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Nice piece of fish posted:In other words, we are - as a species - hosed. The worst case scenario will happen, no magic science will come along to save us from global thermal momentum (what the hell could even do that and who would pay for it?), the poor will get poorer, the rich will get richer until the breaking point where food/water riots erupt and society dissolves into resource-war and chaos. The end will be nukes launched from the first big destabilized nation to experience loss of control of the military to some madman. This is horribly depressing and not something I really want to live to see.
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# ? May 29, 2015 12:59 |
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# ? May 31, 2024 04:35 |
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or we build nuclear power plants and fusion reactors
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# ? May 29, 2015 13:37 |
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Your Sledgehammer posted:I'll preface this by saying that this is a very, very minor quibble, but an important one, I feel. Based on some of the things I've seen you post in this thread, Av027, I'm sure we'd agree on probably 90% of each other's opinion of climate science and what it implies. Yeah, I would say our position on the science and consequences of our actions (and lack thereof) is similar. I suppose as far as the extermination of life, I should probably clarify that I mean that as ecosystems disintegrate, so too does life within that ecosystem. Maybe humans can adapt to exist on some scale (albeit at much lower population levels), but most species do not have that luxury. When their environment changes significantly, or food source disappears, etc, they will become extinct. Let's not forget too, that seemingly small impacts, such as colony collapse disorder (bees), can have devastating chain reactions. This is already impacting agriculture, but if it were to become epidemic, it would be disastrous. Will life still exist somewhere? Of course. But I don't believe there will be much of what currently exists that makes it in the long run. Your Sledgehammer posted:I think it's high time that this thread made it an official policy to just ignore Arkane. We know his schtick, we know it's tired old bullshit, so let's move on. Responding or giving him any attention at all only encourages him to post more, so it's best that no one respond to him at all. Let him shout into the darkness while an honest discussion of climate change happens around him. Even the most science illiterate goon who wanders into the thread would be able to see through the lies, I'd hope, and it's not worth degrading the discourse in here just to poke holes in Arkane's fucktard balloon over and over. If he gets ignored for a few weeks on end, he'll give up and hopefully never come back. I couldn't agree more, and this is basically what I'm getting at. I think most of us feel that we want to correct him, disprove the lies, and ultimately prevent goons that are illiterate on the subject (I've seen plenty that have wandered in here) from taking what Arkane claims as fact. But I think it's folly to continue to attempt to change Arkane's viewpoint (one that I honestly believe he is paid to espouse), as he is obviously not going to change his tune. I also believe that new posters wandering in to the thread can sort it out for themselves in short order by simply reading a page or two - especially since we also reduce the pseudoscience noise by eliminating responses to Arkane, making it easier for a new poster to understand the issues at hand. Arkane is toxic to the thread, and generating several pages of responses to him "proves the controversy". There is no controversy. There's just some rear end in a top hat making GBS threads in the pool. Engaging hasn't worked, it's time to ignore. Av027 fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 29, 2015 |
# ? May 29, 2015 13:54 |
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Nice piece of fish posted:You mean we have more than 30 years of oil and gas remaining at current and increasing consumption levels and pricing? Get the gently caress out of here. We have plenty of natural gas and unconventional oil sources remaining, yes. Economics are an open question, but you've seen how shale caused the oil price collapse over the past year.
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# ? May 29, 2015 15:06 |
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Av027 posted:I couldn't agree more, and this is basically what I'm getting at. I think most of us feel that we want to correct him, disprove the lies, and ultimately prevent goons that are illiterate on the subject (I've seen plenty that have wandered in here) from taking what Arkane claims as fact. But I think it's folly to continue to attempt to change Arkane's viewpoint (one that I honestly believe he is paid to espouse), as he is obviously not going to change his tune. I also believe that new posters wandering in to the thread can sort it out for themselves in short order by simply reading a page or two - especially since we also reduce the pseudoscience noise by eliminating responses to Arkane, making it easier for a new poster to understand the issues at hand. Arkane is toxic to the thread, and generating several pages of responses to him "proves the controversy". There is no controversy. There's just some rear end in a top hat making GBS threads in the pool. Engaging hasn't worked, it's time to ignore. Just make a "this is Arkane posting and it's bullshit [links 1-3 for most common types of Arkane bullshit]" template and post it after every Arkane post
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# ? May 29, 2015 15:11 |
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blowfish posted:or we build nuclear power plants and fusion reactors I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but this is essentially the same as saying we need a full paradigm shift. Coal and natural gas plants are so much cheaper to build and operate than nuclear that it is almost impossible for them to built in much of the world. Even if you convince some places to take on the additional costs of nuclear plants, they still need the improvements to education and infrastructure to operate and maintain them.
