Will solar energy save us?
>>8194879
It already did. The Earth would be a dead snowball without solar energy input.
>>8194879
No.
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
>>8194928
Just save up water in hydro plants during daytime and price fluctuations will naturally encourage consumers and industries to use power when the sun shines.
>>8194934
Will not work.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
>>8194879
By now solar is good enough to not only be free in the long run but also be profitable to end consumers. Profitable is more economical than any positive price they would have to pay.
But the real gain is in freedom of course. You would actually be producing your own. Not being a powerless end-consumer subject to the political stability or whims of huge corporations.
>>8194946
Kek. This post will piss the shill off to no fucking end.
>>8194951
> Oh no. Someone disagrees with me!
> No one honest could possibly disagree with me on this issue!
> Therefore, they must be paid by the evil corporations.
Right...
>>8194956
Hey I didn't write "evil". I wrote "huge". As in "with lots of resources" available to spend on for example affecting public opinion on the internet or other media.
Not many would bother to bash a single concept under the guise of authority (mr Scientist) if they weren't getting something for it.
On sunny summer days Germany which is the most heavy industry intense country in the EU gets peak 50% electricity from photovoltaics. That development would have been perceived as a hippy fantasy just some 25 years ago.
>>8194970
That's great. You got over 50% for an hour on one day. Germany only gets about 15% total electricity from solar and wind, and the country's electricity production is among the dirtiest and most polluting in Europe, and most CO2 producing. Want to know what's some of the cleanest and least CO2? France, with their approx 80% nuclear.
Also, if you read my sources, you will see that they don't say it's impossible for a country to attempt to live out the solar and wind fantasy. The problem is that solar and wind only work when they're being underwritten by an actual effective energy source, like fossil fuels, or nuclear. That's why you don't see a solar manufacturing plant or wind manufacturing plant that is run entirely off wind or solar. That's what the EROEI argument is about.
>>8194972
Yes coal (as well as oil) is dirty and polluting. That's what solar and wind is supposed to replace, you know.
The EROEI argument is about what's currently best at returning investments for real large actors. That means how much more can you get than you pay where the energy price is in the picture.
The fact that photovoltaics for end consumers already is more affordable long term than paying those market prices gives a slight hint of how skewed those bars really are. That is how much higher they are able to charge than what even solar is able to compete with. That's a measure of how broken the market is and nothing else.
>>8194979
>The EROEI argument is about what's currently best at returning investments for real large actors. That means how much more can you get than you pay where the energy price is in the picture.
No, it's not. Not at all. It's a thermodynamic argument that is completely independent of money, financing rates, and economics.
>>8194979
>The fact that photovoltaics for end consumers already is more affordable long term than paying those market prices
Also, largely if not entirely untrue. You're talking about power delivered averaged over the day. You're ignoring that these people still have grid connects for when the sun isn't shining. That is a very valueable service that cannot be replaced anywhere near at cost with solar and batteries.
Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. You literally don't even know what EROEI is, and I know that you have not read my first link that describes EROEI. Don't dismiss an argument when you don't even know what the argument is.
>>8194974
But there is on the other hand more wind during winter. Wind and solar together give 17% annually, compared to 0% 25 years ago and the technology development is still accelerating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_renewable_energy_production_by_source.svg <-- solar has steepest curve here and linear on a log scale means exponential growth - which if you look at the curves is true for all those renewables.
>>8194879
You just need a Dyson sphere OP, pretty damn simple if you ask me.
>>8194989
And the exponential growth is only made possible because the manufacture is being powered by fossil fuels and nuclear power. That curve is going to come to a crashing halt as soon as solar and wind penetrations start reaching levels where EROEI is relevant, i.e. levels where intermittancy of solar and wind start sucking.
I don't care if wind is more common in winter. Look at the historical data. There are still periods of a week at a time where there is no sun and no wind. The grid would collapse, and there would be no electricity for weeks at at time.
>>8194984
Rate of return is purely an economic thing. It means how much money can we expect to get back for each unit of money invested. And that is governed by thousands of practical, political and economical circumstances. Much more so than by technology or science.
Also who exactly is the "we" above?
>>8194988
Yes exactly. Now we're getting somewhere. They have grid connects. Maybe that's what skews those rate of return bars of yours (in the opposite direction)? If they're not allowed to connect they won't even count in the return equation, amirite?
>>8195006
>Rate of return is purely an economic thing. It means how much money can we expect to get back for each unit of money invested. And that is governed by thousands of practical, political and economical circumstances. Much more so than by technology or science.
That's not what EROEI is, dumbshit. This is the second time that I'm telling you this.
>>8195006
>Yes exactly. Now we're getting somewhere. They have grid connects. Maybe that's what skews those rate of return bars of yours (in the opposite direction)? If they're not allowed to connect they won't even count in the return equation, amirite?
What are you trying to say? That we should treat reliable power and unreliable power equally, and just take some naive daily average sum? No thanks. I'd rather use analysis that matches the real world which allows the lights to be on 24-7.
>>8194996
That's just another way to say that if fossil fuels and nuclear refuse to help out in production of solar hardware then solar won't take off. Is that really the signal you want to send? I really don't think that helps your cause.
No it wouldn't collapse. You can store bio fuel and water in reservoirs and in worst case coal, oil or nuclear for such situations.
>>8195012
>No it wouldn't collapse. You can store bio fuel
Lolno.
>and water in reservoirs
No. I just explained how you cannot do that. Here's the link again.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
>and in worst case coal, oil or nuclear for such situations.
In order to solve for global warming, we need to reach about 0% fossil fuel usage. Not 50%. Not 20%. Not 10%. 0%. Solar and wind alone cannot meet that 0%.
The cost of nuclear is almost entirely the capital cost of the plant. So, if you want to have backup for that unreliable solar and wind, you have to pay the full price of the nuclear, which means you might as well run the nuclear all the time, and not bother with the wind and solar. It'll be cheaper too, building only nuclear instead of building the same amount of nuclear plus a bunch of worthless solar and wind.
>>8195012
>That's just another way to say that if fossil fuels and nuclear refuse to help out in production of solar hardware then solar won't take off. Is that really the signal you want to send? I really don't think that helps your cause.
And what do you mean, "won't help my case?". How is stating the facts, which are in my favor, not helping my case? It's the simple truth. Physics and mathematics does not lie. The energy costs of solar and wind, and especially any energy storage, is going to be so high that it's like moving piles of sand back and forth. You are spending a lot of effort, and moving those piles of sand back and forth looks pretty, but you're not accomplishing anything useful in the process. The energy costs are so high compared to the output energy that it's a waste of time. That's EROEI.
>>8195009
I'm saying you are giving lots of hints at what could be a hindrance for solar in those numbers and bars you refer to and that those hindrances have little or nothing to do with the technology or science that could make solar a viable alternative.
I said nothing that naive averages should be used. You have lots of ways to measure and predict both power demand and supply. If you are a "scientist" you should know this.
>>8195019
>I'm saying you are giving lots of hints at what could be a hindrance for solar in those numbers and bars you refer to and that those hindrances have little or nothing to do with the technology or science that could make solar a viable alternative.
I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're trying to say. Please try again.
> I said nothing that naive averages should be used. You have lots of ways to measure and predict both power demand and supply. If you are a "scientist" you should know this.
Prediction of demand is irrelevant if you cannot ramp up production to meet the predicted demand, and that's precisely what solar and wind cannot do.
Did you mean weather prediction, and scaling up and down demand according to available supply?
Let me tell you how the real world works. In the real world, most electrical use is for industry, not residential. Residential is a mere 20%. For industry, those machines are running 24-7. Any disruptions in the power supply means that the capital usage rates go down, which means that costs go up. Forcing the machines to stop 20% of the time means that costs will go up by 25% in order to cover the capital costs.
And worse, many industrial processes with very high energy costs cannot be shut down when the sun isn't shining and when the wind isn't blowing. They need to be running 24-7. For example, aluminum refining. Any loss of power destroys the plant. Allowing the aluminum to harden at the wrong time destroys the equipment. And this is not an extreme outlier. Aluminum refining is a ridiculously large user of electricity.
Consider the internet. Internet server locations are also huge users of electricity. Absolutely huge. Many servers worldwide have their own dedicated power plants in the neighborhood of 250 MW. Do you want the internet to go down when the sun isn't shining.
TBC
>>8195016
That's an extremely long page. If it had any substance you should be able to explain convincingly in a few short lines or one simple picture. Otherwise will come off as attempts of confusion or just wasting peoples' time.
>>8195018
If you can't see what in your communication that gives a reader ideas of what might be giving solar those bad numbers maybe you should switch specialization. If the math and science you claim these numbers to be based on comes so easily to you maybe that is what you should be doing instead of shilling on the internet. But maybe there's a reason that is not the case.
