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Also the first off shore wind in the US connected to the grid. Yay for defeating nimbys
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Nov 5, 2016 04:25
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Bates posted:So the US is getting in on the HVDC bandwagon with the The Plains & Eastern Clean Line. General Electric even went shopping in Europe so it can get done right and proper The final plan to defeat tornadoes turns out to be systematically bleeding the strength out of nature's fury with windmills.
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Nov 5, 2016 11:22
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Hi guys, I bumped into this thread just now and am in Energy Management and Digital Building Controls. I haven't managed to get through more than the first few pages of the thread so far however, I was curious if anyone is bothering to discuss the waste handling and maintenance costs of some of these solutions which got tossed into the OP - or are we all just going to fire expired radioactive fuel into the sun or something - after we salvage all of those corroded leaky barrels of ultra-dangerous waste. Also something I noticed right away is that a lot of the stuff being tossed around this thread is entirely working in a vacuum from the standpoint of how power infrastructure operates, and there's a lot of focus on residential but I haven't seen almost any mention of commercial and industrial buildings, their energy usage, how they interact with utility providers by providing a safety buffer in case of stuff like the national Australian sun shortage that was being tossed about at the OP's proposal, etc. Has there been anything about high-efficiency building controls and systems? There are some absolutely staggeringly efficient devices out there o the market and in use right now. A huge amount of the problem with providing energy is that you have to account for potential spikes in usage first, foremost, and always, and I've not seen much on how that is done, why it is done, and why it's super effective. If anybody's interested and I'm not repeating others' posts I'd like to rattle on about how some of this stuff works, but I suspect I have a few dozen pages of the thread to catch up on first. Cheers!
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Nov 16, 2016 19:37
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The new blood is welcome, especially any soapboxing you have as a power guy. Personally I think this thread is coming down from a disaster high and could use some details / implementation challenges to read. [I wrote this before realizing it was the energy thread, not the recently-explosive climate change thread] In particular, I actually want to hear what you are referring to as the vacuum for all the theory in the OP.
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Nov 16, 2016 19:42
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Does anybody have any insight on what a Trump presidency means for nuclear energy in the near future? He's said he supports nuclear power and wants to reform the permitting process, but I'm wondering if there will be any incentive at all to promote nuclear with his push to use more coal, oil, and natural gas.
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Nov 17, 2016 00:02
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J Corp posted:Does anybody have any insight on what a Trump presidency means for nuclear energy in the near future? He's said he supports nuclear power and wants to reform the permitting process, but I'm wondering if there will be any incentive at all to promote nuclear with his push to use more coal, oil, and natural gas. Start tweeting at him about how all the cool smart scientists know that nuclear is the safest energy because it's made by the same people whose weapons keep us safe. oh god I don't want to talk about that
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Nov 17, 2016 00:59
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coyo7e posted:Words Please post more!
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Nov 17, 2016 02:02
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J Corp posted:Does anybody have any insight on what a Trump presidency means for nuclear energy in the near future? He's said he supports nuclear power and wants to reform the permitting process, but I'm wondering if there will be any incentive at all to promote nuclear with his push to use more coal, oil, and natural gas. I doubt Trump himself knows what his presidency means for nuclear power or anything else. He's just making it up as he goes along. We're all just along for the ride.
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Nov 17, 2016 03:24
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Deteriorata posted:I doubt Trump himself knows what his presidency means for nuclear power or anything else. He's just making it up as he goes along. We're all just along for the ride. He's verbally stated he is a 'huge' proponent of coal, and probably fossil fuels in general. I doubt he can really do much but slow the decline of coal power, though. Even ending all federal solar subsidies and tariffing solar panel imports wouldn't change that it's already more profitable to build a solar plant than a coal plant. I'm not even sure if new tariffs would be possible in this area, as there is no unfair competition with american industries, unlike steel.
