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VideoGameVet posted:So say you create anhydrous ammonia or even a carbon based fuel from hydrogen produced by renewables and run aircraft on that? Anhydrous ammonia fuel cells created without cracking fossil fuels to make the ammonia would be entirely carbon-free. Apparently the Japanese are really pushing for this, which is exciting. A carbon-based fuel cell produced by renewable hydrogen scoops would be carbon-neutral, which would be an acceptable alternative. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon Either way, we'd need to significantly increase power generation capacity in order to transition to this sort of economy. But the good news is that with stable fuel cells you could really do it on an industrial scale. Whether we're talking endless European wind farms, acres of Australian solar fields, massive American hydro plants, or standardized Chinese nuclear facilities, there's many different ways of capitalizing on that sort of fuel cell economy. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Sep 26, 2019 |
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Sep 26, 2019 20:30
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Am I following that correctly? Instead of filling a plane with jet fuel you'd simply pour in liquid ammonia?
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Sep 26, 2019 21:23
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Nebakenezzer posted:In a carbon *neutral* world, aircraft are fine, because you are offsetting the emissions elsewhere. In a world with no carbon emissions, all aircraft (save airships, which as I never tire of pointing out, would work really well with hydrogen fuel cells) are going to have problems. look i like empire of the clouds as much as anyone, bbut we don't need another
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Sep 26, 2019 21:53
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Tab8715 posted:Am I following that correctly? Instead of filling a plane with jet fuel you'd simply pour in liquid ammonia? Maybe:  More on this: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180427100256.htm quote:Researchers at the International Research Organization for Advanced Science and Technology (IROAST) in Kumamoto University, Japan focused on a "catalytic combustion method" to solve the NH3 fuel problems. This method adds substances that promote or suppress chemical reactions during fuel combustion. Recently, they succeeded in developing a new catalyst which improves NH3 combustibility and suppresses the generation of NOx. The novel catalyst (CuOx/3A2S) is a mullite-type crystal structure 3Al2O3·2SiO2 (3A2S) carrying copper oxide (CuOx). When NH3 was burned with this catalyst, researchers found that it stayed highly active in the selective production of N2, meaning that it suppressed NOx formation, and the catalyst itself did not change even at high temperatures. Additionally, they succeeded with in situ (Operando) observations during the CuOx/3A2S reaction, and clarified the NH3 catalytic combustion reaction mechanism. VideoGameVet fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Sep 26, 2019 |
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Sep 26, 2019 21:58
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:look i like empire of the clouds as much as anyone, bbut we don't need another DIS AGREE (oh wow, that's a pro posting name for this thread)
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Sep 26, 2019 22:04
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VideoGameVet posted:If we had a nationwide grid that didn't have to be in frequency sync, storage would be less of an issue. The swath of land from Texas to Canada is wind energy central and turbines don't take out food producing lands (you can farm around them) We already have a nationwide grid that doesn't have frequency sync though?
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Sep 26, 2019 22:08
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fishmech posted:We already have a nationwide grid that doesn't have frequency sync though? Well...outside of the individual segmented grids, yes. But within the grid, you gotta sync unless you are running HVDC.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:11
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fishmech posted:We already have a nationwide grid that doesn't have frequency sync though? I don't know how nationwide it is. Texas is literally giving away wind based electricity in some cases. I also think we still run AC Synced Grids: https://www.testandmeasurementtips.com/how-ac-power-sources-get-synchronized-faq/ quote:Today’s huge ac grids consist of many separate generators with new ones continually coming online. When a generator is powered down for maintenance or even temporarily disconnected, it must resynchronize upon rejoining the grid, generally by automatic means with manual backup instrumentation in place if needed. My guess is you need superconducting DC to get around this or other tech.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:12
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The DC ties have limited capacity, but they do exist.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:14
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VideoGameVet posted:I don't know how nationwide it is. Texas is literally giving away wind based electricity in some cases. We don't have a NATIONWIDE synced grid, however within the individual grids, they are synced.  And there are interconnects between the grids in case of emergency, which include syncrhonizer equipment.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:18
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The current fun aspect about the US grid and renewables is that a significant portion of the new wind generation is being built in the Midwest and Plains States. Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Dakota’s, etc. But the lions share of the load is on the Eastern seaboard for hopefully obvious reasons. So this can cause significant troubles at night or on mild days when all that cheap wind power wants to be used very far from where it is generated. There are upgrades constantly being made to the grid, but the pace of building the wind farms seems to generally outstrip the pace of the upgrades. And a lot of times various cheap generators (wind and natural gas) are forcibly limited in output due to grid constraints.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:26
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Aren't there many things we could turn off - theoretically that would save tons of power? Do we really need the Whole Foods sign bright green at 3AM even when the store is closed? I'd be curious how how a policy like that would scale across the United States. Miami has a interesting thing where all the street lights are off during turtle mating season. Why have them on at all outside of say weekends?
