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If it ever became an actual issue, we could always, you know, clean up the polluted land. It's not magic, it's just expensive at the moment. Odds are, in the next 1000 years, we'll make advances in remediation of chemical contamination, and it won't even be prohibitively expensive. Arguing about what will happen 1000 years from now isn't nearly as important as what will happen 20, 50, and 100 years from now.
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Feb 10, 2017 20:17
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ulmont posted:
If you had actually comprehended my post instead of constructing a pointless strawman to talk about, then you might not have missed this key bit: QuarkJets posted:No, this is completely wrong; the official estimate is only 3000 years, and even that is based on flawed overly-conservative reasoning. My argument is that even 3000 years is way too pessimistically high, and the realistic time that an area would be rendered "uninhabitable" would be on the ~100-year range. Case in point, the worst nuclear disaster ever was less than 100 years ago, and there are people, animals, and plants living in the exclusion zone right now. "Uninhabitable" is clearly the wrong word to use when describing an area that is inhabited So yes, 10000-20000 years of the area being rendered uninhabitable is way overblown, in my estimate it's too high by at least 2 orders of magnitude (a concept that you also managed to gently caress up, as 3k and 10k are not the same order of magnitude)
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Feb 10, 2017 23:17
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As we can see below, the Solar and Wind industries are growing exponentially in North America and in Europe. 65% of new power generation in the US was solar or wind in 2016, and 86% of new power generation in the EU was solar, wind or other renewables. Further, the vast expansion in production and the simultaneous great drop in price of lithic batteries will allow solar and wind plants to store energy for use during times of low production. This growth will only continue to escalate as prices of solar panels and batteries both continue to drop. The Green Energy Revolution is finally upon us and it cannot be derailed by the lobbyists for dying industries like coal. The market is king, and solar has won that battle. Further more, the workforce involved in the industry will make it as powerful as coal once was decades ago. The numbers working in the industry are already over 373k workers and ahead of natural gas. And the workforce will grow greatly this year as Tesla's giga factories and the factories of its competitors come online. Growth is accelerating around the world as well, particularly in Asia. US Solar Market Grows 95% in 2016, Smashes Records quote:US Solar Market Grows 95% in 2016, Smashes Records https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/09/new-energy-europe-renewable-sources-2016 quote:Renewable energy sources made up nearly nine-tenths of new power added to Europe’s electricity grids last year, in a sign of the continent’s rapid shift away from fossil fuels. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/tesla-s-battery-revolution-just-reached-critical-mass quote:
That looks like an 80% increase to my math, not more than doubling, but it's still a great increase and in total GW is 2.3 as large as the US increase. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solar-idUSKBN15J0G7 quote:China's installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity more than doubled last year, turning the country into the world's biggest producer of solar energy by capacity, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Saturday. http://inhabitat.com/india-doubles-down-on-solar-power-with-huge-park-capacity-increase/ quote:India just made a huge commitment to solar power. They’re doubling the planned capacity in their solar parks program from 20 gigawatts (GW) up to 40 GW. The government has also given a green light to the program’s second phase. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-14/saudis-warm-to-solar-as-opec-s-top-producer-aims-to-help-exports quote:Starting this year, Saudi Arabia plans to develop almost 10 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2023, starting with wind and solar plants in its vast northwestern desert. The effort could replace the equivalent of 80,000 barrels of oil a day now burned for power. Add in natural gas projects set to start later this decade, and the Saudis could quadruple that number, according to consultant Wood MacKenzie Ltd. That could supplant all the crude burned in the kingdom during its winter months.
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Feb 16, 2017 11:59
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Charlz Guybon posted:As we can see below, the Solar and Wind industries are growing exponentially in North America and in Europe. 65% of new power generation in the US was solar or wind in 2016, and 86% of new power generation in the EU was solar, wind or other renewables. Further, the vast expansion in production and the simultaneous great drop in price of lithic batteries will allow solar and wind plants to store energy for use during times of low production. This growth will only continue to escalate as prices of solar panels and batteries both continue to drop. It really hasn't not yet it hasn't. Don't get me wrong I sincerely hope that it will. We haven't had a grid yet that is by majority wind/solar, or read, intermittent power sources without dependence on dams for energy storage. When you have dams, its great but not everywhere has the dams to allow for such a large portion of its power supply to be intermittent. When there is a grid that is 80% intermittent power (or there abouts) without dependence on dams, then you can declare victory. At the moment, we are no where close.