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Nov 17, 2016 03:38
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It boils down to this: nobody has a Donald J Trump crystal ball. WHo loving knows
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Nov 17, 2016 04:33
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory posted:A press release that'll get twisted by reporters as if science found a way to make power plant pollution into energy. This topic is a page or two old but I didn't see anyone addressing why the researchers didn't talk about this as a way to produce clean energy from dirty waste gasses. I'm not a chemist and don't know much about industrial processing. So I'll accept smackdowns from any experts. Before the co2 to ethanol catalyst can be used as a scrubber for a power plant, researchers have to develop a cost-effective way to efficiently separate co2 from other waste matter on the fly and a way to get rid of the other waste that would be captured. The other waste would include sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and trace amounts of assorted toxic heavy metals like mercury and lead. The power plant waste gas would almost certainly have to be separated as it was released. Capturing all the gas but processing it much later would be much harder in terms of sheer volume among other problems. If a plant only captures a fraction of the co2 it releases it can possibly mix the remaining co2 with the other waste the separator captured and release the new gas blend relatively safely. If the plant captures all of the co2 then it's left with wastes that couldn't be released into the atmosphere safely in their now concentrated forms. These other waste materials would also start separating and would need to be handled in different ways unless they were captured in some sort of medium. I can't even begin to imagine how to tackle that set of waste problems. Okay, let's say the plant only captures a fraction of the co2. Why would any co2 still have to be stored? Because the co2 has to be pressurized before being put into the water, and water will only absorb so much of the carbon dioxide. These two bottlenecks would require their own sets of storage tanks as a way to regulate the flows of co2 and carbonic acid into and out of the system. These tanks would probably be massive. The people running the conversion part of the plant also want to use deionized water for the co2 and the catalyst because more impurities = less potent and less uniform ethanol. But producing enough purified water would be a much more manageable problem than the co2 separation. There's also the problem of industrial production of the nanoparticles. It's probably not as big a problem as co2 separation and capture and could probably be done on site. Combining the catalyst with the carbonic acid sounds reasonably straightforward. So then the only problem left is deciding how to use the resulting ethanol. Using the ethanol straight away for more power generation would require building a sperate power plant. Retrofitting coal plants to burn a slurry of coal and ethanol would be expensive and dangerous. The whole process from mining to refining to producing the catalysts would take more money and energy than they would ever get from the ethanol it'd produce. But I doubt they'd be running the plant as a way to generate profits. It'd be like recycling: it's cheaper to run recycling plants at a loss than it is to dispose of recyclables and non-recyclables together. TLDR, poo poo is hard. RandomPauI fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Nov 17, 2016 |
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Nov 17, 2016 05:19
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Deteriorata posted:I doubt Trump himself knows what his presidency means for nuclear power or anything else. He's just making it up as he goes along. We're all just along for the ride. If he stays true to "reducing regulation" then well nuclear becomes a lot cheaper. I'm pretty skeptical that he will, though. It's HARD to sensibly scale back regulation. Cleaving regulation while maintaining sensible engineering safeguards is tricky. Over-regulated as the nuclear industry may be, there have to be some safeguards in place to keep owner/operators honest so as to avoid Besse-Davis type situations where fiscal concerns trump risk mitigation. I'd be pretty terrified that Trump would just have someone say "Ehhhh we don't need NFPA 805 or Appendix R, just avoid fires you guys".
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Nov 17, 2016 07:04
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Pander posted:If he stays true to "reducing regulation" then well nuclear becomes a lot cheaper. Honestly I could see a Trump administration taking a cleaver to US siting standards generally in a way that helps nuclear. Make Endangered Species Act et al a lot harder to challenge in court and you remove most of the barriers to siting nuclear plants (because you remove most of the barriers for all massive industrial sites). Then you can subsidize the construction and operation enough to make nuclear viable, if the nuclear lobby is on their game that is. Maybe preempt state laws too? That could "help."
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Nov 17, 2016 07:09
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Wasn't there a thing where these gigantic solar towers and massive wind farms spontaneously combust or bash to death flocks of migrating birds? Is this no longer a concern or are we just saying 'gently caress it' here?
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Nov 17, 2016 07:10
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Feral Integral posted:Wasn't there a thing where these gigantic solar towers and massive wind farms spontaneously combust or bash to death flocks of migrating birds? Is this no longer a concern or are we just saying 'gently caress it' here? Wind farms do kill birds, but not that many compared to pollution. They're getting better about it too. However that's an important concern when building and operating farms. I know of some wind turbines in California that shut off during migratory periods. Solar power towers frying birds is also totally a thing, but the newest plant to come online in the US, Crescent Dunes, has claimed to see far fewer bird "pops" due to a better mirror aiming strategy. That plant also has overnight power generation using stored solar energy. So we shall see.