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Sep 26, 2019 23:30
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Tab8715 posted:Aren't there many things we could turn off - theoretically that would save tons of power? Do we really need the Whole Foods sign bright green at 3AM even when the store is closed? It would be a drop in the bucket in terms of energy savings, but drops do add up. In europe where energy costs are higher they're much more paranoid about wasting power so you have fun stuff like motion sensor lights in bathrooms with 10 second timers leaving you in the pitch black if you're in a toilet stall because those LED bulb pennies add up.
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Sep 26, 2019 23:42
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Tab8715 posted:Aren't there many things we could turn off - theoretically that would save tons of power? Do we really need the Whole Foods sign bright green at 3AM even when the store is closed? Yes, it's probably a waste, but a tiny one that Whole Foods does intentionally because they'd rather pay the extra $5/month for the advertising effects than save the electricity. I'm thinking about the original question, and I don't know of many things we could turn off just to save power. Most things that we leave on, we're leaving on for a reason, like a cable box, because we don't want to wait five minutes for it to boot up when we turn on the TV. Street lights on are because it's safer to be able to see at night.
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Sep 26, 2019 23:49
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Baronjutter posted:It would be a drop in the bucket in terms of energy savings, but drops do add up. In europe where energy costs are higher they're much more paranoid about wasting power so you have fun stuff like motion sensor lights in bathrooms with 10 second timers leaving you in the pitch black if you're in a toilet stall because those LED bulb pennies add up. I've noticed in some parts of the Midwest and Texas for typical white collar office complexs Air Conditioning turns off at 7PM until 7AM the next day. It's off all through out the weekend.
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Sep 26, 2019 23:54
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Tab8715 posted:Aren't there many things we could turn off - theoretically that would save tons of power? Do we really need the Whole Foods sign bright green at 3AM even when the store is closed? “Why do you want to bring CRIME to our town!” —local septuagenarian and voter
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Sep 27, 2019 00:12
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Tab8715 posted:Aren't there many things we could turn off - theoretically that would save tons of power? Do we really need the Whole Foods sign bright green at 3AM even when the store is closed? Efficiency upgrades are certainly worth doing, and they're generally incorporated into modern consumer devices and smart grid type infrastructure. The most important thing is making sure that the end-users are actually valuing the electricity - the American tendency to subsidize resource usage causes a lot of problems with that. On an industrial level, big electricity users often activate at night rather than during the day, since power is cheaper when there's low demand. There's a little bit of that at the consumer level (e.g. dishwashers have timers to run at night, motion-sensor/timered lights are becoming more common, plug-in electric cars can often be set to charge at night, etc.) If you want to have more of this sort of thing in your own home, most electronics stores carry timer adapters that are pretty easy to incorporate. The technology has been around forever, though the newer ones are nicer to use. Wifi smartplug adapters are slowly replacing them, if you want those decorative outdoor LEDs to light up when your car parks after work, as opposed to at 5:30pm. Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 00:30
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Infinite Karma posted:It'd be nice for quality of life. Light pollution is a real thing, and disruption of circadian rhythms, wildlife effects, etc. But lights don't use very much power at all. Whole Foods needs to run probably 100kW worth of freezers and refrigerators 24/7, if the sign has fluorescent lights, the whole sign is probably 200W, max. It's a fraction of a percent. We already picked all the low-hanging-fruit of energy savings over the past 40 years. Insulation, requiring efficiency increases in major home appliances, the catastrophic drop in power draw (and massive rise in bulb life) of lighting, similar pretty massive drops in the power draw of home entertainment equipment, even people's terrible SUVs are still using less gas to go longer distances than the stuff people were driving 30-40 years back. Even a lot of the old time power hungry factories and stuff like that are gone entirely or have had some pretty serious energy cost reductions compared to their past equipment. And frankly a lot of whats left that could be removed "easily" with the kind of decade long government forced timescales like much of that was? It's stuff that doesn't touch the grid. Or it's stuff that we want to cut emissions from in general, which will actually mean needing more grid power to replace it. EG move people in closer and make them drop their current cars for electric transport? You need to increase grid production to supply the power, which was previously coming out of internal combustion.
