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Renewables Won't Keep the Lights On
Posted by Euan Mearns on January 21, 2011 - 12:46pm
This is a guest post by Hugh Sharman that originally appeared on Dimwatt. Hugh is a well known UK energy analyst, his short biography is included at the end of this post. Long term readers of TheOilDrum may recall the second guest post I published here that was based around one of Hugh's articles.
Dr John Constable, the Director of Research at the Renewable Energy Foundation has written an important new article, entitled "Renewables won't keep the lights on", for the on-line Standpoint Magazine.
His article begins with the statement that “In private, the best-informed analysts now agree that Britain's environmental policies have put the country on track to have the world's most expensive electricity.” This is true and tragic. Whatever happened to the “honest” analyst? That their well-informed views are largely correct but held privately disgraces not just the "best-informed analysts" but the whole financial industry! These are the same analysts (or at least from the same self-regarding stables) who stayed mum and therefore well rewarded, while their peers exponentially diced and sliced debts, leading up to the Great Crash of 2008.
The title is self-evidently true, of course, as anyone who is following the electricity generation sector this third-in-a-row, 1960s-style, cold winter (2010 - 2011) can confirm. Typically, wind power output during the periods of greatest (and record) demand has been a piffling few percent at most of their highly expensive, nameplate capacity - and a negligible fraction of national requirements.
This winter is proving once again that, just when it is needed most, wind power (installed capacity > 5 GW) can provide the nation with no effective, reliable generation capacity at all. And forget about photo-voltaic output (PV)!
Dr Constable’s article is not so much focused on the reliability of renewable energy so much as its hidden cost to consumers who pay the whole cost, including subsidy, for all renewable energy. It is frightening that the expanding fleets of wind turbines and many GW of installed photovoltaic generation still require subsidy at all, given their market maturity and the many £ billions of subsidy they have received already.
As he writes, “…the costs of environmental legislation tend to be moderate in the short run, with the pain of the full impact only likely to be felt in years beyond the political horizon.” So true! The sinister reality is that these rising costs are like a line of still-invisible torpedoes, all on target, all heading for the engine room of the UK economy which is likely to blow up and sink the boat with all its unsuspecting passengers.
If this all sounds like “anti-renewables” hyperbole, UK readers who wish to learn more about the way these costs creep up on consumers, can read all about it at the English language version of Germany’s Der Spiegel at Will High Costs Kill Merkel's Green Revolution?. Unlike the UK, Germany has actually built a huge renewable energy capacity, every kW financed by feed-in tariffs, under-written by all consumers. Germany is looked to as the model for promoting further expansion of renewable generation in UK. In the past year, Germany’s PV capacity has almost doubled from 9.4 GW to something between 17 and 18 GW, representing a sunk investment of something between € 50 and €60 billion, the repayment of which will fall on all consumers during the next twenty years. Yet this vast investment yields the equivalent of just 2% of German generation!
Dr Constable also points to Spain which, to avoid exposing its citizens to the real cost-pain of renewable energy through the tariffs they pay, undertook to repay investors through the tax-base. The result is a deficit that is reported to be growing towards €22 billion by December 2010. (Spanish Tariff Deficit to Grow 30% in 2011, Economista Says and Solar investors outraged by Spain's slashing of subsidies) . This deficit is unlikely ever to be re-financed by the markets and could result in the bankruptcy of many of the original investors, some of which are among Spain’s largest power companies.
Dr Constable’s paper expertly exposes the threat to consumer prices if the UK Government does not soon review its current intentions and embrace the German model. Fortunately for the UK, at this point it is saddled with relatively light liabilities, compared with its European peers. There is still time to step back and reconsider our whole renewables subsidy strategy.
From the text, I am not entirely sure that Dr Constable shares my gloom over the rising price and growing scarcity of oil and coal – and therefore, inevitably, of gas. He writes “Concerns over gas availability and price appear to be alleviated by the unexpected growth of global shale gas production…”.
If this surmise is right, it will certainly be a wonderful thing. The view of most conventional analysts is that shale gas makes gas “forever” abundant and that the price link between oil and gas is broken. This view is likely to be shared by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on the somewhat specious grounds that this is the advice they will receive from upstream industry analysts. In a future article, we shall review the record of the upstream industry’s advice to predecessors of the DECC, being the DTI and BERR; on the whole it has been woeful.
If indeed peak conventional oil flows occurred in 2006, as seems likely from the IEA’s latest “World Energy Outlook”, published on 9th November this year, then it is hard to be anything except gloomy about oil prices (and therefore supply security) from 2011 onwards.
This slide tells us that in order for conventional crude oil volumes to be maintained at around 74 million barrels per day, the upstream oil industry must find, develop and commission new, conventional oilfields at the rate of a Saudi Arabia equivalent every five years. No serious energy analyst could possibly accept this hypothesis. And nor do they. The analysts are once again, with some honourable exceptions, staying as mute over the fact that we are over “peak oil flows” as they are about the UK’s energy prices.
There is ample evidence on this site and a growing body of fact-based evidence elsewhere, that growing demand from Asia will push up global demand faster than this can be supplied. The IEA understands this very well but still appears to fear the wrath of its OECD paymasters if it dares to be frank about the extreme fragility of energy supplies. Just over two years ago, during the summer of 2008, on the top of the global boom, global oil demand could simply not be met by global supply, despite record prices. There are siren voices claiming that there is “6 million b/d of spare capacity” at OPEC that can be mobilized as demand continues to rise. The truth is that as we enter 2011, with the oil price once again about to break through the $100/b ceiling (~$17/GJ), that only another global financial crisis can prevent run-away oil price inflation during the next decade, with dire consequences for the UK’s balance of payments.
Even mature businessmen who should know better seem to prefer optimistic myth to studying facts. We will shortly publish a scholar’s review of WEO 2010. In the mean time readers are encouraged to read TheOilDrum's review of WEO 2010 “Questionable assumptions and major omissions” and “Don’t worry be happy” which examines the US EIA’s year-end energy review.
Hitherto, the conventional and comforting view has been that coal can “fill the energy gap” and that the Fischer-Tropsch (coal to liquid) process can keep liquid demand satisfied. This view, often cited by economists, ignores the huge upfront capital costs of Fischer-Tropsch and the long lead times of such capital intensive processes. It also assumes that coal will remain abundant and cheap. And it is the belief of most of the globe’s most influential citizens that CO2 emissions from burning oil, coal and gas threaten the very health of the Globe, so in Europe and probably America, supply will have to get very much worse and liquids prices must rise before any new coal-to-liquids plant gets built.
But as the reality of “peak oil” has become clearer, scholars are beginning to question the optimistic assumptions about coal supply. China and India are between them burning about half of all coal mined. China produces and consumes roughly 42% of global coal (3 billion t/y) and until 2008 was a significant coal exporter, despite that its historical annual increase in demand is between 150 and 200 million tons. However, China imported significant amounts of coal for first time in history during 2010. We have to remember how very small the ship-born market for thermal coal actually is – less than 700 million tons per year. (Coal Statistics).
China’s share of ship-born coal this year was 130 million tons; the direct consequence of this has been a doubling of the price of coal since the end of 2009. What will happen during 2011, if China looks for up to 300 million tons from the international market, is still unknown but prices are likely to be increased again. We expect coal supply security to become a major issue during 2011.
It is clear enough that the China understands the parlous state of its energy supply security well. Chinese state and privately owned energy suppliers are scouring the Earth for fossil fuel and other basic industrial commodities and are out-bidding international bidders to secure the resources for the Chinese market, as any reader of the Financial Times knows very well.
Its demand for iron and copper seems insatiable, and its near monopoly of the World’s supply of refined rare earths is driving up the costs of capital equipment in the renewable energy industry enormously.
Coal price rises will, of course, stimulate coal production in the UK, which until 1981 was a major coal-mining centre. And this increased production may give limited protection to the UK’s coal-fired power stations during the coming decade, providing they are allowed to operate.
But in the short to medium term, it would be naïve to believe that there will not be a large substitution of coal for “cheap gas” all over the globe. As this article goes “to press”, well-head natural gas prices in the USA, depressed by high stocks and relatively high national production) are around $4/GJ, or four times cheaper than oil and considerably cheaper than internationally traded coal at $124/t (roughly $5/GJ FOB).
All the same, it might be well to keep in mind some simple facts about the shale gas boom.
- Conventional (that is to say cheap) gas supply continues to decline.
- The USA remains dependent on Canadian imports and Canada’s own conventional gas supplies are declining
- At current prices, shale gas is unprofitable for many producers, particularly in cases (most) when second year and subsequent year flow rates fall dramatically (Debate over shale gas decline fires up ).
- The motivation of the energy majors in making shale gas acquisitions is not because of the low prices currently causing so much joy to consumers.
- Shale gas production is under fire in many producing areas for the alleged pollution that it is causing, particularly to aquifers that supply America’s drinking water.
The foregoing chart shows that the USA remains dependent on imported gas!
The low price of natural gas in the USA is the cause of huge and loudly expressed joy among a surprising number of fossil energy analysts and market traders. Some even believe that US prices today signal a long term dislocation between oil and gas prices.
All the following is true:
- Natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal.
- The power generating equipment needed to turn it into electricity is much cheaper than for coal plants.
- Gas-fired CCGTs can be built much faster and deliver electricity much more efficiently (up to 60% thermal efficiency) than high efficiency (up to 48%), super-critical, coal-fired plants. Indeed, the “dash for gas-fired power stations” has been a global phenomenon since the early 1990s.
Since 1990, nearly all new, thermal, generating capacity that has been built in Europe, including the UK, has been gas-fired. This is estimated to amount to 160 GW, or 20% of European capacity and is largely responsible for the increased, roughly 200 million toe per year, gas that is now being burned since CCGTs began to be delivered.
However, as Steve Kopits, managing director of Douglas-Westwood’s NY office, writing in the December 2010 issue of Petroleum Review Magazine, reminds us “...economics works. When a commodity becomes expensive, consumers will switch to the next closest substitute and learn how to use that substitute efficiently”.
Compressed natural gas (CNG) is also being used to substitute for diesel and gasoline as a transport fuel. There are many millions of vehicles that have been cheaply and easily adapted for CNG in operation around the World (Compressed natural gas & Natural Gas in the Transportation Sector) and it is quite certain that the USA’s (and China’s) ingenious and price-savvy citizens will soon be adapting their vehicles in their millions to run on CNG. Oddly, for a continent that prattles so much about transport fuel’s effect on Climate Change, the iron grip of Europe’s tax authorities on the use of fuels for transport is likely to make Europe the last major economic area where vehicles are adapted en-masse for CNG.
To repeat, we can be absolutely sure that the mass purchase by the oil majors of the independents who developed shale gas extraction is not for the derisory returns presently being made by these pioneers!
It will only be a matter of time before the relatively small global surplus of gas extraction will be “used up” and the wide ratio between oil and gas prices will revert to the historical mean, close to one. That is what the US energy majors are banking on.
So by 2015, not only will the UK’s generation fleet be heavily dependent on natural gas but there is a high risk that this will also be very expensive and will certainly be beyond national control.
The rate of decline in the North Sea is staggering. We must draw what cold comfort we can from the supposed fact that gas-fired power emits less CO2. However, one cannot resist reminding the reader that the so-called CO2 footprint of a MWh of power derived from LNG is hardly better than that of a modern, super-critical, coal-fired power plant.
To "keep the lights on" this winter (2010 – 2011), we continue to rely on the UK's ancient, polluting, inefficient but generally reliable coal-fired power stations and its mostly ancient but relatively unreliable nuclear to provide respectively 45% and 17% of UK demand. It is a sobering thought that the UK is legally committed (by the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive or LCPD) to closing down more than 8 GW of this capacity, along with 3 GW of serviceable oil-fired capacity by or before 31st December 2015, on the grounds that these emit more than the permitted level of sulphur oxides. With the exception of Torness and Sizewell B, most nuclear capacity will also be phased out by 2018, unless the AGRs can be given a make-over to extend their lives.
It is possible but by no means certain that this loss of capacity will be entirely replaced by new CCGT capacity, but as we write, this could be a close-run thing.
The new Coalition is now wrestling with the near criminal consequences of thirteen years of New Labour talking shops, muddle and inaction over energy reform.
When Labour came to power in 1997, there was ample generating capacity, North Sea gas and oil flows were still rising and during 1999 the international oil price fell to less than $10/b. Some OPEC nations were staring at the possibility of defaulting on their huge debts. The Economist became famous (or infamous) for suggesting that the World was “drowning in oil”; so much for the analysts at our premium and most influential weekly newspaper. (Drowning in oil)
Since coming to power, apparently obsessed by “climate change concerns”, New Labour was in constant dialogue with the public through endless consultations. These were long, drawn-out affairs, ending up with a “white paper” full of bombast and invariably endorsed by then Prime Minister Blair. But only two serious actions were actually taken.
- The introduction of the so-called “New Energy Trading Arrangement” or NETA
- The introduction of a complicated and expensive, customer-subsidy for renewable energy called the “Renewable Energy Obligation” or ROC
Over the last six years, the Renewable Energy Foundation (www.ref.org.uk) of which Dr Constable is the Research Director, has published a number of devastatingly forensic analyses, of which “Renewables won’t keep the lights on” is the latest.
NETA was introduced in England and Wales on 27th March 2001 and replaced the “pool trading system” introduced by the Conservatives, following electricity industry privatization. (NETA-One Year On). The idea was to deliver more efficient and competitive trading arrangements. It certainly soon led to a substantial reduction in wholesale electricity prices.
NETA replaced an energy trading system that had rewarded both production capacity and energy production with a system that only allowed remuneration for pure energy trades. At the time of its introduction, oil was still cheap (roughly $3/GJ), and the upstream industry was unconstrained in its hydrocarbon production, an extraction policy inherited from the previous Tory government. Given the industry’s low specific prices (a consequence of political policy) the industry could only recover its high costs by maximizing extraction rates. This flawed, short sighted policy led directly to the almost complete evacuation of the nation’s North Sea hydrocarbon resources within a generation. Compare this policy with that of the conservation-driven policies of the Netherlands and Norway.
NETA certainly “constrained” energy prices. British Energy and Drax Power Station (to name only two generators) were effectively bankrupted by the low price (gas-based) competition. Large US investors in the UK electricity system, like Mission Energy, AES and AEP lost many $ billions in fire sales of premium coal-fired plants and the effective nationalization of the nuclear industry.
What NETA was specifically designed for - to cut short term prices – was achieved. What it could not do was to send any sort of appropriate pricing signal for the times to come when the UK would once more have to compete in the global market place for primary energy supplies. That is, the times in which we are now living. Bear in mind that during the winter of 2007 – 2008, Japan was willing to pay over $20/GJ for LNG on which Britain is now heavily reliant. By 2015, Britain will be even more reliant on gas imported from Russia, along with increasing LNG imports.
In the dramatic, foregoing chart, Euan Mearns, an editor at www.theoildrum.com, illustrates the vital importance of understanding the UK’s energy dependence in its historical context!
As a direct consequence of an unreformed NETA it is a fact that since Sizewell B was commissioned in 1992, not one single new coal-fired or one single new nuclear plant was built - nor could have been!
In 2009, OFGEM realized, much too late, that the policy of cheap-to-build infrastructure, based on cheap fuel, had indeed shrunk capacity and to a certain extent had kept a lid on prices but only at the expense of future generations. Its recent Discovery Report “discovered” that NETA is no longer fit for purpose and that a complete reform of energy trading will be necessary to enable the financing of the more costly infrastructure that can keep the UK competitive among its OECD peers in the harder times to come.
The paradoxical effect of the publication of Discovery and the announcement that the Coalition is embarking on yet another consultation, this time on energy trading reform (16 December 2010), has been a further reduction in the rate of construction of all new power stations that are not being financed by consumer subsidy, including gas-fired power stations!
As this paper goes to press, the outcome of the consultation remains unknown. It is already a matter of Coalition policy that any new coal-fired power stations must incorporate carbon capture and storage (CCS). There are even calls for new gas-fired power stations to employ CCS. Inexplicably, no one at DECC appears to be “joining the dots” and advocating the use of captured CO2, an excellent fluid for enhancing oil recovery whereby super-critical CO2, effectively an efficient dry-cleaning solvent, “washes out” the oil that other tertiary methods cannot reach. The use of CO2 for stimulating oil production in the fast-fading North Sea would enable the recovery of many billions of otherwise unproduced-able oil from the UK, Norwegian and Danish sectors, while safely burying roughly a ton of CO2 for each 3 barrels of CO2 incremental oil.
CCS will sharply increase the specific fuel consumption (by 20 – 30%) of either conventionally configured gas or coal-fired power stations and add considerably to their capital costs. Without a commercial application for the expensively captured CO2, its implementation will be ruinous for UK power producers and UK consumers. The sheer fatuity of the Coalition’s fixation with CCS, without EOR, will certainly be demonstrated during the forthcoming energy trading consultation.
Oddly, Dr Constable’s article does not mention the Coalition’s policy on CCS at all and disappointingly makes few recommendations about what should be done to “keep the lights on” - and as importantly, keeping UK energy competitive during the coming decade.
He writes “…Instead, government could announce a combination of a carbon tax and a realistic set of emissions regulations. The emerging Emissions Performance Standard might be a basis, but will need revision if it is not to discourage any and all conventional generation.”
Dr Constable is above all, clearly pragmatic insofar as he seems to have accepted the notion that we cannot steer the Coalition away from its “climate-change cart before the energy-security horse” policy. But given the already high costs of carbon ($17/GJ oil, and $5+/GJ coal and the certainty that these costs will rise further, drawing in gas), the last thing we need in is a carbon tax that will make energy prices even more expensive. There is clearly no chance that the US administration will introduce either a carbon tax nor “cap and trade”. Outside Europe, least of all India and China have the slightest intention of further taxing energy use, so a carbon tax in UK and Europe is pointlessly masochistic.
Of course, Dr Constable is right to require our carbon-obsessed politicians to evaluate all “low carbon” energy production from an equal economic base. If the purpose of subsidizing renewable energy is mostly to save CO2 emissions, then these subsidies, especially for PV, are about the most masochistically expensive way that can be imagined and a carbon tax would reveal this.
However, he is absolutely right to conclude that“ …the present policies can only offer emissions reductions through further deindustrialisation and significant economic contraction, effects that are unlikely to be popular with the electorate whatever the weather.”
We are also convinced that unless this Coalition wakes up from its complacent dream of achieving a prosperous “low carbon economy”, reached, almost effortlessly, through massive subsidisation of renewables capacity and energy efficiency, Britain is indeed facing imminent deindustrialisation, economic ruin and massive social unrest.
Paradoxically, OFGEM’s publication of “Discovery” and the launch of the “Power Market Reform consultation” (with the correct but toxic anticipation that base energy rates must rise substantially above a “willingness to pay” threshold) have only increased the already high risk that the lights will start going out by or before 2015. If this is allowed to happen, ruin will certainly follow.
It is time for all those “analysts”, of whom Dr Constable writes, who are carefully protecting themselves from the potential wrath of the “environmentalists” and their captive political establishment, to voice their views stridently and publicly so that a proper consultation can take place this year, not the shams of the Blair years.
We have until only until March 2011 (www.decc.gov.uk) to turn this consultation into a proper and serious public debate.
We are fully aware that the UK must wean itself away from reliance on carbon-based fuels - because fossil energy supplies are no longer secure and imported fuels are likely to be beyond the UK’s ability to afford. If we are going to side-step deindustrialisation, with all that this will entail, we clearly need to develop a strategy that radically transforms the way in which we generate and use energy.
Dr Constable is right. Renewables “cannot keep the lights on”, even if their judicious use, together with the development of large-scale, distributed energy storage, may save increasingly expensive fossil fuel. We should continue to spend a significant fraction of our research and development funding on finding more rational and less costly ways of using renewables. But in the mean time, we really cannot and should not close down the non-sulphur compliant coal-fired power stations (by 2016) and absolutely must accelerate the roll-out of affordable nuclear power on a scale and at a rate that, extraordinarily, has not yet occurred to the Coalition and its senior civil servants.
Just before Christmas, 2009, a correspondent, unusually well informed and sympathetic to our views, wrote as follows “My info from Olkiluoto 3 and at Flammanville is that the EPR is well nigh impossible to build because it is too complex. Essentially, the design of the nuclear island is not conceived for construction so the amount of site welding of pipework is ludicrous. The typical pipe spool length is 1.5m. Apparently, the French do not acknowledge the frailty of welding, culturally, so were not alive to this. However clearly any serious regulator, as distinct from a historic France plc regulator [but they too now are influenced by stronger safety cultures], will insist on weld testing which is painfully slow. Olkiluoto3 is now 5 years late and is bankrolled by France. The Siemens steam island is finished and waiting.”