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Nov 17, 2016 07:15
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Feral Integral posted:Wasn't there a thing where these gigantic solar towers and massive wind farms spontaneously combust or bash to death flocks of migrating birds? Is this no longer a concern or are we just saying 'gently caress it' here? Bird death from windfarms is pretty overrated, it mostly happens to the top of the foodchain where ecological impact is minimal. That's problematic, but better turbine design and the move to offshore farms can reduce the impact. Solar thermal will kill any bird that flies into the 'focus line' of the mirrors, but there just aren't many birds that do this, as the plants tend to be far from any major bird populations. Solar voltaic doesn't have any issues that I've ever heard of. Coal pollution kills far more birds than both of these combined, and simple building strikes on skyscrapers is a notch above that again, so the whole drive to make an issue of it seems suspect at best.
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Nov 17, 2016 07:17
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Feral Integral posted:Wasn't there a thing where these gigantic solar towers and massive wind farms spontaneously combust or bash to death flocks of migrating birds? Is this no longer a concern or are we just saying 'gently caress it' here? I don't know about the solar towers but wind farms (according to reading I did years ago) really did pose a significant threat to migrating birds/bats. The threat to bats seems to be higher than to birds, probably for echolocation reasons. It turns out that at the tips of the wind turbine blades they can create sufficiently low air pressure, capable of rupturing a tiny bats lungs. The bat's don't have to make physical contact with the turbine to be killed by it.  Some article I didn't completely read. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bat-killings-by-wind-energy-turbines-continue/ EDIT: This does seem to be a legitimate issue. But fossil fuel lobbyists obviously exaggerate it and other energy sources and climate change pose huge risks to birds/bats also. BattleMoose fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Nov 17, 2016 |
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Nov 17, 2016 07:20
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EoRaptor posted:the top of the foodchain where ecological impact is minimal. that's not how ecology works (the answer, of course, is to harness the power of the mighty atom with no externally-accessible moving parts)
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Nov 18, 2016 00:45
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:that's not how ecology works I think you'll find many intake structures far more accessible to aquatic life than one might wish. But this is why both wind farm and nuclear plants have and should have regulations to reduce the impact of both. Even if it means we can't build somewhere that otherwise looks nice.
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Nov 18, 2016 02:45
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Trabisnikof posted:Honestly I could see a Trump administration taking a cleaver to US siting standards generally in a way that helps nuclear. Make Endangered Species Act et al a lot harder to challenge in court and you remove most of the barriers to siting nuclear plants (because you remove most of the barriers for all massive industrial sites). Then you can subsidize the construction and operation enough to make nuclear viable, if the nuclear lobby is on their game that is. Is that really the issue that nuclear most comes up against? I though thermal solar was the biggest offender there, at least as far as energy generation goes. My impression was that the obstacles to nuclear were mostly about fear of meltdown and/or radiation (the fear being for humans, not turtles).
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Nov 18, 2016 03:11
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Taffer posted:Is that really the issue that nuclear most comes up against? I though thermal solar was the biggest offender there, at least as far as energy generation goes. My impression was that the obstacles to nuclear were mostly about fear of meltdown and/or radiation (the fear being for humans, not turtles). Well how many nuclear projects do you know of that were stopped by popular opposition? If companies want to build nuclear power plants and popular opinion can stop them then it should happen, very publicly, all the time.
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Nov 18, 2016 03:26
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Bates posted:Well how many nuclear projects do you know of that were stopped by popular opposition? If companies want to build nuclear power plants and popular opinion can stop them then it should happen, very publicly, all the time. I would say that opposite to nuclear projects is regulatory in nature, but that regulation is a consequence of NIMBY or straight up fear of nuclear. The nuclear projects that exist consistently go into gigantic cost and time overrun, which is due to extremely stringent regulation. I'm a huge fan of regulating industry, but there definitely exits a point that's too far, and I think nuclear squarely falls into that category. It's public opposition that is in opposition to informed (scientific, engineering) consensus.
