The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Struensee posted:

I'm pretty sure all cars have vastly improved fuel efficiency. It's just that americans used the fuel efficiency to build bigger cars, not save on fuel costs.

At least part of that goes into crash safety standards, though. The CRX was a tremendously efficient and lightweight vehicle, but I don't think it could be legally sold as a new car today because it wouldn't stand up nearly as well in a crash as a modern car.

But yeah, we also take those efficiency gains and spend them on bigger/faster.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2012 15:12

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:56

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

I've been wondering for awhile why we couldn't just stick waste casks in former chemical weapons depots. I mean you've already got these bunker complexes out in the middle of nowhere, they've already been built with the intent of containing much more hazardous substances, why not repurpose them and get more utility out of them now that we're destroying our chemical weapons stockpiles?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 14:25

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

hobbesmaster posted:

If the California coast was being bathed in radiation anyone with a geiger counter could find out. In Japan after the disaster nobody trusted tepco or the gov't so everyone went off private geiger counters. Its not like the amount of radiation is some big secret that only some random conspiracy bloggers would report on.

Then again some of these people are sufficiently loony as to demand that TRIGA research reactors be shutdown. :psyduck:

# ¿ Oct 28, 2013 22:59

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Given the tremendous expense of grid-scale energy storage, what about going the other way for dealing with peaking? In other words build out capacity to the point where you'll always have enough, and then when demand falls below peak, have at least a portion of power generation capacity feeding into something non-crucial (like cracking water for hydrogen, or even just giant electric radiators if necessary), and then be able to switch that low-priority load off instantly in order to meet surges in demand.

Baronjutter posted:

From what I've read of the subject I think we'll see thorium or even bloody fusion before we see an economical and safe/environmental way to store energy. This isn't Total Annihilation where you can just build a mess of solar plants and "energy storage" to let you shoot your giant lasers when needed.

I always thought it was cool how the wind turbines were really cheap but were also highly variable in their output. (also fragile as hell) An interesting trade-off to make.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2014 22:50

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

blowfish posted:

, basically.

For Germany, using 2013 daily energy production data, there is a 100-fold difference between minimum and maximum wind output, and a 25 fold difference between minimum and maximum solar+wind output.
e: Overall, there is a 220-fold difference for max vs min wind output, if you don't average it out over days .

Overbuilding generating capacity by that margin is ridiculous, there has to be a large amount of storage for any wind based grid even if it's humongous underground ~~evil overlord lairs~~ reservoirs for pumped hydro or whatever.

What's the projected cost of large-scale energy storage?

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 01:25

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Pander posted:

The fun part of a nuke plant in space or on the moon is firing off waste products into the sun!

Launching something directly into the sun would take an enormous amount of energy... although, hmm, maybe a gravity assist or two could drop the trajectory low enough.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 00:34

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Meanwhile, in the world of solar thermal:

Solar farm igniting birds in midair; wildlife leaders ask for halt to more construction

quote:

IVANPAH DRY LAKE, Calif. � Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays � "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

The deaths are "alarming. It's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology," said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. "There needs to be some caution."

The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed birds, including numerous raptors.

"We take this issue very seriously," said Jeff Holland, a spokesman for NRG Solar of Carlsbad, California, the second of the three companies behind the plant. The third, Google, deferred comment to its partners.

The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. The operator says it's the world's biggest plant to employ so-called power towers.

More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes.

Sun rays sent up by the field of mirrors are bright enough to dazzle pilots flying in and out of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Federal wildlife officials said Ivanpah might act as a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays.

Federal and state biologists call the number of deaths significant, based on sightings of birds getting singed and falling, and on retrieval of carcasses with feathers charred too severely for flight.

Ivanpah officials dispute the source of the so-called streamers, saying at least some of the puffs of smoke mark insects and bits of airborne trash being ignited by the solar rays.

Wildlife officials who witnessed the phenomena say many of the clouds of smoke were too big to come from anything but a bird, and they add that they saw "birds entering the solar flux and igniting, consequently become a streamer."

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say they want a death toll for a full year of operation.

Given the apparent scale of bird deaths at Ivanpah, authorities should thoroughly track bird kills there for a year, including during annual migratory seasons, before granting any more permits for that kind of solar technology, said George, of the Audubon Society.

The toll on birds has been surprising, said Robert Weisenmiller, chairman of the California Energy Commission. "We didn't see a lot of impact" on birds at the first, smaller power towers in the U.S. and Europe, Weisenmiller said.