Yet the UK is depending uncritically on Electricité de France and AREVA for virtually all new nuclear capacity, on a time-scale that cannot even start until after the consultation is satisfactorily concluded, and which looks already as if it will condemn the UK to unaffordable new nuclear capacity that cannot possibly be commissioned until the middle of the next decade.
In China, new Westinghouse-designed, AP1000 reactors are being delivered in three years at a cost that is reliably reported of $1500 per kW; this is even less than a new coal-fired plant without CCS. (This is the same UK state owned Westinghouse that was sold by Gordon Brown’s government for a paltry £5 billion just two years ago to Japan’s Toshiba - an act of economic vandalism comparable to his sale of a third of Britain’s gold reserves at the bottom of the market in 2003 in favour of Euro-denominated assets.)
DimWatt wishes to be as constructive as possible and intends to participate fully in the up-coming energy trading reform consultation. This is a one-off and perhaps a “last chance” to head off the growing risk of the failure of the United Kingdom’s energy infrastructure before the Coalition’s first term is up. Extremely uncomfortable changes in the present policy will be necessary, including the life extension of all environmentally non-compliant coal and nuclear generating plant, the reversal of demonstrably impossible plans to build 33 GW of wind power by 2020 and the large-scale roll-out of new nuclear, relying on Chinese or South Korean, not French, know how.
Has the Coalition the mettle to face these difficult choices? We hope so. It has already shown that it can be both radical and pragmatic and dares to be unpopular. As regards energy policy, it will need to be both. Above all, it will need unusual courage to reverse the disastrous course, set by Labour, and unfortunately signed up to by almost the whole of Parliament during better times.
Short bio: Hugh Sharman
Hugh Sharman is the owner of the Denmark-based energy consultancy and project developer Incoteco.Hugh is a civil engineering graduate of Imperial College (1962). He worked mostly on oil and gas projects in the Persian Gulf, France and the UK until the early-1970s. His UK-based renewable energy company, Conservation Tools and Technology, pioneered the use of renewable energy during the 1970s. This business failed because its product line was immature and its consumer-facing sales strategy was flawed for this difficult decade in the UK.
Between 1977 and 1986, he was Area Representative for power generation, Swedish Shipyards and BWSC, in the Caribbean and South America, where he was responsible for power stations sales and marketing. He was responsible for power stations that were delivered in Venezuela, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Bahamas and Bermuda. He founded Incoteco (Denmark) in 1986 and performed power station related work, focusing on technically innovative processes. His clients have included TRW Inc., Rolls Royce, Scottish Hydro, Renewable Energy Foundation, Ormat, VRB Power, Danish Energy Agency, Mission Energy, Qatar Petroleum, ECA international, Elsam, Kinder Morgan CO2, among many others.
At present, he is also an editor for DimWatt and EU sales and marketing director for the China-based, globally operating, electricity storage company, Prudent Energy Inc.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
yawn
wasted energy
these facts to tough for you are they?
I think you're missing the point, I'm asking, what's the point in keeping the lights on if your civilization is choking on its own excrement? There are no facts here, it's just another shill for the coal industry like its predecessor, or possibly just some NIMBY group. One and the same, really. Carry on.
The value of keeping the lights on depends whether you have grandchildren in UK. I do. When the lights go off, which could be as early as 2014, the UK's social cohesion will break down. It will be a very ugly business thereafter. Actually, having spent a life-time being rather (to very) "anti-nuclear", I conclude that has to be the future - or there will be no future!
Inexpensive combined heat and power plants in conjunction with heat pumps which replace fossil fuel furnaces, reduce the fossil fuel consumption by over 50% without even investing anything in insulation and are built in short time.
But Good luck in trying to build affordable new nuclear power plants in 3 years.
"Good luck in trying to build affordable new nuclear power plants in 3 years."
That seems to be conveniently ignored in this article. Let's look at other examples of nuclear plants being built in Europe.
Areva SA, the French nuclear-reactor builder highly touted by pro-nuclear pundits, is over 3 years behind on their latest new nuclear plant in Finland. Cost overruns are now at 100% and will continue to climb. 6 billion euros is the current price, and the final bill is anyone's guess.
That equates to over $5000 per kw just for construction, and does not include operations, maintenance, fuel, waste disposal, and decommissioning costs.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-24/areva-s-overruns-at-finnish-...
The first French EPR @ Flamanville is 20% over budget and 2 years behind schedule so far.
Alan
And the first Chinese EPR is on schedule, they say:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/china-builds-french-designed-nu...
Quite a steep learning curve.
I realy like having EPR debugged by the Finnish authorities.
And with much lower safety standards, it will be debugged by the Chinese during operations.
The lights will not go out in 2014. If it a choice between burning high sulphur coal, oil, palm oil, rainforest hardwoods, anything, or the lights going out, then the government will burn it. They will extend the life of nuclear plants until their control systems simply refuse to remove the shutdown rods.
We are in an energy pickle due to decades of indecision and under investment. Renewables will never supply all the energy we use today, but we are building wind turbines today. They may be loading large amounts of debt on our shoulders for the energy return they give, but we are never going to pay off the debt we already have, and when we do eventually default, we will still have physical possession of the wind turbines. We will eventually be forced to adapt to the energy supply we find ourselves with, and become dramatically more efficient in our use of electricity. It is possible, but not without major social change.
In the medium term, shale gas and in situ coal gassification may or may not extend our indigenous fossil fuel supply, but it will be decade at least before we know the true economic potential.
In the short term, peak oil will drive the UK back into recession, which will cut electricity demand, and so prevent demand exceeding our generating capacity in the next few years.
Agree on all points. The political costs of turning the lights off (South Africa or Pakistan style) would be so huge that all those medium term options will be exploited. Plus there is the option of importing electricity which will also become increasingly important. BTW extending the life of second generation nuclear reactors is not such a bad thing as it seems... these have been shown to work reliably up to 60 years and who knows maybe more is possible (of course provided proper maintenance/refurbishments/upgrades). Original 30 to 40 years design lives were understandably on the safe side.
IMO there is no reason for alarmism in this direction; if I were British I would be more concerned on the economic drag all these imports and rushed investments will induce on the economy, and my guess is that this will be the impact mostly felt.
I'm also not concerned about climate change targets, because it's a lost cause.. and there is no point to worry about something which is doomed anyway. The point here is that after even a hint of a shortage appears on a local or global scale, it will put an end of all the political quibble-dibbling about this. We will start burning everything, without constraint. In 5 to 10 years there won't be any targets, ROCs or whatever. Systems which were designed to have a short-term planning horizon are unable to solve any long term problems - and political and corporate organizations are unable to look beyond 4-5 years, or sometimes even next quarter. We will simply have to adapt.
All the operating UK reactors, save one (the youngest) are not "second generation" but a uniquely British design with some design shortcomings.
I think the UK is "pushing the envelope" in their reactor life extensions.
Alan
I know that UK uses ingenious AGR and Magnox designs and it seems this has caused them much trouble with their operation. However these are still classified as second generation plants, which are broadly identified by 30-40 years design life and large industrial scale capacity (200-1000 MWe). The first generation were prototype reactors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_II_reactor
Given their track record I don't find it terribly good idea to extend the life of UK's gas-cooled reactors, but this is not to say it can't be done, and my guess is that when push comes to shove it will be.
RalphW-
Agree 100% I actually laughed when I read your first paragraph. I'd burn my furniture to stay warm. It was -20F this morning. I'll start ripping the wood floors out and burn them should it come to that. I have children, so that may be the difference here. If I have to drop the huge maple behind the house (knowing that it may fall on adjacent property), stand back... Anything to stay warm.
I'm guessing you don't live in Britain with -20F? That would be tough on those guys. We build for it but when it doesn't top that number for a couple three weeks we do notice.
A few decades ago when I got sick I actually did have to take down and interior wall and burn it to keep warm until I was well enough to go out for wood. That was my very first 'great north woods' winter heating with wood. I was never that unprepared again.
Been using oil the last couple decades, so easy and it used to be real cheap, but I'm slowly installing a wood pellet boiler now--the flow through the pipe across the ridge is down to 600000 bpd, about a third of what is was when I moved here, so the handwriting is on the wall. I don't imagine Britain is real long on biomass fuel either.
Heat pumps and insulation/weatherization are where the country's big short term effort should go. It can be done quickly, the benefits are immediate and you get a good bang for the buck or should I say punch for the pound in Britain's case.
But it seems the red tape currently in place puts a strangle hold on that sort of approach. Its not hard to get a whole army of certified installers if the training is available and tax credits and grants guarantee enough work. In Alaska it took less than a year and a half for the situation to go from a three month wait to get and energy audit to having a glut of auditors. Other bottlenecks in the process pop up and flow away as the work being done expands. Not ideal but things can happen quickly.
The acceptance and certification of the new LENR home heating systems could be expedited. This could save much on home heating fuel consumption.
I do expect that LENR will have a hard time braking through all the FUD that its competition will through up especially from the fossil fuel people.
Please provide a link for LENR home heating systems. I googled it but found nothing...
Also at the demonstration(LENR home heating systems) was a representative of Defkalion Energy, based in Athens, who said that the company was interested in a 20 kW unit and that within two months they would make a public announcement. For the Rossi and Focardi, this kind of interest is the most important.
“We have passed already the phase to convince somebody,” Rossi wrote in his forum. “We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work and go to sell it, as we are doing.”
He directed commercial inquiries to info(at)leonardocorp1996.com .
Tell you what: instead of continually spamming this board about LENR, why don't you come back later after you have, say, ten years of data on capital cost, fuel cost, maintenance, energy production, and life-cycle cost per kwh?
When configured for electric power production, the inventors say that commercially-scaled their process could generate eight units of output per unit of input and would cost roughly one penny per kilowatt-hour, drastically cheaper than your average coal plant.
As currently demonstrated, the cost of heated water might be 10 times less due to the low temperature of the water and the associated low thermodynamical efficiencies.(100C).
I intend no spam, I just hoped to inform about new emerging technologies that might impact on peak oil and the decline in fossil fuels. Such cost competition could help reduce the cost of renewable energy.
Point taken, however...all renewable energy sources are not the same.
If I may suggest...you appear to be searching for renewables in "all the wrong places."
http://tiny.cc/szqul
http://tiny.cc/40fwr
http://tiny.cc/0dwgs
http://vortexengine.ca
HOG
Hi Hugh,
Thank you for writing this article. TOD needs willing contributors (with thick skins). I Dennis Meadows said something like "I grieve for the future that might have been" implying that with enough forward planning our children, grandchildren, would not have to suffer as much as they will now have to suffer.
There have to be other options including the controlled lifestyle descent such as that proposed by the Transition Town movement.
Nuclear has long build time and a low EROeI and so it *cannot* scale fast enough to match depletion rates. The UK is in a corner and only technologies that can start paying back within a very short period after the energy is invested will fit the bill. The long build times and high upfront energy costs will make a large investment in nuclear and energy sink.
"Energy Payback for Energy Systems Ensembles During Growth", Timothy G. Gutowski, Stanley B. Gershwin and Tonio Bounassisi
There will be luls in renewables. Storage must be built and likely both in peoples homes and via large pumped hydro. Blackouts are likely common. Here in the very cold northern US some form of backup heat is recommended (wood stove with a store of pellets, a large hot water tank, or a coal bin and coal stove, etc). And more insulation.
This will cost a lot of money. When Charles Dicken's wrote "The Christmas Carol", a scuttle of coal cost real money. Enough that Scrooge was stingy with the supply. That is the future. And like Dr. Meadows, it does make me sad we did not choose otherwise. There is no time machine. We can only step forward.
I doubt it. Politicians do a lot of stupid things. But there are few things that will get people thrown out of office faster than blackouts.
We had some blackouts here in California in 2000-2001. This was really due to stupid decisions made by Governor Davis' predecessor, but Davis took tremendous heat for it. He took measures to curb the blackouts, but it was too late. He was recalled.
Once a politician realizes his or her job is at stake, s/he will act. Unfortunately, a lot of politicians are too stupid and/or distracted to understand what is going on. So, blackouts can still happen. But they won't be common and, if anything, the surviving politicians will figure out how to avoid blackouts at all costs.
Sorry do not agree.There are problems which cannot be solved and the UK energy crisis is one.Does not matter if you are a politician,scientist or magician.By your analogy the financial mess should already have a solution thru the politicians.The math is never wrong.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I don't agree that the situation is analogous. I am suggesting there are specific events that get people so riled up that heads roll.
Blackouts are something that will cause heads to roll. Also, every mayor knows if you can't remove the snow, you will be out of a job.
You're missing the point. People will get riled and punish politicians, but the lights still won't go back on.
That's a doomsday scenario. I know doomsday could come, but I think we have some time left before that. I don't know what your timeline is, but I think it can't be a lot worse than the US. We are very heavily dependent on oil for transportation, for example. We probably have more alternatives to oil, but, for example, coal can't be quickly substituted as a transportation fuel.
Neither can natural gas.
wastedenergy
This article does point out problems with ccs also, so not a shill to the coal industry.
There are some people who will continue to think that wind power will solve the problem until the lights go out. Then they will blame everyone but themselves.
If you think wind power will do it, fine, but be honest enough to add the pumped storage costs or whatever backup and tell people what they will pay in 3 and 5 years time.
When i talked to a green peace rep, he could not do that after 3 days of asking.
what's the point in keeping the lights on if your civilization is choking on its own excrement?
Isn't your position that the excrement should be burned for its energy content?
Like it or not - there will be lights that go out.
Lights outside that are on "for saftey" Lights at businesses who's model works at $5 a barrel and don't work at $150.
But a simple solar panel can provide you with a far brighter light (via batteries) than a simple candle to yell at the darkness with.
People will get used to heating one small room, will use technology like solar heat to take the edge off the cold.
The lights of what we've been doing will go out. (Unless some magic happens which makes fusion too cheap to meter.....just like fission was gonna save us.)
What? 0.1% of the GDP for energy produced locally is somehow tough to swallow?
Actually, renewables will work wonderfully to keep our lights on if we assume very low-energy lighting. I have 21 LED light bulbs in my home. These use altogether less than 80 watts TOTAL. I could run them all on a 12-volt battery if I wanted, and I could charge that battery up with a combination of a single PV panel, a micro wind turbine, and if all else fails, a stationary cycle with a generator. I can generate 150 watts for about an hour, so this would power my lights almost 2 hours, assuming a period of no wind or sun and a flat battery. Doubling the amount of lighting and associated charging devices/battery would not be a difficult task. And remember we can always charge the battery when the grid is up and running.
What renewables are currently not good at doing is powering the large load of electric heating that we now very dependent on because our homes and buildings are not optimally insulated and should use other forms of heat than resistive electic heaters. But this too will change for the better eventually.
Alas the lobby driven UK gov will not allow you to do useful things like install your own PV systems or wiring generally without it being uneconomic because you have to pay jobsworth a bung to certify your work - and he probably won't understand what you intend anyway! Regardless of your capability [I could do it too] you can't get a subsidy grant without paying 'registered installer' prices etc.. - the same sort of thinking that makes roads cost 10 million per mile...
Decarbonizer:
Where did you get your LED light bulbs and what was the price?
I have been doing some searching for LED light bulbs to replace
my CFLs but it looks like they cost about $30 per bulb at this
point.
Still quite expensive compared to CFLs...
I've done a number of installations with these LEDs in swimming pool screen enclosures in South Florida
https://www.oznium.com/high-intensity-led-floodlight
I also designed the integrated remote control systems on these installations for a friend of mine who owns this company.
http://picasaweb.google.com/coqueta347/SolarBuildersIncRecentProjectPhot...
>
I'm sitting underneath yesterday's salvaged indirect sunlight using one of these..
http://www.amazon.com/Holagen-Replacemnt-Camper-Trailer-1110WH/dp/B0027B...
they're $14 each, and draw about 1.4 watts. Extremely Portable, being about the size of a silver dollar, and so far very durable and resilient. (Low Voltage, 12/15vdc)
They might not be as cheap/lumen as CFLs (which I use throughout the rest of the house) or T5's and T8 Fluoros .. but there's no warmup time, they don't have glass to shatter, minimal waste heat, and you could put probably Eight of them in your pocket (sans Fixture). For me, this is an ideal light for Videography, for Camping, and for my 'Cut and Run kit'.. or just for the office!.. it's a surprisingly smooth and useful light source.
This particular solar setup is very simple, too. A 40 watt Shell Solar panel (the one I bought in Dec 2005 to recognize Deffeyes' peak), a $10 surplus 12v,12ah Sealed Lead Acid battery with a cheap $35 Sunguard 4.5 charge controller. The battery, charge controller, a Voltmeter and some DC and Auto plugs are all built into a basic plastic Tackle-box.. about the size of a toaster. A very convenient little portable power box. Last year it ran the fan for my Solar Hot Air heater, and now it drives my office lighting. (When I add a second or third SLA batt, I might drive the Laptop on it as well.)
So far, I haven't seen this light draw the Tacklebox battery down to any worrying degree.. so I don't have to sit in the dark anytime soon!
How could something like that ever work?! Oh, wait, I built my own and it even charges my power tool batteries.
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll225/Fmagyar/ART%20and%20Solar/Solar...
Well, OK, It doesn't really work. I was having you all on a bit.
There's a fill spout in the back, and it all runs off an old .049 Model Plane Engine. You wouldn't believe the smoke and the noise I have to put up with.. but it does say 'Green SOLAR!!' in big happy letters on the front, and so far all my lefty-hippy friends are so dazzled by the clever use of PC labels and recycled parts, that they haven't had the moral courage to call me on it. I hope that never changes!
Ooh! time for a refill.. If I type for more than 3 minutes, I run out again.
THERE's the little cuss! With a little LED worklight on it.. back in the other house..
http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz240/Ingto83/?action=view¤t=IM...
Doesn't look like much.. but my light is still on, and it's snowing pretty good out there!
Heh! I knew it was a fake, all in a tackle box, eh? And I supposed you expected us all to just swallow that hook, line and sinker!
Psst, mine really runs on this... http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll225/Fmagyar/ChineseMagicMotor.jpg
But don't tell anyone, OK.
They are still expensive, and I wire my own. It's low voltage, fed through a UL-approved converter, it is AT LEAST as safe as your standard snap-together cardboard abomination that supports an incandescent bulb in a lamp. GFCI is your friend, too.
For indoor lighting, I sacrifice ultimate lumens for a little Color Rendering Index. The newer LEDs are about 40% brighter than the ones I used. The (new LED) cost is in the ballpark of $100 for about 1060 lumens (9 x 118), 11 watts measured at the wall (the power factor on the converter is a little meh, but so it goes). Undercabinet lighting is the "killer app" for these guys -- non-standard fixtures anyway, a pain to work on them, and directional light is a plus, and so is low profile.
Pictures and details here, older LED installation (my first one)
It's my opinion that trying to cram LEDs into a "bulb" shape is a losing venture, that will compromise their heat sinking and their very useful directional light. Run at lower (more efficient) power, their lifetime is somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand hours (they don't burn out, they just get dimmer). My next projects are to do more undercabinet lights, and also to replace some often-on basement lights (that aren't on now, because the fixture is broken, and very difficult to replace).
We should, however, be aware of the possibility of peak heat sink.
Mongo, like!
LEDs would be better suited to uplighting than 'bulb' replacement. One way would be to use an aluminium extrusion as a heatsink and wall mount with LEDs spaced along its length.
NAOM
Maybe you should hold out for LED replacement tech called an SMD. They have a wider lighting arc, about 120 degrees and use less energy for the same cost.
SMD means Surface Mount Device and is a electronic package type that is soldered on top of the circuit board without drilling holes for the component pins. It is very common that exactly the same electric chip is put into different packages. SMD have been around for a long time and it will not effect the performance of LEDs.
SMD packages may be better for really fast signals if they are physically smaller but for visible light there will be no visible difference if it blink with a few kHz or a few MHz.
The new power LEDs are all surface mount, and I think it is necessary for adequate cooling. Cooler gives you longer life, better efficiency, and brighter light.
Is there any data on how low energy light bulbs have impacted on total consumption in the UK?
You know a few strings of LED Christmas lights in hallways, stairways and other stragtegic spots are cheap and effective till the market gives us a more affordable LED product with better color than is out there now. Plug them into switch controlled outlets or switch controlled extension cords (anybody can slap one of those wheel switches on a cord) if need be.
