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Pander posted:Stop talking about posters or trends or politics. This. It's fine to talk about "how do we implement X politically?", but "which future energy plan is most politically correct in my dumb opinion" is a boring question.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:44
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Ardennes posted:Basically you are saying a "mixed portfolio" is going to be nuclear (preferably) and fossil fuels, with renewables at 10% or less on the side, less than we have now. Nowhere in this thread have I suggested that we should adopt a portfolio that's anything like this. Dude, what happened? You've posted in this thread before without making accusations that wildly diverge from a poster's actual comments, and then suddenly this week you can't help but misread "let's build a lot of renewables and then fill the gaps with nuclear" as something completely different from that. You're the only one having this issue. As I've posted time and time again in this thread, and to you directly, we should build renewables everywhere that renewables make sense and make up the deficiencies with nuclear power. I'm not an English professor so I don't know how to make my position any clearer than that. quote:A 90% nuclear-10% renewable mix non-carbon mix is not really a mixed portfolio at all in any real sense. You may have changed your mind, who knows. Yeah great job on pulling some random numbers out of your rear end that don't represent my position at all. I'm serious though, your older posts are nothing like this, why are you suddenly making such wild misinterpretations? Ardennes posted:Anyway, I am fine with giving up on the topic. If you're suddenly incapable of accurately interpreting what other people are posting then that might be for the best
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Jul 9, 2014 19:39
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QuarkJets posted:As I've posted time and time again in this thread, and to you directly, we should build renewables everywhere that renewables make sense and make up the deficiencies with nuclear power. I'm not an English professor so I don't know how to make my position any clearer than that. Stop supporting positions which are harder to argue against than a strawman 
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Jul 9, 2014 19:53
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QuarkJets posted:Nowhere in this thread have I suggested that we should adopt a portfolio that's anything like this. Dude, what happened? You've posted in this thread before without making accusations that wildly diverge from a poster's actual comments, and then suddenly this week you can't help but misread "let's build a lot of renewables and then fill the gaps with nuclear" as something completely different from that. You're the only one having this issue. The "random numbers" are from a literal direct quote from you. I find it really creepy you refuse to acknowledge that. You can say you didn't mean it or it was a joke or something that didn't represent your position, but you certainly can not pretend I made that quote up. I spoke up because there is bashing going on in this thread and I wanted to be a bit brave and talk it about it. It isn't a surprise I would get a lot of flack because of the nature of this thread. To be honest, if what I was saying didn't have truth to it, it would have just been ignored in the first place but suddenly a conversation that goes on for pages because I said there were pro-nuclear/anti-green attitudes in this thread. To be honest, I think it has limited the topic of conservation and I don't even believe in 100% renewables but I am sadden how people who may be just open to those ideas are really treated brutally around here. It makes sense that would make me extremely unpopular and called a "100% renewable" supporter...because that seems to be the thread boogyman. It is an argument about tone and dialogue, not about policy which if anything there is a overwhelming consensus. Btw, I am just responding to posts at this point, so this is just going to go on. I have my point and an explanation of why I believe it. I am not going to be convinced otherwise and I know you won't be convinced otherwise, so thats that. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 20:50
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Ardennes posted:The "random numbers" are from a literal direct quote from you. I find it really creepy you refuse to acknowledge that. You can say you didn't mean it or it was a joke or something that didn't represent your position, but you certainly can not pretend I made that quote up. The "bashing" is against people out of touch with reality. "100% renewable" is not possible given current technology. It may be possible at some point in the future, but arguing for that right now only demonstrates that the poster has no grasp of reality. I'd be all for 100% renewables if it was possible. Nearly everybody would. Nuclear isn't an end in itself, but a means to an end - meeting the world's electricity demands without burning fossil fuels. When people post dumb, poorly thought-out, unrealistic stuff they get jumped on, and, yes, "bashed." That happens in any thread devoted to realistic, scientificly-based analysis of a problem. You seem to be reading into this thread far more than actually exists.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:57
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As official voice of the energy generation hive mind I officially admit you are right, "green bashing" did occur as did limited amounts of "solar sullying" and "battery bemoaning". The issue is now fully settled, you are 100% right and you'll get no more arguments from us on this topic, nor more arguments about arguing. Now that that's settled and as a sign of our humble respect, we invite you to move the discussion forward with perhaps a post related to energy generation. If you wish that is, the floor is all yours, you've earned it.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:58
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If I may, I have a technical (or perhaps production related) question. Back in the early 90s, there was talk about, and development of, thin film silicon photovoltaic technologies, with the notion that transparent or semitransparent photovoltaic films could be used in building integrated applications, for example coatings on exterior glass surfaces. The technology still appears to be around, but I can't seem to find anything on why it isn't more widespread. Problems with efficiencies? Photodegradation? Not commercially viable at current production volumes based on energy yield?