>>8195019
>>8195027
Or how about glass manufacture? All flat and mostly flat glass is manufactured via the float glass method. My uncle (used to) work for Guardian, one of the largest and few remaining flat glass manufacturers in the United States. He was talking to me about his job over Thanksgiving one time. He said how at his job, they're going to shut down the plant in order for routine maintenance. He said that it will take 2 months to turn the furnace back on. That's because they need to turn it on slowly in order to prevent thermal stresses from destroying it. This is not unusual. Any sort of high temperature process is very much like this. Any sudden loss of power will destroy the equipment. And high temperature processes like this represent a very sizeable fraction of electricity demand.
There are very real limits to what demand-size management can do. Even if I grant 50%, which is obscenely too high, you're nowhere close to actually making a pure solar and wind solution work.
>>8195032
Imagine you built a 1 sq meter solar panel, and associated equipment. Suppose you measured how much simple energy inputs you needed in the manufacturing process (ignoring human labor for now). Suppose it comes out to 2.172e9 joules. Great.
Now, suppose you measured how much energy that solar panel and associated equipment would produce over its lifetime. Suppose it comes out to 3.36e10 joules.
That means it produces about 15.5 more energy as a ratio compared to its energy construction requirements.
Now, suppose you wanted to look at ensuring that the power doesn't go out when it's not sunny, such as by using energy storage. Great. How much batteries will that take, and how much energy will it take to make those batteries? Then suppose you ask: what is the ratio of the energy out compared to the energy costs?
For lead acid, it's around 2.56. For lithium ion, it's around 3.39.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_0aZwNFdJIZW8MG1P-D7NjaY3Hc6DkEe42lSFlcULHk/edit
Those numbers are so low that it's comparable to trying to power a society only using farm animals. In an agricultural society, almost everyone is doing manual labor, and that's a consequence of the low EROEI value. In order to power an industrial society, you need at least a 7 according to some estimates. For reference, coal and nuclear are at least 50.
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
Oh, and this simple calculation ignores other problems, such as the fact that there's not enough lead in the world or lithium in the world to make enough batteries. Not even enough for 1% of the amount of material we'd need worldwide. Dittos for other known scalable battery chemistries.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
>>8195027
That's why you would have fuel based plants to hop in or ramp up production in the rare cases neither of solar nor wind could fill up. Solar and wind are almost always complementary in the sense that it's at least windy or sunny at any given time and geographically it evens out too. Almost never cloudy and no wind over a large geography at the same time. Also you can in fact predict these things to give both industry and power providers time to react.
You want to tell me how the world works. That is not the same as how the world will work when circumstances slowly change. And it also doesn't mean that things Have to be done in that way just because they are being done like that at the moment. We are talking about the future here. And how supply and demand in electricity changes over time. Energy supply and demand is rather predictable, really. As you mention there are large economical incentives to Make it predictable so that will be done, no matter where the energy comes from.
>>8195032
Regarding pumped water storage, a basic takeaway from the paper is that for just the United States, you would need a pumped water storage system equal in land area to about 3 of the Great Lakes. Just for the United States. Good luck finding that much free land and free water, when scaled up to meet worldwide needs.
Pumped water storage is great for a period of a few hours, not periods of a few days that at minimum we need to cover wind and solar intermittancy. And pumped water storage is the only practical grid-scale energy storage solution. Everything else sucks even more.
elon musk says we need electric cars, which are more expensive, worse, and for faggots
Then he builds a methane rocket....
Why not make an electric rocket u fucking hypocrite musk shit
>>8195047
>Solar and wind are almost always complementary in the sense that it's at least windy or sunny at any given time and geographically it evens out too.
Simply false. Go look at the historical numbers.
>>8195047
>That's why you would have fuel based plants to hop in or ramp up production in the rare cases neither of solar nor wind could fill up.
I want to fix global warming. Do you? In that case, the only acceptable number for fossil fuel use is 0%. When worldwide energy consumption is predicted to go up by 10x in the coming years, getting the western world down to 10% of its historic levels is not good enough. We need to get the western nations down to 0%, and also get the developing world using energy with 0% fossil fuel usage. If these are not your targets, then you're not serious about solving for global warming.
>>8195047
>We are talking about the future here.
No. We're talking about now. WE NEED TO FIX GLOBAL WARMING NOW! That means massive rollout of technology that is ready to go now. None of this "under development" shit. We cannot afford to wait for 20 or 50 years, increasing CO2 as we go, increasing global temps, and increasing ocean acidification.
>>8195053
>WE NEED TO FIX GLOBAL WARMING NOW!
or what?
Would "fixing global warming" help whites? Why should we be paying trillions and ruining our economies?
This global warming shit is more white guilt insanity
>>8195034
Yes try that glass card if you will. I doubt it will work on this one. They sure been trying.
>>8195042
As mentioned 50% peak sunny days today, that is lower than 100% and even if it got above, it could easily be exported (well assuming it in practice was allowed onto the grid in the first place). You could predict and make optimizations and logistics for energy production planning. That would go a long way to avoid even having to store the energy (chemically or otherwise). There are also lots of new advancements in efficient long range energy transfer all the time. That will be more efficient than storage is (up to some range). And south-north balancing can be done. For example produce electricity in southern states to sell to northern. Or neighboring time zones as the gradient of solar radiation is rather high in morning and evening. There's so many aspects of work that can be made to make this work. There main obstacles are almost never technology or science but economy or politics.
>>8195069
Run the numbers. No one (except frauds or fools) actually claim that we can reach 0% fossil fuel usage right now. No one of any noteworthy reputation or expertise has a plan to reach 0% fossil fuel usage.
You're repeating memes, false memes.
Export it to another nearby country? There's this thing called "weather", which means if it's cloudy there, it's probably cloudy nearby. The weather of different European nations, or different United States states, are highly correlated.
Ultra high voltage long distance transmission lines? Want to take a guess as to the net EROEI for those, consider the energy costs for tnramission lines, transformers, and losses from transmission and AC/DC conversion? It's not pretty.
All of your aspects are just hot air.
Do you know what a Gish Gallop is? You should WIkipedia it. You're doing a Gish Gallop. It would take me many posts to refute each point, but you're able to throw out a bunch of bullshit in just a few sentences.
Again, it should be telling that even the most hardcore green advocates are not claiming that they can reach 0% CO2 usage with their pipedreams - well, frauds excluded. (Mark Jacobson is a fraud, and his quackery in peer reviewed papers is well documented.)
>>8195069
>There main obstacles are almost never technology or science but economy or politics.
This is dangerous fantasy. It's wishful thinking. This is spoken by someone who almost certainly is not an engineer, with little to no background in engineering and practical physics.
In problems like this, it's almost always engineering concerns that dominate. Only in rare cases is the problem political rather than engineering. One such rarity is nuclear, where all of the problems are political, not engineering. Further, most of those public concerns are also fictitious, propogated in large part by so-called green organizations like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc., organizations who get a rather large amount of funding from fossil fuel interests.
>>8195016
>you have to pay the full price of the nuclear, which means you might as well run the nuclear all the time, and not bother with the wind and solar.
Why not use all 3. Put them in locations most suited for their needs?
Why do faggots have to be 100% nuke/solar/fossil only?
>>8195051
You tell me the source and why I should trust it then.
>global warming
Yeah and Germany has gotten from 0% to 17% solar and wind alone in 25 years. And that is domestic in a country that has
1) lots of electricity-demanding industry
2) quite bad latitudes for solar radiation and
3) very high population density.
Really not any ideal circumstances for solar altogether and still such an amazing development.
>>8195053
Ok, well maybe I got my answer as for the financing then.
>>8195080
Because the costs of nuclear are almost entirely the capital cost of the plant. Fuel costs are small to negligable. In order to cover for the intermittancy, you need to build full capacity, and when you have full capacity, the only purpose for solar and wind is fuel cost savings, which as mentioned is almost zero.
In other words, a full solar and wind solution with backing nuclear will produce about as many nuclear plants as a no-solar no-wind 100% nuclear solution.
>>8195081
> You tell me the source and why I should trust it then.
For which claims? There are a lot of sources involved. I gave several already up-thread. And why should you trust them? Because they're reputable, and because you can check the math yourself, and you can check the claims against other reputable sources. And because they're not frauds like Mark Jacobson.
>>8195081
>Yeah and Germany has gotten from 0% to 17% solar and wind alone in 25 years. And that is domestic in a country that has
Non-sequitirs. If you paid attention to a damn thing I wrote, you would realize how this is not a counterargument to my position. Apparently basic logic and reasoning is not your strongsuit.
Further, while solar and wind rates have gone up in Germany, guess what hasn't gone down? Oh that's right, Germany CO2 emissions. Guess what has gone up? Simple airborne particulate pollution, which kills millions of people every year, including at least half a million in Europe every year.
>>8195085
Correction, IIRC, airborne particulate pollution kills closer to a quarter million people every year in Europe. It's still several million worldwide when you take into account worldwide coal usage, and including indoor heating and cooking fuels.
>>8195074
I'm not even the one claiming we Have to reach 0% Right Now. Actually it's you who claimed that.