For anyone interested in seriously high powered LED illumination.
I bought some high power white LED modules for a job at work. They claim to be 5000 lumens. About $75 a piece - and not quite fully domesticated!
Bridgelux http://www.bridgelux.com/assets/files/Bridgelux_RS_Array_Data_Sheet.pdf
They consist of an array of 8 x 8 LED chips arranged in a patch about the size of a quarter. They are mounted on an aluminum backing plate about 2" x 2" which you then bolt to a heat sink. They take 30V dc at about 2.1A current.
I put four onto a 4" x 4" heatsink with a dc fan to cool it. When that is fired up its like looking directly at an arc welder - a welding mask is a necessity.
We us this rig for testing solar panels. It can make a small patch of light which matches the 1000W/m2 irradiation from the sun.
LED technology is coming on rapidly, within a few years it will compete directly with CFL in price and performance.
2020
roll on that day . currently I switch the light on and the room goes darker.
Thanks for the link. Still just a little ways from being able to be screwed in as a replacement bulb for all standard applications. Even here at the end of the road LED nightlight bulbs have been on the shelves for near a year now--they are rated at about 1/2 watt. I think the incandescent ones were about 4 watts--used to be used as the smaller of the two sizes of Christmas tree lights, whew the wattage we used to add with decorations!
The white LED Christmas lights work reasonably well for lighting applications. You have to get used to many little lights instead of one point source. You can convert them to 12VDC if you aren't afraid of a little soldering. They are fairly cheap at Costco during the Christmas season.
Jeff
I have been using the little Battery-Pack Christmas Strings as well. About 20 lamps along 4 feet of wire.. can be very pretty light, and they come in Warm White now!
.. but I added a DC plug so I can run them from my little homemade 4.8v rechargeable packs (4 Nicads or Nimhs instead of the 3 Alkalines (4.5v) the original battery pack was made for. That is a really useful battery configuration, actually, since a lot of the LED lamps out there use 3-cells, and I've found that my Walkie-Talkies also want 3-AAA's, so I'm glad to be able to quickly substitute a rechargeable pack into such gear.
Bob
I think you took the phrase "Keeping the lights on" a bit too literally.
LEDs are great and need further deployment. With CFLs and LEDs, we really can get lighting down to a small amount that could easily be powered by renewables. But it is all the other stuff that will be more of a problem.
But yeah, the problem needs to be attacked at both ends . . . use less power and get alternate power sources.
Yes, some few might also want refrigeration....
In the U.S. Households use 30.3% of their electricity for heating type applications:
10.1% Space heating
9.1% Water heating
5.8% Clothes Dryer
4.6% Range top, oven
.7% Hot tub, pool heater
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us_tab1.html
These could be switched to natural gas, propane, heating oil, kerosene, wood, coal, solar thermal.. But it is difficult to see how the other 70% can be switched.
Anyone have comparable numbers for the U.K.?
Another bunch is from refrigers/freezers. Though much more efficient than they used to be, there are still enormous gains possible there. Lights have already been mentioned. Entertainment appliances are being shrunk by the year--soon all tvs, stereos, computers will likely be replaced by tiny hand-held devices that will sip electricity compared to the monstrous predecessors (OK, I'm just guessing here, but that does seem to be the general trajectory.)Dish washers and clothes washers can be made much more efficient. Cutting vampire loads could cut another 5%...
So there is a lot that can be done without really affecting 'lifestyles' much.
But really, we are in the middle of a global freakin crisis--a number of them really. Why shouldn't we expect our lifestyles to change a bit. Most Europeans get by with a tiny fridge/freezer or none at all. If you're getting real food fresh every day from the local store that you walk to, why do you need a fridge/freezer? Most Americans are in desperate need of some extra exercise--why not do your laundry in the bath tub and then hang them up to dry rather than paying an arm and a leg to do equally repetitive drudgery on a machine that actually requires electricity?
All AC units need to also be AC current (or convertible) and come with it's own designated solar panels--when the sun is shining, you can cool your house--then insulate it very well so the cool stays inside well into the night.
There are lots and lots of things we COULD be doing to cut our electricity use down to close to what could be supplied with current hydro/wind/solar/nuke with some NG assist. Mostly though, we're not. And with the new congress we almost surely won't.
As Chomsky said, with the last election we have consigned ourselves to a short, miserable dark age ending in extinction.
{/rant}
I think you're asking a lot -- consider, if nothing else, our (non-)enthusiastic adoption of the metric system, or our failure to learn from high gasoline prices, or the full parking lot of the Whole Foods Market in one of the (allegedly) most liberal cities in the US (Cambridge).
You need to be careful about things like "do your laundry in a bathtub" -- actually washing clothes is not a huge energy sink, not compared to drying, and line drying is much, much easier than washing your clothes by hand. This is similar to the whole locavore thing -- if you want to save energy in how you choose food, avoid beef, minimize pork, consider chicken, but mostly eat plants. And also, ride your bike to the store. Compared to those two choices, the difference in where the food came from is not usually that significant -- but people make far more noise about locally sourced.
I'm a former comrade of the peoples republic of cambridge. How are things in the old town.
Hey, I didn't say it was likely--just (barely) possible.
And you are right, of course, that we should focus first on the things that save the most with the least effort. It bothers me when people fret about getting a disposable cup at the cafe while getting into their SUV to pick up tons of crap at Walmart on their way to getting on a jet to go halfway around the world. We need to tackle a lot of big stuff before sweating to much about the small stuff.
But ultimately we need to go beyond the low hanging fruit. I was just pointing out what was possible and the absurdity of people thinking that hand washing would be an almost unimaginable chore, when they work harder at the gym and pay for the privilege (and use up more resources getting their and using the exercise machines).
After all, getting beyond unsustainable means sources matching sinks--no net extraction of non-renewable resources, and extraction of renewable resources at well below the levels needed to maintain them. We have a long way to go, but this is how most of humanity lived through most of its existence.
I think the local thing is as much a matter of local resilience and connection building as anything. But if you get highly processed vegetarian food that is grown in the US, shipped to Asia for processing, then shipped back here for consumption, I'm not sure you're very far ahead of the game on total impact.
Is there any veggie food actually shipped around the world like that? I'm also much more worried about the common case, than the startling-but-rare case. Common case is the US is, we eat way too much beef (and pork), and drive too much in cars that are oversized for their cargo.
I think that if we get to the point that people are handwashing their laundry to save energy, then we have a serious problem. The energy used by a washing machine saves us a tremendous amount of time and effort; as far as "but you spend time at the gym", that physical effort is probably better applied to propelling a bicycle (I think this is true, and justifying the answer would be an interesting exercise in itself). There will be energy in the future, just not as cheap and probably not as abundant as it is today.
There is an Asian store near us with lots of great products. But I am betting that some of the soy products packaged in Japan were from beans grown in the US or Brazil. You are aware, I assume, that the average trip for most foods is about 1500 miles--much more for some items. So, yeah, I think you could easily come up with a veggie organic diet that consisted of foods that all came multiple thousands of miles to get to you.
But, yeah, people definitely should mostly be walking or biking to the grocery store (and most other places).
Let's not forget the effects of burning all these hydrocarbons.
CCS is yet to be proven over even a geologically short term. We're going to have to store the captured carbon for millennia without any significant leakage, so how long should the pilot project last? a couple of hundred years as a minimum seems reasonable to me. CCS is just another pie in the sky technofix, designed to salve consciences, not to save the planet.
We need a low-energy society, not just a low-carbon one.
When someone writes: “Concerns over gas availability and price appear to be alleviated by the unexpected growth of global shale gas production…”.
If this surmise is right, it will certainly be a wonderful thing. The view of most conventional analysts is that shale gas makes gas “forever” abundant and that the price link between oil and gas is broken.”
I am reminded of this:
After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and oil shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty. James Hansen p236 Storms of my Grandchildren, 2009.
I’m not sure that ‘a wonderful thing’ is the best description.
I am getting more ane more sympatic towards eco terrorism. Someone wanna help me plant some C4 down at Ras Tanura?
Just let me order a few spare bicycle parts first.
Now, now... let's not get carried away here! There are too many people out there who might think you are serious.
Anyways, there will be plenty of things collapsing of their own accord.
That's nonsense. Through most of its existence this planet has been ice-free. Having two polar ice caps means we are technically still in an ice age, albeit a warm period (interglacial) in one.
When the dinosaurs were on Earth, there was no permanent ice anywhere on the planet. There were dinosaurs wandering around Greenland and Antarcta (with very big eyes so they could see in the 6 months of winter darkness).
There was no "Venus syndrome" despite the fact that during some periods the Arctic Ocean was as warm as the Pacific Ocean off California is today, and the planet actually was cooling off when the dinosaurs went extinct. It was the Chicxulub meteor that killed off the dinosaurs, not global warming, and some experts believe global cooling may have contributed to their demise.
It is tempting to dismiss Hansen's comment with a "That's nonsense" but we should be tempered by the knowledge that it was Jim Hansen who was the lead scientist in unravelling the evolution of Venus's atmosphere and climate. We need to be absolutely 100% certain that it is nonsense before we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal and also burn the tar sands and oil shale. There is just a possibility that Hansen knows what he is talking about.
As I recall, Hansen discusses this very objection in his book "Storms of my Grandchildren," which it sounds like you are discussing. I don't have it in front of me, but as I recall his response was that the sun has gotten slightly hotter over the millions of intervening years, and this means that it doesn't take as many GHG emissions to create a runaway greenhouse effect.
He may be wrong, but it's not "nonsense."
Keith
That's right, Keith. The quote comes as the concluding paragraph of Hansen's chapter about Venus. A common misconception is that Venus is warmer because it's nearer the Sun and Mars colder because it's further away. The composition of the atmosphere is far more important.
Since the mean distance of Venus from the sun is 0.723 AU, solar radiation is about 1.9 times as intense as on earth. True, Earth's suface temperature of about 300 degrees is less than half of Venus' surface temperature of about 750K. However, the distance from the sun must have played a significant role in Earth's evolution. How else do you explain that Earth was cool enough for life to evolve and to subsequently modify the original carbon dioxide and water vapor atmosphere by photosynthesizing oxygen and sequestering most of the carbon in limestone and other carbon-rich rocks?
We all know the sun is gradually getting hotter, and that it will eventually fry the Earth, much as it has fried Venus.
It's not a problem for us because by that time we'll all be dead.
Our successors may have to deal with the problem, but that shouldn't be difficult. They'll just move the Earth farther from the Sun. We already know how to do it, the rest is just details.
It's not a big problem if you have the technology, which they will have by that time. We're talking about a very long period of time.
Underlying almost all these discussions is the premise that we need to find a way to continue the human experiment, the premise that human beings should last forever while it is expected that all other species will go the way of the dinosaur. The planet will get along better without the human race. The human race has fully demonstrated that its actions will destroy every living thing in its path in its qwest for survival, unlimited growth, and expansion.
If we are determined to somehow survive somewhere in the universe, suggest we shoot dna samples into space with cloning instructions in the event some future being is interested in starting a new human colony.
The "planet" itself doesn't care. It's just an existential nullity, a ball of rock and water signifying absolutely nothing.
The threshold for runaway (oceans turn to steam) is quite a bit higher than we are at today. A methane hydrate runaway is not the same animal at all -more like PETM-2.Most species survived PETM-1. We aren't about ready to cook all life out of the panet, although we could send things well outside of our comfort zone......
"The threshold for runaway (oceans turn to steam) is quite a bit higher than we are at today."
Please explain.
The average temperature of the ocean surface waters is about 17 degrees Celsius. The hottest ocean temperature (in the Persian Gulf) is 36 degrees Celsius. The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius, so we're a long, long way from seeing any oceans boil. In fact, they're all lower than human body temperature - the hottest you get is a warm bath.
nc
I was attempting a socratic approach. When scientists talk about runaway GHG's, they aren't really talking about Venus, they are simply talking about the climate warming in a way we can no longer control or manage in a meaningful way, and to a degree that causes serious problems for civilization.
Whether we ever reach the fiery levels of Venus is moot.
Hi Rocky,
Until recently, I may have agreed with you. However, after reading "Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future"
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928/...
I find Hansen's warning more credible.
The cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs has been proven almost beyond a doubt. We don't actually know what caused the other mass extinctions.
The problem is that plate tectonics would have recycled the ocean floor since the prior mass extinctions, so all the evidence of an ocean strike by a meteor would have been erased.
However, having determined that the dinosaurs were almost certainly wiped out by a meteor, it becomes the theory-of-choice for the other extinctions, unless someone comes up with a better idea.
The problem with the global warming theory is that the planet was extremely hot during most of the dinosaurs' reign, and it didn't seem to bother them a bit. In fact, they seem to have thrived on heat.
Humans aren't dinosaurs and humans, being mammals, can not live very long in an environment where the dew point temperature approaches their body temperature. The other issue is the situation regarding the location of the land masses when the dinosaurs lived compared to the present. The position of the continents did not support the present cycle of Ice Ages until the Isthmus of Panama closed some 3.3 million years ago. It's completely unreasonable to compare the situation of the Earth at 65 Ma with today's Earth, IMHO...
E. Swanson
nicely put
What has dew point got to do with it? (i.e. how is this relevant to the discussion).
Humans originally evolved in Africa, and most of them now live in cooler climates than equatorial Africa. In fact, human beings have quite a lot of heat tolerance, and most of them can live in much higher temperatures than they currently live in.
The invention of air conditioning has also made hot climates much more tolerable.
He's talking about the "wet bulb" threshold, which is the temperature at which we start to cook and soon die. It's not an absolute, but is a combination of heat, humidity and breeze, essentially.
It's estimated that about half the planet could reach this point if we don't manage emissions and start drawing down carbon from the atmosphere.
I don't think it's credible that temperatures and/or humidity will rise enough to be generally dangerous to human beings. As I said, human beings evolved in Africa, and the large majority of them live in climates which are cooler than they were designed for.
It's the combination of heat and humidity. If the air temperature is greater than body heat and it is saturated then water can condense in the lungs. Look back through National Geographic for an exploration of a Mexican cave filled with gypsum crystals. It is a more extreme example but it does highlight the danger that is causing concern
NAOM
If the air temperature is greater than body heat and it is saturated then water can condense in the lungs.
I doubt that would be a problem. The lungs would just take the condensed water and move it into the bloodstream. This is why you can breath in a steambath. We're not fish and we can't breath underwater, but a bit of moisture in the air is not a problem. I don't know if most people are aware that the lungs can do this.
The real problem is that the evaporative cooling system we have (sweating) becomes ineffective under these circumstances. We can't cool ourselves by sweating. However, in a tropical climate people have figured out how to manage the situation, even without air conditioning. If you look at their houses and clothing, you see all kinds of features which will keep people cool even when it is hot and humid outside. Of course air conditioning is the modern solution and can provide a temperate climate regardless of outside conditions.
The more common problem is dehydration. That's what usually kills people in hot conditions.
Dehydration is caused by sweating. In 100% humidity, sweat does not evaporate so the body is not cooled. Exceed the temperature that the body can shed heat to the air by radiation/conduction then you die of heatstroke. If you check the NG article they recount the issue of drowning in the condensed water. ISTR some workers died from this.
The combination, when temperatures exceed body heat and 100% humidity is deadly. When we get near body heat and 95% humidity even the slightest energy using action, eg just walking slowly, becomes a strain. Remember that A/C is not everywhere, you have to get out of your house/car somewhere. Dehydration OTOH is a slightly more complex issue and can be caused by a lack of salts as much as that of lack of water. If you exceed body heat/ 100% RH then dehydration is the least of your worries. Heat stroke or drowning will get you first.
NAOM
http://www.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/report-clim...
Once air temperature exceeds body heat the body cannot loose heat other than by being cooled. The natural way is by sweating. Sweating only works if the water can evaporate. If the humidity is 100% then the water cannot evaporate and the body cannot be cooled. Exceed body heat with 100% humidity you are in deep do-do and beware heatstroke incoming.
NAOM
It's not easy to tell just how great of a fundamental atmospheric shift we would find ourselves vulnerable to, RMG.
Sure, without even going back to our roots, we see humans in a wide range of environments today, hot to cold, dry to moist.. but then, that's across a global mean which supports many processes that are more ancient than our species, such as migration patterns and ecological balances.
It might not be our own respiratory comfort, but something as simple (!) as a wild imbalancing of pollens or molds that affect dependent species (pollenators or their predators), that affect air quality, that affects one or many of our key crops, or the ability of once-fertile soils to remain so.
We seem pretty resilient within this band that we've been living in.. but 'certain' little changes can cascade on us.
I doubt that the probable conditions we are likely to experience are any worse than what our ancestors have experienced already. I read a book called Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos by William James Burroughs, which details the changes our ancestors went through. All I can say is it is a miracle they survived. In fact, they almost didn't. The Neanderthal men, in particular, weren't as lucky as good old Homo Sap.
Another good read is The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization by Brian Fagan, which details the effects on human beings of the long interglacial period of the ice age we are currently living in.
Anyhow, having read these works, I'm convinced that our climate change survival skills are much better than you might think. Our ancestors had a lot of practice in surviving rapid climate change, of which there was a lot during their existence. The last few millennia have been pretty mellow by comparison.
1. We used to all live in Africa. No longer the case.
2. Our cities did not exist.
3. Our agricultural systems did not exist.
4. Our social systems did not exist.
5. Etc.
Comparing very mobile hunter-gatherer's ability to survive to very anchored, inflexible civilization now doesn't make much sense to me. These are very non-linear things and all very complex. Your view of things is amazingly simplified and not very applicable, imo. I could write a thesis on all the elements ignored in your remarks.
Despite your optimism, a number of civilizations have risen and fallen due to local climatic conditions in this "mellow" period.
RockyMtnGuy, you might want to read this and the underlying science.
Because?
Do you have any idea how few people on the planet have AC? Please, this is serious stuff. At least make a pretense of some respect for the people you are arguing with.
Hi Rocky,
Yes, the book I mentioned was dealing with the other mass extinctions. The author felt that the meteor strike explanation was being applied to quickly to events other than the dinosaur extinction and therefore did research that revealed some pretty compelling evidence for warming issues.
Given your comments, I suspect you would enjoy the book - I think it qualifies for a "better idea" candidate. Also, it is a pretty quick read.
This just in from the journal Nature regarding mass extinction in the Permian, thanks to a link sent by a friend:
"Coal-fired trigger of mass extinction: Fly ash in the frame for Permian die-off".
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110123/full/news.2011.38.html
"From meteor impacts to methane-ice release, the culprits behind the Permian–Triassic extinction event — which devastated life on Earth 250 million years ago — have yet to be pinned down. Now a new suspect joins the line-up: fly ash from burning coal.
A study published today in Nature Geoscience suggests that one trigger for the near-apocalyptic 'great die-off', which killed 96% of marine species and 70% of land-based vertebrate organisms, was a volcanic explosion in coal and shale deposits in Siberia. Within days, ash from the eruption, raining down onto the Canadian Arctic, sucked oxygen from the water and released toxic elements."
Just on more thing for experts to debate and work to prove/disprove over time, and the rest of us to ponder. Regardless of the causation and consequences of that event, human civilization developed to its current state, whatever you think of it, in the past 10K years or so (blink of a geologic eye!) in a particularly stable and relatively friendly climate regime. As the commercials used to say, its not nice to fool with mother nature.
Hi rootstock,
Thanks for the link - better than reading any mystery novel! And yes, I suspect that something like 1% of people really appreciate your comment about the stability of the last 10K or so.
RMG,
If some "economist" jumped up on TOD and stated that the Experts on future oil supplies were full of "nonsense", because we all know that supply equals demand and when demand goes up oil supplies will as well regardless of what the "experts" say about the finiteness of physics, you would probably be one of the first to tell them that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Hansen is without question one of the most knowledgeable scientists on climate. He has a very long track record of being correct. His opinions are supported by literally hundreds of other scientists who have conducted one of the most well researched and throughly checked out bodies of science ever performed. Maybe the most. All, and I do mean all, of that research and collected data has been shown to support that rapid climate change is happening and that it is being caused my human actions. There has been not one piece of scientific work performed that has been shown to be correctly done that suported the opposite conclusion. To decide that Hansen is wrong on a gut reaction or because one can recite something from a HS science book in no way reflects on the quality of his work. Best get to performing some research to back up your claim I guess.
If you get my meaning.
I'd tell him that he needed to back to his Economics 101 textbooks. It's true that supply almost always more or less equals demand, but that doesn't imply that if demand goes up, supply will follow it. In fact, if supply goes down due to non-economic factors, then demand must follow it down.