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Nov 18, 2016 03:58
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Taffer posted:I would say that opposite to nuclear projects is regulatory in nature, but that regulation is a consequence of NIMBY or straight up fear of nuclear. The nuclear projects that exist consistently go into gigantic cost and time overrun, which is due to extremely stringent regulation. I'm a huge fan of regulating industry, but there definitely exits a point that's too far, and I think nuclear squarely falls into that category. It's public opposition that is in opposition to informed (scientific, engineering) consensus. Can we get someone smart and popular to write science pr for the nuclear safety industry? Public opposition also keeps nuclear power plants from getting much needed upgrades.
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Nov 18, 2016 04:11
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Taffer posted:I would say that opposite to nuclear projects is regulatory in nature, but that regulation is a consequence of NIMBY or straight up fear of nuclear. The nuclear projects that exist consistently go into gigantic cost and time overrun, which is due to extremely stringent regulation. I'm a huge fan of regulating industry, but there definitely exits a point that's too far, and I think nuclear squarely falls into that category. It's public opposition that is in opposition to informed (scientific, engineering) consensus. The environmental assessment report that owners are required to complete before a siting license is granted is incredibly time consuming, expensive, and complex. And in the event all goes well, a court challenge could await if an endangered species suddenly may exist nearby or some similar challenge is raised that was not considered in the report. It is absolutely, right next to construction overruns and stoppages, one of the biggest headaches in building new plants. Much easier to add on capacity to existing structures through upgrades, usually. The other insanely huge risk is a critical component failure, like what killed San Onofre and Crystal River. Siting is up there, though.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:02
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Pander posted:The environmental assessment report that owners are required to complete before a siting license is granted is incredibly time consuming, expensive, and complex. And in the event all goes well, a court challenge could await if an endangered species suddenly may exist nearby or some similar challenge is raised that was not considered in the report. I fully admit that I'm not well versed in this area. Do you mean to say that one of the bigger oppositions is protection of endangered species, or some other regulatory blockage? I'm a very environmentally leaning person overall and I certainly don't want to see endangered species put into more danger, but... is that a huge risk? Nuclear reactors don't take up that much land do they? Especially when compared to huge solar/wind farms or even coal/natural gas plants.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:06
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Taffer posted:I fully admit that I'm not well versed in this area. Do you mean to say that one of the bigger oppositions is protection of endangered species, or some other regulatory blockage? I'm a very environmentally leaning person overall and I certainly don't want to see endangered species put into more danger, but... is that a huge risk? Nuclear reactors don't take up that much land do they? Especially when compared to huge solar/wind farms or even coal/natural gas plants. The challenge is less "oh a nuclear plant is a problem but coal would be ok here" but instead that those restrictions are time consuming and expensive for all plant operators, but for nuclear those marginal costs and risks really add up. So take for example, laws banning once-through cooking in California. A big deal because water temperature is very critical to a number fish species and cooling power plants can dramatically raise the water temp. It is a big enough of a problem it is impacting the ability to use hydropower because water releases have to be timed around cooling the river rather than generating power. So these laws are shutting down a bunch of gas power plants, but also is a big reason Diablo Canyon was never a candidate for a license extension.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:20
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Taffer posted:I fully admit that I'm not well versed in this area. Do you mean to say that one of the bigger oppositions is protection of endangered species, or some other regulatory blockage? I'm a very environmentally leaning person overall and I certainly don't want to see endangered species put into more danger, but... is that a huge risk? Nuclear reactors don't take up that much land do they? Especially when compared to huge solar/wind farms or even coal/natural gas plants. Discovering endangered species near a site is a general problem for anything. The Tellico Dam in Tennessee, for example, was held up for a long time due to the snail darter fish - an endangered species with few remaining habitats, some of which would have been destroyed by the dam.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:27
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Do coal or gas plants have to get these environmental impact surveys before construction?
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Nov 18, 2016 07:33
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Deteriorata posted:Discovering endangered species near a site is a general problem for anything. The Tellico Dam in Tennessee, for example, was held up for a long time due to the snail darter fish - an endangered species with few remaining habitats, some of which would have been destroyed by the dam. Aren't dams one of the most environment destroying forms of energy generation? I'm pretty strongly against them for this reason.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:33
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Ardlen posted:Do coal or gas plants have to get these environmental impact surveys before construction? Often, yes. I imagine there are also states where the local environmental agency is in the pocket of the power company (North Carolina) and so the playing field is very uneven. Also I imagine there are additional strings attached to the federal funds that Nuclear, Renewables and CCS (lol) use that probably don't apply to a 100% privately funded plant.