Still there's so much money spent on developing long distance transfer of electricity. Are you saying that would not be done if there wasn't any money in it??
Once again you are strawmanning. I am not even the one claiming it would be either feasible nor necessary to reach those 0%. And especially not Right Now.
>>8195085
>Further, while solar and wind rates have gone up in Germany, guess what hasn't gone down? Oh that's right, Germany CO2 emissions. Guess what has gone up? Simple airborne particulate pollution, which kills millions of people every year, including at least half a million in Europe every year.
Not disagreeing, but do you have a handy source?
>>8195085
Take your autism medication.
>>8195088
>I'm not even the one claiming we Have to reach 0% Right Now. Actually it's you who claimed that.
Then you're not serious about solving for global warming, which means you're not sufficiently informed (or sufficiently moral) in order to take part in this conversation. I suggest you read up on the science of global warming and ocean acidification.
>>8195068
>Why should we be paying trillions and ruining our economies?
Actually, next-gen nuclear can be cheaper than coal, and we can have energy security, and we can save lives lost from coal airborne particulate pollution. Plus we don't need wars for foreign oil, and we can adopt a cheaper foreign policy. It's win win all around. That's what I suggest.
>>8195089
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CO2+emissions+germany+history
>>8195093
I don't think the people pushing global warming ideology will ever be pro-nuclear, certainly not openly.
>>8195096
I know I can google stuff. I was asking you if you would recommend a particular source for the both of your claims.
>>8195078
I actually do have several university degrees in STEM fields, thank you. But I don't feel any need to boast about it by constantly putting silly labels of authority on myself, mr "Scientist".
Any realistic engineer would know that very many of decisions made in this world are not made as result of rational technological considerations but for economic or political reasons.
>>8195099
I'm not sure if I fall under "pushing global warming ideology", but I believe man-made climate change is a great disaster and nuclear energy would be amongst the most important tools for combatting it.
I know many people like me.
>>8195104
>I actually do have several university degrees in STEM fields
>several
lol
why
>>8195085
Ok so it is nuke then. Sorry, I don't have time for this any longer because I actually don't get paid for this. I do it mostly for the mental gymnastics. Thank you for an interesting conversation any way. Have a nice day.
>>8195100
https://unfccc.int/files/ghg_emissions_data/application/pdf/deu_ghg_profile.pdf
Roughly the same levels in Germany since 2011 for greenhouse gas emissions.
http://energytransition.de/2014/06/german-coal-conundrum/
So, at worst, coal is remaining even. They're phasing out some nuclear for "renewables".
What the graph doesn't show is installed capacity, and installed coal capacity is going up, and that is lignite, some of the dirtiest coal imaginable. That stuff is nasty, and the airborne pollution it releases, conventional airborne particulates, is really nasty.
Looking for other sources.
>>8195113
Thanks.
>>8195111
I suspect you're a person who is a combination of dishonest, and fooled by other dishonest people in the so-called Green movement. Do your homework. Do the math.
How can you call yourself an environmentalist if you are not for solving global warming as soon as possible? It's one of the most severe (potential) threats to current civilization that we have, and it should be at the top of the list of priorities for fixing, not punting it 10 or 20 years down the road to our kids.
>>8195118
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/07/brown-coal-wins-a-reprieve-in-germanys-transition-to-a-green-future
> Yet Germany also has the most ambitious green energy strategy of all the industrialized nations — the Energiewende, or energy transformation. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany’s conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, vowed to phase out all nuclear power plants by 2022, while simultaneously sticking to the pre-existing goal of reducing national CO2 emissions 4%0 below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80 to 90% by 2050.
> While Germany prides itself as a green champion, something paradoxical has happened in the last several years: CO2 emissions steadily fell from 1,051m metric tons in 1990 to 813mtons in 2011, the year of the Fukushima disaster. But in 2012 and 2013, CO2 emissions rose again to 841m tons. This can largely be attributed to an increase in the use of lignite for electricity production.
>>8195118
And to be clear, I don't doubt that Germany can continue this trend of increasing "Renewables" and a possible decrease in CO2 production. Realistically, most experts say they can go as far as 30% total generation from unreliables before severe problems start setting in. It's questionable how much further they can go.
What is very certain in my mind based on the facts is that they're not going to get better than 90% reductions, and 90% reductions are just not good enough to solve for global warming and ocean acidification. We need 100%.
>>8195108
Mostly to see your reaction ;)
What is stopping me from buying useless dessert land, leasing solar panels to mine bitcoins?
>>8195105
I'd say man made climate change is just the catastrophe we need to fix this world up
>>8195126
And specifically, they're at 15% from unreliables now, and there's already lots of rumors and stories and grumblings about the German power situation. There are plenty of stories about the increasingly unreliable nature of the German electric grid, and the difficulties faced by neighbors in order to compensate to keep the grid stable. There's been talk of relaxing electric grid frequency controls, and that's because a multitude of unreliable generators, even at 15%, wreak havoc on grid management and on industrial users. Large frequency disturbances can destroy industrial equipment attached to the grid, and at best force a shutoff to prevent damage. (Of course, shutting off equipment can also cause damage - see above for examples, such as furnaces in general, including aluminum refining, flat glass manufacture, etc.)
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/german-grid-fluctuations-increasing/150/537/32737/
>>8195119
Lol. Once again a strawman.
I'm not even an environmentalist. I am a person who loves new technology who happens to be born just in time to be amazed by the advances in solar power.
>>8195137
To continue, in general, grid management is somewhat of a black art. Formalized models for such a large and complex electrical circuit such as the grid are hard to come by. Resonance and frequency variations are particularly hard to model reliably, and they can have devastating effects on equipment connected to the grid. We might not know for sure the consequences short of doing it, e.g. getting unreliable penetration up to 30%, or 50%, or 80%, and if it fails for that reason (ignoring the plethora of other reasons), we'll have lost lots of valuable time not fixing the problem of global warming and ocean acidification.
>>8195139
Fucking liar / troll.
Also, if you're not an environmentalist, and if you don't care about global warming and ocean acidification, then I don't give a fuck about your opinions on the topic of energy policy.
>>8194928
>>8194936
>problem with storing solar energy
Seems pretty easy to me.
>>8195143
If I was an environmentalist I would have been triggered by your "we need to fix global warming Right Now!!" wouldn't I? So you should already know that I'm likely not an environmentalist. Leading me to think that this is just some stunt to get an excuse to be angry.
>>8195150
>If I was an environmentalist I would have been triggered by your "we need to fix global warming Right Now!!" wouldn't I?
What?
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/guest-post-germany-faces-a-growing-risk-of-disastrous-power-blackouts
No. There are solutions, but all of them will facilitate the rise of AI and humans aren't prepared for that. It's fully unnecessary to think about global warming from now on - there are more important things at play.
Solar/Wind lack sophistication but they should work fine in a small residence. We need all resources avaiable now to focus on surpassing AI.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/06/renewables-and-grid-reliability/
How to use solar properly:
1: stop using so much fucking energy you stupid shit
2: use only passive solar, not active solar
3: segregate power generation
Reasoning:
1: even without changing your quality of life, the average person can reduce energy consumption by as much as 75% through their habits. Even more can be reduced using alternative electric devices or devices that don't use electric, but perform the same tasks.
2: Active solar is solar panels. Passive solar is thermal. Thermal energy generation use less dwindling resources than PV and can be repaired easily. It can be anything from solar water heaters to electric power generation.
3: Segregating power generation makes for a more stable civilization and reduces the need for massive amounts of resources (like power lines for instance). The lack of a interconnected power grid provides complete security against many types of disasters from natural to man made.
Materials used to make PV panels are a finite resource that will not last for very long. Sunlight destroys their ability to generate energy over time. Passive solar energy generation does not get destroyed by sunlight over time.
>>8195175
>1: even without changing your quality of life, the average person can reduce energy consumption by as much as 75% through their habits. Even more can be reduced using alternative electric devices or devices that don't use electric, but perform the same tasks.
Only 20% of the grid is residential. Who the hell cares about residential?
IIRC, only 1/3 or 2/3 or something of national energy usage is electric. The rest is transport and industrial heat (mostly, IIRC).
This "75%" is a drop in the bucket, and your plans do not scale or apply to the bulk of this other energy consumption.
So-called green advocates are like this, talking about what they know, which is their own lives, with absolutely zero perspective on the big picture, because of their lack of proper engineering background, and because of their aversion to math.
>>8195175
>3: Segregating power generation makes for a more stable civilization and reduces the need for massive amounts of resources (like power lines for instance). The lack of a interconnected power grid provides complete security against many types of disasters from natural to man made.
At at this level of microgrids, it also makes it impossible to have cheap, reliable electricity like we have today.
That's the secret that many "advanced" so-called Green advocates won't tell you up front. They really are advocating for de-industrialization.
>>8195175
>the average person can reduce energy consumption
Eurocuck detected
>>8195194
thats a fucking anti-aircraft gun
>>8195175
>Even more can be reduced using alternative electric devices or devices that don't use electric, but perform the same tasks.
