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hobbesmaster posted:Because safety measures are taken oil transportation only occasionally levels a part of a city. I'd rather store it under many layers of rock, where it's usually kept. Relative to the amount of oil out there I bet it's pretty safe per joule. That's pretty poo poo though, good thing that was in a small town and not a major population center.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:47
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Jeffrey posted:I'd rather store it under many layers of rock, where it's usually kept. Relative to the amount of oil out there I bet it's pretty safe per joule. Wait, are you seriously suggesting that oil is a good energy storage medium with regards to excess energy produced by renewables? Cause I thought that's what the original argument was concerning.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:51
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Pander posted:Wait, are you seriously suggesting that oil is a good energy storage medium with regards to excess energy produced by renewables? Cause I thought that's what the original argument was concerning. Nah, actually producing it is almost certainly completely impractical and inefficient, I'm not serious there. It might actually be safer than "like, a lot of batteries" though, because of density alone. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 20:54
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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. I'm not entirely sure this is true. A lot of battery tech has problems like this due to engineering trade-offs. Like needing room-temperature and highly mobile batteries that are safe for consumers to handle. I'm no expert in whatever the relevant field is, but I thought things like liquid metal batteries were interesting for grid storage specifically because they can be charged and discharged with essentially no degradation. Their website (http://www.ambri.com/technology/) claims it's 0.0002% degradation per full charge-discharge cycle. If that curve holds up, that's still 90% after 50,000 full cycles. That's easily a battery you could build and expect to work well enough for 50+ years. I'm optimistic about grid batteries because I think they can be sold on more than just "this is infrastructure investment we need to avoid global warming." A grid battery can be placed in the neighborhood it serves, meaning people could still have power even if a storm damages upstream power lines, at least for a while. Businesses (factories, even office buildings) could be sold on buying some themselves, if you can show a cost savings by using off-peak power to charge and avoiding peak rates for electricity. Data centers would be thrilled to have an upgrade in their power redundancy infrastructure, which currently does suffer the problems you talk about.
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Jul 11, 2014 21:00
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It operates a 700C and has 70% energy efficiency which is pretty miserable. Really cool, don't see it being deployed everywhere though. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ja209759s
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Jul 11, 2014 21:11
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hobbesmaster posted:It operates a 700C and has 70% energy efficiency which is pretty miserable. Really cool, don't see it being deployed everywhere though. 2000000 Wh / 67500 l = 29.6 Wh/l That's a third the density of the venerable lead-acid cell. If you took all of the generating plants offline and wanted to power the USA for one day using Ambri batteries (assuming 100% efficiency) then you'd need: 3886400000 MWh / 365 = 10647671 MWh 10647671 MWh / 29.6 Wh/l = 359718 Ml 359718 Ml / 1200 Ml = 299.765 300 Astrodomes filled (as in "stacked to the rafters") with uncomfortably hot batteries.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:14
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From what I've read of the subject I think we'll see thorium or even bloody fusion before we see an economical and safe/environmental way to store energy. This isn't Total Annihilation where you can just build a mess of solar plants and "energy storage" to let you shoot your giant lasers when needed.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:17
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Given the tremendous expense of grid-scale energy storage, what about going the other way for dealing with peaking? In other words build out capacity to the point where you'll always have enough, and then when demand falls below peak, have at least a portion of power generation capacity feeding into something non-crucial (like cracking water for hydrogen, or even just giant electric radiators if necessary), and then be able to switch that low-priority load off instantly in order to meet surges in demand.Baronjutter posted:From what I've read of the subject I think we'll see thorium or even bloody fusion before we see an economical and safe/environmental way to store energy. This isn't Total Annihilation where you can just build a mess of solar plants and "energy storage" to let you shoot your giant lasers when needed. I always thought it was cool how the wind turbines were really cheap but were also highly variable in their output. (also fragile as hell) An interesting trade-off to make.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:50
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Given the tremendous expense of grid-scale energy storage, what about going the other way for dealing with peaking? In other words build out capacity to the point where you'll always have enough, and then when demand falls below peak, have at least a portion of power generation capacity feeding into something non-crucial (like cracking water for hydrogen, or even just giant electric radiators if necessary), and then be able to switch that low-priority load off instantly in order to meet surges in demand. That gets rather difficult to make work politically. Power plants consume huge amounts of capital, and it's hard to justify investment in capacity you don't actually need when there's so many other things that money could be spent on. Building a power plant specifically to crack water into hydrogen would have to be justified on its own merits.