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Nov 18, 2016 07:36
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Potato Salad posted:The new blood is welcome, especially any soapboxing you have as a power guy. -I've only gotten through uhh, 12 pages of the thread so far however it seem to have (at least begun with) a strongly libertarian, pro-nuclear slant, so I want to be full and upfront about my angle before someone starts throwing talking points at me, etc. -I'm going to mainly start on residential because it's simpler however, I do want to go into the different types of power metering, power pricing schemas and their practise, public versus private utility providers and the like... Most of my history and up-to-date knowledge mainly apply to the West Coast USA, specifically the PNW, and/or the Enron fuckups and scandals which caused huge problems in CA in the early 200s, and why and how it happened or might have been averted through policy and good management.. If anyone has something to share about a different geographical region or who'd like to point me toward resources to better inform myself about the rest of the country (except Hawaii, I know that one already) PLEASE do so! I'm probably going to wander all over at first because there are so many things to cover in so many ways, from traffic flow manegement to urban planing to building architecture, to retrofitting in-use structures (this looks like the big bad dog in the corner of the room, because so many industrial and IT structures simply cannot afford to have any downtime for systemic upgrades, so that's a specific field I'm not so well-versed in outside of theory and basic logical factors to be taken into account.) So anyway, ENERGY MANAGEMENT! It's a super nebulous loving term which could mean I'm covering a power grid or walking into residential homes and setting up blower door fans (if you dunno what these literally are - and I sure as heck didn't without an HVAC background - these are a front-door-size fan that you install, turn on,. and then you measure the amount of pressure coming into the back of the fan versus what it could output in a perfect setting (aka plenty of intake airflow) and then you use the differential to calculate how leaky a structure is in terms of air-flow) to find out how man leaks there are in your attic, crawlspace, outlet holes (you do realize the number of doorknob-sized holes in the studs of your home, directly affect the insulation quality in terms of both "air space" which can easily transmit heat loss or gain from outside, as well as the whole ventilation/draft problem!?) It's kind of shocking, because we all think windows and leaky door seals are where heat loss and cold-entry issues come from however, it really is almost always shoddy work behind/below/above the walls and doors and windows! I've lived in lovely places with lovely windows and the actual "radiant" cold you can feel coming off that window when you're near it is super-lovely however, there''s still almost always lower-hanging (if not necessarily a smaller or cheaper project) fruit in simply working to just seal up your house's gaps in the walls, attic, and sub-floor spaces. There's even a contracting/building speciality nowadays which involves literally just being the dude who rolls in post-framing on a building site and just uses a foam-gun in every 2x4 that someone cored a hole to drag cables through, and every floor or ceiling hole which is intended to house a vent or plumbing, etc.. The amount of cold air being sucked up (plus mice and rats having a free highway pre-made!) through the hole that's simply under your kitchen or bathroom sink is phenomenal! First up, we need to really go over some very, very basic poo poo that everybody probably knows, but which needs to be laid out in a certain order of priority and attention.. This stuff seems super loving boring however, it's actually the numero uno critical part of looking at how to either set up a residential or commercial structure which will be dependant/independant of the local grid, or frankly, setting up and managing the whole loving grid itself. (if I misstep please let me know ITT or PM me, because I really want to get into the provider-side of things eventually.) First up, when you are trying to do ANY kind of energy project, you need to get in a demand/supply mindset. This is actually really hard if you're not super-super familiar with wattage and amperage and voltage and kilowatt-hours versus kilowatts, why this matters, and how it actually affects the power grid overall as a whole system. It ends up kind of turning into a word-much (similar to rotational physics and translating latin alphabet into actual definitions of rotational motion can be hard AF and require a little bit of practise and repetition). So here's the poo poo I hate to repeat because it still irks me to mix them up: Energy - this is how much juice gets used, measured in kW/h Power - this is the demand (from a customer in real-time), in kW Consumption - this is the amount of juice used over a period of time. Demand-Side Management - Literally, management of the demand for energy. Used when referring to the energy industry. DSM is an ancillary service offered by utilities, energy suppliers or private companies as a value-added service to assist the customer with getting the best value from their energy expenses. DSM services can include everything from efficiency-related planning assistance for new construction to sourcing of alternative suppliers to consulting on conservation programs to full management of a company's energy efficiency programs. (there's a lot more to this, but