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Trabisnikof posted:Land requirements for wind and solar are often vastly overblown by "experts" ignoring storage, demand response, etc and just flat calculating insane land use requirements by assuming that we need vastly more generation capacity than we do. Its a good study, but does it cover day-night cycles, windless cycles, energy transport over long distance HVDC? Pure capacity seems likes its missing some of the more obvious capacity issues of renewables that we currently have. Deteriorata posted:On the other hand, solving the storage issue for wind and solar is a whole lot cheaper and more straightforward than figuring out how to make the thorium cycle work. True. However, MSR doesn't mean specifically thorium, most of the MSR tech itself is well describes already, we just need larger engineering samples versus the 1960s era MSR Experiment at Oak Ridge. It can be done, and I feel like even with red tape, within the 20 years. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 03:40 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 01:08 |
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CommieGIR posted:Its a good study, but does it cover day-night cycles, windless cycles, energy transport over long distance HVDC? Pure capacity seems likes its missing some of the more obvious issues of renewables that we currently have. Well now you're asking about different issues. I can point you to studies looking at 80% penetration that answer those questions. But you mentioned land use and that study shows that land use is often an overblown concern. But lets figure out the frame here, which of these are closer to your belief: 1. It is impossible to operate a grid at 80%+ renewables 2. It is possible to operate a grid at 80%+ renewables but it would require technology we don't have 3. It is possible to operate a grid at 80%+ renewables but is too costly to achieve 4. It is possible to operate a grid at 80%+ renewables but it might be more costly than an 80%+ nuclear alternative Based the answer there are different ways to take this conversation, since #1 & #2 are easily disproven, #3 obviously depends on the budget for action, and #4 depends on cost comparisons with an alternative that we don't have much data on.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 03:50 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Well now you're asking about different issues. I can point you to studies looking at 80% penetration that answer those questions. But you mentioned land use and that study shows that land use is often an overblown concern. None of those highlight my beliefs, and I feel like your reading a little too much into them. Renewables are well capable of handling a grid, that's not my issue, and I don't believe they are too costly, because that's a blatant falsehood. But I still think that baseload will be a thing, and I think nuclear will be critical to that last 20%, as well as make up until we find viable storage solutions, but then comes the trick: Does your plant store, or does it supply to the grid during peak operating hours? Do you split it between storage and grid use? Don't forget other future unknowns like increase cooling system drain the grid due to rising temperatures/humidity as climate change effects become worse. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 03:52 |
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We've already covered the best locations for wind, the low hanging fruit. Most of the best spots left are relatively inaccessible locations further from population centers, with little transmission infrastructure available to tie into. And capacity factor for wind is low, so if you eliminate baseload you DO have to factor in storage and/or generation oversizing. When you underestimate the scope of the engineering challenges with renewables to fulfill a political promise, you'll end up burning lignite like Germany.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 04:02 |
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Pander posted:We've already covered the best locations for wind, the low hanging fruit. Most of the best spots left are relatively inaccessible locations further from population centers, with little transmission infrastructure available to tie into. And capacity factor for wind is low, so if you eliminate baseload you DO have to factor in storage and/or generation oversizing. Yeah, this is largely my view: Renewables are very good. They should be used everywhere possible. But Nuclear is the ONLY 24/7/365 full power generation method with the least carbon footprint right now. Germany killed it in a Fukushima inspired China Syndrome fearmongering rush job, and now they are mining more coal and burning more gas, while shifting their Green goals way, way down the road. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 04:10 |
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CommieGIR posted:But I still think that baseload will be a thing, Baseload is a term that just means the minimum power needed to run the grid, renewables or other intermittent sources can supply baseload. It often gets used as short hand for non-dispatchable power plants or to the aggregate of ancillary power services that are often achieved by thermal plants with large rotating reserves like those non-dispatchable coal and nuke plants. Those services don't have to be provided by the same power plants just because historically they were. Like blackstart, the ability to turn on first, is something few if any nukes in the US can do (I don't think NRC allows it). But most hydro can. If we disaggregate the services offered fewer and fewer can't be served by renewables and basically none can't be serviced by biofuels. And also this is why I constantly hammer the role of