Slide rule instead of calculator and typewriter instead of printer?
>>8195220
And leaving clothes out to dry in the sun instead of using a heating clothes driver machine.
Oh, and what about thinking happy thoughts instead of actually heating your home / apartment? Or maybe just turning down the thermostat by 5, 10, or 20 F.
>>8195190
Electricity should cost in excess of $10usd per 1 kilowatt hour right now.
"Industry" isn't needed at all. It is just a money maker for Oil companies. The only thing that fuels industry is money and debt, nothing else.
Segregate food production, energy production, & governments, erase all companies, dismantle all power plants, turn off the internet, stop superfluous space missions, cap all wells, cull everyone with an IQ less than 130.
Humanity is never getting off this rock, except on O'Neill Cylinders. It is time you realize that. Pretending oil and nuclear will save humanity is just retarded.
>>8195194
American actually, but I'm not even sure what you mean.
>>8195220
Slide rules and tablets. No need for paper.
>>8195223
Just use the normal clothes dryer, but power it using the sun or from thermal energy stored by the sun. Even some prisons use this for everything from cooking to clothing.
>>8195190
>>8195175 is right. Diminishing energy comsumption is the best alternative. Who the hell needs industries? All humans have achieved with them is burying themselves to the ground and evolving AI to potentially galaxy threatening levels rather than improving themselves.
I know that for someone who gives so much value for the artificial and the ilogical its hard to understand this simple truth. Your family, humans in general and nature are the more important thing for you and your planet.
Anyways, most of the damage has already been done. Pointless to think about energy. We need to improve ourselves.
>>8195200
I want a nuclear solution with energy so cheap I can live off mining bitcoins
>>8195204
If by anti-aircraft you mean ducks, drones and skeet then yes.
>the pellets will loose too much velocity and power to do any damage to an small fixed wing aircraft
Ok guys, nothing else seems to work on this motherfucker so we have to play the pedophile card.
>>8195319
> yanks with responsibilities for thought control.
anyone interested in this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
>>8195330
>>8195312
>>8195308
Enjoy your permaban degenerate filth
>>8194928
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>>8195223
begone, tripfag.
you're aware that at the very moment you post with a tripcode without having a proper reason for it, or even more a shitty tripcode like "Scientist" that does nothing but bolster your own ego, everybody stops listening instantly?
i can't even read what you wrote and take it seriously.
stop this shit right the fuck now.
>>8195344
> mfw calling yourself scientist
How pretentious and tryhard can a self-entitled retard be ? He looks like a typical highschooler.
>>8195042
you are assuming solar technology won't improve. I'm working on PhD in MechE for a solar energy converter, and I can tell you the technology is going to improve rapidly in the next 5 years, especially once certain information about STPV is released to the public.
>>8195344
Do not respond to the tripfagging shitposter. He's a known retard who's been derailing threads on /sci/ for years.
>>8195344
>>8195346
He also takes the contrarian stance in every thread he posts in regardless of what is said. I even agreed with him on something in another thread a few months ago and he found ways to disagree. He's the bugguy/plont of /sci/.
Just filter triptrolls. See image for how to do it.
>>8195352
the filter only hides content, folding the post inward. i.e. i will still see the posts.
his sources are pure bullshittery, btw.
>>8195390
Really?
[spoiler]I don't live in US so I don't know[/spoiler]
Please do not point out tripfags.
no, but nuclear will.
>>8195143
>I can save the Earf goys!
>Implying developing countries care about environmental impact
>Implying population booms in Africa and South Asia aren't going to be supported by fossil fuel consumption
>>8195924
We tried to get into nuclear suppliers group but Chinese were feeling insecure.
>>8195348
No. I'm assuming that energy storage won't significantly improve. EROEI of solar and wind dies just on energy storage EROEI problems, lack of sufficient materials problems, and/or lack of sufficient land problems (for pumped water storage). Wind and solar themselves are irrelevant. The intermittancy, and the lack of solutions for the intermittancy, are the much bigger problem. Solar and wind could be entirely free, and they still wouldn't work.
>>8195352
I don't recall posting in any thread like that .. ever.
>>8196185
Hydrogen could be the perfect solution for our energy storage.
>>8196200
Emphasis "could" be. Currently it's not.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/got-storage-how-hard-can-it-be/
> Electrolysis for the production of hydrogen tends to range between 50–70% efficient. Then the fuel cell converts the stored energy back into electricity at 40–60% efficiency for a round-trip efficiency of 20–40%. If you happen to want some of the waste heat, then you might boost the efficiency estimate (true for any of these storage methods, actually). But in a straight-up apples-to-apples comparison, the hydrogen method is a very lossy storage option. If it were dirt cheap and low-tech, I might be more excited about its potential, despite the poor efficiency. But since the opposite is true, I’m not revved up over hydrogen storage.
And we need to solve global warming now.
No.
>>8196209
>And we need to solve global warming now.
I agree we do, but arguing about it with random basement weaboos isn't going to change anything. So, what exactly is your angle here?
>>8195326
Yes. Currently, however, I'm more interesting these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorcon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)
>>8196213
>I agree we do, but arguing about it with random basement weaboos isn't going to change anything. So, what exactly is your angle here?
One person at a time. Many people who read this can vote, and can talk to their friends, so when they say something stupid like "we can do it with wind and solar", we can be armed with facts to say "no we can't".
>>8196215
Of course we all know fusion could solve all our problems. Too bad it's been 10 years away for the past 50 years.
>>8196218
I didn't link to a fusion reactor, and the earlier person wasn't talking about fusion either. I linked to simple fission reactor designs. The ThorCon design and the GE PRISM use no new experimental technology, and are quite well demonstrated by lots of previous work at US national labs.
>>8196216
>so when they say something stupid like "we can do it with wind and solar"
Nobody is saying that. If anything most people are pessimistic about it, and until recently there has been very little budget to do any significant development, since there was no will. Debasing wind and solar while it's just starting to gains some traction will get you nothing. Spreading the money to thousands of experimental projects instead of focusing it on a select few will also get you nothing.
>>8196223
> Nobody is saying that.
Lots of people are saying that. Just do a google. Germany as a nation is also saying that, plus large portions of the EU.
> If anything most people are pessimistic about it, and until recently there has been very little budget to do any significant development, since there was no will.
Germany? EU?
> Debasing wind and solar while it's just starting to gains some traction will get you nothing.
As I explained at length above, they're living in a fantasy. Energetically-cheap fossil fuels (and nuclear) are allowing them to live out this 15% solar and wind fantasy in Germany, but there is no way that solar and wind alone could work. In effect, they're subsidizing their solar and wind experiment on fossil fuels.
> Spreading the money to thousands of experimental projects instead of focusing it on a select few will also get you nothing.
I only named 2 "experiments", not two thousand. Wind and solar have failed, because energy storage has failed. The expert discourse to the public on this from the so-called environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc., are full of lies, misinformation, or outright delusion - it's hard to tell which.
>>8196197
That cinches it, you're an idiot.
>>8196215
>Yes. Currently, however, I'm more interesting these:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorcon
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)
Nuclear power is dead, man.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578690-thanks-cheap-natural-gas-americas-nuclear-renaissance-hold-fracked
>>8196227
>Wind and solar have failed, because energy storage has failed. The expert discourse to the public on this from the so-called environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc., are full of lies, misinformation, or outright delusion - it's hard to tell which.
Time makes fools of us all.
>>8195200
>>8195200
>100% nuclear
wew
lad
i love how fucking hostile you are and how much fun you're having shitting on other peoples ideas when you think we can sustain nuclear
do me a favor. go google "known uranium reserves on earth".
take that number, multiply by the roughly 2% or whatever it is that's naturally occuring U-235
take the energy per kg of U-235 * amount of U-235 left on the planet
that gives you the amount of energy that can be made
completely forget the nuclear efficiency and spent fuel costs and ONLY multiply it by the ~30% efficiency you get with a carnot heat cycle - fuck it, round up to 50%
now
divide the amount of energy you can get from U-235 by the world energy consumption (~17 TW)
I'll save you the trouble. its about 5-7 years.
there's enough U-235 on the planet that we know about for 5-7 years. And thats suggesting that we can insntantaneously mine all of it, and that we magically have all of the infrastructure already built and ready to roll to handle consuming all that fuel.
how in the fuck can you preach so much about this and ignore this fact, ESPECIALLY when you say shit like
>>8195053
>WE NEED TO FIX GLOBAL WARMING NOW! That means massive rollout of technology that is ready to go now. None of this "under development" shit. We cannot afford to wait for 20 or 50 years
like, dude - what?
>>8194879
No nuclear is the future, the most powerful objects in the universe are powered by nucler phenomenon, solar is nothing but a meme.
>>8194928
>https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
Oh my god, you absolute fucking garbage. How can you keep coming into threads to spam this when its been debunked so many times?
>>8198469
>go google "known uranium reserves on earth".
