The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

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

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Why not get a little of everything?

There seems to be a minimal amount of freezer space in this one. Hard pass.

# ¿ May 12, 2019 18:07

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 19:39

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Phanatic posted:

Kinda surprised to see nothing here about Three Gorges, which even the CCP is now admitting has "deformed" under simply enormous quantities of rainfall.

https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/three-gorges-dam-under-fast-mounting-flood-pressure/
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/three-gorges-dam-deformed-but-safe-say-operators/

If this thing goes, it's 2% of China's electrical capacity gone, and that doesn't even touch on the millions of deaths, disruption to food supplies and supply chains, subsequent disease and starvation, etc. A humanitarian disaster of that magnitude hasn't been seen in our lifetimes.

Informative thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1287836332883050498.html

It's mostly sensationalist reporting traced back to a story originally posted by crazy cultists.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2020 17:41

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Crazycryodude posted:

Well too bad, they can either give up some of those things willingly in a controlled scaling back of consumption or they can lose them anyways when poo poo starts collapsing more and more. At least in the former you get to keep a roof over your head in a wood-frame Khrushchyovka that has running water and climate control and enough local-ish food to keep you healthy, in the latter we all just get to live in a climate-ravaged wasteland where billionaire compounds get to keep all the luxuries and it looks like Fallout for the rest of us.

Have you seen the American response to covid? They can't even be bothered to wear a mask and stay away from restaurants even with the risk of death.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2020 15:09

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Phanatic posted:

Single-family zoning laws are definitely a thing that needs to be done away with.

This will most probably never happen in our lifetime.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2020 22:20

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

FreeKillB posted:

I feel like how many toothpaste brands are available in a store is not pertinent to the actual issue at hand, as to whether increased electricity demand on a per capita basis constitutes 'manufactured demand' or not.

There are two aspects here that could be in question. One is whether things like AC, refrigeration, water heating and laundry machines count as essentials or not. The other is the extent to which these uses as opposed to fancy widescreen TVs or Alexas or what have you is driving increases in per capita load, possibly allowing for taking into account manufacturing or data centers as opposed to pure direct residential load.

Was there a recorded drop in Co2 output or electricity use over the past few months of the pandemic?

Travel and other expenditures must have been way down. As well as restaurants and manufacturing sites being shut down.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 03:44

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Infinite Karma posted:

A big part of the "free real estate" thought when it comes to rooftop solar is that the land and buildings have already been developed and structurally set-up to support electrification, including the last mile to the place the power is being generated. That's not negligible.

Bulldozing hills in the desert to build solar farms doesn't just require you to grade the hills and drive foundation piles for the mounting systems, it also means building roads and high voltage distribution lines and switching stations and industrial inverters to carry that power to where it's needed, potentially hundreds of miles away.

Yes it�s called building infrastructure.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 21:29

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

mediaphage posted:

what's the point of this post? the dude above you was just clarifying an aspect that some people might not consider.

sure it�s something to consider, but it shouldn�t be a hindrance to building infrastructure and new energy production.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 21:45

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

mediaphage posted:

i disagree with you on this point but this is a better response than your snark above

Didn�t mean for it to come by quite that snarky, but any project of that scale is going to require similar levels of build up, be it solar, wind, Coal, nuclear.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 21:50

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Phanatic posted:

And the counterpoint is that it's tough to transport that much material and workers into existing cities. The transport apparatus is already sized to bring in the stuff the city needs and for the workers and inhabitants to get around. In other words, there are also bottlenecks to simply putting solar panels on the top of every building. And then maintaining them and replacing them as they fail. Maybe you'll wind up building additional housing units in the city for all those workers.

But at some point it seems we have to admit that there is no getting around it. Either invest into the tech and commit to significant work or we end up with endless talk about what could be the perfect solution.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 22:01

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Infinite Karma posted:

Solar panels are really pretty space-efficient for how long they last. Given that they last ~30 years, working on roughly 3% of the solar capacity in a city in any given year isn't a huge ask in terms of infrastructure-supporting-infrastructure.