The commission is now considering the application from Oakland-based BrightSource to build a mirror field and a 75-story power tower that would reach above the sand dunes and creek washes between Joshua Tree National Park and the California-Arizona border.

The proposed plant is on a flight path for birds between the Colorado River and California's largest lake, the Salton Sea � an area, experts say, is richer in avian life than the Ivanpah plant, with protected golden eagles and peregrine falcons and more than 100 other species of birds recorded there.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials warned California this month that the power-tower style of solar technology holds "the highest lethality potential" of the many solar projects burgeoning in the deserts of California.

The commission's staff estimates the proposed new tower would be almost four times as dangerous to birds as the Ivanpah plant. The agency is expected to decide this autumn on the proposal.

While biologists say there is no known feasible way to curb the number of birds killed, the companies behind the projects say they are hoping to find one � studying whether lights, sounds or some other technology would scare them away, said Joseph Desmond, senior vice president at BrightSource Energy.

BrightSource also is offering $1.8 million in compensation for anticipated bird deaths at Palen, Desmond said.

The company is proposing the money for programs such as those to spay and neuter domestic cats, which a government study found kill over 1.4 billion birds a year. Opponents say that would do nothing to help the desert birds at the proposed site.

Power-tower proponents are fighting to keep the deaths from forcing a pause in the building of new plants when they see the technology on the verge of becoming more affordable and accessible, said Thomas Conroy, a renewable-energy expert.

When it comes to powering the country's grids, "diversity of technology ... is critical," Conroy said. "Nobody should be arguing let's be all coal, all solar," all wind, or all nuclear. "And every one of those technologies has a long list of pros and cons."

-- The Associated Press

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 20:58

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Pander posted:

That isn't to say there aren't ideas or plans. Europe/North Africa is an ideal situation where long distance DC can transmit power from solar collectors in the deserts of North Africa through an underwater cable to Southern Europe.

Please tell me that you meant to write "through many underwater cables". :psyduck:

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 16:45

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Pander posted:

And more carbon emissions during operations.

At first I was confused, and then I read the article. A solar power plant that burns natural gas, are you loving kidding me?

# ¿ Nov 22, 2014 21:14

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

QuarkJets posted:

I'm not sure if you're serious, but I was making a joke. "NIMBY" (not in my back yard) is a common complain for people who don't want a nuclear power plant anywhere near them, not even in the same state

This also applies to wind farms, power transmission lines, and pretty much anything that isn't an expensive private school giving their kids a full-ride scholarship.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 16:52

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Anosmoman posted:

A car with a life expectancy of 20 years is not equal to a space thing that will fly probably once.

Pretty sure SpaceX eventually wants to start reusing the capsules.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 17:07

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Trabisnikof posted:

Whether or not your argument is valid (personally, I think the impacts on a community matter when developing energy projects and the history of Energy projects is rife with examples of communities that were destroyed for various projects), community involvement has very little to do with why TVA has taken so long to build this plant:

You can't really blame the UCS for "poorly welded metal, electrical cables that were damaged during installation, and quality assurance records with missing or incorrect information."

Bechtel also hosed up the Trojan plant in Oregon.

EDIT: Whoooops, I misread that, the article doesn't say Bechtel was the contractor for initial construction.

# ¿ May 12, 2015 19:04

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

EoRaptor posted:

You can now make your own incomprehensible* predictions about nuclear power:
http://thebulletin.org/nuclear-fuel-cycle-cost-calculator/model

* Probably really accurate, but holy crap it doesn't explain the options well.

Interest rate appears to be the single biggest factor in that tool.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 17:34

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

fishmech posted:

But you do need energy density. Space around suitable points of the infrastructure for energy storage isn't exactly infinite. When we're building battery banks that can hold a sizable percentage of a continent's energy needs, we can't just accept the "make it huge" tradeoff.

Even if there was infinite space, there are not infinite materials. We might run out of lead trying to build a national-scale lead-acid battery backup.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 17:04

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Trabisnikof posted:

That blog post makes two common errors.

First, just decides that we'd need a battery big enough to store all the electricity the US needs for a week. Studies by research groups like NREL show that number is vastly lower, even in some crazy 90% renewables scenario.

Second, it makes a mistake about the definition of resource. The term, when used by USGS and others, specifically refers to amount of something economically viable at this price. In some insane world where we build a giant lead acid battery of doom, we wouldn't run out of lead the global "lead resources" would increase as the price increases and things that used to be not economical to get lead out of would become economical.

How much storage would be required, then?