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# ? May 29, 2015 15:48 |
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Duckaerobics posted:I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but this is essentially the same as saying we need a full paradigm shift. Coal and natural gas plants are so much cheaper to build and operate than nuclear that it is almost impossible for them to built in much of the world. Even if you convince some places to take on the additional costs of nuclear plants, they still need the improvements to education and infrastructure to operate and maintain them. Less of a paradigm shift than ~*~smart grids~*~ with substantially reduced energy consumption that in addition follows what sun and wind do instead of being at whichever level people want to use. Nuclear power means we can spend money on continuing to have plentiful energy without producing too much CO2, and then spend energy to avoid other problems such as resource scarcity or land use without rebuilding industrial civilisation from the ground up.
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# ? May 29, 2015 16:09 |
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Series DD Funding posted:What the gently caress are you talking about? Petroleum will not be gone in 30 years unless we restrict it as part of CC fighting efforts. The effects of global instability relating to food insecurity are a bigger threat to global petroleum distribution than geology.
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# ? May 29, 2015 17:31 |
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blowfish posted:Less of a paradigm shift than ~*~smart grids~*~ with substantially reduced energy consumption that in addition follows what sun and wind do instead of being at whichever level people want to use. Nuclear power means we can spend money on continuing to have plentiful energy without producing too much CO2, and then spend energy to avoid other problems such as resource scarcity or land use without rebuilding industrial civilisation from the ground up. Seeing how smart grids mainly just means computerization and grid upgrades and that is already happening, it is a vastly smaller shift than magically building a bunch of nukes no one wants to pay for or operate. Also your scare line about how we can't have reliability if we use renewables is both proven wrong by engineering study after engineering study, and is about as accurate as saying we'll all glow if we use nuclear.
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# ? May 29, 2015 17:40 |
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blowfish posted:Less of a paradigm shift than ~*~smart grids~*~ with substantially reduced energy consumption that in addition follows what sun and wind do instead of being at whichever level people want to use. Nuclear power means we can spend money on continuing to have plentiful energy without producing too much CO2, and then spend energy to avoid other problems such as resource scarcity or land use without rebuilding industrial civilisation from the ground up. I think these are great solutions to reduce CO2 output in developed nations that already have the resources to battle climate change. I don't think it's reasonable to expect developing nations to build renewable power grids when coal and natural gas are much cheaper and easier to build and operate. It will take (and has taken) a monumental effort to replace the majority of western nations power generation with renewable or nuclear power sources. I don't see how a global shift is possible without a major change in political and economic thought.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:19 |
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Duckaerobics posted:I think these are great solutions to reduce CO2 output in developed nations that already have the resources to battle climate change. I don't think it's reasonable to expect developing nations to build renewable power grids when coal and natural gas are much cheaper and easier to build and operate. It will take (and has taken) a monumental effort to replace the majority of western nations power generation with renewable or nuclear power sources. I don't see how a global shift is possible without a major change in political and economic thought. Yeah, but developing countries are starting from waaaay lower levels of energy use in the first place, so if industrialised countries have low carbon power that also buys time during which developing countries can burn cheap fossil fuel until they themselves become rich enough to afford something better.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:27 |
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Duckaerobics posted:I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but this is essentially the same as saying we need a full paradigm shift. Coal and natural gas plants are so much cheaper to build and operate than nuclear that it is almost impossible for them to built in much of the world. Even if you convince some places to take on the additional costs of nuclear plants, they still need the improvements to education and infrastructure to operate and maintain them. And yet India and China are building them anyway.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:29 |
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computer parts posted:And yet India and China are building them anyway. They're also building a lot of coal and natural gas plants too...