Good for him. I'd point out that nobody has yet been to Venus and checked the accuracy of his theories. When they get there, they might find he is totally wrong and the high temperatures are caused by factors that nobody has thought about yet. So far, it's just a theory. Many widely-believed theories have gone into the garbage bin of history when somebody developed the technology to check them against the facts.
At least two probes have landed on Venus. Claiming they have to go there o understand it is bogus on its face.
Try this puffery with real scientists over at RealClimate and see how soon you are relieved of your delusions. Or, you could just go read all the research.
You didn't address the core point: no science to back your claim. The wackiness that lets otherwise sane-seeming people deny a body of evidence so vast, and a body of evidence without a rival or single piece of evidence to overthrow it, boggles the mind.
At least two probes have landed on Venus. Claiming they have to go there o understand it is bogus on its face.
If the probes don't last or lack the correct instrumentation - what value were they to the debates about heat trapping in an atmosphere?
Straw man much?
Through most of its existence this planet has been ice-free.
Irrelevant. We are talking about now, not all of existence.
Having two polar ice caps means we are technically still in an ice age, albeit a warm period (interglacial) in one.
Huh? Glacial and inter-glacial are the same? Cite? If so, you learn something new every day.
When the dinosaurs were on Earth, there was no permanent ice anywhere on the planet. There were dinosaurs wandering around Greenland and Antarcta (with very big eyes so they could see in the 6 months of winter darkness).
Again, irrelevant. You are arguing that if it rained last week, it must rain this week.
There was no "Venus syndrome" despite the fact that during some periods the Arctic Ocean was as warm as the Pacific Ocean off California is today, and the planet actually was cooling off when the dinosaurs went extinct.
Then is not now. We, as pointed out below, are not dinosaurs. It's irrelevant what they survived in. We didn't evolve during those times and, more importantly, our civilization is not adapted to a much hotter world. More so, no other change, with the exception of the impact ELE, has ever come this fast. Other climate changes happened over tens of thousand, and even more commonly, millions of years, allowing adaptation. We are talking about decades to, if we are lucky and smart and act soon, hundreds of years.
Unless you can prove GHG's are not increasing and are not GHG's, you are wasting your time.
It was the Chicxulub meteor that killed off the dinosaurs, not global warming, and some experts believe global cooling may have contributed to their demise.
From the impact. But a dust-filled atmosphere from an impact isn't really comparable to anthropogenic warming, is it?
Easy. When there are permanent icecaps the earth is experiencing an ice-age. But during an ice-age ice tends to advance and retreat due to warmer and colder periods. Those periods are called glacial and inter-glacial. See wikipedia.
"Easy."
Please, pat someone else on the head. Nothing more irritating than being asked to be "easy" when one is not "not easy."
As I said, learn something new every day. This is a good example of how confusing jargon can be. Until this point, and I have read reams on climate, I'd never read that narrow definition of "ice age" and don't recall the distinction being made in anything I've read or listened to.
I don't find it a useful distinction in this conversation, but understand its usefulness to scientists.
The basic scientific facts are that Venus is a completely different planet than this one. It is much closer to the sun and gets much more solar radiation. Its atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide compared to 0.04% for Earth. The atmospheric pressure is 92 times as high as on Earth. It lacks a magnetic field and doesn't experience plate tectonics. You can't extrapolate from anything that happens on Venus to anything that happens on Earth.
But, my basic point was that we are experiencing a relatively cold period in Earth's history. For most of its history it has been much warmer than this. We are, in fact, in an ice age. My fears of runaway temperature effects during an ice age are minimal. I'm more worried about another glaciation event.
You can frame denial any way you wish, of course, but your points are still not meaningful or useful. Why are you stuck on Venus? Who cares about Venus? Besides, your assertion is incorrect. We can extrapolate information learned from other systems to things we know here. It's false on the face of it.
You seem to be trying to build a straw man argument that Earth is a direct proxy of Venus, which nobody is claiming.
Another logical fallacy: because we're in an ice age, dangerous warming can't occur. Again, false on the face of it.
You do make a point about long-term cooling. There should be another glacial period in our future, but that is all the more reason to keep the FF's we have in the ground so we can keep long term CO2 at a level that keeps that at bay. I wouldn't worry, though. We've already put enough GHGs in the atmosphere to keep it warm a minimum of 1k years.
Storms of my Grandchildren should be mandatory reading for every 5th grader and anyone holding public office.
The Land of Fog, above the 50th parallel, doesn't get much sunshine? This is shocking.
I say go for wind. You just need a lot more of it.
Wave, tide and nuclear - but that's TOO easy.
garyp
The report by The Royal Academy of engineering shows costs of production, any country that has wind needs a backup of 100% of wind for days of high pressure calms. Which back would you have and at what cost?
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_Generation_C...
If you are Denmark; Swedish and Norwegian hydro power.
If you just don't happen to have a neighbour or two with relatively overwhelming spare electric capacity they can turn on and off with a mouse click, my next best bet is stationary bikes with electric generators in the basement.
HV DC links to Norway (England) and Iceland (Scotland) will do nicely.
Alan
UK better restart the project of building such a link to Norway.
(Its a long time since I read something new about the project. )
Thanks. I would point out that this winter, Norway's water levels are at an historic "low". Far from supplying power, Norway is depending on all Denmark's and Finland's fossil-fired plants to keep its own lights on!
As well as Danish wind and Finnish (and Swedish) nukes.
However, Norway has such a surplus of hydroelectric that management may be buying some bargain power (like the Swiss do almost every night from the French), but I doubt that Norway will be a net power importer for an extended period.
Any links ?
Hydro can still be used to balance wind in a drought. Just burn more FF (as efficiently as possible) to keep the water in the reservoir till needed.
Alan
http://www.nordpoolspot.com/reports/reservoir/Reservoir-content-Norway/ from this location, you can also check out the reservoir levels in Finland and Sweden
I am quite aware of hydro operations. In a drought, use them sparingly but still use them for peak demand and to balance wind (above the minimum required "fish water" to keep fish downstream alive).
Alan
Something widely ignored in the US.
I'm speaking as a person who has toured the historic salmon-processing towns of the Columbia river, which reached their peak back when there was a large salmon run on the Columbia. It's gone now.
I've also toured the Grand Coulee Dam, which is very impressive, but was a significant factor in wiping out the salmon in the Columbia. That, and the other 32 dams the salmon had to climb to get to their spawning grounds.
Too bad the Chinese seem to be emulating some of our errors at least on the Mekong.
The trades offs are always tough. The bigger the projects the tougher the trade offs. When it comes to big dams, national mindset (including what may be very subjectively called the state of enlightenment) and the economic situation will dictate what gets traded off.
And about double the normal snowfall on low areas where people live and about half the normal snowfall on high areas where the melt water fills the dams, this is a cold and wierd winter in scandinavia.
Guest post coming on Norwegian hydro and interconnectors linking to it. Need to wait 10 days or so.
you could start here, no fancy technologies with esoteric chemicals only inert argon (extracted from the atmosphere ) gravel and a heat pump. manufacturing in place. This would be very easy to ramp up, $10 a kilowatt hour storage. Proof of concept done now in the middle of scaling up to pilot plant size.
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
What's the problem? apart from the fact that our politicians don't have a brain cell between them and don't seem to realise that expensive electricity is better than no electricity.
Already built natural gas plants plus a bit of conservation.
Later, when more nukes come on-line and some older coal fired plants are retired, more pumped storage.
Back-up problem solved.
Alan
Given England is the home of replacing the bones of dead nuke workers with broomsticks - its quite easy to show how safe nukes are - once you pull out the cancerous bones of the dead!
http://www.theredferninquiry.co.uk/files/active/0/sellafeld%206.doc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-11768944
And as for "this NEW design is safer" I present
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-pla...
An "advanced design" isn't gonna mean squat if the people can't handle the wastestream.
"Bones were even replaced with broomstick handles so no-one would become suspicious at the funerals."
Hilarious!
Hilarious!
Yes. Ha, ha - thinking that the dead or the alive felt being would care!
You have wind OR fog. You could have solar energy where is dry and windy and... Fat quadrupedal ruminant mammals where is foggy and grass-covered.
I appreciate the analysis, even if it didn't brighten my morning.
Seems consistent with Hirsch's view of the nonviability of renewable and lack of concern of climate change. I guess that's the realist's view. It was only a few years ago that renewables seemed to offer so much promise. Ah, but that was so long ago.
Renewables work, but they ARE location dependent. The UK is in rough shape for solar access, there is wind, and then wave if a workable technology comes about.
Of course, it might have been helpful to show a wind chart up top that wasn't just drawn from two days last month, 'when wind didn't deliver'. or at least have another line on that chart that shows the annual average.
We have had workable UK tidal plans for over a century.
There once were a lot of 'Tide Mills' in Maine as well.
Maybe we'll find ourselves making our toast instead of just our bread on the tide charts again someday?
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/molinologist/rawson6.html
EDIT: NOT to forget, of course, that you will have to eat your toast in the dark, since renewables will NOT be able to keep the lights on.
- That is all.
They have wind and they are developing it. They just need to do a lot more ...
http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/14/news/economy/wind_power_technology/index...
They'll have to figure out storage. Pumped hydro could handle a lot of it. I still think hydrogen is going to be important. With a large enough pipeline grid, you can also store a lot of energy in there.
These guys say 120GWh with a 1000 miles of pipe:
http://www.leightyfoundation.org/files/windpower_may03.pdf
That is, by varying the pressure between 500 psi and fully packed at 1000 psi... So, 30,000 miles of pipe at $1 million per, gives 3,600 GWh for $30 billion. I say do it.
Guys, please let's all get real.
The round trip efficiency AC/AC, using hydrogen as the storage medium, is at best about 30%.
Electricity to hydrogen, about 72% (optimistically)
Hydrogen to storage, (say) 90%
Hydrogen storage to electricity (at best) 40%
Round trip efficiency electricity to electricity using hydrogen 72% * 90% * 40% = 26%
That is simply awful!
After half a life-time in renewable technologies, the general lack of realistic storage technologies available is my main motive for earning my living by selling industrial batteries (www.pdenergy.com). These are roughly 70 - 75% efficient. But I do not kid myself, nor anyone else, that these can be economic for any longer than about 8 hours of storage (at rated capacity).
No more significant amounts of incremental, new pumped hydro can be built anywhere in mainland Europe.
The above statement is so obviously false as to be ridiculous and to raise questions about the agenda of anyone claiming it.
30 seconds of googling will turn up links showing that over 7 GW of pumped storage is currently either under construction or in planning stages in Europe. Simple common sense would indicate that there are thousands of dams in Europe with power generation capability and no pumping facilities, so pumped hydro "can be built" by adding pumps.
From the link below
"Conclusion
• Over 7GW of New PHES proposed in Europe
• Most Plant are utilizing exiting resources or
are Pump Back type
• Wide range of costs 0.47-2.17 €m/MW. Very
Site/Project Specific."
http://hmrc.ucc.ie/econdocs/Pdf/12-Deane.pdf
Before you get all self-righteous and finger-pointing, please stop to do a few sums. It's not as false and ridiculous as it looks at first sight.
The most useful figure of merit is the the storable ENERGY (in GWh) not just the installed capacity. Taking Dinorwig as an example, it can run at 1.8GW for 6 hours = 10.8GWh.
7 GW of installed PHES capacity with storage proportional to Dinorwig gives you about 42 GWh. Reckoning total average UK demand (never mind the whole of Europe) at 30GW (very roughly) and 20% wind penetration to be buffered over calm periods gives you 6GW of demand to buffer. With the above storage you'd get, very roughly, 7 hours.
Nothing like enough for a calm period of a week or more. Not a "significant amount", in other words.
That presumes that;
- No smart grid measures would change the demand load
- No change in demand from increased building energy efficiency, from insulation, lighting, new building standards, and much more efficient HVAC
- No storage via other methods such as CAES, ammonia, etc.
7 Hours of FULL backup storage is indeed significant, especially when one considers the use of fast spinup, cheap natural gas turbines to help fill the gaps.
What is 'false and ridiculous" is the claim that "No more significant amounts of incremental, new pumped hydro can be built anywhere in mainland Europe."
7 GW is just the pumped storage that is currently planned. The idea that the current pumped storage plans are all that "can be built anywhere in mainland Europe" is simply false and ridiculous. I can easily find 1000 potential sites in France alone, on existing reservoirs, without counting the additional potential from pumping and releasing sea-water.
Norway could dam a fjord and have many gigawatts of pumped storage from a single installation. Obviously there are environmental consequences to such a project, but to claim that it is impossible is just not true.
Thank you Tommyvee,
But let's keep the dialogue civil please.
I was aware of the new (2 GW) capacity being built in Portugal, specifically to balance the new wind that Portugal is also building. And the 1 GW that will bring Germany's PHES capacity to roughly 8 GW.
I am most obliged to you for this useful study and the link. But with due respect, given that Europe's (mostly thermal) generation capacity is over 600 GW, 7 GW of new (and proposed) pumped hydro is pretty small stuff.
As the study points out and you have quoted, new pumped storage in our crowded continent is highly site specific. It always controversial on environmental grounds.
In the UK, which is the subject of my paper, Scottish & Southern have a permit to build a 50 MW PHES.
When this has been built, that will be "it". More or less.
I have absolutely no secret "agenda" in writing this paper except to state the obvious. That the UK is between a rock and a very hard place, vis a vis "keeping the lights on".
Thank you Tommyvee,
But let's keep the dialogue civil please.
I was aware of the new (2 GW) capacity being built in Portugal, specifically to balance the new wind that Portugal is also building. And the 1 GW that will bring Germany's PHES capacity to roughly 8 GW.
I am most obliged to you for this useful study and the link. But with due respect, given that Europe's (mostly thermal) generation capacity is over 600 GW, 7 GW of new (and proposed) pumped hydro is pretty small stuff.
As the study points out and you have quoted, new pumped storage in our crowded continent is highly site specific. It always controversial on environmental grounds.
In the UK, which is the subject of my paper, Scottish & Southern have a permit to build a 50 MW PHES.
When this has been built, that will be "it". More or less.
I have absolutely no secret "agenda" in writing this paper except to state the obvious. That the UK is between a rock and a very hard place, vis a vis "keeping the lights on".
This article mentions that existing pumped storage in Europe is 38 gigawatts, or more than 5% of 600 GW generation and that there is potential to "significantly increase", in direct contradiction to your claim. I recognize that there are environmental and financial issues with pumped storage and for this reason installing pumps on existing reservoirs is preferable before new projects, but both will occur.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/business/global/20iht-rbogisle.html
"Europe has installed 38 gigawatts of pump storage, most of it connected to fossil fuel generators, but it has 140 gigawatts more of installed hydroelectric capacity and Mr. Sweatman said “there is potential to significantly increase pump storage as old European hydro installations are renewed.”
“The economics of pump storage combined with intermittent renewable energy are very good, under the right circumstances,” he added.
Those not only include technical issues like water availability, but also high energy commodity prices, a wide electricity market price differential between peak and off-peak demand, and a lower cost of generating renewable power as technology improves."
And let's not forget the entire smart grid concept that include smart appliances/HVAC, (in-advance) spot pricing, etc, nor forget vastly improving building efficiency upgrades (new and renovated).
Also don't ignore CAES for additional storage.
And by all means don't ignore geothermal power, as Europe, the US, Australia, etc have resources to replace their current levels of conventional thermal power generation with EGS. According to the head of the German Geothermal Association, Werner Bussmann, "Geothermal sources could supply Germany’s electricity needs 600 times over." Even if he is off by a factor of 3 orders of magnitude, there would still be 3 times the geothermal potential for all of Germany's electricity and heating needs.
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2009/11nov/german1109.cfm
So you have not even begun to scratch the surface of renewables and modern grid management concepts, so the phrase "Renewables can't keep the lights on" is speculative at best, and most likely entirely false as an encompassing proposition.
US Geothermal Power Resources
European Geothermal Power Resources
No more significant amounts of incremental, new pumped hydro can be built anywhere in mainland Europe.
Simply false and supports my suspicion of an "agenda".
Alan
Yes he did seem to tip his hand some there. No significant amount of new pumped hydro in Great Britain I could swallow. Mainland Europe goes all the way to the Urals. I can't believe the old east block is that fully developed.
The old eastern block is quite flat until you get to the Urals; the big rivers in Ukraine and in western Russia were dammed in the Stalin and Krushchev eras, and I think Romania gets 1.5GW mostly from the Danube. On the other hand, the first page I found googling for Carpathian hydro-electricity says 'the hydro-electric potential of the Carpathians is unexploited'
Tha nations that once made up Yugoslavia are quite mountainous. The Tatra mountains on the border of Slovakia and Poland, In fact, a topographic map of Poland with several regions of interest for pumped storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polen_topo.jpg
Slovakia is 2/3rds mountainous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slovakia_topo.jpg
Romania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romania-relief.png
Bulgaria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bulgarien_EN.png
and on and on.
Alan
I took a look at a couple pages on Polish hydro. We are not talking British Columbia type potential here and much is utilized--though some with old, poorly designed projects. Big fish migration issues.
This article sums up most of the hydro envisioned in the near future, mostly small stations. But it makes no mention of pumped hydro. The only mention of pumped hydro I found was that a large part of hydro power currently produced comes from large hydro stations with their own pumped hydro capacity.
The Poles burn coal. Coal plants can load follow and be dispatched as needed. The Poles thus have little need for pumped storage, therefore no plans.
Build more transmission to Germany and that may well change. Periodic "free" wind power will serve as an economic incentive for this to happen,
Best Hopes,
Alan
I had similar thoughts, though "free power" is not how I'd term it but rather that Poland would earn a cut from the storage.
The Poles are one of the biggest players in the European coal game, but it appears considerable restructuring of that industry is underway.
I'm no engineer but it would seem some environmentally enlightened designs could be used for pumped hydro storage. Not a bad way to invest money earned exporting coal.
as a related aside: Polish coal power plants don't seem to have had the maintenance they should have, but I'm guessing that is hardly a unique situation in the former east block.
And what's the efficiency of gasoline ICE's?
A lot of the viability of hydrogen depends on fuel cells. If fuel cells -- as expected -- become cheap enough, your numbers become gibberish. We will have hydrogen pipelines, because that's the only way to get the hydrogen to the fueling stations.
I doubt that. You can use the ocean as lower reservoir. Got any oceans around there?
Try comparing apples to apples. An ICE is not an energy storage technology. When lead-acid batteries have a round-trip efficiency of around 80%, and hydrogen electrolysis and fuel-cell recombination is much, much less, it's hard to see why hydrogen will be 'important.'
How will fuel cells becoming cheaper increase the efficiency of electrolysis, which is already a bit worse than batteries?
Unless the source of energy going into storage is really cheap (and it's not going to be), then round-trip efficiency of storage is going to be the most significant factor in which storage tech is chosen.
Gasoline is stored solar energy.
HughSharman was commenting on the "round trip efficiency" of using hydrogen. I didn't spell it out, but I was inviting him to look at the round trip efficiency of gasoline in an ICE. I think you'll find it is extremely low, even though we didn't put the stored solar energy in the ground in the first place. Consider that a barrel of oil underground has 5.8 million BTUs in it. How much of that energy goes to your wheels? I think you could count the percentage points on one hand.
It is not ideal, but we deal with it.
You are framing this issue as any battery salesman would frame it. The thing we really want to know is how much would a kg of hydrogen cost at the filling station. If it's $5 or less, and there are sufficiently inexpensive fuel cells, gasoline ICEs will disappear pretty quickly and be replaced by hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. Battery powered cars will not compete well with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars due to weight. The battery pack in an electric car tends to weigh 400 to 900 pounds. The fuel cells on a Honda Clarity weigh 150 pounds and take up much less space.
So, if something like the Honda Clarity becomes economic (all major car manufacturers are also working on fuel cells), people will want to buy them. This means the hydrogen will be piped to fueling stations (hydrogen can't be trucked economically over any great distance.... do the math). If fuel cell vehicles become sufficiently cheap, even $10/kg hydrogen will make them work. But I think you'll find that wind-elec powered electrolyzers and pipelines will be capable of delivering $5/kg hydrogen over long distances.
According to this report, we can get a kg of hydrogen with 52.4 kwh.
http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4310610.pdf
That's a reasonable statement, but the issues are complicated. In the US, the best wind resources are in areas where there would not be much demand for the power (roughly in the midsection of the country from below the Texas panhandle to the Canadian border).