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Jul 11, 2014 23:06
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Given the tremendous expense of grid-scale energy storage, what about going the other way for dealing with peaking? In other words build out capacity to the point where you'll always have enough, and then when demand falls below peak, have at least a portion of power generation capacity feeding into something non-crucial (like cracking water for hydrogen, or even just giant electric radiators if necessary), and then be able to switch that low-priority load off instantly in order to meet surges in demand.  , basically.For Germany, using 2013 daily energy production data, there is a 100-fold difference between minimum and maximum wind output, and a 25 fold difference between minimum and maximum solar+wind output. e: Overall, there is a 220-fold difference for max vs min wind output, if you don't average it out over days  .Overbuilding generating capacity by that margin is ridiculous, there has to be a large amount of storage for any wind based grid even if it's humongous underground suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 10:04
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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It would be easier to design an on/off switch for solar and wind, then there'd be no more overproduction on sunny or windy days!  Zelthar posted:Maybe with the dangers of Hoover Dam shutting down, this will change their tone a bit. If the dam shuts down, what takes its place in generating power? Are they going to build a bunch of gas plants to make up for the shortfall?
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Jul 12, 2014 10:11
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blowfish posted:
The saddest part of that pdf is page 6. They're so proud of reducing nuclear and gas, but they increased coal by 8.7 TWh. While I don't get the hysteria over Nuclear, I really don't get why they decided to reduce gas by 10.5 TWh in favor of pumping up coal. And 3.2TWh of that coal is with Lignite. Great job Germany.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:52
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Raldikuk posted:The saddest part of that pdf is page 6. They're so proud of reducing nuclear and gas, but they increased coal by 8.7 TWh. While I don't get the hysteria over Nuclear, I really don't get why they decided to reduce gas by 10.5 TWh in favor of pumping up coal. And 3.2TWh of that coal is with Lignite. Great job Germany. Nobody really wants to run a gas plant because of our glorious Energiewende policies. Electricity demand is to be satisfied, with power sources ordered by prority: * by renewables as much as possible * by base load power (nukes, coal, and more coal) thereafter * by gas to compensate for fluctuations Building coal plants, since they have priority over gas in the energy mix, means you get to run your power plant at full output most of the time. For gas power stations this means constantly adjusting the power up and down. While gas plants can adjust power output quickly, they will rarely run close to their maximum output. It is uneconomical to operate anything beyond the minimum number required to even out power generation. It's mind boggling that Germany doesn't subsidise replacing coal or nukes with gas plants running at full output 24/7 in the short term, since that would at least be slightly less horrible for the climate (not quite as mind boggling as the fact that we're not straight-up building nuke, but whatever). Yay us. e: I put in some random link instead of the news report on gas power plants. Link corrected.
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 15:24
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Raldikuk posted:I really don't get why they decided to reduce gas by 10.5 TWh in favor of pumping up coal. Imagine that you own a utility company in Germany:
Edit: here's a succinct summary. 
GulMadred fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 15:50
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Is the ESBWR still on track for final approval in September after Dryergate? Are there any places with advance orders placed for it?
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Jul 12, 2014 15:57
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Hedera Helix posted:If the dam shuts down, what takes its place in generating power? Are they going to build a bunch of gas plants to make up for the shortfall? Main power split is between CA and AZ. So yeah, in this market we may see an increase of natural gas. Though AZ has a large coal plant they could easily expand on.(Navajo Generating Station ~18 TWh/year) CA has a bad need for desalination that will only grow as fresh water supplies dwindle. AZ too will want in on this once their water mining dries up. Current desalination processes take large amounts of power to run, so this means even greater power needs in the near future.