I'm guessing from your claims that you mean "economically viable uranium reserves", as in thoroughly surveyed ore bodies where uranium can be extracted at a profit using current techniques, to sell at current prices.
Mineral "reserves" are usually not large in relation to scenarios of greatly increased consumption, since you have to spend money to make "resources" (minerals which are believed to be available) into "reserves" (measured quantities of minerals in definite locations).
>take that number, multiply by the roughly 2% or whatever it is that's naturally occuring U-235
U235 isn't the only nuclear fuel. U238 and thorium are also usable, and they are so abundant that if the continental land masses, from twenty feet below the surface to the bottom of the crust, were made entirely of the best coal, this coal would still only be about one tenth the store of energy that the uranium and thorium is.
Analysis showed that even using 1950s technology, the cost of uranium and thorium fuel extracted from common granite (using in-situ weak acid leaching) wouldn't be a problem for breeder reactors.
Modern seawater uranium extraction technology (using ion-exchange resin left to soak in the ocean for a year or so until it's full of uranium) is a few times more expensive than conventional mining, but still wouldn't raise the inconsequential cost of uranium ore in the economics of conventional (non-breeding) nuclear power to a troublesome level.
>>8198469
>U-235 is the only way to do nuclear
Fuck off.
Give it up people everyone here inheretly knows that the only way solar will save us is if we build a dyson sphere around the sun and start collecting megatetragigawatts of energy. Then its too our good buddy nicola tesla for wireless transmission, either that or eventually our ability to harness more than 0.5 kw/h per panel will come about
>>8195200
>it does nothing to obviate the need for a near 100% nuclear solution
At the proposed rate of increase we have enough Uranium reserves for 20 years. What then?
Uranium will be irrelevant once we establish fusion reactors and we can get plenty of deutrium from the ocean.
>>8195049
Musk is all about marketing.He saw an opportunity amongst the californian hipsters for his car that pollutes more than some fossil fuel cars,and made a cool desing,and marketed as clean.
>>8195080
because buildinga nuclear plant occupies very little space and is mostly clean.If you just have nuclear plants to fulfill the base load,when there is no sun and wind,it is just cheaper and more efficient both economically and environmentaly,to just use the 2 km^2 nuclear plant,instead of 400 km^2 of solar panels.Even ecologically it makes more sense just to go full nuclear,as lots of forests would have to be cut to place as many plaques as some green nuts want to do.
>>8195081
>Yeah and Germany has gotten from 0% to 17% solar and wind alone in 25 years. And that is domestic in a country that has
And Germany pollutes more than almost every other country in Europe thanks to the nuclear moratorium.And % of energy is pointless,if at some specific points,its % is below 1% of the overall production.Having huge surpluxes in summer means jack shit,to measure the viability of a source of energy.What is important,is to be able to fulfill the base load always,something that neither solar or wind can accomplish
Decrease overall energy usage.
>>8195237
>"Industry" isn't needed at all
>>8194879
No. The problem isn't power production, its distribution and storage.
There is no magical bullet solution for energy, local solutions will have to be adopted that are workable for that location.
>>8199115
> implying those are mutually exclusive
>>8199126
That's the whole point, kid.
>>8199143
> calls someone else kid
> thinks a business can't both serve a bed and make profit
>>8199150
>still misses the point
Industry isn't needed at all in any form except to make money. That is the only reason any industry exists.
>tripfag
>trip is "scientist"
I don't even disagree with what he says, but what a fucking cunt
Kill yourself immediately.
>Thread about energy sources
>Barely anyone talking about nuclear fussion
>"Hur, hur, nuclear energy won't work because we don't have enough uranium"
Fucking ignorants
>>8199153
Your point being that you're an idiot?
I got that. Now I do suppose you could be saying we should return to Hunter gather days and helplessly watch as over half of the world starves to death, which yes, some people would survive so technically there is no need for modern farming and all of the supporting industries, but I don't think that's a point worth discussing.
>>8199115
>one "industry" that is actually needed
Clothing. And profit doesnt make the industry unecesary.
>>8199153
>Industry isn't needed at all
And you say this from a computer,in a chair,using wi fi,wearing clothes under a ceiling. Do you seriously believe that no industry was involved in the development of any of this?
>>8198787
>we have enough Uranium reserves for 20 years. What then?
There is thorium,that is way more abundant than Uranium,and countries like China have operational reactors that use thorium.
all sources of power have their downsides,
fossil fuels: finite and polluting
nuclear: expensive
hydro: fish genocide
wind: bird genocide
solar: cannot work for about 6-12 hours a day, and high replacement costs (the latter are presently ignored, as most large solar projects haven't hit that point yet)
biofuel: drives up food costs
so the future will likely be a combination of all the above. A balanced grid is a fault-tolerant and happy grid.
>>8199215
>nuclear: expensive
This is plain false. It is only expensive at the beginning,once the debts are starting to being payed is one of the cheapest sources of energy.
>>8199215
You forgot solar sucks the further you get from the poles.
I'm curious about geothermal, what's the big deal with it? Can't get a large enough temperature gradient cheaply in most places? Fucks with ground water too much?
>>8199222
Fuck, father from the equator/closer to the poles is what I meant to say
>>8198794
>once we establish fusion reactors
>>8199202
>There is thorium
The common problem here is that these alternatives require a lot of research and the funding it pathetic. Don't expect any results for decades. And for that reason the risk is just too big.
>>8199219
>It is only expensive at the beginning
OK, sop decomissioning is for free? I never knew that. To the contrary I heard it was horrifically expensive.
>>8199277
>The common problem here is that these alternatives require a lot of research and the funding it pathetic.
China and India are doing a great work on it. China alredy has prototypes.
> it was horrifically expensive.
In the long run is extremely cheap. France proves this having one of the cheapest energies in Europe.
>>8198820
>if at some specific points,its % is below 1% of the overall production.
Does that happen? Germany is a big country and the chance of zero wind across the entire country is rather low.
Moreover you appear to be unaware of trans national power grids.
Also you appear never to have heard of responsive load.
You know, people have actually thought about all these things. They have also done things about it.
>>8199175
>nuclear fussion
OK, so this is the spanking new tech where you combine fusion and fission, right?
After all we are not ignorant, right? Right?
>>8199222
>You forgot solar sucks the further you get from the poles.
I never knew that. Having lived north of the northern polar circle I am rather surprised by this. Also, cold weather improves solar electric conversion efficiency.
>>8199290
>zero wind across the entire country
If some areas dont recieve wind they would be fuck.
> They have also done things about it
Yes,and most people agree that nuclear has to compliment renewables to fulfill the base load. For the moment renewables are expensive and couldnt fulfill all the energy demand of any country.
>>8199290
The farther you get from the equator the less sun you get
http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/calculation-of-solar-insolation
>>8199297
>some areas dont recieve wind
Then there is still the national grids and the lines between the nations. That part of the infrastructure exists and has existed for decades.
>>8199309
>insolation
That is about *insolation* and the page you link to assumes the panel is flat on the ground. You can test this by selecting summer and position north of the polar circle and you will see, somehow, less then maximum.
What you need is information on sunlight on either a heliostat or a panel at an angel equal to latitude. Insolation on its own is useless.
quintuplets
>>8199335
Homie, even with tracking it's the same. Hell, think about it this way, I'm in North Dakota now, and during the summer the days get between four and five hours longer than in Alabama, it doesn't get anywhere as hot here. Why? Intensity. The closer you are to the equator, the more direct the sun light is, the more intense it is. (And insolation is a measure of intensity irrespective of if a pc panel is collecting it, but whatever). It doesn't have to go through nearly as much atmosphere to get to the ground. The more polar you move, the more atmosphere light has to travel through which robs intensity.
Solar sucks north of around Kentucky.
>>8199375
At the same time near equator you are troubled with dust and humidity in the atmosphere. France experiences sand falling out of the sky from storms in Sahara. In the north where I live the lower temperature means less humidity and we have much less dust too. Little industry here means a lot less pollution too.
>>8199383
And even with those problems, depending on just how far north you are, you'll need up to eight times the pv panels to produce a quarter of what can be done in the Sahara.
>>8199215
>hydro: fish genocide
>wind: bird genocide
Not an argument
>>8199389
Sahara is in one of the worst regions on this planet in terms of political turmoil. Sure you could build a huge solar electric farm, given enough bribes.
Then you have all the terrorists which already kill oil workers in that region. You also have to transport the electricity across more troubled regions. Your lines will be subject to the generic Arab terrorist and the whims of politicians who feel entitled to a bit more palm grease.
In short: totally insane.
Also you have sand storms that will grind down the panels and cover them in sand. Dunes will move and can engulf your solar farm.
>>8199486
That's not the point. In any event we're back at the whole "it's not production that's the problem, it's distribution". We can literally, right this very second, using current pv panels, cover a few square miles in Arizona and produce enough electricity to run EVERYTHING in the US. Would be pretty damn cheap too, but, and this is a huge but, we can't efficiently move that power more than 200ish miles and we damn sure can't store that much.