In order to utilize these stranded wind resources, we'd need a very large transmission and distribution system. The basic choices would be high voltage power lines or hydrogen pipeline. I think the hydrogen pipeline will be preferable because you get a lot of storage from it (e.g., fully packed at 1000 psi and down to 500 psi still serviceable), as opposed to no storage in the power lines.
I want to add that I think hydrogen fuel cell cars and battery power cars may co-exist. And, there are reasons we should want them to coexist. In a renewable energy powered transportation system, battery powered vehicles could be a significant energy storage system. Time-of-use metering for charging cars could help ensure they are getting charged when we need to store the electricity.
A lot of the viability of hydrogen depends on fuel cells. If fuel cells -- as expected -- become cheap enough, your numbers become gibberish.
Really? Because the Doctor (in Science!) who is the organizer of the European Fuel Cell Forum in Lucerne sees things different:
Ulf Bossel: There is no future to a hydrogen economy because it is much too wasteful.
This is baloney. I already answered this. See above.
"Too Wasteful" is highly subjective. He may be right. But if he's right, we should all take our cars to the junkyard immediately and have them made into scrap metal so we will have plenty for bicycles. It is absolutely true that cars, and the system we have for fueling them, are incredibly wasteful.
However, I don't think people are going to give up cars any time soon. So, we have to look at how cars will be fueled. Hydrogen will work fine if fuel cells become cheap enough.
This is baloney.
The argument - appeal to authority:
The readers can look at what you said "make the fuel cells cheap" or the readers can go read what the good Doctor who runs the Fuel Cell conference says about Hydrogen fuel cells.
Then readers can read what he says about other types of fuel cells.
(or listen to the podcasts if you'd rather have it from his own lips)
From the watt podcast link some other statements:
The announcement was about how they were no longer going to have Hydrogen fuel cell (PEM) discussions at the conference.
I already answered this. See above.
And I quoted your above - If fuel cells -- as expected -- become cheap enough
Note how Dr. Bossel's argument still stands if your position of even $0 fuel cells came into existance.
I don't think people are going to give up cars any time soon. So, we have to look at how cars will be fueled.
And that is an entirely different argument than fuel cells.
A solution for cars has already been mentioned - http://www.ruf.dk The only way that has a chance of being implemented is if magical superconductors come into existance that can superconduct at, say 70 C. Then a new grid would have a reason to be built - a grid that does something like power transport.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your point except that you say "Dr. Bossel said so." Did Honda, GM, Toyota, Hundai, and other major car companies drop their plans for hydrogen fuel cell cars because "Dr. Bossel said so?"
I think they're pretty serious about it.
Honda:
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
GM:
http://www.gm.com/vehicles/innovation/fuel-cells/
Toyota:
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/toyota-fuel-cell-vehicle-demon...
Hundai:
http://www.worldcarfans.com/110122230143/hyundai-tucson-ix-hydrogen-fuel...
Since they are investing billions developing this technology, don't you think they figure there will be a way to get the hydrogen to fueling stations?
This Argonne National Lab report says, "While hydrogen may be transported in a number of possible forms, pipelines currently appear to be the most economical means of moving it in large quantities over great distances."
http://corridoreis.anl.gov/documents/docs/technical/APT_61012_EVS_TM_08_...
Maybe they did their homework?
DOE:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/fuelcells/
There was quite a lot of hydrogen talk from all the major car companies circa year 2000. The former DaimlerChrysler company once promised 40,000 hydrogen fuel-cell cars by 2004 - but did not even get close to delivering, and ended up talking about just 20 such vehicles.
Across the automotive industry, most of this initial enthusiasm has since faded away - possibly upon the gradual realization that hydrogen is an expensive and unwieldy energy storage medium, rather than a true energy source. And if you look at the links given in the post by 'dechert' for Honda, GM and Toyota, the grand total of hydrogen vehicles from all three companies seems to be just 420 cars (200[Honda] + 100[GM] + 120[Toyota]). Only Hyundai hints at larger numbers of hydrogen cars, but these are not due until 2015 (and much can change in 4+ years). Who is going to invest the vast sums of money needed to create a hydrogen delivery infrastructure, with such boutique-sized market numbers in the air?
So it would seem that hybrids like the Toyota Prius (and soon battery models like the Nissan Leaf) have already started grabbing significant chunks of the market space once envisioned for hydrogen.
This depends entirely on the cost of fuel cells. They probably need to get down to $50 per kw or less. Right now, they are probably over $1000 per kw.
Also, I think there will be battery powered cars and hydrogen powered cars. Both will find a reason for existence.
This depends entirely on the cost of fuel cells.
Prove this.
Show how much it costs to make and store Hydrogen.
The future is fact-free.
Well, I gave a link to this report already. Did you read it?
According to this report, we can get a kg of hydrogen with 52.4 kwh.
http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4310610.pdf
Until someone shows me this is wrong, I going with what these guys said...
120 GWh per thousand miles of pipe. $1 million per mile.
http://www.leightyfoundation.org/files/windpower_may03.pdf
The Internet is a big place with many non-English speakers.
Thusly I can understand your lack of understanding of what a Doctor in them-thar Science-y things has to say.
Once your above cited links start shipping in mass what you claim is a reality - then rational people might consider what you have to say as any kind of truth.
Because I can point to GE claiming they'd ship a CHiP PEM fuel cell in 2003. It is now 2011 - and I still can't buy what was claimed would be an option by now.
Since they are investing billions developing this technology, don't you think they figure there will be a way to get the hydrogen to fueling stations?
Really? That is the best you can do as a rebuttal?
Billons invested? Do your links REALLY support that claim?
Tell ya what. Man up and show how Don Lancaster is wrong.
http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp
If your POV is correct - show how Don Lancaster is wrong. I'd also accept how Dr. B is wrong. (yet you can't show the math. Why is that? Oh, yea, that is because you are wrong. Wrongy Mc Wronginton. Mr. Incorrect. Wrong. Not right. How much more pointing out how you are Wrong will it take for you to show actual math VS handwaving?)
Because the astute reader will note how an actual Dr. has claimed actual Physics has stated actual Physics does not support a Hydrogen economy - and your response is handwaving.
Go ahead - Show the math that Dr. B is wrong.
My guess is you can't show you are right with actual math and references to the CRC bible.
You seem pretty enamored by Dr. B... being an actual PhD and all. Yes, I noticed he has a PhD from Berkeley no less.... where I went to school a long time ago ... and where Jerry Brown went to school. I've known lots of Berkeley PhDs and I still do. Some of my collaborators on various projects are Berkeley professors. I also know that I would never accept anything a Berkeley PhD says unquestioningly -- they are wrong, quite often, too.
There is no point going through the math with you in any detail. What Dr. B is saying is highly subjective. We know hydrogen is not very efficient as a storage medium. There is also the point about water ... you need lots of water, which, fortunately, gets recycled. And, I actually agree there is unlikely to be a "hydrogen economy." But I am not suggesting a "hydrogen economy." I am suggesting a renewable energy economy. Hydrogen is very likely to have a role to play. How big a role depends on a lot of factors.
The jury is still out on hydrogen. Just because some car makers have not delivered on some promises in recent years, doesn't mean it will never work. Hydrogen ICE is not so great, either, but it's all relative. We may see a lot more H-ICE. Gasoline powered cars are going to look worse and worse. The fuel (gasoline @ $3/gal and rising) for a 30 mpg car is 10 cents per mile. $5/kg hydrogen would fuel the Honda Clarity at 8 cents per mile. Although the fuel cost per mile for battery-powered cars is less than gasoline or hydrogen, batteries have some serious limitations.
Here is something else Dr. B and/or you may not agree with or understand: We can't survive on average EROI less than one. However, this does not mean we won't fund production/consumption activities with EROI less than one. In fact, we do it all the time. At this point gasoline may be approaching EROI=1. It could even go less than one. This does not mean we will instantly stop buying gasoline and stop driving. It means that this activity must be subsidized by other high energy activities that yield high EROI. We choose to subsidize this very wasteful and inefficient activity aka driving cars around. We'll probably continue to do this as long as we think we can afford to do it, despite whatever arguments from physics/math Dr. B or anyone else presents.
Also, with respect to hydrogen production, there are some heat-driven processes that may work well with high-temperature concentrating solar. We'll have to see about that. We're just starting to see solar thermal power towers being built.
See page 13
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/h2_tech_roadmap.pdf
A renewable energy economy will employ many different technologies and strategies. In some cases, hydrogen may be the best alternative among some not-so-great alternatives.
Are we going to use wind resources that are currently stranded? For a renewable energy based US economy, we will need ways to move large amounts of energy all over the country -- probably 70% of renewable energy will be produced in the Western half of the US. My opinion is that a hydrogen pipeline grid will be part of the answer.
There is no point going through the math with you in any detail. .... The jury is still out on hydrogen.
Lets see - Dr. B lays out how the math doesn't work AND therefore the idea of a Hydrogen economy won't work.
And your position is - I won't show the math AND oh, Hydrogen can work.
Math and material science that do work are things like the Stranded Wind/Ammonia solution. Where Hydrogen is teamed up with Nitrogen. Even the seafuel effort of the 1970's - another pairing of Hydrogen - this time with Carbon avoids the material science problems.
But go ahead.
Show the math. Show the numbers for storing the Hydrogen.
(I'd reference the post where a TODer showed how 1 ton of steel was needed to store $11 of Hydrogen but the link was in the now gone profiles)
My opinion is that a hydrogen pipeline grid will be part of the answer.
And this is only because of fuel cells being "too expensive"? Do you have any idea of what the material science of storing Hydrogen is?
Again, you are hoisting strawmen. I'm not arguing for a "Hydrogen economy." I am arguing for renewable energy economy, in which hydrogen may have an important role.
Ammonia is likely to be important as well. This is a good point. But it is not either/or. "Hydrogen formed via electrolysis will be combined with nitrogen from air...." see pg 31.
http://renewables.morris.umn.edu/wind/conferences/2007/Reese-WindToAmmon...
Since your favored ammonia solution involves H2 from wind, it appears you are attacking your own "no hydrogen" strawman.
Hydrogen storage will mainly involve packing it in the pipeline. I don't think hydrogen storage tanks or trucking will be useful.
I'm no expert, but I know a little about it.
I wouldn't bother even if you could find it. It would show extreme ignorance. If we use hydrogen in a significant way, it would not touch steel (other than perhaps some stainless steel fittings) and would not be stored in tanks. The hydrogen will be contained within non-metallic linings. I'm not sure you are getting this part of the proposal: the hydrogen would be stored in the pipeline grid itself by allowing the pressure to vary.
We have hundreds of miles of hydrogen pipeline in the US for many years now, in a production environment. So, it's not like we have no experience with it.
This presentation says, "Assume H2 enters pipeline at 1000 psi pressure and the allowable pressure drop is 300 psi." (pg 10)
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/hpwgw_code_smith.pdf
And they quote "DOE 2015 target for hydrogen delivery" at $800k per mile. Other estimates say $1 million. So, I use $1 million for transmission and distribution capital cost. Also, note that the problem of embrittlement of steel mantra is largely irrelevant, because the hydrogen won't be touching steel pipes. It is likely to be fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP).
A real good estimate of how much you could store in the pipeline -- and how much it would cost -- is way beyond the scope of anything I would be willing or able to accomplish in a blog post. My budget for that is hovering around zero. All I can do amounts to back-of-the-envelope estimates, but I think it's okay to give some idea.
Again, I refer you to this paper. I haven't checked all the math, but it has Alvin Duskin's name on it, whom I know to be a very competent and accomplished person. So, I assume it is reasonable.
http://www.leightyfoundation.org/files/windpower_may03.pdf
Anyway, this paper asserts 120 GWh storage in 1000 miles of 36 inch pipe. This storage capacity exists since the pressure can be varied from 1000 psi and 500 psi. My reading suggests this may be conservative. We may be able to have much higher pressures, and 300 psi is adequate on the low end for most service requirements.
I've seen estimates that we have 300,000 miles of natural gas pipeline in the US. I will assume a similar length for a fully-developed nationwide hydrogen pipeline. Also, I think the hydrogen pipeline grid should be built keeping in mind that it will eventually replace the natural gas pipeline grid. The same rights-of-way would be used, for much of it. In some cases, the H2 pipeline would carry natural gas until the local customers are ready for H2. We could start removing the decades-old and faulty natural gas pipes. Why might that be a good idea? You might ask the families of the 8 people torched to death in a recent gas pipe explosion.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39159597/ns/us_news-life/
The pipeline would consist of several different pipe sizes. For the moment, let's assume 100,000 would be 36 inch. So, 100 x 120 gives 12,000 GWh of storage just in the 36 inch pipe. How much the hydrogen pipeline would be called on for storage is just a guess. But it might not be as much as one would think because if we're connected all over the country, there would be renewable source contributing to it all the time since if it's not windy in one place, it's likely to be windy somewhere else.
If the hydrogen pipeline grid came out to $1 million per mile, that would be $300 billion. Given that we can expect to spend $40 trillion on energy expenditures (assuming no economic collapse) over the next 20 years, the hydrogen pipeline grid amounts to less than 1 percent of the overall expenditures for energy.
This alone would not solve all of the storage problem, but it doesn't have to. There are other very good ways to store power from electric sources -- like pumped hydro. What the pipeline grid gives you is interstate connection of users and producers. It has advantages over electric grid connection because it will be potentially more flexible and more fault tolerant.
For example, if, say, we install 700 GW of wind in stranded areas in the middle of the country, using electric power transmission and distribution system everything has to be sized for maximum output since wind power surges could bring down the whole system if not properly sized. On average, a power grid properly sized to handle these 700 GW would be under utilized and inefficient.
As for hydrogen generation, I already gave you this link, which indicates $500/kw for electrolyzers. So, figure another $350 billion for that. Again, less than 1 percent of overall energy expenditures we'd expect over 20 years.
http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4310610.pdf
The electrolyzer costs could be mitigated somewhat because you don't really need the capacity to match all the power output. I would guess that in the model (100s of GW of wind turbines pumping H2 into a massive pipeline) some of the turbines would be dedicated to H2 production and some would not. Where they are not connected to the power grid, this could be a savings. For example, you might have clusters of turbines connected to a single large H2 production plant.
Here is another paper with a lot of detail on what a hydrogen pipeline grid would entail.
http://corridoreis.anl.gov/documents/docs/technical/APT_61012_EVS_TM_08_...
I already gave you a target price of $5 per kg of compressed hydrogen, and documentation to back that up. Even if it comes out to a little more than that, it would be fine. It is not cheap energy but it doesn't have to be. It would fill a need that other resources can't fill. If you can't figure out why we don't always use the cheapest sources for energy, try to figure out why we are willing to pay $3+ for a gallon of gasoline. It may be "uneconomic" by some calculations, but it is still considered a necessity for most people.
Anyway, I've given you links to many credible sources. There is no indication you've read any of it. All you do is come back and say, "Dr. B says no hydrogen." If that's all you got, I am not interested. Try thinking for yourself for a change.
Again, you are hoisting strawmen.
Really? You have never addressed the loss of energy of taking water and making H2.
But you come up with some fine handwaving.
A Million a mile for a pipe yet:
1,020-mile TCGP, which is estimated to cost between $2 billion and $3 billion to construct,
$40 bil for 2000 miles
Both are far more than your "estimate" - and for somthing that is far simpler to contain and doesn't loose 2% a day due to leakage.
Of course the math showing the energy used to convert Water to H2 and then back shows its a stupid idea. But lets look at the cost of using a 138kV line shall we?
new 138 kV overhead line costs approximately $390000 per mile
$.39 million a mile is less than 1 million. And less than $20 million a mile
And you have NEVER bothered to show how Don Lancaster is wrong.
http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp
Mr. Lancaster and Dr. B have both said taking electricity and making Hydrogen is a bad idea. You've been challenged to show their calculations as incorrect. Your "rebuttal" is to show pricing that is more expensive than wire to move electrons and far less than what it costs to move natual gas - a far easier product to contain.
And no where do the pro Hydrogen people talk about the effects of H2 being loose in the environment - at least when they are talking about how great a Hydrogen economy will be.
Since your favored ammonia solution involves H2 from wind, it appears you are attacking your own "no hydrogen" strawman.
You appear to not understand that the storage and transport of Hydrogen is "problematic". Taking H2 and making it for your industrial end use works. Keeping H2 stored and transporting it doesn't.
Try thinking for yourself for a change.
And its obvious that trying to provide an education to you is pointless.
The rest of the readers of this exchange - go read Lancaster. Go read Dr. Ulf Bossel. Take a copy of the CRC rubber handbook and do the electricity -> H2 -> electricity calculations. Compare the costs of miles of pipeline/miles of electrical lines. For extra credit - consider the H2 is so lightweight it escapes the gravity of the Earth - thus H2 as an energy transport system will, over time, reduce the mass of the Earth, increase the O2 levels, and react with O3 in the Stratosphere (getting rid of O3 and putting water vapor in the Stratosphere) and then ask yourself:
How stupid is talk of a Hydrogen Gas based energy system?
For my "estimate," I am using a DOE target price for delivery and transportation of H2. See pg 3 of this presentation:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/hpwgw_code_smith.pdf
This is an absurd figure. It is important that we reduce H2 leakage. But we've been using H2 for industrial purposes for decades. This problem is recognized and is being addressed.
See p4
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/hpwgw_code_smith.pdf
No, it is not. This is just more strawmen you are trotting out. If we accept that FF are going away, then comparisons between what FF costs and renewables cost are academic.
Again, you are trotting out stuff like "hydrogen economy" and "Hydrogen Gas based energy system." I am working toward, promoting, advocating a "renewable energy economy." As long as you insist I am talking about a "hydrogen economy," you are simply persisting with strawmen.
As far as I can tell, a renewable energy based economy will be mostly electric. As much as possible, we need to develop electrified rail transport. Thermal storage in solar thermal electric power plants will greatly improve load matching for such things as air conditioning. Diversity and interconnection of power producers will also improve load matching. That is, when the wind isn't blowing in one place, it's probably blowing somewhere else (same with sunshine).
It is not that I prefer H2 to electricity. H2 and electricity have different properties. For example, you can't store energy in a high voltage power line. You can store energy in a hydrogen pipeline. This is a consideration for a renewable energy economy. The fact we will be able to vary the amount of energy stored in a H2 pipeline has load matching benefits.
For vehicles, batteries are more efficient than H2. But batteries are heavy and bulky. This may be a limiting factor. You are not going to see many large vehicles running on batteries. You can already see some large vehicles burning H2.
http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/pdfs/41001.pdf
http://www.energyboom.com/transportation/nrel-uses-wind-power-fuel-hydro...
H2 has many other uses, as it can be combined with other elements and compounds... like ammonia, as you already pointed out . So it will be valuable to have a ready supply.
Also, the nat gas pipeline is old and needs to be replaced. So, part of the cost of the H2 pipeline grid will be mitigated by transitional use for natural gas. For example, we will start replacing old failure-prone gas lines in CA. We will try to ensure those new gas lines will be H2 capable. This is already being done elsewhere in the world (I read about this being done in Japan, but I'll let you research it if you want).
I do understand that it is problematic. The development of technology for pipeline transportation and distribution is in the works. From my reading, it appears those problems can be addressed. I don't think Lancaster or Bossel are ones that are working on addressing those problems so I probably won't bother reading any more of what they say.
In addition to transitional use for natural gas, a hydrogen pipeline grid can have value for transitional use in the oil refining business (H2 for refineries).
Also, you keep going on about storage. Again, we're not going to be storing any significant amount of H2 in tanks. A pipeline grid will hold plenty. If we need more, cavern storage can be added. Cavern storage is touched on in some of the papers I pointed out. Here's a link to industrial H2 cavern storage already in operation:
http://www.praxair.com/praxair.nsf/AllContent/3A0AB529A089B473852571F000...
I am interested in problem solving -- not interested in people shouting "it can't be done." At this point, there may be some legitimate doubt that it can be done. We will see.
I am interested in problem solving
And yet you invoke "magic" as how this problem will be solved.
Develop polymeric nanocomposites with dramatically reduced hydrogen permeance for use as the barrier/liner in non-metallic hydrogen pipelines.
And why not quote the actual leakage figures than respond to the 2% claim with:
This is an absurd figure.
And I'll note that when prices per mile are quoted for ACTUAL projects VS what you call "evidence" of what the DOE hopes the cost will be your response is
No, it is not.
Your position can't stand up to actual numbers from actual contracts/projects so you go with "No".
H2 has many other uses, as it can be combined with other elements and compounds... like ammonia, as you already pointed out . So it will be valuable to have a ready supply.