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Jul 12, 2014 21:21
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Zelthar posted:I don't know of any exact plans for replacement power. Currently its just everyone fighting over water supplies. With US natural gas prices so low and EPA regulations on Coal fired power plants going full steam ahead expect excess demand to be met with natural gas plants. Mitigated by whatever increased installed capacity of renewables are available. California power utilities are under state carbon rules anyway, and I'm pretty sure only LADWP buys coal power (and they've promise to stop by 2025) from AZ so I'd expect regulatory pressure to prevent a growth in purchase of electricity contracts from coal-fired power plants for use by Californian utilities. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 23:19
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blowfish posted:
What's the projected cost of large-scale energy storage?
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Jul 14, 2014 01:25
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:What's the projected cost of large-scale energy storage? 
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Jul 14, 2014 03:13
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:What's the projected cost of large-scale energy storage? Let's build glorious above-ground Pumpspeicherwerks in hypothetical 100%-wind Germany. They're cheap and effective! Germany needs about 600TWh of electricity every year, let's ignore the increase switching to electro or hydrogen/synthetic fuel cars would entail. That's about 1.65 TWh = 1650000 MWh per day, and equivalent to about 70000MW electricity generation. It is estimated (p.32) we'll need over 40 TWh (over three weeks'!) worth of storage by 2040, in a grid that's definitely not 100% wind, so let's be optimistic and run with maybe a month worth of storage. Germany's current biggest pumped hydro project will bring us 13000 MWh at the rock-bottom cost of  .In order to store enough energy to satisfy the electricity demand of Germany for one day, we'd need about 130 of the things, which will cost about €80 billion according to original plans, or €210 billion according to the current cost estimate. For one month, that's roughly €2-6 trillion worth of Pumpspeicherwerks. Add to that the running cost, estimated to be €0.03-0.05 per kWh stored per day, so €1.2-2 billion per day, for any day they're full. e: add a trillion or so to overbuild wind by a factor of three to feed the pumped hydro storage. Wind costs $1.2-2.2 million, so let's say about €1 million per MW of nameplate capacity. At capacity factors of 20-40% that's €2.5-5 million per actual MW installed. Overbuilding wind by a factor of 100 instead of building Pumpspeicherwerks, to produce 7000000MW of electricity on average most of which is disposed of, costs... €17.5-35 trillion. tl;dr: 
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 12:42
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silence_kit posted: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. But isn't this going to be more expensive to build and maintain than just installing a bunch of dedicated solar panels a few miles away? It's a clever enough idea, but it seems to make more sense to concentrate on applications where energy generation isn't some ancillary consideration.
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Jul 14, 2014 12:43
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Just for fun, let's build nuclear power plants in the same dumb way as the infamous Olkiluoto unit 3, which will cost three times as much as planned. At €8.6 billion for 1600MW nameplate, with about 90% capacity factor for nuclear, we need about 50 of the things. That's €430 billion. Why do people call nuclear power uneconomical again? suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 13:06
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Amusing article / book review that brings up some interesting points for renewables in Australia. http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/07/14/get-fact-testing-ian-plimer-on-wind-and-solar-power/ I haven't read either book, but it's nice having a quick reference to say to anyone that that is why plimer is poo poo.
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Jul 14, 2014 16:08
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Looks kinda like slap-fighting and competing projections. Sounds like the book reads like a Fox News opinion piece, and the rebuttal sounds like "nuh uh".
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Jul 14, 2014 16:18
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Frogmanv2 posted:why plimer is poo poo. According to a quick google search, Plimer is a climate change denier. Case closed.