Ohm's law is a bitch.
>>8199505
>cover a few square miles in Arizona and produce enough electricity to run EVERYTHING in the US.
A square mile on a perfectly clear day with the sun dead overhead will only have 3.64 gigawatts of solar power fall on it.
In Arizona's least sunny month, a square mile will have 7.8 gigawatt-hours of solar energy fall on it per day. In its most sunny month, it's 22 gigawatt-hours.
With about 15% efficiency (which is quite good since it includes things like storage losses) you get 1.21 jiggawatts per square mile in the worst month.
The USA consumes around ten thousand times this amount just in grid electricity.
Conclusion: "a few square miles in Arizona" (and a lot of batteries that we haven't quite worked out how to make economically yet, although the tech seems like it's ready to keep up with the market) would replace one or two conventional power plants, not the USA's entire power consumption.
To completely replace all other energy sources, the scale of solar energy would be comparable to the scale of farming, in terms of land use, although perhaps an order of magnitude less. Frankly, I think it's a job we should be planning to hand to the farmers, who are experienced in working large land areas, rather than think of it as something that will be taken care of by conventional utilities.
>>8199505
You can move power plenty of distance
you just lose a certain % every 1000 miles
And of course, the #1 issue with intermittent power like Solar is that you need baseload power to handle 100% of the load otherwise you will experience constant blackouts.
Solar on earth is still a scam
>>8199505
Do you work om high power transmission systems? In Sweden they transport power at about 1 MV in their national power back bone. And it is rather more than 300 km.
And why keep pushing this meme about storage? That is completely wrong. Again.
>>8199704
>you need baseload power to handle 100% of the load
>baseload power
>batteries or thermal storage
We have the example of the Tesla Powerwall. A $3,000 unit is enough for the average household ($3,500 installed) to handle daily variation, and that's with compact, costly lithium-ion batteries. Once the market is established, cheaper (though bulkier) battery types should be available.
Anyway, in an all-solar economy, most of the power would have to be spent synthesizing fuels and other chemicals.
Clean-fuel peak/backup turbines are cheap to build, and will get cheaper with automated production and the falling cost of energy.
Yes, I said "falling cost of energy". Solar's watts per dollar figure has been improving exponentially, like Moore's Law, and consequently the raw per-joule cost has recently become better than coal-fired electric in the best sites. This trend isn't slowing down, and there's no reason for it to, until the cost of solar panels is comparable to non-solar outdoor surface materials like shingles and paint.
Solar panels (and solar power systems including storage) can be made from arbitrarily cheap and abundant materials, and can provide their own energy, so there's no hard floor on their cost. We have in nature the example of plants, which can reproduce themselves using solar power and in-situ materials at no cost in labor.
>>8199729
You know a megavolt isn't that much once you realize they've put as much of the current as they can into voltage to minimize joule heating...
And you're aware that people use electricity during the night, right? That's why you need storage when talking about solar.
>>8199794
Power sources that fluctuate constantly like Solar cause serious problems in the grid
This shit will never be cheaper than a nuclear power plant
>>8199794
What pv company do you work for?
>>8199826
A proper battery setup at every use site, providing intermittency tolerance, will greatly simplify the grid.
>This shit will never be cheaper than a nuclear power plant
Nuclear power has hard cost floors due to the obvious safety and non-proliferation requirements. It has to be a controlled technology, and that will keep it an expensive technology, and one which is simply not available to many nations.
>>8199852
> simplify
You have no clue do you? You just have these pie in the sky dreams about how all of this stuff works.
>>8199828
>zomg, someone's posting actual accurate facts!
>he must be a paid shill!
Go be garbage somewhere else.
The worst kind of pseudointellectual trash is the guy who tries to present ignorant cynicism and pessimism as some kind of superior sophistication.
He says, "I know all about this, so I know it won't work!", but you start talking to him about it, and he doesn't know the most basic facts, he just memorized talking points he heard somewhere, from somebody who's also largely ignorant of the subject.
>>8199862
This can be for you, too: >>8199868
If you don't see how users with storage capacity will simplify the grid, from something that constantly meets demand from millisecond to millisecond and it's a big problem if there's an outage for even a few minutes, to something that just distributes energy as it's available, you have no business speaking up in these discussions, yet here you are posing as some superior sophisticate.
>>8194879
Yes.
http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/cheapsolarpower
>>8199215
>wind: bird genocide
Genocide this
*grabs concentraded solar power plant*
>>8199868
Why? You're being garbage here spouting off bullshit, ignorance, and outright lies.
>>8199884
Fuck off you piece of shit. You don't know how this works at all. You literally don't have the first clue. Having to have batteries in the grid complicates it by orders of magnitude, and that's not your bullshit hyperbole. Putting batteries on a source like solar is a pain in the dick that requires a decent hunk of additional equipment to work without blowing up, or do you honestly think you can take like a 600V line and just stick it to a battery?
>>8200062
There wasn't a "no u" in that.
Nigger, I just spent three months doing a feasibility study for solar's use in my company.
I'm well aware of what magnitudes are and as is all that is needed for power distribution are transformers. You can get fancy with remote monitoring and automated switching but those aren't necessities to the point where many grids in the US still just go transform to high voltage from generation point, across high voltage transmission lines to substation (just a big honking transformer) to step down to low voltage distribution lines to end user.
Simple, reliable tech. Batteries only come into play when you want backup power for automated systems and don't experience the kind of discharge cycles one used for powering something like homes would.
Including a battery in line in the grid, you faggot would require backup batteries, enough batteries in place to handle peak demand, the host of electronics to maintain the life of the cells (voltage regulators, tenders, an asston more fuses, etc) plus some kind of load where it could dump excess electricity once the batteries are charged which is not remotely trivial since we're talking about utility loads and not the panel on Bob's rv...oh and all of this has to be networked because if you don't you could easily end up in a situation where one battery station starts dumping too much load keeping others from charging, all while having to make sure you're making enough electricity to meet demand during the day AND charge the batteries enough to last through the night.
Yeah, transformer, btw, is some wires wrapped around a core.
For every part in a regular power grid, there's at least 100 in a solar grid.
>>8195149
>mfw we could just have used lumber from the rainforests/jungles the whole time
>>8200115
We are. Like literally. There's a whole line of GMO trees being farmed specifically for fuel and lumber. It grow SUPER fucking fast too.
pic fully related
>>8194879
Nah
If solar energy was real, all sunny countries would run on solar
>>8200171
that's dank
>>8200177
There's not a single 1st world country on the planet that doesn't use solar.
>>8200115
How would that help? Rainforests grow as slowly as fuck.
>>8200183
replace them with GMO eucalyptus tree farms
ok faggots, what's the worse shit that could happen in 10 years?
Get a load of this fucking piece of shit shill tripfagging under "Scientist". He's a textbook case of social engineering.
I hope he's a bot, otherwise, imagine the sad and sorry life of such a person, selling his ass and his soul to nefarious, money-grabbing, and sometimes murderous interests.
This individual, if there's one behind the automatic post generator, is malevolent enough to not care about trying to suppress a clean and cheap energy source, because his bosses tell him so. He's probably shilling for big pharma and the MIC as well
I hope one day to meet one of his kind, who I will proceed to fuck up within an inch of his life
Pic very much related
>>8200195
>Replace the rainforest with GMO eucalyptus tree farms
That sounds like a majestic fountain of unintended consequences.
>>8200195
Eh, 10 years isn't very long. We could see slightly more severe weather, and increased desertification in the US, northern Africa and Australia. The only major change on that timescale would be a significant reduction in northern sea ice.
The really bad shit will take longer.
>>8200211
do we have a chance to recuperate the enviroment.
Also, what effect will space mining have on all of this when it became cheaper to mine asteroids than mine earth mines with low return yields?
>>8199215
>fossil fuels: finite and polluting
no. "fossil" fuels are not finite. we can make the stuff from fucking seawater with the only other input being electricity. our carbon capture technology isn't up to snuff only because of the shear volume we dump out. if we reduce emissions with more efficient machines and supplement with renewables and nuclear, a closed carbon loop is entirely possible, even practical. we will be using hydrocarbons forever, and thats not a bad thing.
>>8199219
the problem with nuclear is you need a stack of PhD's, engineers, and highly trained technicians to run the place. while this isn't so much a problem in modernized countries, the big energy whores are the developing world. those countries wouldn't be able to operate a nuclear plant even if you gave one to them.
>>8200221
is possible to device fossil fuels that don't pollute?
Reminder that Randell Mills at Brilliant Light Power is maybe finally going to commercialize his endless R&D
Reminder that Andrea Rossi has got a COP 50+ "boiler"
Mills' effect is very real, as is "cold fusion"/LENR
Remember that they assassinated Eugene Mallove because of it
Mills' Suncell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjJYg4Abv50
>>8199826
>Power sources that fluctuate constantly like Solar cause serious problems in the grid
that problem has already been solved. every state with a "duck curve" problem has been installing quick fire gas turbines to pick up the load at peak demand. the fluctuation problem only applied to old school coal/oil plants that took 4 hours to get up to steam.