An issue I was considering recently is that so many houses have ridiculous decorative rooflines and eaves and gables that absolutely destroy the ability to place an effective solar system on them. And almost every flat roof commercial building has preposterous distributions of equipment on the roof in random locations that prohibit simple rooftop solar there as well. Just changing permitting guidelines to make new construction solar-friendly would massively, massively decrease costs and increase performance.

Would legislation which mandates that all new built homes in solar efficient regions must have solar pre installed be at all possible in the current Us political climate?

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 22:13

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

That nuclear line looks pretty stable, even if you can see the point where the one reactor got shut down.

Natural gas being what hosed up the most is never going to be addressed in this state though!

Maybe I�m reading it wrong, but solar and wind looks to have had similar drops (proportionally) as natural gas.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2021 05:30

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Is this the same as the other small reactor proposals, or just a smaller standard plant?

https://www.chinadailyasia.com/article/228485

https://youtu.be/3Te-FbQVOaU

# ¿ Jul 16, 2021 17:49

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Are multi-story apartments/condos more efficient than single family homes?

# ¿ Sep 21, 2021 20:26

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Owling Howl posted:

Toyota famously stuck to a hydrogen strategy rather than BEVs after basically everyone else had abandoned it. It didn't work out and now they have to catch up.

Isn't Toyota buying ready made solutions from BYD and sticking their body on top? If so, should be a pretty quick catch up.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2021 15:06

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Did the UK ever finish thst nuclear plant they were working on with the Chinese? Or was that another victim of the trade/cold war?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2022 01:09

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

anyone have any info on China's SMRs? At least from the video it looks like construction is well on its way.

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

# ¿ Aug 22, 2022 16:36

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

it's amusing that people think that public utilities and infrastructure need to be profit generators.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2023 18:05

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

in a well actually posted:

China approved 100 GW of new coal plants last year. All of their total current and new nuclear is only 100 GW. They might get go 150 by like 2035, but that isn�t going to do poo poo for their current terawatt+ of coal generation.

In that same timeline how many old coal plants are they shutting down?

Seen here, there is a priority place on shutting down of older, smaller, and more polluting coal power plants. These are being replaced by fewer larger coal power plants. I've read that overall coal capacity is set to fall.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220306023

quote:

Plants decommissioning remains the priority

Although significant progress has been made in reducing Hg emissions via SUS, the coal power industry still faces great challenges given that a large number of pollutant-intensive small units remain in operation. At the early stage of the 13th FYP (2016�20), the total capacity of existing small units in China was 212.5 GW, equivalent to the total capacity of CFPPs in the United States. Since a large number of small units in China will come to the end of their service life before 2030, SUS will remain a focus of pollution mitigation strategies for the next decade. From the view of provincial regions, the extant small units are concentrated in several provincial regions, such as Shandong (29.45 GW), Inner Mongolia (12.57 GW), Henan (10.61 GW), Jiangsu (10.23 GW), and Shanxi (9.62 GW), which together make up approximately half of the national total. On one hand, small units, especially those with capacities under 300 MW, failed to meet the increasingly stringent environmental requirements even after ultra-low-emission retrofit. On the other hand, the costs of efficiency improvements and the installation of APCDs are beyond the affordability of small units. Incentivized by the increasingly stringent environmental requirements (e.g., Emission Standard of Air Pollutants for Thermal Power Plants27), China will commit to promoting an early retirement policy among small units with intensive pollution in the future.28 However, if all the small units are decommissioned radically in a short time, some regions may encounter large power gaps. For example, in Shandong Province (China's third largest provincial economy), small units with capacity less than 300 MW still provide over 35% of the province's total capacity. If all the small units are decommissioned immediately, Shandong will face a power shortfall of more than 100 million kWh.29,30 Thus, an appropriate timetable for the provincial CFPP shutdown campaign in China is recommended, especially in regions where small units still play an important role. Meanwhile, specific development plans for alternative energy are needed. For the provinces with abundant renewable energy resources, such as Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Qinghai, their local renewable energy could be further explored as a substitution for coal power. For provinces such as Shandong and Jiangsu, where coal power dominates and the potential of renewable energy is comparatively smaller, replacing pollutant-intensive small units with large ones with higher Hg removal efficiency could be a feasible policy for Hg emission control.