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Sep 27, 2019 00:31
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The problem is, arguing that we can cut energy needs by shutting things off ignores that things like AC and other comforts which are the largest draws in most homes, will only become more necessary as the average temperatures increase.fishmech posted:And frankly a lot of whats left that could be removed "easily" with the kind of decade long government forced timescales like much of that was? It's stuff that doesn't touch the grid. Or it's stuff that we want to cut emissions from in general, which will actually mean needing more grid power to replace it. EG move people in closer and make them drop their current cars for electric transport? You need to increase grid production to supply the power, which was previously coming out of internal combustion. Yup, this is going to be another reason storage is not going to be the end all answer: As we switch to electric transportation more, the grid demand will only go up.
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Sep 27, 2019 01:34
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fishmech posted:We already picked all the low-hanging-fruit of energy savings over the past 40 years. I'm surprised every time I go into the mall of corporate headquarters lobby it's a freezing 66-68 degrees. I sort of wish we'd just acclimate ourselves to 72f or even 74f and that's how they do it in other countries.
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Sep 27, 2019 01:39
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CommieGIR posted:The problem is, arguing that we can cut energy needs by shutting things off ignores that things like AC and other comforts which are the largest draws in most homes, will only become more necessary as the average temperatures increase. Heating is a much larger portion of energy expenditures than AC is. When AC becomes more necessary as average temperatures increase, heating becomes less necessary. AC typically uses more electricity, but that’s because heating is usually produced by burning fossil fuels. From a CO2 perspective, you’d rather people live in Phoenix where their AC comes from a big nuclear plant than live in Minnesota.
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Sep 27, 2019 01:47
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Yeah, AC is weird like that. We could still save a lot of power by reducing it. In the end though you cannot reduce power to carbon neutrality. Or even make it most of the way there. Also sometimes we want to move from directly burning fuel to using (green) electricity, so we'd see a big increase in electrical demand from that, even if our carbon footprint goes way down. Like electrifying steel mills.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:01
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Phanatic posted:Heating is a much larger portion of energy expenditures than AC is. When AC becomes more necessary as average temperatures increase, heating becomes less necessary. True, but either way AC use is likely to increase, and with electric cars becoming more common, so will high amperage charging ports. Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Also sometimes we want to move from directly burning fuel to using (green) electricity, so we'd see a big increase in electrical demand from that, even if our carbon footprint goes way down. Like electrifying steel mills. Arc Furnaces are loving awesome.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:01
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Are there any upcoming revolution with energy storage or are just stuck with giant lithium batteries?
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Sep 27, 2019 02:03
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Tab8715 posted:Are there any upcoming revolution with energy storage or are just stuck with giant lithium batteries? Some, but flywheels and pumped storage are kind of the winners right now But, again, storage is a net drain most of the time, so take whatever your net output of your wind solar is, and half that for its peak output. That's the problem: Storage has to be charged/pumped, and for the most part the amount being used to do so is not going on the grid. So, got a 500 MW solar plant? At least half of that is going to storage, and there are losses.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:05
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Tab8715 posted:I'm surprised every time I go into the mall of corporate headquarters lobby it's a freezing 66-68 degrees. I sort of wish we'd just acclimate ourselves to 72f or even 74f and that's how they do it in other countries. In other countries they use celsius  .Tab8715 posted:Are there any upcoming revolution with energy storage or are just stuck with giant lithium batteries? I doubt it? It is very difficult to have reusable energy storage with better energy density than dynamite. Lithium batteries are terrible for grid storage in most incarnations, they simply need to be replaced too often. I think the best you can hope for is similar or slightly better performance than current batteries without some of the downsides. This would make them still inferior to pumped hydro, although that is geographically limited. Smiling Demon fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 02:08
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CommieGIR posted:Some, but flywheels and pumped storage are kind of the winners right now Also we're going to need to build absolutely massive artificial tank/basin structures if we're really going to do enough pumped storage to buffer continental electricity demands. There simply aren't enough natural valleys suitable for damming to do so, and even if there were we wouldn't want to be utterly destroying all those ecosystems just to store power.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:18
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fishmech posted:Also we're going to need to build absolutely massive artificial tank/basin structures if we're really going to do enough pumped storage to buffer continental electricity demands. There simply aren't enough natural valleys suitable for damming to do so, and even if there were we wouldn't want to be utterly destroying all those ecosystems just to store power. Not to mention the ecological and human disaster that dams/basins have been already.