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Jul 14, 2014 16:27
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:But isn't this going to be more expensive to build and maintain than just installing a bunch of dedicated solar panels a few miles away? It's a clever enough idea, but it seems to make more sense to concentrate on applications where energy generation isn't some ancillary consideration. Honestly, one large reason why the idea exists is to provide some sort of application or justification in research funding proposals for low efficiency photovoltaic technologies. A lot of the low efficiency solar cells do have an advantage over the most successful technology, wafered crystalline silicon, in that they can be manufactured directly on glass or plastic, which could possibly open up new applications. It remains to be seen whether those proposed applications are actually useful though.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:43
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Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Even if we were going 100% renewables why would getting rid of any sort of grid or backups would make things better because?? What exactly do they want, every building being its own island of power with no connections? Am I missing something? I just hear and read so much about how everything would be greener and better if we "moved beyond inefficient centralized power generation and adapted to a renewable decentralized system". Also apparently large power plants are less efficient than everyone having a tiny personal or neighbourhood power plant in their back yard? What??
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Jul 14, 2014 22:20
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Baronjutter posted:Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Even if we were going 100% renewables why would getting rid of any sort of grid or backups would make things better because?? What exactly do they want, every building being its own island of power with no connections? Am I missing something? Replace "centralization" with "Big Government" and it's the same logic you're familiar with.
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Jul 14, 2014 22:22
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Baronjutter posted:Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Anything big is bad (and probably also corporate and industrial), therefore, everything should be as decentralized as possible because clearly that will be more efficient despite all existing reality. It's the same sort of stupid as "enviromentalists" who oppose wind power because it'll cause cancer.
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Jul 14, 2014 22:26
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Baronjutter posted:Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Walking hippy stereotypes applaud having electricity generation in the hands of ~the people~. Free market fetishists are happy about increased opportunities for ~competition~. It's loved by both by the loonier parts of the left and by neoliberals 
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 22:29
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It would have it's perks. I wouldn't want there to be no grid, but there would at least be some advantages if the grid were structured so that various regions could provide power to the grid when their local power source was underused, and consume it when it was overused. A smaller node could act as a supplier or a consumer based on use in its coverage area. Single points of failure are probably the biggest problem with centralization. A few years ago, someone took out a utility pole and managed to knock out power for all of san diego county for ~12 hours. That couldn't happen if power plants were per-region instead. That's not to say it's a good idea given what's out there today, just that it's not purely a negative thing. it depends entirely on how much economies of scale there are power generation - at the moment I'm sure it's pretty much where we are operating, and nuclear probably pushes it in the opposite direction further still.
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Jul 14, 2014 22:32
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Trasmission losses are not insignificant either, and limiting those is what requires the very high voltage transmission lines, the construction and maintainance of which and the associated infrastructure (substations and so on) is quite pricey. As with nearly all things, local decentralised generation should be part of a sensible energy policy
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Jul 14, 2014 22:41
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Jeffrey posted:A few years ago, someone took out a utility pole and managed to knock out power for all of san diego county for ~12 hours. That couldn't happen if power plants were per-region instead. Yes it would, because San Diego county would be unlikely to be able to produce all its power needs locally without using something massively polluting, or building its own nuclear plant which would be far in excess of mere local demand. Gimby posted:Trasmission losses are not insignificant either, and limiting those is what requires the very high voltage transmission lines, the construction and maintainance of which and the associated infrastructure (substations and so on) is quite pricey. As with nearly all things, local decentralised generation should be part of a sensible energy policy Transmission losses are often more than counterbalanced by increased efficency of fuel usage. That is, after all, why they exist. You also can't, e.g. move Niagara Falls or the Hoover Dam to put the massive power available closer.