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Jul 10, 2014 02:14
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Sheikh Djibouti posted:If I may, I have a technical (or perhaps production related) question. Back in the early 90s, there was talk about, and development of, thin film silicon photovoltaic technologies, with the notion that transparent or semitransparent photovoltaic films could be used in building integrated applications, for example coatings on exterior glass surfaces. The technology still appears to be around, but I can't seem to find anything on why it isn't more widespread. Problems with efficiencies? Photodegradation? Not commercially viable at current production volumes based on energy yield? It exists and has rather nice efficiency but why build it into the exterior of your building when that's fundamentally a pretty dumb place to put your solar cell. Technology like CIGS and CdTe have very nice power/price ratios comparative to silicon but using your solar cell as a cosmetic feature on your building is stupid.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:42
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Bip Roberts posted:It exists and has rather nice efficiency but why build it into the exterior of your building when that's fundamentally a pretty dumb place to put your solar cell. Technology like CIGS and CdTe have very nice power/price ratios comparative to silicon but using your solar cell as a cosmetic feature on your building is stupid. I think the idea was that you wouldn't be limited to discrete cells on the roof but could, in essence, convert your entire glass envelope into a generating substrate while retaining transparency.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:51
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Sheikh Djibouti posted:I think the idea was that you wouldn't be limited to discrete cells on the roof but could, in essence, convert your entire glass envelope into a generating substrate while retaining transparency. Yeah, you probably don't want to invest quite expensive solar cells to strap to the side of your building where they will work half as well, require you to cut down all your trees and be pretty ugly to boot.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:54
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Bip Roberts posted:Yeah, you probably don't want to invest quite expensive solar cells to strap to the side of your building where they will work half as well, require you to cut down all your trees and be pretty ugly to boot. The technology doesn't involve cells but a very thin film (nanometers to micrometers, as I understand it), so it's not really a matter of strapping on cells. I guess if you were in an area that otherwise had light obstructions (trees or otherwise) they would indeed be impractical, though. I used to work in Midtown Manhattan, where other buildings would be the issue, but even there there was quite a lot of exposure. As to appearance, I never had the sense that they would substantially affect appearance beyond adding tinting, so I'd be surprised by an aesthetic issue. If you're correct that they're "quite expensive" that likely is a key reason (combined with impracticality depending on location and exposures) why they haven't gone anywhere, and that was certainly an issue in the early 90s. Not a big deal, I was just curious about what become of that technology.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:14
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Bip Roberts posted:It exists and has rather nice efficiency but why build it into the exterior of your building when that's fundamentally a pretty dumb place to put your solar cell. Technology like CIGS and CdTe have very nice power/price ratios comparative to silicon but using your solar cell as a cosmetic feature on your building is stupid. The reason why there is the idea to integrate photovoltaics into other installed portions of buildings has to do with the cost of installing the solar cells. I have been told that the installation cost is the dominant cost for most solar energy generating systems built from crystalline silicon solar cells, the dominant photovoltaic technology. If you could put the solar panels into the windows and shingles on the roof, you sort of aren't paying for the installation cost, since those would be put in when the new house or building is built or during its natural cycle of being remodeled. The amorphous silicon solar cell, which is what Sheikh Djibouti is referring to, is also an inefficient solar cell, and as you said in your later posts, the idea of having a solar cell on the side of the building in the shade further leads to lower power output. There also is the fact that a transparent solar cell on top of a window is by its nature a very inefficient solar cell because instead of absorbing sunlight and converting it into electricity it is letting the sunlight pass through. A good solar cell is black. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 03:21
