). It gets worse and worse the further you get from the equator, all the way to practical infeasibility on the Poles. (On an unrelated note, I'm now rewatching Gundam00. How long for space elevators and 99.9% uptime solar, again?)
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Nov 23, 2012 03:31
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Aureon posted:How long for space elevators Don't know what you're watching, but my call is 150 years at this rate, 75 years if we put our minds to it.
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Nov 23, 2012 03:54
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Aureon posted:Which are already down from 270 to 220. Most geographies have some capacity for Hydro and basin storage is relatively efficent. quote:Efficiency losses will mean that approximately 20% of the energy pumped into the system will be lost and not returned out of the system * The latest data I have seen for transmission losses on the entire Australian grid is around 5% so 95% efficient. quote:The exploitation of remote energy sources at low cost (e.g. hydro or mine-mouth, coal-fired plant suitable for producing electricity at a cost of the order of 10 - 25 mills/kWh) is now feasible and economical for distances never before entertained. For example, transmission systems can be set-up over a distance of as much as 7000 km in d.c and 3000-4000 km in a.c. such that, by offering an acceptable reliability level for the receiving system concerned, present costs small enough (from 5 to 20 mills/kwh) as to make advantageous the exploitation of those sources, when compared to generation at 30 - 35 mills/kWh located in the vicinity of load centers. Even in the US which is acknowledged to have one of the worst and most inefficient grids around it's losses are 7% (93% efficient). quote:According to EIA data, national, annual electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 7% of the electricity that is transmitted in the United States. Now those 5% and 7% figures are for the aggregated grid so include all the short transfers. This will mask the (worse) efficiency of the longest transmissions. As to the solar availability data I note you left out: Middle-East, Arabian 270 South America, Atacama 275 More saliently the 'Only sahara and Australia' claim flies in the face of the enormous areas of the earth (especially in Africa - see map provided) that have very good solar availability. Remember this is in the context of 'Why are we only talking about Australia?'.
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Nov 23, 2012 04:30
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