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:32 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Seeing how smart grids mainly just means computerization and grid upgrades and that is already happening, it is a vastly smaller shift than magically building a bunch of nukes no one wants to pay for or operate. I'm holding my breath till an entire big powergrid (and not just one of many interconnected regions that can fall back on / dump to fossil or nuclear powered neighbours) actually runs on mostly renewables. Aside from exceptions like Norway where shitloads of hydro are available and population density is low, or countries which just build an assload of environmentally destructive biomass powerplants.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:32 |
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Trabisnikof posted:They're also building a lot of coal and natural gas plants too... Cool, good for them.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:33 |
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China and India are developing countries (though doing increasingly well) that need cheap electricity in the middle of nowhere right the gently caress now, and furthermore seem to follow an approach of "throw poo poo at the wall and see what sticks" as evidenced by them also building up large renewable capacities. Oh and you conveniently forgot about how China is actually starting to wean itself off coal now.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:36 |
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blowfish posted:I'm holding my breath till an entire big powergrid (and not just one of many interconnected regions that can fall back on / dump to fossil or nuclear powered neighbours) actually runs on mostly renewables. Aside from exceptions like Norway where shitloads of hydro are available and population density is low, or countries which just build an assload of environmentally destructive biomass powerplants. Well, the Texas grid has been seeing peaks of 20%+ Wind and averages above 10% Wind, so it is getting there. And in case you weren't aware, the Texas grid is a distinct grid, not just a regional ISO. Meanwhile, the engineering for higher than 20% penetration have been heavily modeled and while there are infrastructure costs (new power lines in particular) they're on par with historical spending on electricity infrastructure. Also, biomass isn't "environmentally destructive" when fueled from waste materials, of which there are Gigawatts worth of waste capacity in the U.S. alone. blowfish posted:China and India are developing countries (though doing increasingly well) that need cheap electricity in the middle of nowhere right the gently caress now, and furthermore seem to follow an approach of "throw poo poo at the wall and see what sticks" as evidenced by them also building up large renewable capacities. Oh and you conveniently forgot about how China is actually starting to wean itself off coal now. Correct, they want coal to only make up 50% of total energy consumption by 2050.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:47 |
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So how much storage will Texas have on a 80% or more renewable grid, and how much of that will be biomass? In addition, what kind of waste do you want to chuck into biomass, because e.g. anything that can be made into animal feed is much more efficiently converted into animal feed instead of electricity.
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# ? May 29, 2015 18:53 |
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blowfish posted:So how much storage will Texas have on a 80% or more renewable grid, and how much of that will be biomass? In addition, what kind of waste do you want to chuck into biomass, because e.g. anything that can be made into animal feed is much more efficiently converted into animal feed instead of electricity. Well, since you set the goalposts at 80%, I would recommend you look at the RE Futures report from NREL. I'm too lazy to look up the per-grid numbers for you, but for shifting the entire US to 80% renewables would require ~100-150 GW of storage capacity. I'd also like to point out that we're both ignoring the political/economic feasibility of either 80% nukes or 80% renewables, just looking at engineering and costs here. I don't think we'll hit 80% renewables by 2050 nor will we hit 80% nuclear by 2050. Good biomass feedstocks include ag waste (we're talking corn stalks, sugar cane wastes and rice hulls etc), landfills, waste water treatment plants and forestry wastes (black liquor etc). Maybe there's some overlap between some ag waste and the ability to make it into animal feed, but I'd argue a slight increase in meat prices would be worth the cost. Especially since waste biomass with CCS could even be a net-negative carbon-equivilent emitter, which is the kind of thing we need.