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Feb 16, 2017 13:36
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BattleMoose posted:It really hasn't not yet it hasn't. Don't get me wrong I sincerely hope that it will. We haven't had a grid yet that is by majority wind/solar, or read, intermittent power sources without dependence on dams for energy storage. When you have dams, its great but not everywhere has the dams to allow for such a large portion of its power supply to be intermittent. That's where the batteries are going to come in.
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Feb 16, 2017 13:40
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Charlz Guybon posted:That's where the batteries are going to come in. And once that has actually been achieved, then you can celebrate about being victorious. At this point in time, the amount of penetration that intermittent power sources can have into any grid, is very much still in doubt.
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Feb 16, 2017 14:43
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Charlz Guybon posted:That's where the batteries are going to come in. Show me where we're going to get all those batteries from, where we're going to place them, and where we're going to discard/recycle worn out ones on a regular basis then. Not to mention " cumulative capacity of over 40 gigawatts" for solar isn't very impressive when the about 100 nuclear plants total to about 100 gigawatts which they can sustain practically 24/7, while almost all 40 gigawatts of solar disappear at night. And that's with nuclear only providing ~20% of yearly generation, you need to cover at least another 300 gigawatts of capacity continuously to take out all the fossil fuel plants.
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Feb 16, 2017 15:53
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It is still impressive that solar photovoltaic energy is growing rapidly and according to current projections, will likely become a relevant energy generation technology. The party line in the beginning of this thread was that PV can't do it, solar panels will forever be too expensive, it will never become a real technology, etc. etc. This kind of shows that it is hard to make meaningful statements about the cost of speculative technologies. Even academic researchers who specialize in the science behind a technology get it wrong when they authoritatively claim that technology X or technology Y is fundamentally high cost, and that's why their research into technology Z is practical and justified. There are a lot of things that go into how much something costs that aren't apparent until you actually work directly on the problem of commercializing and trying to lower the cost of a technology. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 16:18
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If Trump/The Republicans come in and wipe away any and all remaining incentives for solar and other renewables, what does that do to the current trend and market outlook?
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Feb 16, 2017 16:23
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Doom Rooster posted:If Trump/The Republicans come in and wipe away any and all remaining incentives for solar and other renewables, what does that do to the current trend and market outlook? Mostly very little because they were already set to expire. By the time congress passes a law repealing subsidies there would be very few projects not already started that needed the subsidies for profitability. Also consider that a bunch of renewables go in Red districts, so it's probably not too high a priority for them.
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Feb 16, 2017 16:50
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silence_kit posted:It is still impressive that solar photovoltaic energy is growing rapidly and according to current projections, will likely become a relevant energy generation technology. The party line in the beginning of this thread was that PV can't do it, solar panels will forever be too expensive, it will never become a real technology, etc. etc. Yeah, the "let's declare victory!" posts are premature at best, but the fact that solar has taken off enough for it to become commercially viable in some areas is fantastic. Panel and installation costs were prohibitively high before, but solar is mainstream enough now that market forces are driving those costs down, and the areas of the country (and planet) where solar is an economical intermittent supply grows by the month. Storage is still a massive issue and still stands in the way of grid scale solar. That being said, market forces are already working on that problem, and if panel/installation costs continue to decrease it will make more expensive storage techniques viable. We are not near grid scale solar, but several of the major problems (panel and installation costs) are almost solved, and the outlook on solving the storage issues looks better today than it has in the past. That's certainly something to be happy about.
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Feb 16, 2017 18:18
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I assume unreliable renewables work with dams because the dams can just throttle down and save their water ? This sounds especially relevant with many hydro sources projecting less flow due to climate change effects.