And yet you do not seem to understand the WHY of the stranded wind project - Hydrogen doesn't store "well".
Also, you keep going on about storage. Again, we're not going to be storing any significant amount of H2 in tanks.
I see, so now you are no longer arguing that Hydrogen won't be used in transport?
I guess the agenda is not so hidden, since Hugh Sharman is marketing director for China-based Prudent Energy (according to the bio above) which sells redox flow batteries. Claiming that pumped storage cannot be built is a good marketing argument for flow batteries, with one small problem (its' not true).
"At present, he is also an editor for DimWatt and EU sales and marketing director for the China-based, globally operating, electricity storage company, Prudent Energy Inc."
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/made-in-china-prudent-energy-lands-22m-for-f...
Interesting, you guys make Vanadium Redox Batteries.
Read more: vanadium — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0850402.html#ixzz1Bi0qRt00
Would your company be interested in funding a start up sea squirt farm (Ascidians)?
The Mechanism of Accumulation of Vanadium by Ascidians: Some Progress towards an Understanding of this Unusual Phenomenon
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2108/zsj.13.489
Abstract
Now if we could only get the Ascidians to accumulate Uranium instead of Vanadium we'd really be set >;^)
Hugh,
What you say is of course true. 26% efficiency round trip is truly awful and those disagreeing with that are simply adopting an indefensible position.
But is is also true that 30% efficiency in old coal fired plant is also awful. And that 20 to 30 % efficiency of an ICE is woeful.
Hydrogen becomes a theoretical option in a world with abundant energy. And so in a Scotland with 10GW of wind in 2020, we will have a vast surplus of power at times when no one wants to use it. The real issues are the cost of building 10 GW of wind whilst maintaining old FF plant to balance in the interim, and the cost of building all that storage be it hydrogen or pumped hydro.
Too many people on this thread saying this and that is possible without without providing any form of balanced view regarding environmental impacts and cost. Damming a Norwegian for example - do you have any idea how deep the water is and why would you want to do that when you already have vast systems of inland lakes. And using the ocean as the lower reservoir in pumped hydro - without any mention of the corrosion problems that might entail.
I disagree with your final statement about pumped hydro, though that falls on what you mean by "significant". We have two pumped hydro schemes in Scotland at present. Back of envelop calculation suggests that would have to grow to 100 to 200 schemes. Quite sure we do not have sites for that and the environmental harm would be extensive. But we could maybe build 20. I'm not sure whether the cost is worthwhile for a partial solution.
Hydrogen becomes a theoretical option in a world with abundant energy.
Yet the reality is that is not the world we exist in.
Go read Dr. B's comments from podcast 67 of The Watt.
Like it or not, Hydrogen as H2 is a dead end.
The future is better use of C'nH's as oil and/or electric grids.
Partial solutions for windy days in Scotland with 30 to 35 TWh annual demand and 10 GW wind.
- Turn off the natural gas, coal and hydro generation (plenty of pumped storage to fill gaps).
- Fill the pumped storage (nameplate for 22 units would likely be > 10 GW, certainly greater than the surplus of wind over immediate demand).
- Automatically have dual fuel# households switch to electric resistance. Inform people that today is a cheap power day (meters set for lowest rate) and time to do laundry, baking (if electric) and even hoovering. Industry may do more batch processing (such as melting scrap steel in electric arc furnaces). Water districts pump as much water as possible.
- Export power to Ireland (their wind generation will not be an exact match with yours)
- Export power to England & Wales (as above)
- Export power to Swiss, French, Luxembourg pumped storage thru England
- Export 1+ GW to Iceland (via HV DC link they hold back hydro)
- Export power to Norway, and via them, Sweden and even Finland/Baltic states
# Simple to engineer hot water and space heating that uses NG most of the time and switches to electrical resistance on a signal.
Let 2% or 4% of the annual wind generation go to waste, because efforts to use or store that small fraction cost more than the power is worth. But that is more likely to occur at 15 to 18 GW of wind than 10 GW (see above).
Best Hopes for Scottish Pumped Storage,
Alan
Alan,
Some good points - it's just a case of scheduling the energy intensive tasks to coincide with periods of energy availability.
Wind and water power were amongst the first sources of power to be developed after human and animal muscle power for energy intensive tasks such as grinding corn. I am sure that the miller found other things to do when there was insufficient wind to turn the sails, and when there was wind he probably worked around the clock to maximise its potential.
My father worked on the Scottish hydro schemes in the 1950's. Once up and running, they attracted a lot of energy intensive industry to the area. There was at least one aluminium smelting plant at Fort William which utilised the abundant cheap power. The same can be said of the energy intensive industries which grouped around Niagra Falls.
Perhaps some of the Scottish wind power should be exploited for manufacturing more wind turbines, plus energy intensive processes such as silicon wafer production, aluminium smelting and glass making - all used in pV cells?
2020
Of course corrosion is an issue with power storage and generation with seawater, but it is an issue that has been successfully addressed for decades in existing tidal power plants. So again, while it is an issue to address, it has nothing to do with whether pumped storage "can be built".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
"Current and future tidal power schemes
The first tidal power station was the Rance tidal power plant built over a period of 6 years from 1960 to 1966 at La Rance, France.[6] It has 240 MW installed capacity.
The first tidal power site in North America is the Annapolis Royal Generating Station, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, which opened in 1984 on an inlet of the Bay of Fundy.[7] It has 20 MW installed capacity.
The Jiangxia Tidal Power Station, south of Hangzhou in China has been operational since 1985, with current installed capacity of 3.2 MW. More tidal power is planned near the mouth of the Yalu River.[8]
The first in-stream tidal current generator in North America (Race Rocks Tidal Power Demonstration Project) was installed at Race Rocks on southern Vancouver Island in September 2006.[9][10] The next phase in the development of this tidal current generator will be in Nova Scotia.[11]
A small project was built by the Soviet Union at Kislaya Guba on the Barents Sea. It has 0.4 MW installed capacity. In 2006 it was upgraded with a 1.2MW experimental advanced orthogonal turbine.
Jindo Uldolmok Tidal Power Plant in South Korea is a tidal stream generation scheme planned to be expanded progressively to 90 MW of capacity by 2013. The first 1 MW was installed in May 2009.[12]
A 1.2 MW SeaGen system became operational in late 2008 on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.[13]
254 MW Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Plant in South Korea is under construction and planned to be completed by the end of 2010.[14]
The contract for an 812 MW tidal barrage near Ganghwa Island north-west of Incheon has been signed by Daewoo. Completion is planned for 2015.[14]
A 1,320 MW barrage built around islands west of Incheon is proposed by the Korean government, with projected construction start in 2017.[15]
Other South Korean projects include barrages planned for Garorim Bay, Ansanman, and Swaseongho, and tidal generation associated with the Saemangeum reclamation project. The barrages are all in the multiple-hundred megawatts range.[16]
The Indian state of Gujarat is planning to host South Asia's first commercial-scale tidal power station. The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India's west coast, with construction starting early in 2012. [17]
Estimates for new tidal barrages in England give the potential generation at 5.6GW mean power.[18]"
Googling around shows that the Okinawa sea water pumped storage plant has been operating successfully since 2000 and offers a good test bed for developing corrosion-resistant technologies. It uses high head and a completely artificial reservoir to modulate up to 2.1% of Okinawa generation capacity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_Yanbaru_Seawater_Pumped_Storage_Pow...
"Its maximum output is approximately 2.1% of the maximum power demand in the Okinawa Island recorded on August 3, 2009.[3]"
http://www.hitachi.com/rev/1998/revoct98/r4_108.pdf
"CONCLUSIONS
This paper dealt with the structural features of the
pump turbine for seawater pumped-storage, corrosion
preventive measures, and measures for preventing the
adhesion of marine organisms. When anti-corrosion
engineering for seawater pump turbines is established,
the limitations on location of pumped-storage power
plants are remarkably relaxed, and an increase in the
demand for pumped-storage power plants expected."
I admit that the charts I chose were highly selective! Of course I do. These show wind power output on the days when power demand was at a winter high. During these days, had the UK been depending on wind power, demand would not have been met. Much of the power supplied during these days, was delivered from power stations that are scheduled to be closed down on or before 31 Dec 2015.
You're suggesting that windpower comes with the promise of being available just when we need it, which is sadly not in the contract. We heard the same thing when Texas had a heatwave, and lo, there was no wind to save the day and run the air. Renewables are not 'Just-in-time' on-demand power supplies.. but if we are smart, we can benefit from them by not running down our reserve fuels when we DO have wind, sun, whatever.. so that the other is available for us when we have emergent need of it.
It's like saying you won't buy aspirin since it doesn't help when you're being hit on the head with a log. It would certainly be foolish trying to prepare for extreme weather conditions with the development of a single or even just a couple energy sources.
These are BB's, but if we gather enough of them, they will constitute a very helpful arsenal.. cause the Howitzer shells are starting to run out.
As noted earlier, without the small amounts of wind installed in the UK, the lights would have gone out in the last two winters.
All year long, but especially in the winter, wind generation saved natural gas. And the UK was on fumes at one point in each of the last two winters.
Wind has already "saved the day" in the UK.
Alan
Citations would be appreciated.
The National Grid yesterday issued only its second-ever warning that demand for energy is threatening to outstrip available supplies unless industry quickly slashes its consumption and more gas is rushed in from abroad.
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/149760
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4699
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4878
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7176
Alan
Alan,
I think you should have said that "gas saved the day" - that is what your 4 references are all about.
Now who has an agenda? :)
..and WIND saved the gas.
This is Chess, not Checkers, eh?
*clap* *clap*
or even go.
As noted earlier, without the small amounts of wind installed in the UK, the lights would have gone out in the last two winters.
Alan
Which days are you talking about?
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Today wind provide 193 MW at max. WE USE 55,650 MW at max
Where do you get your information from? Do you work for a wind farm company?
I am not talking days, but months.
On windy days, significantly less natural gas was burned. Some days a quarter less NG was consumed to produce electricity. This reduced burn of NG on windy days meant that there were only minimal curtailments of natural gas last winter.
Absent wind (the fond hope of the author of this article), natural gas curtailments in the UK would have been severe and deep by late February/early March as Rough and the other natural gas storage sites would have been drained to fumes.
The UK is adding just 5 hours worth of storage in the next two years. UK NG production is falling dramatically - soon the UK will not even produce enough NG to meet your summer demand. You will be importing NG year round to meet current demand. Rapidly expanding demand for LNG in the UK will have to compete with rapidly expanding demand from China and more demand from almost everyone else.
A simple engine breakdown of an LNG tanker, an especially severe winter storm, a pump failure at a NG storage unit, an undersea pipeline leak or any other disruption in stretched thin supplies and the lights will go out. The free market you have opted for will not build enough storage to match your increasing NG imports. Even an average winter will strain NG supplies (storage + current production + current imports) in a couple of years.
*IF* the UK had built the equal of Germany's wind turbine fleet, your NG storage would be far less severely strained, and your NG imports significantly lower. Some windy days, 20+ GW of wind generation would have allowed NG demand for generation to drop to near zero.
Best Hopes for UK Wind and conservation,
Alan
Great, trouble is the total installed wind power so far costs more than one AP1000 yet produces as little as 1/100 the electricity on many days. You cannot run a country like that.
http://nuclearinfo.net/twiki/pub/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower/...
Fact is one AP1000 produces 1117MW of electricity 24 hours a day 365 days a years.
Also the gas balancing alert is when demand exceeds deliverable supply. The reason our storage is not enough is because the last useless government listened to Greenpeace types who would have us living in dark caves.ie no coal, no nuclear no oil.
If we started building the nuclear power stations 5 years ago instead of gas, gas, gas we would not have a problem. If we do not get enough LNG in coming years what will backup Wind Sweet FA
France produced nearly 90% of its electicity from nuclear with far older stations
As the knowledgeable pro-nukes admitted (see "second generation" nuke), UK nukes (save Sizewell B) are problematic.
French built adapted Westinghouse reactors. Good for 60 years if treated right. Magnox & AGR, not so much.
Sizewell B can likely be kept running for 60 years, but only Sizewell B.
Alan
I think Alan's point is worthwhile and straightforward. Essentially, FF consumption avoided is equivalent to storage of surplus wind or other renewable energy. If one doesn't need to burn gas, it goes (or stays) into storage for use when required, just like hydro pump storage or regenerative storage into batteries when Swiss trains go down hills. For some reason, we don't seem to be looking at these sources from this perspective. And no, I don't think the answer is just renewables. I think any answer that doesn't rely on diverse systems is in trouble.
You can't pick one day (or a couple of days) to prove a point about the viability of an energy source.
If you look at the 2-52 week outlook, wind and hydro (both renewable energy sources).
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/BMRSSystemData.php?pT=WEEKFC#chartelement
The Dutch and French interconnections are available for import when needed or export when surplus exists.
You should know by now that Alan doesn't work for a 'wind farm company'.
Will
I have been looking at this data for some weeks.
The historical data shows wind production varying from about 10% of consumption to 0.1% of consumption. This is over a period of weeks.
If we increased our wind capacity by 10 times, what would that do?
Well some days we would get 100% from wind, since you just cannot shut down all your coal, nuclear and gas what do you do with all this spare electricity?
Other days, sometimes for many days at a time, you would get only 5% perhaps 15%. Since wind conditions are very similar in UK northsea as in Denmark they will be looking for spare production at the same time we are.
Since our gas is running out we should use it only for home cooking and heating, not to balance massive fluctuations in wind.
Any wind power must have sufficient pumped storage to meet its vagaries. There must be many reserviors that can be adapted although probably not cheaply.
The backbone of our supply must be nuclear, thus saving on importing gas and coal.
Why can't we learn to adapt to the variability?
Look, we have learned long ago to adapt to variability in rainfall. And nature does it all the time through the process of natural selection. Imagine telling a farmer that he can't grow crops because on some days he will get 1/100 the amount of rain that he should expect. They have learned to adapt and we have faced the fact that cloud seeding isn't the solution and irrigation doesn't scale to all farming.
The problem is that we are too used to thinking of energy as 24/7 without realizing that many of our activities revolve around adaptability.
BTW, I know of what I speak on the topic of wind variability. My book http://TheOilConundrum.com contains comprehensive stochastic analysis of wind speeds and it agrees completely with entropy arguments. It also contains the above analogy with rainfall and an analysis of rainfall statistics as a comparison.
Precisely. Move forward with;
- Demand management via smart appliances (and smart plugs for legacy appliances), CFL/LED lighting, high efficiency HVAC, home energy ratings for new/resale, spot pricing (4-48 hours in advance), informed consumers, etc.
- Variable supply management via smart grid, with projections of variable generation, management of storage and gap-fill generation, spot pricing adjustments, etc.
What are you trying to achieve with smart grids and demand management?
a) Smooth out short term rapid fluctuations of wind and solar until other slower sources come online / go offline?
b) "Solve the intermittency problem" of renewables?
for a) it might work as demand can be shifted around during the day. But PHES can possibly take over that part.
b) is much harder and I can't see smart grids "solving" this issue. The temporal correlations of the fluctuations are simply too long for smart grids to be able to deal with it. Solar PV has a strong temporal correlation on the order of a year, wind on the order of several days to weeks, plus apparently a long term correlation on the order of a decade. I mean who is going to stop doing their laundry in winter to push demand into summer for PV, or stop heating their home in winter and do it in summer? The weekly correlation of wind still seems to long for smart grids to be able to deal with it. What types of load can be shifted by a week?
Smart grids might help to bridge the gap it takes to fire up or power down Coal and Gas planets. But one will likely still need the full nameplate capacity available in thermal power plants. Of cause that doesn't make wind useless. Already today peaking power plants have very low capacity factors of only a few percent. So building gas fired plants that are only needed a few days of the year wouldn't be too unusual. We also already have large scale storage capacity for gas and coal.
That last paragraph is the major part of the answer to the questions you raised. Also add pumped hydro and CAES for storage, and EGS for additional dispatchable renewable power.
Look, we have learned long ago to adapt to variability in rainfall. And nature does it all the time through the process of natural selection.
Right, so if we get a couple of windless very cold weeks, let's just select out all the very young and old people? And for what, to pander to irrational neuroses over nuclear power?
When in the weather data record can you pick out multiple weeks of very cold weather with no wind? Which areas specifically are you able to do this in?
Will
Can you provide facts to prove this wrong?
Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents major companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers in the steel, glass, pottery, paper and chemical industries, said the failure of wind power had profound implications.
He was speaking after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than two per cent of the nation’s electricity.
Now Mr Nicholson predicts that the Government will encourage power companies to build billions of pounds worth of standby power stations in case of further prolonged wind failures.Last updated at 1:20 AM on 9th January 2011
And the cost of the standby generation will be paid for by industry and households through higher bills – which could double by 2020.
‘What is so worrying is that these sort of figures are not a one off,’ said Mr Nicholson. ‘It was exactly the same last January and February when high pressure brought freezing cold temperatures, snow and no wind.’
In fact last year, the failure of wind power to produce electricity was even more profound.
Then, over a few days, the lack of wind meant that only 0.2 per cent of a possible five per cent of the UK’s energy was generated by wind turbines.
So little energy was generated then that the National Grid, which is responsible for balancing supply and demand of energy in the UK, was forced to ask its biggest users – industry – to ration supplies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345439/Customers-face-huge-wind...
With conservation & efficiency, the UK need never build another natural gas or coal fired plant. You have enough NG plants already built that can be repurposed to standby duty.
Add more international interconnections, pumped storage and new nukes (> retired nukes) and the oldest, least efficient plants can be scrapped from even standby duty.
Alan
"He was speaking after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than two per cent of the nation’s electricity."
If my calculations are correct, this is actually a particularly bad example of "how wind can't keep the lights on".
According to Wikipedia [1] referring to [2] the UK currently has 2.6 GW of nameplate capacity of wind connected to the grid with the highest ever recorded feed in of 1.8Gw. On 07/12/10 the peak consumption was 60Gw [2].
Lets for the moment assume that a statement as above tries to show wind in negative terms so less than 2% can probably more or less be equated to 2%. 2% of 60Gw would be 1.2 Gw.
1.2 Gw out of 2.6Gw would be a load factor of nearly 50%, well above the average expected 30% and not far off of the maximum measured power!
OK, the 1.2Gw is likely to be quite a bit too high, as the 2% probably referres to daily consumption rather than peak. There are also other number of 5 Gw installed nameplate mentioned in the article, but still, this sounds far from the lull that wind can have and the low 2% in this case can't be blamed on the intermittency of wind, but on the low amount of wind installed so far.
That isn't to say that wind doesn't have a massive problem with fluctuations, the other example you mentioned seems to show this much better with only 0.1% provided. Also for example take todays and yesterdays wind output in Germany. Out of the installed nameplate capacity of about 25Gw of wind, real output [3] was as low as 600Mw, or a load factor of only 2 - 3 %.
It also has been / predicted to be several days of low wind, such that Germany resorted back to Oil fired peaker plants to deliver its power [4].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
[2] http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
[3] http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/daten_uebertragungsnetzbetreiber/stro...
[4] http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/freiwillige-veroeffentlichungen-markt...
Apmon
Where are you getting 2%
Then, over a few days, the lack of wind meant that only 0.2 per cent of a possible five per cent of the UK’s energy was generated by wind turbines.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345439/Customers-face-huge-wind...
What the article is saying is over a period a several days when it was the coldest, the wind turbines in UK produced 0.2% of total demand, or about 5% of wind nameplate capacity.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp.php
Today the are producing about 231MW which is about 10% of Wind nameplate. OR about 0.4 of total demand
The numbers come from your previous post, where you quote the article you just linked to
"He was speaking after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than two per cent of the nation’s electricity."
The article goes on to make it more precise: "but the moment the latest bad weather arrived with snow and freezing temperatures, this figure fell to as low as 1.8 per cent." So less than 2% equates to in a minimum of 1.8%, so that roughly corresponds to the more or less 2% I calculated with.
The 0.2% referres to last years cold spell, not this years, and which is what I ment by saying your other example is better.
So it still appears that wind actually worked reasonably well in this cold spell. Does anyone have some proper numbers rather than relying on the selective quoting of statistics by the dailymail (well know for its accurate scientific methods...)?
But yes, the basic conclusion of that you need full backup capacity in thermal powerplants remains true. But we already have large storage capacity for "things to burn" (Coal, Gas, biogas, wood,...) to balance out demand fluctuations that can't be covered by supply. During cold spells, gas is also drawn from storage because supply can't provide it. So storage isn't unique to renewables. Just that the fossile fule industry has had decades to build their storage and it is at a different place in the supply chain
http://www.theiet.org/forums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=226&threadid=38971
At the time of writing total demand is 60GW. Coal is providing 43% and wind only 0.1% (The total output of our 2,430MW installed wind capacity is a measly 41MW, only 1.7% of rated capacity).