>>8200224
natural gas is pretty damn clean burning. the only thing that produces no pollution at all is hydrogen. NOx and particulates are the big polluters that make people sick, carbon is only a big deal when you dump fuckloads of it into the atmosphere and don't take it back out again sometime down the cycle.
>>8200242
can we solve all this mess?
>>8200213
>do we have a chance to recuperate the enviroment.
It's very hard to know, and it's not really a boolean thing anyway. We've already fucked up a lot of shit, and it's probably too late to undo the damage we've done. There's also a time-delay thing, so we're actually already committed to things getting worse for the next decade or two. Everything after that depends on our future actions.
>Also, what effect will space mining have on all of this when it became cheaper to mine asteroids than mine earth mines with low return yields?
This is just my opinion, but I'd put asteroid mining in the same bucket as economical fusion. It'd be great if we could do it, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
>>8200221
Making hydrocarbons is hard work, and carbon capture is incredibly hard work. We may be using hydrocarbons as a chemical feedstock and to power a few select applications (probably military) forever, but petrol in cars and coal in powerplants are definitely going to need to go.
>the problem with nuclear is you need a stack of PhD's, engineers, and highly trained technicians to run the place
And you need effective regulation to keep the plants maintained and safe.
>>8200224
>is possible to device fossil fuels that don't pollute?
Theoretically yes, but it's difficult and consumes a significant fraction of the power it generates.
>>8200254
>can we solve all this mess?
I guess that depends on exactly what you mean by "solve", but yes.
We've basically left it to the last possible minute though; this would have vastly easier if we had started twenty years ago.
>>8200254
yeah, absolutely. the energy situation on this planet isn't a science problem, and its barely an engineering problem. we've had most of it worked out since the 70's.
the real problem is political. no point in the US/EU/other developed nations going HAM when China, India, and Africa are just going to be mass polluting shitheads. we have to get everyone on the planet on the same page with this one or else it won't work. thats the challenge.
>>8200272
can we recover the damage on the enviroment?
>>8200272
I forgot to add, can western nations help the poor ones to develop using safe energy sources?
why not use energy generators that use gravity?
>inb4 that's hydro power
>inb4 dams
>>8200259
>Making hydrocarbons is hard work
making complex hydrocarbons is hard work. alcohol and methane is extremely easy to make and also very light in the pollution department.
>carbon capture is incredibly hard work
only because of how much we would have to reclaim to make a difference right now, and its not so much difficult as it is inefficient. the equipment itself is fairly cheap and maintenance free, you just have to dump more energy into it than is practical. thats changing very rapidly however.
>>8194879
>solar power thread
>search "nuclear"
>62 matches
Gosh imagine that. Another solar thread raided by nucleartards. What are they so afraid of? Can't even 1 of these threads stay on topic at all?
>>8200275
i don't know. how do you "skip" an industrial revolution without stratifying an entire society? thats literally whats happening in India. sure you could just go in and install some machines and train people how to use them, but i personally think that there is a mind set that gets lost when a people don't progress themselves. there is something about that trial by fire of modernization that strengthens resolve.
>>8200273
i honestly don't know if things will ever go back to the way they were.
>>8199215
>nuclear: expensive
Fucking south africa can afford to make use nuclear energy
>>8200292
>Fracking is causing earthquakes, in zones not known for earthquakes, which trigger other faults around the world
[citation needed]
>>8200808
There's some screwiness happening in Oklahoma that they're linking to fracking, but I'm not too sure about the strength of those claims. I haven't heard much of anything about ND, Colorado, or Pennsylvania. There are other problems with fracking that I think warrant far more attention though.
>pic I just took related
>>8199375
Oh shit fellow North Dakota anon, where are you at?
>>8199215
>biofuel: drives up food costs
lol americans
>>8199153
You're fucking retarded. Are you 17 or something? Industry has made almost everything you own you idiot.
>>8199153
>Industry isn't needed at all
Here's your (You).
>>8201689
Williston getting screwed by the slowdown, you?
>>8201870
Grand Forks
>>8201889
Ah, the fun side of the state.
I'm probably going to head over to Devils Lake next weekend. If I were smart, I would just keep driving. Willy's bad these days friend.
>>8194879
>Will solar energy save us?
No only Elon Musk can save us now.
>>8198469
Those numbers rely on bullshit assumption. It assumes only high grade ore. There's plenty of known lesser grade ore, and when the cost of raw ore is only a very small fraction of the total electricity cost, it's not a problem.
Further, if we ever bother to build a breeder, such as an IFR or a breeder MSR, then we get effective access to even lesser ores, such as everyday rock. Everyday granite contains about 3 ppm give or take of uranium and thorium, or thereabouts. (I forget the exact numbers.) When burned in a fuel efficient breeder reactor, that volume of rock has an amount of useful energy compared to the same volume of coal times 20. When you run the numbers on how much energy it takes to extract that uranium and/ore thorium, we're very energy positive.
Also uranium from seawater.
>>8199215
Nuclear is only expensive in an insane regulatory environment. Especially with newer designs that don't require high pressure vessels, and standardized factory-line production, we should be able to get cost competitive with coal, and maybe even a little cheaper.
>>8199290
>Does that happen? Germany is a big country and the chance of zero wind across the entire country is rather low.
Look at the historical data. Every couple of years during winter, there is a week where there is no solar (aka about 1% of nameplate for the whole day), and no wind, across large swathes of Europe.
You see, there is this thing called "weather", which means the wind in one location is not independent of the wind in another location.
>>8199505
"few square miles".
We'll say 5.
15% average conversion solar to electricity efficiency.
95% AC DC inverter efficiency.
Say 5% losses for transmission, and I'm being generous IIRC.
I'll just eyeball it as 200 watt / sq meter daily average, which is also probably way too generous if we're getting serious about this (because winter).
I'll ignore storage problems for now too, including round-trip conversion losses in storage.
(5 sq miles) (200 watt / (sq meter)) (15%) (95%) (95%)
= 0.35 GW
Average US demand:
About 3 TW.
What?
Actually, in order to supply US demand using these assumptions, electricity only, this is how much land we would need:
(3 TW) (1 sq meter / (200 watt)) (1 / 15%) (1 / 95%) (1 / 95%)
= about 42,781 sq miles!
Arizona is about 113,998 square miles, so we'd need to cover about half of Arizona.
>>8199408
it is when you realize that they have to be used in real life
>>8199794
>Once the market is established, cheaper (though bulkier) battery types should be available.
Not really, no.
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
> This trend isn't slowing down, and there's no reason for it to, until the cost of solar panels is comparable to non-solar outdoor surface materials like shingles and paint.
It is slowing down. Before, it was using the cheap scraps from computer processor manufacture. Now it has to make its own. Also, there's more to an installation than just the solar cell, such as the framing, inverters, transmission lines, etc., and those are not dropping in price.
>>8200171
We're not losing rain forest because they're using wood for power, or for furniture, or for paper, etc. In fact, if you want more trees, you should waste more paper in the United States, because IIRC most paper in the United States comes from tree farms. Ergo, more demand means more tree farms.
We're losing rain forest because people are clear cutting for farm land.
>>8200233
Oh, great, so what you're actually saying is that solar and wind are an excuse by the utilities in order to build more gas, thereby ensuring we don't solve for global warming and ocean acidification.
>>8200242
IIRC, nat gas is still half the CO2 of coal. That's not clean in terms of global warming and ocean acidification, but the reduction in airborn particulate pollution is noteworthy.
NUCLEAAAAAAAAAR!
Liquid fluoride thorium reactors!
>>8203503
Do not feed the triptroll.
>>8202928
>I'll just eyeball it as 200 watt / sq meter daily average, which is also probably way too generous if we're getting serious about this (because winter).
Except it's more on the order of 4-5 kW/m^2 in the winter, and 6-7 kW/m^2 during the summer.
http://www.solar-electric.com/solar-insolation-maps.html
>>8204300
Don't bother.
Dude is delusional and retarded.
There are arguments against renewables without having to resort to FUD.
>>8204300
Protip: kWh / day is not the same thing as watt.
7kWh / day is about 291 watt. Please learn your basic units before correcting me.
>>8204560
And you're just an idiot troll.
>>8204575
And you're nothing but a piece of shit
Hell, even shit has a higher function than yourself: it can become fertilizer
You on the other hand are a devil working to hamper humanity's progress. Litterally, anti-human.
May Kek smite you :^)
>>8204714
Or, maybe you're just wrong, and you have no rational, scientific argument, and so you resort to namecalling instead.
>>8204722
Or, maybe you're just a dishonest, paid liar, and you have no rational, scientific argument, and you resort to FUD instead
May Kek smite you :^)
>>8204573
How hard is it to understand that 7kW / day is computed over 24 hours, nighttime included.