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Feb 16, 2017 18:27
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fishmech posted:Show me where we're going to get all those batteries from, where we're going to place them, and where we're going to discard/recycle worn out ones on a regular basis then. http://web.mit.edu/2.14/www/Handouts/OnePorts.pdf coyo7e fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 19:00
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coyo7e posted:You can make a battery out of anything - it doesn't need to be a nicad or li-ion or whatever - you just need to be able to store the energy in some form - which could be a turbine, or Phase Change Materials like salt hydrates, etc. That doesn't tell us anything about where we're going to get all the material, where we're going to store them while in use, and where/how we're going to discard/recycle worn out/damaged materials on an ongoing basis. Storing petawatthours of electricity is not trivial. Storing it safely is even less trivial.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:52
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Baronjutter posted:I assume unreliable renewables work with dams because the dams can just throttle down and save their water ? This sounds especially relevant with many hydro sources projecting less flow due to climate change effects. And they can function as batteries, if excess generated power is used to pump water upstream into the reservoir for use when the sun or wind die down.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:54
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:And they can function as batteries, if excess generated power is used to pump water upstream into the reservoir for use when the sun or wind die down. Yeah, having asstons of hydroelectric capacity is AMAZING.
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Feb 17, 2017 00:08
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unless you're a salmon, or unless you live downstream from one dam during unseasonably-heavy weather 
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Feb 17, 2017 00:33
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Baronjutter posted:I assume unreliable renewables work with dams because the dams can just throttle down and save their water ? This sounds especially relevant with many hydro sources projecting less flow due to climate change effects. They are mostly a big rear end battery so regardless of what the weather is doing or what supply is doing, you can always (assuming the pumps aren't already at 100%) pump what up into the dam. Many dams around the world already run their pumps 100% overnight when electricity is dirt cheap (usually off of coal) so they can run the turbines during the peaks and make profits. The electricity price shifts an absolute huge amount over the course of the day.
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Feb 17, 2017 01:02
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There's a hydro "battery" exactly like you guys are describing in western Virginia. You can't do this everywhere, requires some very specific geographical features. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned an energy storage attempt which was just driving an electric locomotive up a hill carrying traincars full of concrete, and running an alternator as it comes back down. Concordat fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 02:10
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fishmech posted:Storing petawatthours of electricity is not trivial. Storing it safely is even less trivial.
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Feb 20, 2017 15:39
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Rent-A-Cop posted:gently caress safety! I say we build a flywheel the size of the moon. I mean, arguably that's what the moon is and you get energy out of it by building tidal generators. So really you just need to run them backwards, speed the moon up, and you've got the best pumped storage solution in local orbit.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:28
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, arguably that's what the moon is and you get energy out of it by building tidal generators. Tides are not created by extracting energy from the moon's rotation you silly person
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Feb 20, 2017 22:53
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QuarkJets posted:Tides are not created by extracting energy from the moon's rotation you silly person This is true. Instead, they're storing energy into the Moon's orbit (and extracting energy from Earth's rotation.)
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Feb 21, 2017 01:09
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QuarkJets posted:Tides are not created by extracting energy from the moon's rotation you silly person The moon's orbit around the earth, making the moon the wheel, and the earth the bearing in this analogy.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:01
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OwlFancier posted:The moon's orbit around the earth, making the moon the wheel, and the earth the bearing in this analogy. That's revolution; flywheels use rotation. Also, tidal generators don't extract orbital energy from the Moon, they extract rotational energy from the Earth. Tidal acceleration results in the Moon receiving angular momentum from the Earth, increasing its orbital period (to an equilibrium of about 47 days) while Earth's rotation slows to the point that the same side of the planet would always be facing the Moon. So it would be more appropriate to call Earth the flywheel in that analogy
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Feb 21, 2017 04:18
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QuarkJets posted:while Earth's rotation slows to the point that the same side of the planet would always be facing the Moon. But that slowing is so gradual that long before it gets to that point we will have way more solar energy than we need. Or want. Once the oceans boil away, no more tides!
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Feb 21, 2017 06:54
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coyo7e posted:unless you're a salmon, or unless you live downstream from one dam during unseasonably-heavy weather I used to give a gently caress about biodiversity in our rivers and streams. I'm trying not to shift to 100% "dam everything now" and need help doing so.
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Feb 21, 2017 11:07
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Potato Salad posted:I used to give a gently caress about biodiversity in our rivers and streams.
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Feb 21, 2017 11:23
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LemonDrizzle posted:You're too late - hydro is such a well-established technology (it's been around for over a century after all) that essentially everything worth damming in the developed world has already been dammed. Tangential, but does anyone know if China is close to maxing out its hydro potential, or sub Sahara Africa for that matter?