Gas, 20,400 MW, 39.2%
Coal, 22,400 MW, 43.0%
Nuclear, 8,100 MW, 15.7%
Wind, 41 MW, 0.1%
Hydro, 150 MW, 0.3%
41mw/2660= 1.5% of possible wind and 0.1% of Total demand approx
So you believe that picking wind numbers at their lowest are representative of their potential over months, years, decades?? Answer carefully...
PaulS hasn't done the analysis and evidently has no feel for the actual numbers.
I would recommend that he do some autocorrelation or cross-correlation studies of the wind speed time series that are available all over the internet. Do it correctly, and correlations reduce to probabilities which you can reason with. You can do something like ask, "How long on average will it take to collect X amount of energy in such-and-such location?"
Unless you actually do the analysis, it can work against your intuition.
BTW, I will SLAM PaulS for implying that what I said infers to "select out all the very young and old people". What a dickweed.
And for what, to pander to irrational neuroses over nuclear power?
Once the fission industry can go to Congress and say 'we no longer need Price Anderson because we have a demonstrated track record of safety' then you'd have a mature. responsible industry.
Until the fission industry can actually operate without NRC violations/fines ... they can't even follow the basic safety regulations set out to date.
The backbone of our supply must be nuclear, thus saving on importing gas and coal.
I actually agree with that. But I see no realistic way to get to 50% of total MWh in the UK from UK nuke generation before 2030 (only Sizewell B will be left of current nukes, so build to replace retiring nukes plus displacing coal & NG). And that 2030 date includes about a 25% reduction in overall electrical demand.
Nukes take so long to build that WTs built in 2011 will be scrapped just as the UK gets just barely enough nukes for a near ideal mix (if you work harder and faster than you have in recent memory).
One possibility as a stop gap - the French turn off several of their older nukes every spring & fall (no demand, even from 12 GW of Swiss pumped storage). The UK increases both electrical transmission under la Manche and pumped storage and makes a deal to keep those idled nukes on. Less NG burned in the mild seasons. In 2022 or so, the UK may export power on some winter days from a combination of new nukes and new wind.
Best Hopes for more UK nukes,
Alan
Alan
We are in a real fix.
LNG will become so expensive and used not only for our heating and cooking but much of our electricity production. Wind with no storage is a liability.
many people here already struggle to pay bills. I see gas and electric bill double in next 5 to 10 years.
This will cripple what little industry we have left in this country.
Were I Minister of Energy in HMG, I would (in rough order of priority)
- Start conservation and efficiency, using "best practices" from world wide. The biggest, quickest, greenist, most enduring and usually cheapest source of power !
- See above (this is the #1 AND #2 priority)
- Start construction of two EPRs at Hinkley post haste (take the train to Paris and make a comprehensive deal with EdF, see items below)
- Build more electrical connections between England & Scotland, and to France, Norway, Iceland, Germany/Netherlands and even Ireland
- Actively look for another utility to build two AP-1000s (Scots & Southern ?)
- Make a deal to buy 100% of the output of a ~950 MWe French nuke during the spring & fall. A nuke that would otherwise be turned off by EdF (see Gravelines). This will save NG for storage/reduced imports.
- Make a deal to build two "British" EPRs on French soil, a second one each at Flamanville & Penly with electrical lines to each. Perhaps a "sale back" in 2040.
- Streamline and seriously weaken & shorten environmental reviews for new wind farms and pumped storage. Aesthetics will no longer be considered in WT siting and permits.
- Significantly increase subsidies for wind and add pumped storage subsidies. Aim for at least 4 GW of new wind every year, with a phase down in subsidies after 30 to 40 GW is installed (Note: after these WTs are installed, the # of GW to be replaced in 20 to 25 years will likely be smaller. Aesthetics may be reconsidered for replacements)
- Give the same incentives to new and enlarged hydro, solar, bio-mass, geothermal and tidal. Slightly higher for hydro due to it's long life and dispatch (except run-of-river)
- Special subsidies for pumped storage (they last for centuries and nukes need them too)
- Special subsidies for more transmission as well
- Make a deal with the Republic of Ireland to build a subsidized nuke in Ulster close to the interconnection with Scotland. Perhaps a 600 or 700 MW Candu And perhaps another in Wales, close to a new connection with Ireland there
- Start promoting "Dual-Fuel", using high efficiency heat pumps. Above a certain temperature and with a certain % wind, use heat pumps for heat & perhaps hot water. Colder or less wind, use NG for heat and hot water. A variant of HydroQuebec. This approach is both energy efficient and a great tool to manage winter load to match wind & temperature related demand. AND save NG with wind generation.
Pay for above with a tax on most uses of electricity (another incentive to conserve).
Your fear appears focused on higher rates. Sorry, few options there except use half as much at twice the rate = the same bill. German industry is not harmed excessively by high electrical rates and few remaining British industries will be excessively hurt.
Note: Germany wants to cut their electrical consumption by half from 2008 to 2050. And they are much more efficient than the Brits already.
Best Hopes for Solutions,
Alan
I would push for more Nuclear, but other than that, you got the job.
There are real labor force issues (and supply chain is a secondary constraint) in building more nukes.
This is one major reason to build two British EPR nukes in France. The other is the speed & efficiency related to building a second nuke next to the first one.
The CANDUs require a slightly different mix of skills to construct and are, per my understanding, less demanding to construct.
Building an AP-1000 gets around the "common design flaw" issue affecting most of a nations nukes and there are plans to build them with less on-site labor than EPRs. But they are 25% smaller than EPRs (1.2 GW vs. 1.6 GW for the EPR).
The order of completion might be:
- Flamanville IV (the second EPR there)
- Hinkley Pt. C (1st UK EPR)
- Hinkley Pt. D, Penly IV (the second EPR there), 1st AP-1000 all at once
- 2nd AP-1000, Ulster Candu
4 x 1.6 GW + 2 x 1.2 GW + 0.7 GW = 9.5 GW of new nukes built as quickly as reasonable
with a mix of new nukes after that.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Add district heating and cooling with the goal of establishing a small full scale system in every large town that then can grow withouth subsidies.
A VERY good point that I overlooked :-)
In Denmark over half the homes and businesses are served by DHP.
Alan
Yair...all this conversation assumes BAU and is going round in circles. As I mentioned in another post perhaps we need to consider a radical change in how an "industry" in any economy works.
It won't be convenient or "easy" but with present weather forcasting and predicting technology perhaps you check your cellphone to see if the wind is blowing or the solar system is putting out enough to run the machines at work?
We may have to start at odd hours and work for sixteen hours straight but as I mentioned before, life goes on. Work does not have to be done to fit in with some percieved nine to five life style concieved by human beings
On a tiny scale I can work that way now from the little PV array. that is to say I can run shop tools when the sun is shining and do other jobs when its not.
The nonsence of "Just In Time" ordering has to go and traders/distributers will have to relearn how to manage their stocks. In other words there has to be a complete rethink of life style and commerce with the emphasis on living with intermittent energy supplies.
Much of my life has been lived under those conditions with power only available on boats and remote stations for ten or twelve hours a day.
Even in the tropics (Gulf of Carpentaria)our fridges and freezers were off line (and deffinitely not opened) pretty much from six in the morning to six at night every day. That is to say we only ran the Lister at night to drive the air-con so we could get a bit of sleep.
Install about 200 times as much wind as you have now. Then, you'll be fine.
You got it ass backwards, Kingfish. Do you know what it was like when we installed the first commercial wind turbines here in California? BTW, Governor Jerry Brown helped make that happen. He was ridiculed, and avid supporters like me continually listened to stupid commentary about why it would never work. We're talking late 1970 - 80s.
Take a look at this US map and watch the numbers from 1999 to current and tell me what the growth rate is:
http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_installed_capacity.asp
If they started the sequence from 1980, you'd see it at zero. US now has 37 GW of wind. Worldwide, it's about 200 GW. .... starting from zero in 1980
Hi dechert,
As at December, 2010, Canada surpassed the 4 GW mark (see: http://www.canwea.ca/pdf/Canada%20Current%20Installed%20Capacity_e.pdf). That's a thirty fold increase from just ten years ago. Still a long ways to go, but we're slowly getting there.
Cheers,
Paul
While a lot of know-nothing dummies scream "it can't be done," wind installs are increasing well over 25 percent per year now. Just as a reference, what if that rate continued for 20 years? I ran these numbers starting with current 37 GW for the US and 200 GW worldwide...
That's more energy (not just elec but total energy) than the world uses/needs. Of course, we don't expect that rate to continue forever. But direct solar is growing at a similar rate and will likely overtake wind within 10 years or so.
We can get to 100% renewable so long as the idiots don't prevail. No guarantee on that, however.
No, it's not.
First of all, according to Wikipedia, average world power consumption in 2008 was over 15000GW, but that's the much smaller of your errors.
The big mistake you're making is thinking that if 37GW of nameplate capacity is installed, then that's 37GW of power being produced all the time. The wind doesn't blow all the time, so actual average power is much less. For wind (assuming it's installed at sites with good wind resource) 30% is a realistic 'capacity factor'. (15% is good for solar. Actual performance for both varies tremendously with the site.)
So, multiply your 13877 GW by .3 and you get only 4163 GW average power delivered by wind in 2030. Less than a third of what the world currently uses.
E-gads. You are seriously confused.
Wind: 30% capacity factor is what we get in California (20% in fall and winter, 40% in spring and summer), which is not particularly good. The best sites get closer to 40% or even better. 33% capacity factor for large commercial wind is very realistic. Let's take 30%, conservatively.
4163 GW EQUATES TO 400 QUADS PER YEAR
So, 4163 GW would be the average power (given that were are considering renewable sources that produce electricity). But here is your major goof: You have to apply a heat rate when comparing electricity with other forms. A barrel of oil has 5.8 million BTUs, but it would be nonsensical to equate that to 17,000 kwh (5.8 million divided by 3413 BTUs) because you could only get some fraction of the heat value in the oil converted to kwh.
So, for example, when you look at the DOE figures for BTUs from hydro, it is not kwh times 3413. It's kwh times a heat rate ... I believe they use something like 11,000 BTUs per kwh. So, you need to take the kwh and multiply by your heat rate. If you do that, the 4163 GW becomes about 400 quadrillion BTUs per year (4163 x 8766 x 11000 x 1,000,000). The US uses about 100 quads (a little less in recent years). If we're 25% of world usage, then 400 quads is about right for world usage.
But we really want to figure all renewables since, in reality, we are not going to run everything on wind power.
As for solar, I am assuming solar thermal-elec will produce the most. All of the large solar plants being installed in California are solar thermal. Some are now including heat storage, which extends the generating hours and therefore capacity factor.
Capacity factors of 65% are expected with 24 hr power generation in the future. For PV, 15% is good, but PV will not be the major source. I am guessing a mix of 30% wind, 45% solar thermal, and 30% PV. The other 5% or so would be a mix of hydro, geothermal, biomass, and whathaveyou. Except for PV, these sources would average well over 30% capacity factor. PV will bring it down some. But PV is important due to versatility. Overall, 30% capacity factor is reasonable.
When I say more than the world uses/needs, this also assumes we're getting rid of ICE vehicles, and doing other things that will be more energy efficient. In addition, solar thermal for water and space heating is not taken into consideration here. We'll have more of that, too.
dechert
You are the one who is confused. Stop lying that wind turbines produce 1/3 of their rated capacity.
This is like saying that in Burma the average rainfall is 20cm a month, trouble is most of it turns up in two months.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Why don,t you look at this site and work out how many time wind produces 1/3 you will find that it produces 1/10 as often and 9/10 as often.
I will back dechert up on his overall argument.
People do not understand the nature of stochastic processes. Take as an example the nature of an activity such as engineering a new product. The process as empirically observed consists of bursts of creativity separated by periods of little progress. Yet as long as forward progress exists, then we will keep at it. You just monitor the mean productivity and use that as a measure. You don't just give up on engineering because you go through dry spells.
The analogy of wind is the same, we take what we can from the bursts of activity and live with that.
Like I have said before, we have to learn how to adapt to what we are given. No use complaining that nature and entropy doesn't always provide a deterministic solution.
BTW, your last sentence doesn't really parse very well (it might have something to do with a lack of commas).
Wow! A bit harsh, no?
I have state that California is where commercialization of wind began, although it is not the best area for wind.
Here is an NREL page about that:
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_wind_national_lo-res.jpg
I said that we get 30% capacity factor in California -- roughly 20% in fall and winter ... 40% in spring and summer. We've had grid-tied commercial wind power here continuously for 30 years... longer than anywhere on planet earth. It's all absorbed into the grid.
If you want, you can look at the wind contribution up to the minute. As I write this, there is little wind and it's about 1% of the power in the Cal ISO area (represents a little over 80 percent of the state's power -- does not include Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power, nor Sacramento Municipal Utility District and other smaller sources)
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
If you were to watch this all the time, you'd see it varies from 0 to a high of about 10% of the demand. None of it is dumped -- hydro can always be held back to make use of wind power at windy times.
There are examples of smaller turbines connected to batteries, but that's not what I am talking about.
Capacity factor has improved (now 30%) and will continue to improve. Larger, newer turbines, with higher hub height, are replacing the smaller older ones.
CEC says capacity factor was 23% in 1994.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/wind/documents/1994_wprs_report/summary05.html
According to this report 2005, "35 percent of US-made turbines manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s remain in operation in California." So, you can see the trend of older turbines being replaced, as overall installed wind capacity continues to increase.
http://www.nirs.org/alternatives/factoid14.htm
Since the wind power is all absorbed into the grid, so far, there is no need for storage. As wind power expands, we can utilize existing pumped hydro storage and/or add pumped hydro storage. This will reduce effective capacity factor somewhat because pumped hydro is about 80% efficient, so there will be some losses. However, by the time we get to a large enough installed wind capacity that we need storage for wind power, we will be using more efficient wind turbines with much high hub height and much higher capacity factors.
This Cal ISO report quotes 37% capacity factor for new wind projects.
http://www.caiso.com/2007/2007d75567610.pdf
So, even if a wind park at 37% capacity factor were dedicated to pumping water, we would still be able to obtain overall system capacity factor of about 30% (80 percent of 37 percent).
Furthermore, we haven't begun to develop off-shore wind. There are a number of studies that indicate California could have 100s of GW of wind power if we go for off shore wind. This Stanford University study shows potential for much higher capacity factors in the future. For example for the proposed Eureka wind park, they say (see pg 14), "we find a 39% capacity factor for this wind park."
http://offshorewind.net/Other_Pages/Links%20Library/California%20Offshor...
In summary, wind capacity factor in California has improved from 20-25 percent in the 1990s to about 30% now -- with no storage. As the percent contribution for wind increases, we could still achieve 30% capacity factor with pumped hydro storage and larger more efficient turbines and higher hub height. Furthermore, when combined with pumped hydro, the power will be worth a great deal more because it can be dispatched when most needed.
With 30% capacity factor, California seems to be rather lucky, at least better of than Europe.
According to a study from 2009 [1] looking at capacity factors in the time frame from 2003 - 2007, the average capacity factor for the EU was only 20.8%. With Germany on the lowest side with only 18.3% and Greece on the highest with 29.3%. The UK was above average with 26.1% and the US at 25.7%.
This study also looks at long term variation in wind. Talking about temporal correlations on the order of a decade, with the yearly wind index varying by 20 percent points on that time scale.
[1] http://estaticos.soitu.es/documentos/2009/06/capacity_factor_of_wind_pow...
Verify my understanding of that reference that you link to. Is it complaining about the North Atlantic Oscillations (NAO), which apparently add a +/- 10% variation to the wind energy? That seems acceptable.
These figures should all go up as larger turbines go in with higher hub heights. UK is doing a lot of off-shore wind -- cap factor must be quite a bit higher there.
The data for the report you cite is 2008 or before, which is already a bit old.
The best sites in the US are stranded. Best sites for CA are off-shore, and haven't been touched.
California can talk about its wind power and solar power, but the fact is that it is backed up by some absolutely monstrous hydroelectric dams in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, plus some absolutely huge coal-burning power plants in the adjacent desert states.
I've toured a number of these facilities. They're absolutely epic in scale. They're mostly dedicated to keeping the lights on in California. All the power lines lead toward California.
It's not an easy task, keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running in California. I think that if the adjacent states pulled the plug on them, the lights would go off in California and they'd all be baking in the dark. At least on the windless days.
Not even close to accurate.
California has roughly 1,000 power plants with a total of about 75,000 megawatts generating capacity. We had a problem with capacity in 2000-2001 due to some idiotic policies put in place in the 1990s. But that problem does not exist anymore.
The vast majority of generators are idle almost all the time. As I write this, demand is about maybe 28,000 megawatts, and about 10,000 is being imported. So, we're running a grand total of maybe 18,000 megawatts the 75,000 capacity we have.
Wind is a small percentage right now. Average power from wind is less than 1,000 megawatts. Solar should far surpass wind by next year.
We do import a significant amount of power. For some reason, if it's available at much lower cost than we can generate it, we tend to buy it.
If neighboring states cut us off, we'd be firing up more of our own generators (mostly natural gas). It would cut into the utility's profits, and may cause our rates to go up, but, right now, there is no danger of blackouts. There is not too much danger or neighbors cutting us off, since they have no other customers for their extra power. In other words, we get the cheap power, and they get some money for it.
From the US Energy Information Administration:
I've seen a lot of these facilities driving around the Western States. They are exactly as described - big hydroelectric dams in Washington and Oregon; big coal-burning power plants in the Desert States; and all the transmission lines seem to lead toward California.
I toured the Grand Coulee Dam in Northern Washington last summer - a huge dam on the Columbia River with four powerhouses and some of the biggest generators in the world. One of the local people asked the tour guide, "How much of the electricity from here is used in Washington?" and he replied, "None. It all goes to California."
He went on to explain that Washington utilities were not willing to pay as much money as California, so they used power from a variety of local hydroelectric dams - which were much cheaper. Grand Coulee is run by the Federally-owned Bonneville Power Administration.
True, about half of California's generating capacity is supplied by natural gas, due to the near impossibility of building a coal-burning power plant in the state, but I doubt that much of the gas is produced inside of California.
So, I think California residents may be somewhat naive about where their electric power is coming from, or how good their situation is.
OTOH, California (and Austin Texas) are the success stories for electrical conservation in the USA. Despite population growth, fairly stable consumption and recently a decline.
Best Hopes for More,
Alan
What the EIA says is just a little bit wrong. We don't import so much electricity because of high electricity demand. We import electricity because neighboring states are willing to sell us very cheap power.
We get some power from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona because it is part owned by California utilities.
California electricity demand per capita is lower than any other state. It imports electricity (around 25% of its demand) from other states mainly because regulations make it nearly impossible to build new conventional power plants in California (other than natural gas-fired ones).
Of course the neighboring states have cheaper power, but that is mainly because they have fewer regulations on building new power plants.
Webhubbletelescope and dechert
My last sentence reads very badly.
What I was trying to say is pro wind people distort the facts.
One wind turbine or a group do not produce a third of their capacity most of the time. It has no practical meaning, unless linked to pumped storage of hydro which you can hold back. In the UK we have very little of this and I was talking only about UK situation.
Looking at the electricity produced from ALL of the UK wind farms, which stretch from the very south to the very north of the country. They do not produce 30% of nameplate any more often then they produce 10% or 60%.
When you take Europe as a whole you even out some of the extremes, but you still get 10% of nameplate quite often, you also get 80% regularly also.
So when 90% of wind is not there you have to come up with a backup.
What pro wind people try and make others believe, is that we can rely on about 30% of wind nameplate. It is deceitful and dangerous we are seeing this to be true in countries like Denmark and Germany.
http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html
Even for wind power to provide 10% of our nation's electricity needs, only a small amount of additional conventional back-up would be required, in the region of 300-500 megawatts (MW). This would add only 0.2 pence per kilowatt hour to the generation cost of wind energy and would not in any way threaten the security of our grid6.
The above statement is the sort of thing I am talking about, 10% of what and when?
Is this 10% of nameplate or 10% of demand on the few day it produces 10%.
If wind produced 10% of out annual consumption it would have to have an installed capacity of about 18Gw. Average production of about 6Gw, but when it is producing only 10% of that for several days you need backup of 90% of the 6Gw which is 5.4Gw.