demand response along with storage and renewables. Large businesses already shift operations to take advantage of electricity pricing, enrolling them in demand response programs drastically reduces the cost of providing reserves. quote:and I think nuclear will be critical to that last 20%, as well as make up until we find viable storage solutions, but then comes the trick: Does your plant store, or does it supply to the grid during peak operating hours? Do you split it between storage and grid use? We already balance this equation through Independent System Operators and Reliability organizations. For example in the month of August alone we've have 4-5 nuclear reactor trips. That means all of a sudden the grid is down ~1GW of power instantaneously. That's a much worse problem for a grid to handle than for a wind farm to reduce production and far far harder to predict than the weather. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is actually an incredibly good example of the infrastructure required to run a high renewables penetration grid. But yes, I think we agree that quibbling over that last 20% doesn't matter when we have the rest of the 80% to replace still. Pander posted:We've already covered the best locations for wind, the low hanging fruit. Most of the best spots left are relatively inaccessible locations further from population centers, with little transmission infrastructure available to tie into. And capacity factor for wind is low, so if you eliminate baseload you DO have to factor in storage and/or generation oversizing. That's not true at all. There's lots of available wind siting left in the US. In particular as we've been raising hub height that opens up more space for wind. Like do you have a scientific source for that claim? edit: NREL shows that at least 35% of our electricity needs can be met with wind without any issues about running out of locations: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/63197-3.pdf quote:Electricity demand growth, fuel prices, and financing assumptions in the 20% Wind Energy by 2030 report were based on the Energy Information Administration’s 2007 Annual Energy Outlook [3]. Specifically, U.S. electricity consumption was projected to increase by 39% over consumption in 2005, to 5,800 terawatt-hours per year in 2030. No major breakthroughs in wind technology were assumed. By 2030, wind turbine energy production was projected to increase by about 15% on a relative basis, and wind project costs were assumed to drop by about 10%. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 04:11 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Baseload is a term that just means the minimum power needed to run the grid, renewables or other intermittent sources can supply baseload. But Texas' Wind generation is less than 20% of their total supply. That's great, but not inspiring confidence. And again, as we already highlighted above, the most ambitious attempts by places like Germany actually resulted in an increase in emissions: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html Where are you getting these reactor trip numbers?
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 04:13 |
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CommieGIR posted:But Texas' Wind generation is less than 20% of their total supply. That's great, but not inspiring confidence. My point is that ERCOT has the rules and infrastructure in place to grow beyond 20%. My trip count comes from the NRC event logs, looks like it was 4 so far this month not 5: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2019/20190819en.html quote:AUTOMATIC REACTOR TRIP DUE TO TURBINE TRIP https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2019/20190812en.html quote:MANUAL REACTOR TRIP DUE TO FEEDWATER REGULATING VALVE MALFUNCTION https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2019/20190805en.html quote:MANUAL REACTOR TRIP AND MANUAL ACTUATION OF REACTOR CORE ISOLATION COOLING quote:AUTOMATIC REACTOR SCRAM ON LOW REACTOR WATER LEVEL
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 04:21 |
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Gee, it's almost like running on outdated reactors might be a problem, eminently solvable by building their new replacements with current globally accepted designs. It's not like the rest of the world just sat with their thumbs up their asses when the US decided to halt new construction for decades. There are designs available from many trusted nuclear partner countries completely ready for use.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 05:00 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Well now you're asking about different issues. I can point you to studies looking at 80% penetration that answer those questions. But you mentioned land use and that study shows that land use is often an overblown concern. Count me in at 5. It is possible to operate a grid at 80%+ renewables but the ecological impact would be huge. Better than ecological impact of climate change, and better than generating even 10% of your power from coal, but worse than generating, say, 40% from nuclear power and 60% from renewables (granted I don't have an analysis to back that up)
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 05:16 |
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Deteriorata posted:The technical hurdles that need to be overcome for it to be commercially viable are large and will be expensive to implement. With the prices of solar and wind dropping so fast, there doesn't seem to be a significant case to be made for spending lots of money on it. I see, thank you. I wasn't aware solar and wind were moving that fast or showed potential to cover the spectrum of supply that way. How about using reactors of this model to replace current commercial shipping propulsion?