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Jul 14, 2014 22:47
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Baronjutter posted:Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Even if we were going 100% renewables why would getting rid of any sort of grid or backups would make things better because?? What exactly do they want, every building being its own island of power with no connections? Am I missing something? There are two movements that get mushed together: The no grid people The more smaller independent generators people There are plenty of ways that smaller generators (coupled with grid improvements) could increase reliability and beat out the status quo. Beating the status quo isn't hard, you can find plenty of small scale gas turbines that are better for the environment than a coal power plant. They're still less efficient by far than a combined cycle natural gas plant or something at grid scale, but mainly its something that would have benefits in rural areas, during emergencies, and is frankly something that smaller actors could do. If you're living somewhere that is unlikely to switch away from Coal anytime soon, your small village might decide to build a 10MW plant that would pay for itself during peak and theoretically let you island during a power outage* all while being greener than your neighbors. Mainly its a way to try and market small scale power plants to new customers. (*Some restrictions may apply, contact and license with your local ISO for more details. PPAs not included) Nintendo Kid posted:Yes it would, because San Diego county would be unlikely to be able to produce all its power needs locally without using something massively polluting, or building its own nuclear plant which would be far in excess of mere local demand. Only because San Diego's Nuke was shut down because when they broke it. They have 1GW+ of Natural Gas already installed...and are building more small scale peakers (9MW turbines) http://www.sdge.com/newsroom/press-releases/2011-05-23/sdge-proposes-adding-450-mw-local-%93peaking%94-power Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 22:49
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Ok thanks, I had a feeling it was that but I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt and hope I was missing something. Just this month I've read a few articles and now today in the Cnd Politics thread there's a dude mentioning decentralized power as some sort of cure all. What strikes me odd though is that it's not just some idiot on facebook, it's often in otherwise good articles. I was reading a good article on some urban land use issues that was mostly totally correct and well researched and the author just adds in some point about how OBVIOUSLY another huge thing we can do for the environment is decentralized power. I kept seeing this "decentralized power" thing referred to in articles and people as some inevitable and clearly superior system. I think the idea has leaked beyond reactionary greens who just see "big power plant = big environmental impact!" into other progressive circles where it's just eaten up as an obvious fact because a progressive ally said so. I got quite a nasty bunch of feedbacks when people were yelling about decentralized power generations and I mentioned small pre-fab plug and play nuclear reactors as an awesome solution for small towns and isolated communities. I guess decentralization would work if everyone had a big reliable local source of power they didn't need to worry much about. And yeah I do feel a strong libertarian vibe from it. Everyone would just boot-strap them selves into having their own household power plant and supplement their income from selling it back to the grid with no power company or government telling them what to do. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 23:04
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Yeah, I've usually seen it in reference to stuff like people installing photovoltaics on their roofs and selling excess power back to the grid, or a neighborhood setting up a biomass generator powered by grass clippings and tree limbs and such. A lot of it seemed impractical and kind of silly, but didn't seem to be anything actually wrong with it. It's just not the panacea some seem to claim. Small-scale local power generation will certainly help, but probably not a lot.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:11
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I want to build a tiny nuclear plant to supply my house and sell back to the grid.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:23
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Trabisnikof posted:Only because San Diego's Nuke was shut down because when they broke it. They have 1GW+ of Natural Gas already installed...and are building more small scale peakers (9MW turbines) http://www.sdge.com/newsroom/press-releases/2011-05-23/sdge-proposes-adding-450-mw-local-%93peaking%94-power 1 gigawatt of natural gas is massively polluting. Also, it clearly wasn't enough power for the area since it couldn't handle a gird isolation event.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:34
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How scalable is nuclear anyways? For instance why couldn't some small town have its own little nuclear plant? I remember seeing an article a few years back about, I think Mitsubishi, building some tiny tiny little reactor with the idea to mass-produce them for small or isolated communities. They'd require no staff, they'd just sit there generating power and on schedule they'd be replaced or re-fueled. I think the whole thing was about as big as a large van. The idea was to bury them under a public place like the town square or in front of city hall so there wasn't a chance anyone could steal it or tamper with it without having to dig for a day. They'd only need refueling every few years or more so you'd just bury and forget. I'd love to see tech like that developed and mass-produced on a scale that made it cost effective. Not just to give smaller towns a nuclear option, but for emergencies too. Something that could fit in a standard 40' shipping container ready to be plugged in to turned on and plugged in. Obviously a single large plant would be more efficient than a bunch of these micro-nuclear generators though.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:42
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Baronjutter posted:[Small nuclear reactor question] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor Small reactors can output 10-250MWe and are generally small enough to transport on a rail car.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:01
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