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 19:10

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Solar panels wear out eventually, right? What's the process for recycling them?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 17:53

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

My understanding is that a lot of the anti-nuclear environmentalists were less motivated by environmentalism and more by a desire for nuclear disarmament. Which politically keys in to banning reprocessing - committing to once-through means cutting out the argument (however unsound) that civilian nuclear power just feeds the nuclear weapons program.

Sinestro posted:

We have a stupid environmentalist problem and a need to get rid of our left over chemical weapons problem. Why can't we put this together?

We've already made great progress on incinerating the chemical weapons stockpile. The Umatilla depot in Oregon is now empty, for example.

Although that reminds me that I still think the old chemical weapons depots should be looked at as possible storage locations for nuclear waste. I mean, a cask full of spent fuel is probably less hazardous than containers of nerve gas.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 07:06

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Bolow posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4

What the gently caress more do they want on transportation safety?

Man, how could they edit out the footage of the rocket boosters lighting off on that locomotive?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JhruRobRI

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 07:22

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

I have a hard time believing that a house got classified as a power plant when I'm sure there are businesses with greater generating capacity thanks to on-site backup generators. If it's true (which would be hosed up), I think either there's a regulation or policy (whether legal or corporate) that's been grossly unevenly applied, or someone was a real tinpot rear end in a top hat.

That said, I do recall hearing about there being regulations governing home power generation when there's a grid outage - but my understanding is that that's intended to protect the lives of line workers who need to be able to trust that when they talk to the central office and are told the power is off for the line they're working on, it's not being quietly energized by someone who hosed up big time when they wired up their solar array.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 22:11

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

blowfish posted:

~natural~ ~earth~ gold, the new trend for rich hipsters

The word you're looking for is purestrain gold.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 23:58

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

silence_kit posted:

The reason why nuclear energy isn't doing well in America has very little to do with environmentalists. Many posters in this thread have a mistaken belief that the US environmental lobby is some kind of Illuminati pulling the strings behind the scenes of the US Govt. to thwart the rapid build out of nuclear power plants. But in actuality, environmentalists don't really matter.

Nuclear energy is not the slam dunk technology that people in this thread like to claim. The real reason why nuclear energy is unpopular in the US has to do with the large capital investment needed to build a nuclear power plant and amount of risk associated with doing so, and the long amount of time it takes to build the plant. It is a pretty elaborate and complicated technology, with the potential for things to go very wrong, and so to do it right and to do it safely means that it must be high cost.

I'm willing to accept that there's a lot of economic negatives, but I have to wonder: if it's so incredibly risky, why does anyone in private industry bother with attempting to build nuclear?

# ¿ Jun 22, 2016 04:28

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Boten Anna posted:

Tell me about it. We finally got solar installed at our place, and we're generating an almost obscene amount of extra electricity during peak hours, though most of our use is pulling off the grid past 10 PM, mainly for EV charging but it's also because we're all home and our housemate (and sometimes me) stays up all night and plays video games It'd be pretty great to get some powerwalls or something and get off the grid entirely, but that isn't exactly a cheap or even arguably environmentally friendly option considering what an environmental disaster lithium mining is.

Have you looked into lead-acid batteries? It would take more space, but it would probably be much less expensive than lithium-ion.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2016 17:04

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

This article seems to be making the rounds:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory posted:

Nano-spike catalysts convert carbon dioxide directly into ethanol

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 12, 2016�In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy�s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous.

�We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked,� said ORNL�s Adam Rondinone, lead author of the team�s study published in ChemistrySelect. �We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own.�

The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.

�We�re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we�re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel,� Rondinone said. �Ethanol was a surprise -- it�s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst.�

The catalyst�s novelty lies in its nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes. This nano-texturing approach avoids the use of expensive or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of many catalysts.

�By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want,� Rondinone said.

The researchers� initial analysis suggests that the spiky textured surface of the catalysts provides ample reactive sites to facilitate the carbon dioxide-to-ethanol conversion.

�They are like 50-nanometer lightning rods that concentrate electrochemical reactivity at the tip of the spike,� Rondinone said.

Given the technique�s reliance on low-cost materials and an ability to operate at room temperature in water, the researchers believe the approach could be scaled up for industrially relevant applications. For instance, the process could be used to store excess electricity generated from variable power sources such as wind and solar.

�A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it�s available to make and store as ethanol,� Rondinone said. �This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources.�

The researchers plan to refine their approach to improve the overall production rate and further study the catalyst�s properties and behavior.