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 06:03 |
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Pander posted:When you underestimate the scope of the engineering challenges with renewables to fulfill a political promise, you'll end up burning lignite like Germany. Germany actually overestimated the engineer challenges and is ahead of its targets for renewables. The target for 2020 is 35% which was reached a couple of years ago (I think 2017?). Especially solar PV costs have dropped faster than studies had expected. You might still end up right in the future though because there was a massive slow down in wind expansion this year due to NIMBYism and political inaction. It's important to remember that Merkel is leading a conservative pro-business government. She inherited the Energiewende from previous Red-Green governments going back to the 90s and she never really was that much committed to the whole project.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 08:56 |
Discendo Vox posted:I see, thank you. I wasn't aware solar and wind were moving that fast or showed potential to cover the spectrum of supply that way. That will never, ever happen. And if by some miracle the technical hurdles were overcome, actually I can't even finish that thought. Look up "magic pipe" cases, and then you'll understand why I shudder at the thought of commercial shipping having nuclear.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 12:15 |
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Trabisnikof posted:constantly hammer the role of demand response along with storage and renewables Trabisnikof posted:constantly hammer the role of demand response along with storage and renewables Trabisnikof posted:constantly hammer the role of demand response along with storage and renewables as a mediocre third-tier computer toucher its always amazing to me how almost completely untapped demand response is. I mean sure, you can get a steel plant or whatever to knock off for a few hours, but compared to something like high-frequency trading, we're in the stone age. Hell your typical something awful forum thread during a heated argument has a faster feedback loop than our grid. We need to catch up to 2002 era vbulletin technology. A simple 2:1 overprovision of wind & solar, combined with per-second over-the-internet based pricing, would imho solve 90+% of the intermittancy "problem". Hydro storage, thermal storage, li-ion storage, inter-region HVDC, and simple cultural adaptation can handle the rest.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 13:27 |
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A couple of months ago I read a pretty extensive report from OECD on the matter (moving marine transport away from fossil fuels). It provides an overview of all the challenges needed to achieve this by 2035. You can check it out here. It is possible to do this, but will require a huge global effort (not surprising). Comrade Blyatlov posted:That will never, ever happen. Here is the list of shipwrecks that happened last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_2018 Now imagine a good chunk of them actually having nuclear reactors. Here is the part about Nuclear from the report I linked above. quote:Nuclear propulsion Dante80 fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 13:34 |
StabbinHobo posted:as a mediocre third-tier computer toucher its always amazing to me how almost completely untapped demand response is. these are definitely skills that are translatable to large-scale power generation and distrbution it really isn't that simple particularly when big industry is involved
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 13:49 |
there are also specific circumstances where a crew might have to sacrifice their engine in order to save their ship fine with a diesel engine, but christ, now i'm imagining having to run a nuclear reactor past its safe limits and shuddering like gently caress i guess one solution there is redundancy but this isn't a thought path i really want to go down on the other hand, you'd most likely wind up with steam making a comeback, unless there's some other way of directly translating the heat generation into mechanical work that i'm not familiar with though that causes its own issues again, steam propulsion is a different beast to diesel and has its own ticketing and qualifications, that plus nuclear i guess with enough impetus it's not an impossible set of obstacles but make no mistake they are not small challenges Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Aug 25, 2019 |
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 13:55 |
Also I bet it's a lot cheaper to convert air and water into hydrogen or hydrocarbons with peak solar and wind energy than it is to build 50,000 floating miniature nuclear reactors, create effective regulatory agencies to oversee those 50,000 floating miniature nuclear reactors, and staff nuclear technicians on every cargo ship and nuclear engineers in every port.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 14:18 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:there are also specific circumstances where a crew might have to sacrifice their engine in order to save their ship Yeah, you would solve these issues by greatly overbuilding and over-engineering the nuclear reactor(s) powering the ship, and somehow getting the international crew to take the necessary maintenance and proper operation of the ships' power plant(s) more seriously. This is why nuclear electricity is so expensive, and it would make shipping expensive too.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 14:20 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:there are also specific circumstances where a crew might have to sacrifice their engine in order to save their ship The drive gearing would be what would be run to the limit much earlier than the reactor most likely.