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Sep 27, 2019 02:32
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CommieGIR posted:Not to mention the ecological and human disaster that dams/basins have been already. It may an ecological disaster but it’s not like we would build them if they didn’t benefit us. Irrigation, flood control and water supply is just more important to us than the downsides.
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Sep 27, 2019 10:26
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Owling Howl posted:It may an ecological disaster but it’s not like we would build them if they didn’t benefit us. Irrigation, flood control and water supply is just more important to us than the downsides. Obviously flood control and irrigation are legit uses, (TVA and the dams in Tennessee come to mind) but its a poor choice otherwise.
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Sep 27, 2019 16:21
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Are there any examples of hydroelectric power that aren’t environmental disasters?
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Sep 27, 2019 16:27
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CommieGIR posted:We don't have a NATIONWIDE synced grid, however within the individual grids, they are synced. If one was to build a facility in the general vicinity of the spot at the Texas/New Mexico border where the three major grids meet, would it be possible to get service from all of them and be basically immune to external power loss? Something like a datacenter where all the power is going to be feeding in to the on-site UPSes so the lack of synchronization on the input doesn't matter. wolrah fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 16:43
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wolrah posted:Something I've often wondered about when I see maps like this and I guess this thread would be as good a place as any to ask about it: No. It doesn't work like that. The grids only interconnect at specific spots where they have equipment for that.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:05
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CommieGIR posted:Not to mention the ecological and human disaster that dams/basins have been already. Tab8715 posted:Are there any examples of hydroelectric power that aren't environmental disasters?
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Sep 27, 2019 18:19
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My understanding is that most of the good sites for hydro were already exploited in the 50s-70s
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Sep 27, 2019 18:28
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There are examples of pumped hydro using manmade underground reservoirs. The one I'm thinking of is the one on El Hierro in the Canary Islands: Case study: El Hierro – renewable energy for remote island systems It's a small island and fuel costs were high enough for it to make economic sense. The island is now powered entirely with wind + hydro storage. I think the impact on the environment is pretty minimal.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:31
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Kaal posted:My understanding is that most of the good sites for hydro were already exploited in the 50s-70s Maybe in the U.S. that's true. The Panama Canal, for instance, could have a massive generating station attached, with basically unlimited capacity, instead of the tiny generators is currently runs. The Atlantic side is much, much higher than the Pacific side. More pie-in-the-sky, the Bering Strait could also potentially be dammed (geopolitical issues between Russia and the U.S. aside). The Strait of Gibraltar could be dammed (but I'm more skeptical of that, because the Mediterranean is already an area in danger of overheating).
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Sep 27, 2019 19:03
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Infinite Karma posted:Maybe in the U.S. that's true. The Panama Canal, for instance, could have a massive generating station attached, with basically unlimited capacity, instead of the tiny generators is currently runs. The Atlantic side is much, much higher than the Pacific side. Panama is an interesting idea, but the idea of damming gibraltar or or bering straights is ludicrous. Hydro is not the future, and we should not be pursuing large scale hydro projects.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:07
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Panama is an interesting idea, but the idea of damming gibraltar or or bering straights is ludicrous. Tidal could work. The issue is, as anyone who has worked on boats knows, the ocean loves to break stuff. But this should be solvable. Even currents could be tapped. Waves too. But you really have to deal with a harsh environment.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:25
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Panama is an interesting idea, but the idea of damming gibraltar or or bering straights is ludicrous. There are still gains in Hydro, is the point. There isn't enough geography to switch to primarily Hydro for our power, but if we doubled Hydro at existing dams and turned the good sites into pumped storage facilities, and also installed pumped storage in the Great Lakes, we could make a big dent in the numbers. Going from 8% Hydro to 15% Hydro and 25% Nuclear to 35% Nuclear in the U.S., building out pumped storage for 10% of our capacity (that's actually probably the craziest part to be honest), that might be enough baseline to make 50% Solar and Wind generation feasible. edit: re: nuclear, if we have about 100 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S., we could conceivably build 10 more and hit those numbers. That's not crazy, even with NIMBYs blocking progress.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:25
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