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# ? May 29, 2015 19:04 |
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I skimmed the first part of the NREL report with the graph showing 100-150GW, which is a meaningless number because having enough storage to provide 150GW for ten minutes or ten hours or ten weeks are completely different requirements. I'll read the whole thing in more detail eventually but there's no mention of the total required storage capacity in the executive summary except handwaving it away as "it works". e: mentioning how much storage you need is sort of important, because a week or even a single day of storage is going to be loving expensive suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:22 on May 29, 2015 |
# ? May 29, 2015 20:08 |
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^ Luckily, as the NREL grid modeling shows, that's not an amount of storage required. blowfish posted:I skimmed the first part of the NREL report with the graph showing 100-150GW, which is a meaningless number because having enough storage to provide 150GW for ten minutes or ten hours or ten weeks are completely different requirements. I'll read the whole thing in more detail eventually but there's no mention of the total required storage capacity in the executive summary except handwaving it away as "it works". Actually one can measure grid storage in watts, which is particularly important when considering reserve load requirements (e.g. in the case of grid-wide renewables): The Great “Power vs. Energy” Confusion posted:Energy storage usually means batteries, but there are other ways, like pumped hydro and molten salt. But whatever the technology, there are two performance parameters of interest: It is not a meaningless metric at all. Also, check out the whole volume on storage and renewable technologies if you have detailed questions: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/52409-2.pdf
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# ? May 29, 2015 20:28 |
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So how many GWh will be behind those 150 GW? That is sort of important, because the design of your pile of batteries/water reservoirs/whatever will depend on that. I'm sort of assuming any sane storage system would deliver reasonable wattage because that is the whole point of having storage in the first place, and e.g. hydro isn't known for providing only a small trickle of power for months I've yet to see a seriously proposed storage system that would completely fail at delivering wattage. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:41 on May 29, 2015 |
# ? May 29, 2015 20:39 |
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Let's just grab numbers from the NREL report and assume that 150GW will be enough (I doubt it, but hey, let's be generous), and insist on using GW and not caring about for how long that will last. According to the NREL thing hydro tends to be $1000 per kW ish, but has gotten more expensive recently in megaprojects, much like that other category of megaproject known as nuclear power plants, but let's just assume this stuff will be done reasonably competently, we'll have an easy supply of valleys to dam up, etc. and roll with $1000. That's 150 billion bucks down the drain for storage even according to the "let's gloss over for how long we need to provide power " approach, which could fund 15 completely mismanaged Finnish nuclear power plant builds instead, or 30 with standard levels of fuckery At this point, you're building 75 Hoover dams. Have fun. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 29, 2015 |
# ? May 29, 2015 21:01 |
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Series DD Funding posted:We have plenty of natural gas and unconventional oil sources remaining, yes. Economics are an open question, but you've seen how shale caused the oil price collapse over the past year. This is total nonsense, the drop in the price of oil has to do with retaliatory action taken by OPEC/House of Saud, not because we're just producing TOO MUCH SHALE OIL!!
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# ? May 29, 2015 21:39 |
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Also that^^^Series DD Funding posted:We have plenty of natural gas and unconventional oil sources remaining, yes. Economics are an open question, but you've seen how shale caused the oil price collapse over the past year. Yeah. Alternatives to just pumping the stuff straight out of the ground are very expensive, questionable in their longevity and we use petroleum for one hell of a lot more than just transport and logistics. For one, farmers are going to get a double whammy of increased fuel AND increased fertilizer costs starting pretty soon. This will be a significant impact on food prices - even if those prices are already way too high due to distribution, refinement and sale overhead excess plus profit excess - unless corporations are willing to cut prices to the bone to make way way less money off of raw foodstuffs. And I think everyone knows the answer to that one. Then there's all the other stuff that runs on petroleum. Machine lubricants, industrial chemicals, asphalt and tar, aviation fuel, fertilizer, industrial plastics etc. The current oil price collapse will not last. The current glut will not last. We can't keep up today's levels of hydrocarbon production for 30 years without huge expenses, and even if we could - we're still running our in 40, 50 or 60 years. Of course, we're ignoring here what draining every least drop we can from the earth's crust actually means in terms of CO2 levels. If we don't leave that stuff in the ground starting pretty damned soon, then we are barreling at that worst-case scenario at comparatively breakneck speed. Spending energy to get more energy out then spending much more energy trying to scrub the effects of that energy from our closed system to sequester CO2; the single most energy effective thing we can do to stop global warming is leave all that poo poo in the ground, and that's the one thing we absolutely positively will not do. Paradigm shift, or start preparing. Middle ground is slight damage mitigation at best.