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 14:23 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:these are definitely skills that are translatable to large-scale power generation and distrbution i know you think you're being clever but for the record operations management and capacity planning in internet services is a direct copy/paste descendant of the telco network which is a direct copy/paste descendant of the electric grid (which in turn is a direct descendant of TRAINS). its not only "that simple" its actually far easier, specifically because of how much slower physical things move. I mean I said "per second" in my example but in reality it could be done regionally on a 10 - 100ms time window. You really only need to crack 500ms if you're trying to handle something globally, and i doubt we're getting there with transmission anytime soon. If you feel some need to slow things down to make yourself feel better you could arbitrarily raise it to a 1 minute window. Essentially the internet and the power grid need to merge so that our refrigerators and good gaming rigs can all join the realtime auction.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 15:06 |
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silence_kit posted:This is why nuclear electricity is so expensive, and it would make shipping expensive too. I'm confused as to why cheap shipping is important? Given the whole climate emergency this seems like an unlikely thing to end up having and a low as gently caress priority. Any talk of economic cost is pretty misplaced at this point. The only costs that matter anymore are emissions. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:09 |
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And considering "Its cheap" got us into this mess, arguing that high cost is a reason to avoid nuclear is laughable: It was always going to have a heavy price tag, but given the mess we made, we might as well pay it.
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:24 |
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Oh no we'll have to educate our populace and pay them well for the good of all. The horror
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:27 |
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Nevvy Z posted:I'm confused as to why cheap shipping is important? If shipping cost doesn’t matter, we could just go back to shipping everything by sail. That’d be more green than a nuclear powered cargo ship.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:34 |
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Nevvy Z posted:I'm confused as to why cheap shipping is important? Given the whole climate emergency this seems like an unlikely thing end up having and a low as gently caress priority. The fact that we do have a climate emergency means that our assets have to be used in the most cost-effective way possible to provide the maximum intended result in the shortest timeframe. To give a very simplistic example. Shipping right now is responsible for around 3% of global CO2 emissions. You may need a trillion dollars to convert the fleet to ammonia propulsion over the course of a decade, and make said ammonia carbon neutral in production inside two decades. You may need three trillion dollars to convert half the fleet to LFTR based nuclear propulsion over the course of two decades. Which one will you choose? Dante80 fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 25, 2019 |
# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:37 |
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silence_kit posted:If shipping cost doesn’t matter, we could just go back to shipping everything by sail. That’d be more green than a nuclear powered cargo ship. Ah yes, a *checks calendar* 2 year journey for some thing from China.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 16:38 |
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CommieGIR posted:Ah yes, a *checks calendar* 2 year journey for some thing from China. Also agreed cost shouldn't just be measured in dollars, because dollars don't take into account the carbon emissions needed to produce a thing, environmental impact from mining the materials to make the thing, etc. Just because something costs fewer dollars doesn't mean it's automatically better, the thing we should be measuring costs in is total carbon emissions or something.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 17:14 |
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Pander posted:And capacity factor for wind is low, so if you eliminate baseload you DO have to factor in storage and/or generation oversizing. A reminder that we've reached the cross over point for renewables on capacity factor. As we build more renewables the capacity factor going forward increases for renewables and decreases for conventional power generation. That was a couple years ago now.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 17:19 |
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Crazycryodude posted:More like a few months, and also yeah? Deal with it? If we want to still have something even vaguely resembling a technological society this time next century there's gonna have to be sacrifices made. I dont think we'll be seeing any wind driven superfrieghters anytime soon.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 17:26 |
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BrandorKP posted:A reminder that we've reached the cross over point for renewables on capacity factor. As we build more renewables the capacity factor going forward increases for renewables and decreases for conventional power generation. That was a couple years ago now. What? Why is this true?