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Sheikh Djibouti posted:The technology doesn't involve cells but a very thin film (nanometers to micrometers, as I understand it), so it's not really a matter of strapping on cells. I guess if you were in an area that otherwise had light obstructions (trees or otherwise) they would indeed be impractical, though. I used to work in Midtown Manhattan, where other buildings would be the issue, but even there there was quite a lot of exposure. As to appearance, I never had the sense that they would substantially affect appearance beyond adding tinting, so I'd be surprised by an aesthetic issue. If you're correct that they're "quite expensive" that likely is a key reason (combined with impracticality depending on location and exposures) why they haven't gone anywhere, and that was certainly an issue in the early 90s. Not a big deal, I was just curious about what become of that technology. I think the problem was that in real-life application, they were far too expensive and fussy to be practical. They could set up lab conditions that made them seem great, but were sufficiently fragile and costly to make them unattractive to actual buyers. There are still reports cropping up occasionally of breakthroughs of one sort or another with assurances that this time they'll actually be affordable and useful, but not much has ever made it to market.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:25
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Many thanks silence_kit and Deteriorata, those posts actually answer my question pretty well.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:27
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I vaguely recall reading about instances where colored filters above a thin-film panel would concentrate light on it, bolstering its ability to produce power. Would this actually work, or would the filters reduce the amount of light actually reaching the panel?
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Jul 10, 2014 03:46
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Hedera Helix posted:I vaguely recall reading about instances where colored filters above a thin-film panel would concentrate light on it, bolstering its ability to produce power. Would this actually work, or would the filters reduce the amount of light actually reaching the panel? You're probably thinking of luminescent concentrators which are a rather nice technology in that they can be developed orthogonally to PV semiconductor technologies. They also can make rather nice gains in efficiencies for certain materials.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:13
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Sheikh Djibouti posted:If I may, I have a technical (or perhaps production related) question. Back in the early 90s, there was talk about, and development of, thin film silicon photovoltaic technologies, with the notion that transparent or semitransparent photovoltaic films could be used in building integrated applications, for example coatings on exterior glass surfaces. The technology still appears to be around, but I can't seem to find anything on why it isn't more widespread. Problems with efficiencies? Photodegradation? Not commercially viable at current production volumes based on energy yield? The University of Oregon has a business department building that is LEED certified and has the semitransparent photovoltaics that you're talking about. I think they look really cool! If you don't know what they are, they just look like inlaid art. It's pretty classy and understated. They work pretty well since the building is designed for efficiency - they're placed so they look out onto the grand courtyard and get plenty of sun.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:51
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Ah gently caress it, nevermind. Ardennes if you want me to continue making GBS threads all over you for making poo poo up then turn on private messages
QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 08:19
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QuarkJets posted:Ah gently caress it, nevermind. Ardennes if you want me to continue making GBS threads all over you for making poo poo up then turn on private messages  says no.