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# ? May 29, 2015 21:52 |
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Radbot posted:This is total nonsense, the drop in the price of oil has to do with retaliatory action taken by OPEC/House of Saud, not because we're just producing TOO MUCH SHALE OIL!! OPEC didn't increase production until prices had already collapsed: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-12-11/shale-oils-relentless-production-is-breaking-opecs-neck http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/OPEC-Output-Up-U.S.-Shale-Down.html The point is that shale is very economical at the pre-fall prices, and we've got shittons of it.
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# ? May 29, 2015 21:53 |
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Series DD Funding posted:OPEC didn't increase production until prices had already collapsed: Lets just ignore the bigger climate picture and do the same old same old. Right.
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# ? May 29, 2015 23:45 |
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CommieGIR posted:Lets just ignore the bigger climate picture and do the same old same old. Right. I was responding to the contention that in 30 years petroleum will be "gone." If that were actually true stopping AGW would be much easier.
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# ? May 29, 2015 23:48 |
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blowfish posted:Let's just grab numbers from the NREL report and assume that 150GW will be enough (I doubt it, but hey, let's be generous), and insist on using GW and not caring about for how long that will last. According to the NREL thing hydro tends to be $1000 per kW ish, Why are you making up assumptions about what kinds of storage the report suggests, when it in fact lays out in detail what kind of storage they model (hint: it's not all hydro)? It's almost like you're cherry picking numbers to declare the work of many well respected scientists as suspect because it doesn't meet your ideological views, all without providing evidence of your own...Arkane, is that you?
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# ? May 30, 2015 01:01 |
Trabisnikof posted:
IMO it's poor form to just post a link to a 300+ page PDF as an argument. But while skimming it I found a figure suggesting that Lead acid batteries have a higher power density than EDL capacitors, ANIME AKBAR fucked around with this message at 05:02 on May 30, 2015 |
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# ? May 30, 2015 04:52 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Why are you making up assumptions about what kinds of storage the report suggests, when it in fact lays out in detail what kind of storage they model (hint: it's not all hydro)? The costs per unit output for hydro are at most middle-of-the-road for the stuff evaluated in that report. Building a mix of storage options amounting to 75 Hoover dams will not be cheaper than building 75 actual Hoover dams.
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# ? May 30, 2015 08:05 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Well, the Texas grid has been seeing peaks of 20%+ Wind and averages above 10% Wind, so it is getting there. And in case you weren't aware, the Texas grid is a distinct grid, not just a regional ISO. gently caress, California had to recently ask the wind and solar people to stop supplying power because they were overloading the system. We are on our way, we just need storage.
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# ? May 30, 2015 09:54 |
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Pohl posted:gently caress, California had to recently ask the wind and solar people to stop supplying power because they were overloading the system. You say that like it is a good thing, but that is precisely the problem. "Oh we got a reasonable amount of energy, with power output over time ranging from 1% to 99% of nameplate capacity for an average of 35%" is what actually makes a mainly renewable grid hard to build. Even in Germany, which covers a reasonable land area and has good renewable penetration compared to most other countries (so the "you're just extrapolating from a tiny number of generators to an entire country" argument doesn't hold water) has major problems with this to the point where German electricity prices (which are adjusted according to supply/demand continously) follow an inverse relationship with renewable power input and occasionally go negative as we have to pay neighbouring countries to burn useless electricity. Just look at this graph of the craptastic variability in solar/wind output in Germany 2014, as compiled by the Fraunhofer renewable energies institute, which would be our equivalent to the NREL: A 2012 study looking at wind power output vs electricity price (MW vs. € per MWh): Even a few days of storage to buffer electricity output for an industrialised country cost hundreds of billions of dollars (see my previous post) e: I'm pretty much reposting this every year in the climate/energy threads, and each new renewable energy generation over time plot for Germany looks just as ridiculous as the last one. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:45 on May 30, 2015 |
# ? May 30, 2015 10:39 |
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blowfish posted:You say that like it is a good thing, but that is precisely the problem. "Oh we got a reasonable amount of energy, with power output over time ranging from 1% to 99% of nameplate capacity for an average of 35%" is what actually makes a mainly renewable grid hard to build. Which, as he said, is why we need storage.