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 17:27 |
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silence_kit posted:If shipping cost doesn’t matter, we could just go back to shipping everything by sail. That’d be more green than a nuclear powered cargo ship. https://www.sailcargo.org/
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 17:30 |
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So, basically, we have to grow a bunch of old growth forests, and then we have to probably quadruple the total size of international cargo fleets? Because that's not gonna cut it.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 18:15 |
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CommieGIR posted:So, basically, we have to grow a bunch of old growth forests, and then we have to probably quadruple the total size of international cargo fleets? Agreed, I’m pretty sure SailCargo is a scam to crowdfund a really nice yacht. No one in their right mind wants to try to turn a profit with a wooden ship. I am curious to see what could be done with a modern steel ship and something like the DynaRig sails seen on the latest sailing yachts. http://nextgeneration-cargo.com/index.html
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 19:18 |
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Yeah, wind capacity factor improvements are no joke: https://emp.lbl.gov/wind-technologies-market-report/ quote:The average 2018 capacity factor among projects built from 2014 through 2017 was 42%, compared to an average of 31% among projects built from 2004 to 2011 and 24% among projects built from 1998 to 2001.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 19:20 |
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MrYenko posted:Agreed, I’m pretty sure SailCargo is a scam to crowdfund a really nice yacht. No one in their right mind wants to try to turn a profit with a wooden ship. I do admit: I'd like to see what supplementing the engine with sails would do for a modern ship with proper rigging. I don't know how well it would work, since most modern ships are built around the ability to sail in a straight direction with minimal drift, versus sailing ships of old.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 19:56 |
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CommieGIR posted:I do admit: I'd like to see what supplementing the engine with sails would do for a modern ship with proper rigging. I don't know how well it would work, since most modern ships are built around the ability to sail in a straight direction with minimal drift, versus sailing ships of old. The study I linked above talks about this. Take a look at skysails (kites) and rotorsails (Flettner rotors) for example. There are also some other projects under development.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 20:39 |
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silence_kit posted:What? Why is this true? Here are my post on it from earlier: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/solar-wind-reach-a-big-renewables-turning-point-bnef Link where I took that from. Won't do you much good though, unless you can use a Bloomburg terminal. I posted that first comment in april and the article I was basing it on has since been archieved. Smiling Demon posted:edit: have more renewables does not let you use existing renewables more frequently No it does that. Found something that was based on the bloomburg article and quotes it (edit, nearly not everything on a second reading) entirely. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...NtZu1xo030Q1gjQ Here's the tldr https://imgur.com/3l5ujuC Edit: the important part As Bloomberg explains: "It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. As more renewables are installed, coal and natural gas plants are used less. As coal and gas are used less, the cost of using them to generate electricity goes up. As the cost of coal and gas power rises, more renewables will be installed." The table above shows how the capacity factors of coal and natural gas are starting to be affected, while wind and solar are starting to do better because bigger and taller wind turbines catch more wind and more solar is being installed in the U.S. Southwest where sunny days are more frequent. It's kind of like a flywheel, and the more solar panels we install, the more wind turbines are built, the faster it spins. At some point, doesn't make any sense to run fossil fuels on sunny or windy days, and overall capacity factors go down enough that prices are simply not competitive with storage, and rather than build new natural gas plants, utilities will simply buy more renewables combined with storage.
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# ? Aug 25, 2019 21:49 |
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MrYenko posted:Agreed, I’m pretty sure SailCargo is a scam to crowdfund a really nice yacht. No one in their right mind wants to try to turn a profit with a wooden ship. Maybe there's some airplane treadmill thing I'm missing here, but why not put rotating wind turbines on cargo ships to power electric motors? Sails seem more efficient in ideal circumstances, but that would work regardless of wind direction.
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# ? Aug 26, 2019 00:45 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 01:08 |
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Maybe there's some airplane treadmill thing I'm missing here, but why not put rotating wind turbines on cargo ships to power electric motors? Sails seem more efficient in ideal circumstances, but that would work regardless of wind direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship something different but closer to wide implementation is the following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship
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# ? Aug 26, 2019 00:56 |