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Jul 10, 2014 08:41
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Ardennes posted:Basically you are saying a "mixed portfolio" is going to be nuclear (preferably) and fossil fuels, with renewables at 10% or less on the side, less than we have now. I'm not sure where you're getting that renewables make up more than 10% of our current electricity generation portfolio. According to the EIA non-hydro renewables make up 6% with solar and wind only making up 4.36%. And this isn't factoring in any intermittency problems that are smoothed out by hydro, nuclear, or fossil fuels. And those intermittency problems cannot be ignored at all, so yes, if we scaled back the population to 10% perhaps we could rely very heavily on wind and solar. But we don't have that small of a population. We also have a country that covers a vast amount of land. Raldikuk fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 12:41
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Hedera Helix posted:I vaguely recall reading about instances where colored filters above a thin-film panel would concentrate light on it, bolstering its ability to produce power. Would this actually work, or would the filters reduce the amount of light actually reaching the panel? Reduce it relative to what? Let's say incoming irradiance is 1000 watts/m^2. If you have 1 square meter of solar cell, you can capture 1000 watts of incoming light. You could, instead of doing that, use a square meter of solar concentrator to intercept that 1000 watts of irradiance and concentrate it into an area of, say, 1/20th square meters. So you need less solar cell. But yes, you're going to lose energy in concentrating it into that smaller area, so your 1/20 m^2 solar cell won't have 1000 watts of input, it might have 500. But in any event, you're not going to get more than 1000 watts with a square meter of collector, whether the collector's a solar cell or a material that concentrates that square meter's worth of input into a smaller area of solar cell. Also, this book is great (and surprisingly funny in places, the author has a wit that's pretty much perfectly suited to this subject) and everyone should read it: http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605984922/ Phanatic fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 12:55
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Raldikuk posted:I'm not sure where you're getting that renewables make up more than 10% of our current electricity generation portfolio. According to the EIA non-hydro renewables make up 6% with solar and wind only making up 4.36%. And this isn't factoring in any intermittency problems that are smoothed out by hydro, nuclear, or fossil fuels. And those intermittency problems cannot be ignored at all, so yes, if we scaled back the population to 10% perhaps we could rely very heavily on wind and solar. But we don't have that small of a population. We also have a country that covers a vast amount of land. I'm pretty sure he's including hydro which is commonly considered a renewable. Also there are more options to the issue of matching intermittency to load besides just building more base load; including storage, peaking capacity and large scale interconnectivity. All are methods available to grid planners today with large scale R&D investments by experienced companies and not just "greentech startups" that look quiet promising. So I don't think the future of grid/generation planning is as narrow as a choice between more large base load stations and absurd cuts in energy consumption.
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Jul 11, 2014 07:26
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm pretty sure he's including hydro which is commonly considered a renewable. Maybe with the dangers of Hoover Dam shutting down, this will change their tone a bit. Lake Mead current level 1080ft. Minimum level for power generation 1050ft. Ave generation 4.2 TWh/year http://www.nps.gov/lake/naturescience/storage-capacity-of-lake-mead.htm So are they doing anything about it? Nope! "Federal and state water officials have negotiated plans for a shortage declaration triggering delivery cuts to Nevada and Arizona if annual projections for the Lake Mead water level drop below a 1,075 foot elevation. That projection is based on data being compiled by the Bureau of Reclamation." http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/07/10/lake-mead-nevada-drought/12486313/ Lower Basin Water allocations by state CA - 58.70% 4.40 million acre·ft/year AZ - 37.30% 2.80 million acre·ft/year NV - 4.00% 0.30 million acre·ft/year -- Treated water from Las Vegas returns to the river. Cut the 4% guys water, that will fix it.
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Jul 11, 2014 11:35
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm pretty sure he's including hydro which is commonly considered a renewable. Hydro can be considered renewable, that is fine, the problem is that there isn't much more building out that we can do. If you include Hydro as renewable then it is at 13%, so barely above the 10% number claimed, with the same intermittency problem for renewables other than Hydro. Storage is all well and good, but isn't there yet for our needs, perhaps it will be in the future. Peaking plants basically means natural gas plants, so you get more CO2 and leaked natural gas into the atmosphere and you need to build out a lot of peaking plants to cover the huge variability at the extremes--unless you're ok with brown outs and black outs when there's an exceptional string of non-windy/non-sunny days. All of the grid planning techniques right now include a reliance on baseload power. I personally feel that we need a solid baseload power generation via nuclear that will keep things smooth with a large build out of renewables where possible. If storage techniques improve, we can keep adding them to the grid and reducing our need for the baseload power. The problem is that we should have been replacing coal and natural gas plants with nuclear decades ago to deal with climate change. We can't keep waiting for a magic bullet renewable setup to get us off fossil fuels, we needed a stop gap yesterday, but we procrastinated, we shouldn't keep making the same mistake now.
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Jul 11, 2014 13:49
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Raldikuk posted:I personally feel that we need a solid baseload power generation via nuclear that will keep things smooth with a large build out of renewables where possible. If storage techniques improve, we can keep adding them to the grid and reducing our need for the baseload power. The problem is that we should have been replacing coal and natural gas plants with nuclear decades ago to deal with climate change. We can't keep waiting for a magic bullet renewable setup to get us off fossil fuels, we needed a stop gap yesterday, but we procrastinated, we shouldn't keep making the same mistake now. However, in an ideal world we would do ___ instead 
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Jul 11, 2014 13:59
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In the long long run is it theoretically possible to replace peaking with battery and or turning down desalination?