>"Scientist" not understanding what an average is
>>8204736
This person: >>8204300
tried to correct me, saying I was off by an order of magnitude, aka off by about 10x. This is wrong. That anon didn't know the difference between "KWh/d" and "W".
Seemingly, you didn't realize this. Your problems are different. You seem to have reading comprehension issues, or integrity issues (e.g. trolling).
>>8204740
>: At high noon on a clear day, each square meter receives 1000 watts of sun power. If you look at the large yellow areas, you will see that it gets around 6,000 watts on an average day. So, even though the average day is exactly 12 hours, the power you actually get on your panels is equal to about 5 to 6 hours of full sun per day. Since the typical modern solar panel is about 12% efficient, you will get about 700 watts per square meter of panel. So, if the map says that you live in a "six" area, you can expect sun power equal to 6 hours per day over the entire year.
And that's still better than Fukushima... or Chernobyl... or (insert next nukular catastrophe here)
>>8204750
>you will see that it gets around 6,000 watts on an average day
What are you quoting? Again, that makes no sense. The author of that comment doesn't know what they're talking about. You cannot sum up "watts" like that. That's nonsensical.
A watt is a measure of power, not energy. For energy, use joules, or watt-hours. It's meaningful to talk about the total energy received over a day in terms of joules or watt-hours, but not watts.
>And that's still better than Fukushima... or Chernobyl... or (insert next nukular catastrophe here)
No one died at Fukushima from radiation poisoning, and it'll probably be true that there will not be a single death that we can reliably trace back to radiation poisoning from Fukushima, and the there will not be a statistically significant increase in cancer rates from Fukushima. In terms of total human deaths, Fukushima is a non-event, just like Three Mile Island.
More people have died by choking on sliced bread than have died from radiation poisoning from nuclear power plants. More people have died from a single dam accident than have died from radiation poisoning from nuclear power in the history of humankind.
>>8204759
>I am a lying piece of shit, may Kek smite me!
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/19/national/former-prime-minister-koizumi-backs-u-s-sailors-suing-over-fukushima-radiation/#.V4iDZhLHbSI
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/navy-sailors-possibly-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-fight-for-justice-a-1016482.html
>>8204762
For reference:
https://xkcd.com/radiation/
Let's take one of the fearmongering sites: (funny that you project your own faults onto me)
http://www.naturalnews.com/050902_Fukushima_US_Navy_sailors_radiation.html
> The Navy's recommendations were based on the fact that the USS Ronald Reagan had detected the radioactive plume from Fukushima at a distance of 132 miles from the plant with readings at 30 times higher than the background radiation level.
Let's take XKCD's value of 4 mSv / year background levels. Total dose received:
(2 days) (3 mSv / year) (30) = about 0.5 mSv
Aka about the same dose as a mammogram.
Color me totally not impressed.
Can you say "scam" and "ignorant fool"? Everything you've been told to you about the extreme dangers of radiation? It's a lie from fearmongers and fools. It's the same kind of quackery of complaining about fluoride in the water, or autism from vaccines. Further, the financial backing for many of these radation fearmongers often comes from people with a financial interest to keep nuclear down in order to maintain their fossil fuel profits.
>>8204776
Err, apologies for mixing up 3 mSv / year vs 4 mSv / year. However, the end result doesn't change much.
Can we stop with the fucking solar panel meme? Solar PV is less effcient than passive solar AND uses more expenisve rare shit to build. Solar PVers should be gassed.
>>8204762
>>8204776
Here, I will offer an olive branch. I endorse the newer passively safe designs, like the AP-1000, and next-gen passively safe designs, like IFR / S-PRISM and ThorCon.
I recognize that there might have been an effect on these sailors. it's hard to tell without spending a lot of time looking into it, which I won't do personally, because it won't change my position on nuclear power. Coal kills millions of people every year. We know this. This is an undisputed fact. If nuclear kills 4 sailors every 20 years, that's a drastic improvement, and one that I'm willing to leave with, especially when there is no alternative, because solar and wind cannot work.
>>8204783
There's also the fact that burning coal releases radioactive material into the atmosphere... far more than a nuclear reactor, aside from its waste, could ever hope to leak.
Although I do think present reactor designs are disgustingly pitiful. All wasted space and material just to have failsafes for high pressure systems you shouldn't have to use to begin with.
>[current year]
>Still incapable of doing anything that doesn't resolve to using a thing to spin a thing
>>8204786
Yea, the "high pressure" aspect of current reactors is a huge problem, in terms of cost, reliable construction times, reliability and repair, and especially in terms of safety. High pressure water is a great way to get many of these radioactive chemicals into the air. In other designs like IFR / S-PRISM and ThorCon, there is no high pressure water in the reactor, which means there's no driver for the really bad stuff to get into the air in an accident. For ThorCon in particular, even in the worst case of exploding a bomb in the reactor core, all that happens is the radioactive stuff splatters about and stays there, because of the lack of high pressure water, and because it is in a very chemically stable form in the salt.
High pressure is bad on costs, because you cannot make small modular reactors on construction lines. The high pressure vessels required are insane, and there's like only one facility in the entire world that can make them.
Plus all of the concrete for high pressure must be poured on sight, which is an incredibly expensive and error prone process.
Getting away from high pressure is one of the most important considerations in next-gen reactor designs.
>>8204776
>>8204783
> I am a persistingly lying piece of shit, may Kek smite me!
Hey dipshit, if sailors away from the coast are suffering from poison radiation, what about people nearby?
>nukular is better than banging silex so it should be preferred to clean energy sources
Solar, hydro, LENR... all better than your nukular lobby products
Though feeder or thorium reactors are interesting
Litterally kill yourself my untermensch
>>8204792
breeder not feeder
>>8204792
>Hey dipshit, if sailors away from the coast are suffering from poison radiation, what about people nearby?
Luckily that day, the wind was blowing out to sea. It could have been a lot worse AFAIK if the wind conditions had been different.
>>8204792
>LENR
Wait what? Cold fusion? ... I must be getting trolled.
>>8204794
lenr-forum.com
>it could have been a lot worse AFAIK if the wind conditions had been different.
But I thought nukular power was harmless? :(
>>8204795
>But I thought nukular power was harmless? :(
Fuck no. That's just silly. Nothing is harmless.
My position is simply that it's better than all of the known alternatives, and that it is really quite safe in general, as borne out by the historical record.
I would say the same thing of hydro, but there are a couple dam accidents that killed thousands of people each. Still, when put into perspective, it's hard to see these incredibly small numbers compared to the millions that die every year from airborne particulate pollution from coal and other dirty fuels.
>>8204795
Cold fusion / fission is a pipedream, and goes against all of known physics. There hasn't been a single reliable demonstration of any of the basic physical principles. It's a sham.
Further, and even if it works out, the rational and prudent thing to do would be to start funding tech that is ready now for widescale deployment. So, maybe we throw some research money your way, and to the high energy fusion guys, but in the meantime, it's time we started cranking out nuclear reactors like the AP-1000 like candy, and go full scale prototypes for the S-PRISM and ThorCon. And if Kirk Sorenson has actually solved the problems with a 2 fluid Thorium MSR breeder, then throw some money his way for prototyping too.
>>8204799
> repeatedly uses coal as a strawman to dismiss clean energy sources
> conveniently ignores mechanical power that can be harvested from the oceans
>>8204801
> known physics are the totality of physics
> what are Quantun Mechanics and why are they at odds with General Relativity if known physics are so all-encompassing
You're subhuman trash, getting paid to prevent humanity's progress
May Kek smite you :^)
>>8204806
Regardless of the conflicts between GR and QFT, we cannot test those differences on Earth. There is no experiment that you can do on Earth to see a difference. Which is exactly what I just said at length above. You need to work on your reading comprehension. Take a moment, simmer down, slow down, and read for comprehension.
>>8204806
Also, I was using coal and hydro merely to put nuclear into perspective.
I have separate arguments for saying that wind and solar cannot work - see my EROEI arguments above. As for cold fusion, the only responses I need are "lol" and "oh wait, you're serious? let me laugh harder".
>>8204809
> LENR cannot be real because known physics, which are incomplete, say so
May Kek smite you :^)
>>8204810
> I am a dishonest and lying piece of shit, working as a paid shill for nukular lobbies (amongst others)
Kill yourself my man :^)
>>8199670
Has there been any research to combining farming and solar? Would it be possible to place transparant panels above the work-height of a field, without it blocking too much sun for the crops? Seems like a good dual-use of land thats already been cleared and in use
>>8200211
That, and Trump
>>8204817
>>8204812
>>8204806
Good lord you are one irritating cunt.
I may not agree on some of the things put forward by >>8204810 here but at least he has the balls to present some kind of coherent argument, instead of shitposting like a fucking 12-year old who cant give a decent argument beyond kek, shill and LIER REEEE!!!!
>>8204903
He's a piece of shit shill, not my fault nor my problem if you don't or can't recognize them
Educate yourself on alternative energy sources, and technology suppression