at least please keep it in mind from the perspective of the people providing juice to your home or business, etc). (yeah gently caress y'all, I copy-pasted that one BUT didn't include the six factors which are considered DSM - google them if you're interested, it's worth it imho) Sorry about the definitions but it will probably be helpful eventually when I either lose my own train of convo or someone calls me on a mixed-up understanding between us.. I'm going to begin with Billing. It's not very loving interesting from a layman's standpoint but really, it's going to demarcate the difference between a residential or commercial/industrial demand, and also explain WHY they are different and what that means, and how it helps everybody overall (and why you can't just re-zone your house as a business for free without some changes to your meter etc)... And honestly, we all have a power bill so why do you NOT want to know why it's sooo loving high (if you don't live in the PNW  )So in Energy "zoning" terms, we have three categories of buildings: Residential - homes, rentals, duplexes, apartment buildings - any bulding which people live in as the primary usage, pretty much. They tend to have a lot of demand oriented around local HVAC, refigeration, and a whole fuckload of appliances... But most residential has a pretty low load, and a pretty limited peak - although the peak times may be hard to determine based on the affluence level and type of jobs of residents but that's different ball of wax which involves building an "occupancy profile" among other things.. Commercial - Someplace which is set up to have lots of people do lots of stuff in order to produce a product (or profit) at the end of the day. This can include restaurants, retail stores, boiler room-style phone/computer bank companies, server farms and other large IT-related facilities, educational or governmental facilities (which people don't live on - no idea how military factors in - probably is an exception to this structure from what I know due to their inherent always-on demand nature).. There's probably a few others but it comes down to if it's a living space, or for-profit facility "with predictable down-times" (and yes, server farms are the unicorn in the paddock here, and there's a shitload of reasoning to push them into Industrial as we're about to see). Industrial - you build poo poo. Lots of machines, generally 24/7 uptime with very few lows off of peak usage, conveyors, possible hardcore HVAC controls (cooling from the hot machines, cooling because of fragile products, heating/cooling because of temperature sensitivity a la capacitior manufacturing which often invlved whole racks of glass capacitors bursting at even a 1 degree temp shift), and a really high uptime - generally assumed to be 24/7 or close to it. You don't really need to worry about stuff that qualifies for Industrial Building "zoning" *this is not the same as property zoning overall because it only involves an agreement between the owner and power/water providers) because it's like that old adage about porn - "you'll know it when you see it". --These three categories can and do get mixed together in the same structure - see stuff like a Trump Tower full of condos and apartments but also shopping centers and restaurants, etc.. Those specific multi-use structures require multiple meters for each usage. Now that we've covered that insultingly-basic level of stuff, we move on to power meters.. This is important for many reasons however, "I can't sell my juice back to the power company" is also rolled up into this for you hobbyist solar enthusiasts and the like, so you might want to brush up on this stuff! When you (in the USA at least) build, say, a home in the USA, your local utility provider rolls up and installs a meter on the building based on stated intent of use. If they believe people are gonna live there, they'll install a residential power meter on your building, which locks you in at certain perks and pricing schemes (which are in theory generally going to end up lower than the commercial and industrial power rates, in a regulated or co-op region.) This meter measures your consumption (aka demand over a period of time) and then calculates your rates per kW/h based on whatever metrics they've got to pull from..This can include their price per unit purchased (which they have to mark up to stay afloat), the season you're currently in (hot climes have higher rates in summer, cold climes in winter, and the urility must know what to EXPECT IN ADVANCE as we will get to), the time of day you were using the juice, and a few other metrics - but generally residential is charged seasonally or by time of day versus demand, iirc. (I think I'm missing a third way here but it's not super important overall I think). If you look at your utility bill (I could make a whole post on this alone) you will see a variety of surchages and service/area charges.. These basically are like the fees you: -pay comcast to rent a cable modem (except it's a power meter) that was provided for you, -the fees to stay hooked up to the grid (this includes if you use no juice - because they're still paying for the work to lay the lines and install the meters even if you're not using them) -"area" or "network" charges - for expanded projects to tear up streets etc and lay down new lines to customers in outlying areas or who live in areas with poor infrastructure. -you've finally also likely got some percetile charge on your bill which is literally just a tax which your utility provider uses to roll-over in the form of subsidies, incentives, upgrade programs, etc - to their customers, because the less juice the provider has to keep around - the less everyone pays overall and also, the more reliable your infrastructure is (I'll get to this but in the next post or the one after, sorry it's a lot to lie out clearly in an organized manner). Communism! Wow that was a fuckload of words, I'm going to submit this and keep going in another post - tbc Please holler at me if I hosed something up or if you need more clarification, I'm trying to distill a few dozen hours of lectures and at least that in book reading, into a couple posts! coyo7e fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Nov 18, 2016 |