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Jul 11, 2014 14:53
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Nevvy Z posted:In the long long run is it theoretically possible to replace peaking with battery and or turning down desalination? Sure, there's lots of different ways of handling peaking. Ones that are cheap and publicly acceptable are fairly rare, unfortunately. The current (no pun intended) problem with batteries is that they are hugely expensive to build at the scale needed for effective peaking, and also expensive to maintain. Desalination is not currently practiced on a wide enough scale to make a difference, but is definitely something that would be done at off-peak hours to consume excess base generation when electricity is cheap and available, since it's not done as-needed to meet immediate demand.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:11
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In theory, sure. But it'd be hard with the more "traditional" method of battery storage. You'd need something like 5 billion tons of lead for the battery (with the USGS saying we worldwide proven reserves are maybe 80 million tons), going off an old theoildrum article. i.e., this sucker. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8237 As a side note, while the website is no longer being continually updated, I encourage everybody interested in some moderate number crunching to read the website's articles. Good stuff on the whole.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:13
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Deteriorata posted:The current (no pun intended) problem with batteries is that they are hugely expensive to build at the scale needed for effective peaking, and also expensive to maintain. Just to give everyone idea: Think about your cell phone battery. It probably loses about half of its charging capacity over the course of 2-3 years. Multiply that by the entire electric grid. (also, multiply in the rare occurrence of explosions) Different chemistries have different behaviors for energy density and lifetime but all battery technologies have similar limitations.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:35
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hobbesmaster posted:Just to give everyone idea: Think about your cell phone battery. It probably loses about half of its charging capacity over the course of 2-3 years. Multiply that by the entire electric grid. (also, multiply in the rare occurrence of explosions) Different chemistries have different behaviors for energy density and lifetime but all battery technologies have similar limitations. So in essence, it's stuff like flywheels and pumped hydro or nothing.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:54
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blowfish posted:So in essence, it's stuff like flywheels and pumped hydro or nothing. Or thermal or hydrogen storage. There are even concepts for pneumatic storage.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:17
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Deteriorata posted:Desalination is not currently practiced on a wide enough scale to make a difference, but is definitely something that would be done at off-peak hours to consume excess base generation when electricity is cheap and available, since it's not done as-needed to meet immediate demand. I sadly predict that it's going to have to be so in theory it would be ideal to just plan for that and aim for overgeneration in the long run.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:34
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Lurking Haro posted:Or thermal or hydrogen storage. There are even concepts for pneumatic storage. Pneumatic storage is interesting. The problems are that the tanks are fairly expensive to build and the pressures involved are so high that they are pretty dangerous.
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Jul 11, 2014 18:17
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crabcakes66 posted:Pneumatic storage is interesting. The problems are that the tanks are fairly expensive to build and the pressures involved are so high that they are pretty dangerous. Is there any non-dangerous way of storing energy on a grid scale?
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Jul 11, 2014 20:25
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LemonDrizzle posted:Is there any non-dangerous way of storing energy on a grid scale? There inherently is not. Any method of storing a lot of energy in one place will involve... storing a lot of energy in one place. No matter what, there'll be ways for the energy to discharge with a less gently sloping and productive path than would be desired.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:31
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LemonDrizzle posted:Is there any non-dangerous way of storing energy on a grid scale? Nature stored it for us in the form of clean burning uranium.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:33
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^^^ burning uranium: the only thing possibly worse than burning coal! LemonDrizzle posted:Is there any non-dangerous way of storing energy on a grid scale? Thermodynamics says probably not.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:33
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storing it as oil in a tanker seems pretty safe
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Jul 11, 2014 20:35
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Jeffrey posted:storing it as oil in a tanker seems pretty safe Because safety measures are taken oil transportation only occasionally levels a part of a city.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:42
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hobbesmaster posted:Because safety measures are taken oil transportation only occasionally levels a part of a city.  I hope.
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