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# ? May 30, 2015 11:37 |
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Nice piece of fish posted:Sure, and this proves that everyone can do a thing. Which is nice. Unfortunately, given the global scale of the problem, this won't be nearly enough and in the end might not even be a significant factor - which is what I think people here are saying. Nah we'll be fine.
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# ? May 30, 2015 12:19 |
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Anosmoman posted:Which, as he said, is why we need storage. Which, as also already said, will be ludicrously expensive even under optimistic assumptions and is therefore going to realistically happen in the same way that Germany will have a nuclear renaissance (protip: too late or never)
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# ? May 30, 2015 15:55 |
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blowfish posted:You say that like it is a good thing, but that is precisely the problem. I don't think you explained this well, if you mean what I think you mean. Almost everyone, upon hearing that wind is an intermittent source of power, thinks the same thing: "oh no, what about the calm days with no wind? There won't be enough power!" This is not the problem with wind. No wind power operator has ever had a shortfall problem. This is easy to deal with. No problemo. The trouble with intermittent generation is harnessing the power when there are high winds. When electric companies tell wind operators "too much power! Shut that down!" that is the problem. All those economics calculation on the cost of wind assume you're able to actually harness and sell the power. If you can't sell it, precisely when its generating the most power, the cost of wind generators goes higher than any other form of energy. By a lot. In the long run, this is a totally solvable problem for wind, without requiring massive amounts of grid storage or anything like that. Once the transportation infrastructure is electric, you just have the grid tell cars to charge full-speed to soak up power when it's abundant, and charge more slowly when its scarce.\ In the short run, they're building up a lot of grid infrastructure to sell that excess power to where it can be used. Iowa wants to sell to Chicago, for example, so they need to build a big power line to cross that distance. In the medium-term, there probably needs to be reform of some sort of the grid power pricing structure. IIRC, there's a big problem where some plants could be spun down a little bit when wind is high, but don't because they have a contract to sell all their power all the time to the grid, and the generator wants their money, and the contract makes the grid pay for it. So grid is telling wind to shut down because they've got enough from coal. heh (e: I'm pro-nukes, btw. Just don't have anything further to say on that side of the argument.)
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# ? May 30, 2015 16:01 |
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crazypenguin posted:In the long run, this is a totally solvable problem for wind, without requiring massive amounts of grid storage or anything like that. Once the transportation infrastructure is electric, you just have the grid tell cars to charge full-speed to soak up power when it's abundant, and charge more slowly when its scarce.\ Of course this assumes that sufficient numbers of cars are plugged in (and need power) during peak generation.
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# ? May 30, 2015 16:07 |
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crazypenguin posted:Once the transportation infrastructure is electric, you just have the grid tell cars to charge full-speed to soak up power when it's abundant, and charge more slowly when its scarce.\ I would never, ever buy an electric car that didn't charge as fast as it could every time I plugged it in. Telling anyone who's on low battery "sorry, you can't drive to $location for $time because the wind isn't blowing enough right now" is not going to work. Especially if $location is "the hospital".
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# ? May 30, 2015 16:53 |
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# ? May 31, 2024 04:35 |
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Hydrogen (or synthetic fuel) cars are more sensible because H and C and O are effectively unlimited and the only thing we need to invest is energy to make the stuff. Any sort of battery uses finite resources that often take effort to reclaim from used batteries. Unless we get super batteries very soon I'd prefer topping up the e-gas in a normal car, and the latter will be less visibly (to the end user) affected by fluctuating
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# ? May 30, 2015 16:59 |