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Nov 18, 2016 09:28
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Holy poo poo that post was bigger than I thought and I barely scratched the surface however, I really, REALLY want to get into the different schemes for billing customers (of different types, usually) before I get into the Commercial/Industrial sector stuff, because I have a serious concern that the entire horse might get pulled down and dragged into the weeds by libertarian extremists before I can ffinish my post.. Plus gently caress I spent like 2 hours writing and then cleaning up that post - so good night
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Nov 18, 2016 10:40
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coyo7e posted:Okay thanks all. Now to be up-front I'm not going to be fair and balanced, I'm going to come entirely from the angle of someone who's really, strongly interested in eventually becoming part of the decision-making infrastructure for power in a large geographical are, and helping to point things toward positive change, renewable/sustainable sources, and the like.. I know I am looking forward to more of this, at least! quote:-I've only gotten through uhh, 12 pages of the thread so far however it seem to have (at least begun with) a strongly libertarian, pro-nuclear slant, so I want to be full and upfront about my angle before someone starts throwing talking points at me, etc. Absolutely pro-nuclear (with some vocal dissent of course), but I'm not sure 'libertarian' is the angle I'd call it. Most of what I'd seen was people asking that fossil fuels and solar/wind and such be raised to the nuclear standards, with a bit of easing of siting and overbuild (how many coastal plants need to survive a hurricane, a 9.3 earthquake, a 30 foot tsunami, and then a 747 plowing into it at full speed, within an hour of each other?). Admittedly its been a while since I went back to the start of thread so it may have indeed morphed in memory and time, I'd freely admit. EDIT: Holy poo poo, it's over three years ago? Maybe it could do with a fresh thread and OP...
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Nov 18, 2016 10:45
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Karatela posted:Absolutely pro-nuclear (with some vocal dissent of course), but I'm not sure 'libertarian' is the angle I'd call it. So yeah I wanna get that out way in front, because I'm seeing a lot of :sperger: level nuclear math in the first couple dozen pages, without actually looking at things within the entire system and as anybody who's taken physics 101 knows - everything within a system comes back on itself and nullifies change without an outside force/impulse, so tossing a pile of nuclear waste into that equation is really hard to nullify since there's not a system in place to already digest and expel it in another form which is bio-compatible. So basically I have a dropping feeling in my gut that I've got 3 years of posts about how nuclear is great and people who never acknowledge the waste disposal logistics, and I'm just gonna go through that on my own time while attempting to be fully up-front about my personal views and knowledge base.. But what it tends to come down to is deciding to work with a cyclical or linear system of supply and demand. If you've got a linear supply and demand, then as you make a profit, you turn it back into harvesting more resources to make greater profit. If you've got a cyclical supply and demand, then you've got to train up a few more folks to work each element of the cycle however, you can make the majority of systems self-sustaining (in the newton's 3rd law sense) as long as you are good enough at tracking everything within the system and then maintaining it at a high level of efficiency (which is a huge caveat due to modern management practises in business, I'll get to that eventually as well). coyo7e fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Nov 18, 2016 |
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Nov 18, 2016 11:04
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coyo7e posted:Hi guys, I bumped into this thread just now and am in Energy Management and Digital Building Controls. I haven't managed to get through more than the first few pages of the thread so far however, I was curious if anyone is bothering to discuss the waste handling and maintenance costs of some of these solutions which got tossed into the OP - or are we all just going to fire expired radioactive fuel into the sun or something - after we salvage all of those corroded leaky barrels of ultra-dangerous waste. Radioactive waste isn't actually a serious problem and is far less dangerous than most people think. It's perfectly safe to just chunk the vast majority of it on a patch of desert inside a fence, station a 20 year old with a rifle at the gate, and forget about it. Anyone who tries to steal, say, spent fuel rods, which are the most radioactive thing out of a plant, will end up regretting their decision. Briefly.