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Feb 21, 2017 11:25
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LemonDrizzle posted:You're too late - hydro is such a well-established technology (it's been around for over a century after all) that essentially everything worth damming in the developed world has already been dammed. Yeah most of the remaining stuff that could be dammed would either require moving whole, large cities (not the mostly small time sub-20k population towns that tended to be moved for earlier projects) or would require extraordinary engineering work and reinforcement on the surrounding terrain to actually hold the water. You can hypothetically build giant hundred-mile perimeter walls to create a reservoir anywhere on the globe, to build a suitable dam in front of, but that's hardly practical. Some existing dams might be suitable for installing more or higher efficiency turbines to increase power output, or to be replaced wholesale with a newer dam located close by, but that's about it for major expansion in most of the world.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:43
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coyo7e posted:unless you're a salmon, or unless you live downstream from one dam during unseasonably-heavy weather Both of which are very feasible to mitigate using current industry best practices.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:10
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Flood control is a pretty big reason for building dams in the first place. It's not really an argument against them if they can't prevent all flooding all the time.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:20
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Dameius posted:Tangential, but does anyone know if China is close to maxing out its hydro potential, or sub Sahara Africa for that matter? Congo River, Inga Dam Scheme, its been on the cards for years. One of the biggest issues is the instability of the political system in the Congo. quote:The dam has an expected generating capacity of 39,000 MW (52,000,000 hp), with 52 turbines each with a capacity of 750 MW (1,010,000 hp).[1] This is a significantly larger capacity than the Three Gorges Dam, which is currently known as the largest energy-generating body ever built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Inga_Dam
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Feb 22, 2017 06:04
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BattleMoose posted:Congo River, Inga Dam Scheme, its been on the cards for years. One of the biggest issues is the instability of the political system in the Congo. Also the nominal of the dam is about 200-300% of the DRC's entire GDP.
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Feb 22, 2017 16:41
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Dams in the tropics have a number of issues that can lead to them being large sources of carbon. First replacing a tropical forest or bog the reservoir is going to be immediately to large emissions. Second, for various reasons the reservoirs are often wider and shallower with large seasonal fluctuations in depth and large nutrient and sediment inputs. What happens when you have a wide shallow expanse of warm water rich in nutrients? You produce methane.
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Feb 22, 2017 17:32
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The Congo is somewhat unique for tropical rivers though in that it doesn't have much seasonal depth variation, owing to it's large catchment of areas on both sides of the equator.
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Feb 22, 2017 19:03
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Wind is having some growing pains right now. I'm in the process of acquiring certifications for turbine repair, and what I've uncovered while speaking to current workers is problematic. Most concerningly (at least career wise for me) the major wind producers are increasingly unwilling to invest in preventative maintenance on a regular schedule. This cheapening of production can of course manifest itself catastrophically, as potentially seen in recent tower collapses in eastern canada (the causes of which are still under investigation), or more insidiously over time. For example: for many years the gold standard for blade repair in the industry has been Siemens Blade B, a certification which qualifies a technician to repair damage to turbine blades which penetrates up to three layers deep in the composites. This covers damage from bird strikes, lightning strikes, and the odd delamination from stress. All things you want to get patched up pretty fast so that your very expensive turbine blade doesn't degrade any further. Unfortunately, word of mouth in the industry right now is that Siemens will no longer be performing B-level repairs as part of their warranty services or ongoing maintenance, and that damage of this nature is going to be filed under "general wear and tear". Why this cost cutting is seen as necessary is unclear, and it implies an uncertainty in the profitability of the market from a major producer which is unsettling to say the least. 
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Feb 23, 2017 04:10
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Wind is suffering some regulatory setbacks in some states that depress investment. In 2014 the 5th circuit butchered PURPA rights for wind in Texas, so building more in west Texas is going to be hard since small Qualifying Facility projects can't get PURPA mandated legally enforceable obligations anymore without having the thing built in advance. I've seen other state utility commissions outside the 5th circuit rely on that case (Exelon Wind) to justify acting the same way. I wouldn't be surprised if that trend has made pre-2014 sales projections take a beating and lead to cost cutting efforts.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:17
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Well it's not like corporations aren't known to cut costs and ignore long term profitability, safety, the environment, babies etc even when everything is going stellar. At any rate it's a competitive sector.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:22
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Bates posted:Well it's not like corporations aren't known to cut costs and ignore long term profitability, safety, the environment, babies etc even when everything is going stellar. At any rate it's a competitive sector. Yet more reasons to nationalise the energy market.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:45
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