ORNL�s Yang Song, Rui Peng, Dale Hensley, Peter Bonnesen, Liangbo Liang, Zili Wu, Harry Meyer III, Miaofang Chi, Cheng Ma, Bobby Sumpter and Adam Rondinone are coauthors on the study, which is published as �High-Selectivity Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Ethanol using a Copper Nanoparticle/N-Doped Graphene Electrode.�

The work was supported by DOE�s Office of Science and used resources at the ORNL�s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the DOE's Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://science.energy.gov/.

No rare metals involved, and taking place at room-temperature.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2016 19:26

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

QuarkJets posted:

Over time I've become less and less convinced that we need to do much more than on-site storage with really well-engineered casks

I feel like former chemical weapons depots could also be reasonably used for housing those casks, especially as the casks are far less dangerous than canisters of nerve gas.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 07:02

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

I know I've said this before but it seems to me like a great place to store waste would be in those chemical weapons depots we've spent the last couple decades clearing out - waste of any sort is a hell of a lot less scary to monitor or deal with than loving nerve gas or blister agents.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2018 06:49

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Potato Salad posted:

150,000 2MW turbines:

300GW of power (more that half the US's coal capacity)

$750B to build and install, assuming an exorbitant $5M cost per unit because they're offshore.

Lesson: gently caress F35s, get actual strategic economic value out of free gubbermint energy for industry for less cost.

God, what would the cost be to maintain all those offshore turbines? The sea relentlessly works to destroy anything we put into it.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2018 18:43

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

That said, I'm also in favor of just overbuilding the hell out of clean energy generation, and using the excess to power carbon extraction from the atmosphere.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2018 18:45

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

For reference since it seems to be a common comparison point, the lifetime price of the F-35 program is expected to be in the area of $1.5 trillion with about a third of that going to buy the planes. Fusion power doesn't exist so that's out. Replacing the ~2.5 trillion kWh of fossil fuel electricity currently used annually with fission power at 90% capacity factor would require about 315 million kW of generation, or about $2 trillion at current EIA cost estimates (plus operating costs).

Once you get that far, you can start looking at replacing gasoline. Adding another 3.4 billion barrels of gasoline per year and assuming a barrel of gasoline represents ~1,700 kWh, that's another 5.7 trillion or so kWh of power to make up for - assuming a perfectly efficient conversion process, which it won't be - so another 600 million kW of generation. That's another $3.5 trillion at best, multiplied by whatever efficiency losses would come from the carbon fixing process.

Within the scope of the country's wealth and industrial capacity? Probably. Politically possible? lol.

On the one hand, if we set about deliberately replacing all of that generation with nuclear power, rather than "letting the market decide", it should theoretically be possible to realize cost savings through economies of scale - we know we're building so many hundred nuclear power plants, we can ramp up production of all those components, etc.

On the other hand we're a decaying society that can't do anything right anymore so the final cost would probably still be even higher than what you estimated. :suicide:

# ¿ Dec 28, 2018 23:47

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Rime posted:

I'll dump when I'm out of NDA, I've already got stories which would make you

When are you out of NDA?

# ¿ Jan 15, 2019 22:12

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Let it go to waste as we don't have any way to store it .

Overcapacity only helps to a certain extent. The more overcapacity you have the less economic it is to install another panel.

Until we have grid storage that is worth a drat it doesn't help much.

Use the overcapacity to produce liquid fuels, use fuels to run peaker/overnight plants, boom there's your grid storage.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2019 20:26

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

I still think we're better off just vastly overbuilding renewables capacity and then using the overcapacity to generate liquid fuels that can run night-time electrical generation and vehicles. Whether that liquid is derived from extracting carbon from the atmosphere, or from cracking hydrogen, still seems like a better deal than trying to build giant battery farms or flood the Rockies.

EDIT: don't get me wrong I'm also fine with ramping up nuclear power production

# ¿ Sep 27, 2019 19:50

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:56

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

CommieGIR posted:

I want to highlight one quote

This is pretty stupid take: There has yet to have been a successful attempt on a nuclear power station by terrorists, proliferation risks are true of any nuclear power solution, which is why strong global agreements and inspections are critical, and the alternative is continued fossil fuel use.

Not to mention even counting Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear accidents have accounts for very little in the way of deaths.

Take a look at the title of the person they quoted. Their primary concern isn't environmentalism, it's nuclear disarmament; the thinking being that if the public is turned against nuclear power, it becomes less tenable to maintain the infrastructure for nuclear weapons.

It's not a stupid take, it's dishonest.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2021 21:20

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