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Nov 18, 2016 11:08
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My first Energy Trumper! Congrats - would you care to share the science behind your claim? What's your theory of nuclear waste disposal? Adding it to fly-ash and concrete in residential buildings? That's a favorite of mine
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Nov 18, 2016 11:12
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coyo7e posted:My first Energy Trumper! Congrats - would you care to share the science behind your claim? Protip: if you want a serious discussion, be less of a condescending prick and don't automatically assume the guy you're quoting has no idea what he's talking about. Generally speaking, waste falls into two broad categories: high level and low level waste. High level waste is spent fuel rods. It's generally stuffed into big, unbelievably tough (as in, can withstand being hit by a train at full speed tough) casks, which are then stuffed into a rack. The casks contain the radiation perfectly well and usually are also used to transport the waste if needed. This is the really dangerous stuff, but at the same time, the casks are secure enough that you can just park them anywhere. No need for ridiculous 1000 leagues below the earth storage needed. Low level waste is just about everything else. Equipment, used protective gear, medical stuff, that sort of thing. Typically, the radiation emitted from this stuff fades away to safe levels within 5-10 years. It's generally just flat out buried in a hole somewhere (the exact depth required depends on how radioactive it is), and there hasn't really been any problems with it. So. Low level waste disposal is fine as it is. High level waste disposal, which is what all the green morons whine about endlessly and want to use as a club to kill nuclear in the US, is also not a huge problem, except that the US is supposed to have a central facility that all the nuclear power plants can send it to. It's legally required to, in fact, and up until relatively recently, was taxing reactor operators for the construction of such a site until the feds were ordered to stop by a court. The feds have also lost many lawsuits related to the construction of such a site, since it was blatantly obvious that the government had no real intention of constructing the facility due to the issue becoming a political football. Thanks, Harry Reid! To recap: spent fuel casks are completely safe. They can't be transported or opened without extremely specialized equipment, are immune to even ridiculous accidents, and thus, as I stated, can be perfectly safely parked on a patch of desert somewhere. No one has tried to steal a spent fuel rod, ever, in the entire history of nuclear power in the US, and they are harmless just sittng in the casks.
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Nov 18, 2016 11:39
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coyo7e posted:-I've only gotten through uhh, 12 pages of the thread so far however it seem to have (at least begun with) a strongly libertarian In my experience this thread is in favor of all of the things that a libertarian would scoff at, including strong regulatory frameworks and possibly even nationalization of the transmission grid. I think that most of the people in here are pro-nuclear for global warming reasons, which a lot of libertarians either deny or ignore
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Nov 18, 2016 12:06
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coyo7e posted:So yeah I wanna get that out way in front, because I'm seeing a lot of :sperger: level nuclear math in the first couple dozen pages, without actually looking at things within the entire system and as anybody who's taken physics 101 knows - everything within a system comes back on itself and nullifies change without an outside force/impulse, so tossing a pile of nuclear waste into that equation is really hard to nullify since there's not a system in place to already digest and expel it in another form which is bio-compatible. Have you taken physics 101? We don't teach this kind of word salad in physics 101, or any physics course for that matter. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics says the exact opposite of what you've written here; the entropy of a closed system will at best stay constant, but it can also increase without any input. Applicable to this topic, what you've written suggests that radiation can only occur due to outside influences (because "everything within a system comes back on itself and nullifies change without an outside force/impulse") but that is definitely not true QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Nov 18, 2016 |
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Nov 18, 2016 12:18
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That read like a C+ screed from your 100 level Environmental Engineering for Homeopaths ("How Energy Makes You Feel") class, co7ote. Almost to a person the desire for nuclear power in the thread stems around the reduction of greenhouse emissions, not libertarian politics. And I am not sure what other points you're trying to make, that O&M costs aren't calculated in nuclear power proposals? Because they really are. The death and cleanup of a plant is built into its overnight costs in the planning phase.
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Nov 18, 2016 15:15
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