https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/china-cut-coal-use-power-plants-300gkwh-by-2025-2021-11-03/

GlassEye-Boy fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jun 22, 2023

# ¿ Jun 22, 2023 21:09

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

There is also the new condensed batteries from CATL which are described as semi solid state with over 500wh/kg, already in production.

https://hiu-batteries.de/en/research/prof-fichtner-catl-condensed-battery/

Also, BYD is now the 2nd largest battery producer after overtaking LG chem earlier this year.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2023 23:26

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Water rights are not something you want to gently caress with as a individual.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2023 04:05

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

TheMuffinMan posted:

you guys excited for solid state batteries?

sources say toyota made one with mid 700 mile range and under 10 minute charging time

believe it when I see it. Toyota's been making the same claim every year for half a decade or more now.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 21:12

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

in a well actually posted:

Carrying around the weight of solar panels doesn’t make any sense (a theoretical maximum of ~1 KW/m^2 vs a 80KW motor on a Nissan Leaf); the extra weight costs you more energy to cart around than it generates, even in the Sonora. Their claim of 1000 miles of range would mean they’re carrying way more batteries than they need.

It is as fantasy driven as a gas Hummer; a different market but an appeal to image over function.

It's a glorified long distance competition EV. It has no safety to speak of and the interior looks like a college project. They had some YouTuber test drive it and you can hear it creaking and groaning anytime it tried to accelerat.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 23:28

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

https://twitter.com/colinmckerrache/status/1696482907538264353?s=20

While the energy transition isn't happening as fast as we'd like... it is happening.

Yea, but at what cost?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2023 20:50

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Flappy Bert posted:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin

This stupid point is brought up every time, yes they are permitting new coal, but at the same time they are shutting down the same amount if not more, replacing older smaller and dirtier plants with larger cleaner ones.

But you'll never see media reporting on that part.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2023 18:12

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

in a well actually posted:

Wow, look at all the coal shutting off.

Yes exactly as your graph shows.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2023 18:46

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Smiling Demon posted:

Am I missing something here?

People are responding to a graph that shows power generation in China is mostly fossil fuels followed by a small portion of hydropower and nuclear and an even smaller portion of solar and wind as if it is an indication of progress?

Because this situation looks incredibly bleak. The graph may not be the best, but I don't think you can get a positive interpretation out of it without a severe dose of optimism.

The graph shows that after about 2010 coal basically stopped increasing in China. Yes it's still a large percentage, but almost all the newly added power have been alternative to fossil fuels. The total number of coal should also drop once they have sufficient nuclear and other sources to cover base load.

But the narrative that China is building more coal plants than ever is a convenient lie that allows other to point a finger at them and say see we don't need to do anything because China is ignoring their climate commitments.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2023 00:30

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Heard they had some initial startup problems, but seems like they finally got things working.

https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1732240058600800548?s=20

# ¿ Dec 6, 2023 16:55

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

Saukkis posted:

We need two simple rules. Increasing CO2 is forbidden and your power plant needs to provide stable power at all times. The industry can then decide if they want to build renewables with large scale storage, nuclear, or coal plant with proven sequestration system.

So pretty much what China has been doing, why aren't other nations doing the same? Seems like a lot of talk but either nothing is being done or actually going backwards in the case of the Germans.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2023 18:35

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 19:39

GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

This seems interesting, does anyone have any info on compressed air storage for energy?

https://twitter.com/tphuang/status/1777646582524936426

# ¿ Apr 9, 2024 16:09

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