If the argument is LNG will become more expensive and risky because of where it comes form. Therefore we will build our own secure source of electricity, we will achieve this in part by building wind turbines and also enough pumped storage to store the excess power at night.
This I could except, but I am not going to except being misled by those in UK who should know the facts.
No, you have that backwards. Wind critics don't lift a finger to do any kind of analysis.
Look, I have done interesting work on the entropic analysis of wind speeds. This forms a small, yet vital part of my book The Oil ConunDRUM.
This is not distorting the facts. This is trying to attain a deep understanding of natural forces. When will the wind critics start to admit that wind fluctuations are no different than rain fluctuations. Fill in this sentence:
"Everyone complains about the _____".
And there is nothing we can do about it. That's essentially the problem and we learn to deal with it.
Webhubble
I agree with you, it is very much the same, this is why we build reserviors to store water.
Similarly reservoirs should be converted or built to store wind energy also.
A hydro watershed and associated reservoir can store rain in the rainy season and dole it out during the entire year.
Let’s say you build a 3MW windmill for $5,000,000 that averages 1MW output. Over the course of a year it produces 8760 Mwh of energy, mostly in the spring and fall. To smooth that output over a year you build pumped storage capacity for 1/3 of that energy, 2,920 Mwh. The energy transformation equipment cost is $1,500 / kw, a cost of $1,500,000. The storage cost is $100 / kWh, for a cost of $292,000,000
Total cost of 1 MW of wind power as reliable as hydro, $298,500,000. That is $298 per watt. Compare that with nuclear at $5-$7 per watt. I did not factor in the transformational energy loss, about 20%.
Claiming that wind is just like rain without including the cost of a similar amount of storage IS distorting the facts.
The vast majority of the flat plains of the midwest have no reservoirs. Some places have underground aquifers and other places can pipe in water of course, but many can get by with no water besides the rainfall. Then you consider all the grazing lands.
I am not distorting the facts, you are looking through a narrow aperture and perhaps suffer from myopia.
Plus, consider that the traditional use of wind turbines, in the form of the classic windmills, are used for pumping water. They pump water when there is wind, the water stays around as a reservoir when the wind dies down, and everything is hunky-dory. This is a natural way to take advantage of stochastic energy.
SNAP!
Clever, you have changed the subject from energy to agriculture, OK, I’ll go there.
When a raindrop hit’s the ground it must be absorbed by a plant instantly, like a light bulb absorbs electrical energy, or it evaporates instantly, right? No, the water can be STORED in the ground until it is needed.
Water can be STORED in aquifers, and reservoirs and ponds and watersheds.
Dryland farmers do not grow corn because it needs a reliable supply of water, like a city. Wheat can go a few weeks without rain. How long can a large city go in a severe heat wave without power or water?
YES! This is EXACTLY the point I was making in the above comment. Wind proponents never include enough storage to cover the effects of seasonal variation, monthly variation, or even just a week of calm winds during a severe heat wave.
So wind is not like rain in energy, and it is not like rain in agriculture.
I see nothing useful in this comment, perhaps it is the myopia. Feel free to elaborate.
You are getting the hang of it. Wind supplies energy. You can actually sail around the world with wind. America was discovered with the help of wind energy. Yes, dry spells exist, but people are resourceful. Sailboats also have oars, and now, gasp, auxiliary engines.
Like I said, the point is to open up your aperture. You have heard the saying that every vote counts, well every alternative source of stochastic energy plays a part.
The book on entropy is http://TheOilConunDRUM.com. I am enthusiastic about this subject because there are always ideas for working with things that are predictably unpredictable. You don't have all the answers and neither do I, but I know the start is to doing analysis and maybe, perhaps, we can make a dent.
Right. We saw that enough storage to make wind almost as reliable as hydro is enormously expensive. That leaves wind and solar perpetually tied to fossil backup (auxiliary engines) and their associated emissions. But wind proponents never include that cost, which will escalate in the future, as fuel cost and emission fees ramp up, and existing fossil plants reach end of life.
I believe this is why companies that have billions of dollars invested in fossil infrastructure have magnificent TV commercials about wind and solar, but no commercials about nuclear power. Only nuclear power can put the fossil industry largely out of business, especially if we do not engage in massive R&D that might produce something even better than fission.
No, we did not see that.
BH, your numbers were absurd... not worthy of a serious response.
Who is we? I suspect many people saw it.
You have a habit of saying things you cannot back up. Who pays me, how much, how often? I bet you $100,000 you cannot back that claim up.
You make many claims you cannot backup. You low balled your $1.2 trillion grid cost estimate for a California renewable energy system.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7275#comment-755429
You are having a tantrum because you completely blew your storage cost estimate by including only the energy transformation equipment and nothing for the actual storage.
You low balled the grid cost and designed for average weather, not the worst weather.
I showed that California can have a robust nuclear grid that works in all weather for half your cost estimate.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7275#comment-755480
Instead of fixing your mistakes you further low balled an even more vague design at $1trillion.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7189#comment-760616
I see you revised your comment while I was composing a response. I think people deserve to see both.
You seem to think that I have something against nuclear power. I have blogged here and over at my own site for over 5 years and have neither promoted nor criticized nuclear power. You can google it if you don't believe me. (I have talked about cold fusion because I have had professional run-ins with Martin Fleischmann who is an electrochemist, and discussed things related to half-life because it is disorder related)
But it's this knee-jerk reaction that we can't even think about the problem of stochastic energy, without immediately deferring to nuclear that bothers me. Jeez, I don't have the brainpower to do nuclear physics, but I have all sorts of analytic skills when it comes to probability, disorder, statistics, chemistry, electronics, etc. From what I can tell, no one is really looking at this effectively and that is the hole I am trying to fill.
Actually I have thought about it a lot. My conclusion is that the Fossil Fuel Age will not end until a cheaper more convenient alternative is available. If you come up with a design that meets these criteria better than nuclear I am all for it.
But it must be practical, not just a theoretical calculation.
Huge ugly industrial pumped storage facilities that despoil vast areas of beautiful mountain country and evaporate large masses of water will never get permits for construction.
Huge ugly power lines operating at low capacity factors running all over the country connecting widely dispersed facilities and moving huge flows of power around bad weather systems will never get permits for construction.
Designs that will collapse during extreme hot or cold weather will never be approved for construction.
There are about 200 nations on the planet. When one of them develops a simple safe modular reactor system that can be mass produced in huge numbers at very low cost it will be the beginning of the end for fossil fuel.
I have consistently called for a massive R&D program to push all possible energy technologies as hard as possible. It maximizes the probability of finding some technology that is better than fission. This is the most anti nuclear position that is practical.
And if the alternatives are ugly stuff being built or freezing in the dark or shutting down industry that keeps people fed?
And if the alternatives are ugly stuff being built
Oh no! Someone's sense of asthetics has been offended!
Quick - to the Kusnler signal!
or freezing in the dark
Man has advanced - with insulation, solar gain and Earth shelter you can have 45 deg in the middle of a Minnesota winter without external energy input.
or shutting down industry that keeps people fed?
The stranded wind version of how to have things go (make Ammonia) seems to address that.
Remember folkes:
Energy used = number or people X rate of energy use per person
If the energy used == energy obtained and the energy obtained is dropping you can balance the equation via reduction in people, energy per person or both.
Guess what's eaiser AND socially acceptable so long as you ain't the ones being reduced/with less energy?
But it must be practical, not just a theoretical calculation.
And that is ALL new nuke designs are. New design nukes are just about the most impractical "solution" to our energy problems I can think of !
A new design nuke is VERY unlikely to get widespread implementation before 2031, and that quick is highly questionable.
So your advocated "solution" MIGHT take place, but after my death. So more R&D is simply not a workable solution. Wind just needs steady industrial development. Thanks but no thanks for wind. Solar could use a small amount of R&D (free from the gov't) but can get by without.
Nukes, DESPITE many tens of Billions in Gov't (free) R&D, about 90% of all energy R&D. STILL needs more R&D (free) ?
And while you are dissing pumped storage, remember that nukes need them too. France has built 4 GW, Luxembourg 1 GW and Switzerland 12 GW of pumped storage just to accommodate the French nuclear fleet. France would be supplying just over half of their electrical needs with nukes if it were not for pumped storage and cross-border sales.
Also remember that nukes needs LOTS of transmission as well. To distant markets or pumped storage at 3 AM.
Best Hopes for Building, not wasting $$ on more R&D,
Alan
I would be quite happy to have a slow moving 20 year program for a small or medium sized LFTR, IFR or equivalent reactor running in Sweden chipping away on the problem of freeing large volumes of wood chips for the large CHP plants for use in even more bio refineries in the 2030:s and 2040:s and replacing todays comming new builds of BWR:s or PWR:s in the 2070:s and 2080:s. We would be well served with a few dozen a few hundred MW thermal reactor replacing biomass boilers making district and industrial heat and electricity.
It will not save the world from peak oil but what we build today will be worn out some day and then it would be good to be able to build something that is even better. Investing a little today for building lots of stuff in 2070:s will still be shorter then the cycle time for our forestry.
This could be handled as the slow moving project for doing all the groundwork for final handling of high level radiactive waste. We have spent a fraction of what USA spent and are well on our way to actually building a repository that is good enough for every criticism that is thrown at it. There were even a competition between two municipialitues for the siting, Östhammar won and building of the bedrock repository will likely commence in a few years.
Some things are best handled slow and steady in a very serious way and a fair effort is probably only around a hundred good people for 20 years plus expensive equipment. But I would hurry up building generations of test equipment to not get stuck churning at the powerpoint stage.
Such a project would also be good for maintaining the technical knowledge needed for running our generation 2 and 3 reactors.
We are however too small to follow more then a few technology paths, other industrialized countries need to try other solutions.
I wrote:
Best Hopes for Building, not wasting $$ on more R&D,
Sweden has the basics already built or in planning (unlike the USA and much of the EU).
Sweden *HAS* and *IS* building ! So applying resources to R&D for the future is wise.
But the USA (and much of the EU) has not yet started building. VERY often, increased R&D spending is used as an excuse to continue doing nothing in our societies.
Best Hopes for Sweden !
Alan
Alan, we have had this conversation many times before, in the future, why don’t you just paste in this answer with your comment.
France went to 80% nuclear in 25 years using Gen II reactors at a time when fossil fuel was relatively abundant and cheap without breaking a sweat. Denmark started earlier with massive wind feed in tariffs and got to 10% domestic wind and 10% export wind so far.
Gen III plants have been built in other countries. They are simplified updates of Gen II plants, using lessons learned, making them easier to build and maintain. Developed countries can eliminate most fossil power plants using Gen III plants. The modular plants would be better for second and third world countries.
Your timeline is based on a business as usual approach in the U.S. That is the opposite of my recommendation, so your comment is off topic and irrelevant. My recommendation would work like this.
The president assigns a group of experts to find the best engineering project manager in the U.S. The president calls him or her into the oval office saying, “I want you to push every potentially useful energy technology as hard as possible to solve the world’s energy problem as fast as possible. Authority goes with responsibility, so I am giving you the authority to do whatever is needed.
Here is a checkbook on the U.S. treasury good for up to $100 billion per year.
Here is an executive order authorizing you to use any government resources you need, national laboratories, test facilities, proving grounds, airspace, seaspace etc.
Here is another executive order exempting the project from all regulatory constraints, EPA, OSHA, DOE, NRC etc.”
That is all it would take. I do not claim that this will happen. It is very unlikely. But it would minimize human suffering and maximize our quality of life in the shortest time. What timeline do you predict under these conditions?
A lot of R&D money has been spent on projects with the word nuclear in the title, but only a small fraction was for the benefit of commercial nuclear fission power plants. Our 104 nuclear plants have contributed far more in tax dollars on nuclear kWhs than the government spends on R&D benefiting them.
I have repeatedly pointed out the nukes can make much better use of a small amount of storage than intermittants do.
False. By building 500 nuclear plants distributed near population centers, the average distance traveled by a nuclear kWh would be very short compared with those in a renewable grid. And shorter than it is today with long high power lines to distant coal and hydor plants.
With an all nuclear grid we could restore some of our wild rivers.
Battery storage units located at the end of each power line can smooth power line loads allowing existing lines to operate at higher average capacity factors, transmitting a lot more energy than they do now.
France went to 80% nuclear in 25 years using Gen II reactors at a time when fossil fuel was relatively abundant and cheap without breaking a sweat.
Our 104 nuclear plants have contributed far more in tax dollars on nuclear kWhs than the government spends on R&D benefiting them.
Gen III plants have been built in other countries.
Factually wrong.
The French were sweating profusely and cutting the edge on safety. Oil was expensive and motivated the political leadership. The French also had a running start since they had been building nukes to their own design before licensing Westinghouse.
The French had MUCH more nuke building experience back then than the USA has today (we have rebuilt Brown's Ferry 1 and restarted construction on Watts Bar 1 and 2 (#2 in process). That is *ALL* that we have done for over 20 years. All the experience we had is either dead or has Alzheimers.
The French built the four N4 reactors from 1984 till 2002, so some of their experience is still working. But the N4s took so long to build because "thermal fatigue flaws in the heat removal system requiring the redesign and replacement of parts in each N4 power station".
That is an example of how an evolutionary Gen 2.5 reactor can run into design flaws. What of a Gen 4 ?
You forgot to include the 50 or so US nuclear plants that were started and never completed because of the bad economics of nuclear power plus the early retirement nukes (including the new type nuke at Ft. St. Vrain that looked good on paper but failed in the field. A lesson for your proposal).
Nukes are still deep, very deep, in the hole for their subsidies (and *STILL* no viable means to deal with their waste !) And extra expenditures by the Dept. of Homeland Security since 9/11 are a new subsidy for nukes.
Finland and France are building Gen 3 reactors, but nobody has actually built one. The first one SHOULD have been completed in 2009, but now 2012 (with luck).
The FRENCH are two years behind on the second one.
What happened to the renowned French that build new nukes without breaking a sweat ? Trouble with just one to their own design.
The first two AP-1000s (in China with their renowned quality control) are scheduled for completion in 2013-2015.
Gen 3's are just evolutionary developments of Gen 2's. No major new technology, supposedly simpler and easier to build.
Some new type reactor (liquid salt thorium or whatever) EVEN UNDER YOUR SCENARIO would not be debugged and enough operating experience gained for widespread confidence in both safety and economics (including fuel cycle economics, life expectancy, mid-life refurbishment, decommissioning) for commercial buys in volume before 2030. Too many steps required, and too many years experience required.
The $100 billion per year would be better spent on subsidies actually building renewables, pumped storage. HV DC transmission and increasing the subsidies for new nukes so someone besides Georgia Power will build a Gen 3 in the USA. It is VERY clear that we are simply not subsidizing new Gen 3 nukes enough in the USA.
Wind needs *ZERO* subsidized free R&D. Solar very little if any. Only nukes, after 60 years of massive R&D subsidies, still need MORE free R&D ! So all your $100 billion (well, $98 billion) will be spent in a variety fo new nuke designs. No other technology needs such massive R&D.
Best Hopes for Realism,
Alan
The highest nuclear priority is to build at least six Gen 3 reactors in the USA by 2020. Not some Gen IV dream with all of it's inevitable problems (a crash program will multiply the problems several fold).
You said:
Here is another executive order exempting the project from all regulatory constraints, EPA, OSHA, DOE, NRC etc.”
FRIGHTENING !!!
Any engineer that sees a problem will get squashed and the very real problem will go unaddressed in a "top down" crash program. And few will have the time to reflect and "connect the dots" to recognize looming complex problems in a crash project. No review for safety by the NRC (as you stated).
Don't build ANY of the first dozen near me ! I will lay down in front of the gate in protest.
I predict that your $100 billion/year program would result in:
- Nothing concrete and useful being built as the crisis deepens
- A massive, trillion $ rathole with nothing except marginal benefits.
Remember President Nixon's "War on Cancer", promising a cure to cancer if we spent $X billion more on research ?
I could support Magnus Redin's approach (~100 good people on each promising idea, without excessive pressure or too tight a timetable) *IF* we make the higher priority investments first.
Your crash, throw hundreds of billions with a front end loader on the "problem" is a sure way to 1) waste money and 2) MINIMIZE the possibility of a workable technology being developed. Pressure and compressing time lead to both waste and failure.
As the man that cleaned up the mess of the IBM 360 operating system said "Just because one woman can have a baby in 9 months does not mean that two women can have one in 4.5 months".
You want 9 women to have a baby in one month whilst ignoring real solutions to our problems
Best Hopes for Realism,
Alan
Alan;
Thanks so much for your reasonable responses.
While I remain skeptical of Nuclear overall, I'm much happier hearing your moderate and clearly conditional acceptance of how we might approach such a project.
When Bill proposed the rescinding of OSHA and EPA and other 'Regulatory Evils'.. IE, the Corporate insistence on getting all the profit, none of the responsiblity.. it served no purpose but to harden my walls against people who are willing to blind themselves to Industrial Abuse.
Good luck to us.. sigh!
When Bill proposed the rescinding of OSHA and EPA and other 'Regulatory Evils'.
Now I was planning on dinging Bill on this post:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7395#comment-761648
Turns out Bill wasn't involved in the conversation however.
Just remember the reply to:
a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap.
was:
Some folks would need to come to terms with their fears of nuclear power first.
(rrrrrright. Dump 50K gallons of radioactive waste and its greeted with "Awww, just get over it")
eric,
you utterly mis-characterized my post.
My 'Some folks..." statement referred to being more open to the idea of producing modern, highly safe modular nuclear power plants in the future.
It was not an excusing or poo-poohing of the dumping of the radioactive liquids.
That was then (1959-1963, at one location, in an era of very little regulation), this is now.
You or I or anyone else can't go back in time and undo that event.
But it is specious to insinuate that modular mass-produced modern nuclear reactors would commonly discharge tens of thousands of gallons of liquid radioactive waste into their surrounding environments.
I invite you to contemplate all the heavy metal wastes emitted into the environment by coal burning power plants, including radioactive materials.
Empirically not as attention-grabbing like a good 'China Syndrome' fear-mongering campaign...the steady on-going environmental damage caused by coal burning is out-of-site, out-of-mind, apparently.
Heisenberg;
It would be more appropriate to mention all the heavy metals and radioactive wastes that will be potentially spewed by Wind Turbines. Dropping in 'Coal Power' presumes that Eric is actually supporting this instead of Nukes.
You heard that they found more leaks up at Vermont Yankee, right? It wasn't where last year's Tritium was showing up, and so was sort of off their radar. Think there are any more where they haven't been looking yet? How close are THOSE ones getting to the Connecticut river now.. ? How long have they been trickling along undetected? If we start building a new fleet of Nukes in the US, should we celebrate with Champagne.. and if so, should we check the Champagne for radiation from the occasionally naughty waste treatment site there?
http://www.just-drinks.com/news/champagne-council-fails-to-halt-nuclear-...
Coal and Nuclear BOTH have to go. How? I don't know.
This thread read like a bad joke...
Heisenberg says:
And then 50 to 100 years from now, two very sad men look at the piles of nuclear waste and dozens to hundreds decommissioned nukes of decades past. One says to the other: "Why the hell did they build those things when they knew there wasn't a proper solution for all this shit? It's a shame you or I or anyone else can't go back in time and undo that event."
Bill Hannahan says:
Does history really need to repeat itself constantly? Are we ever going to learn from past lessons?
Eric Blair says:
Well, fortunately, that looks more like it...
Meanwhile, the CO2 in the atmosphere and mercury in the biosphere keeps climbing (as well as uranium and it's radioactive decay byproducts - coal discharges much more into the environment than nuke power).
I have come to the judgment that fuel reprocessing is the most viable solution for waste nuclear fuel. The French are doing it successfully. Still more expensive than fuel once-through and then let sit under guard. However, geological disposal is also viable (except politically, especially at local levels).
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes venial sins and mortal sins. Burning coal is a mortal sin, Well managed and well regulated nuclear power is a venial sin.
I see no practical way forward without some sin. Yes, I want to minimize sin, while recognizing that humanity cannot live without sin.
Best Hopes for Virtue (renewable energy & conservation),
Alan
May all be very true Alan from a big city but it's actually quite depressing isn't it? This seemingly unstoppable need to keep what we have or wanting more now, all at future generations expense...
I wonder though:
Are the French that good a reprocessing? I've seen reports of radioactive plumes in seawater drifting by the Dutch coast up to Denmark and further. How about their shippings to Russia where it's stored in rusting containers out in the open? Is the volume of waste really lower after reprocessing?
Regarding geological disposal, the German salt mines are leaking and they were supposed to be THE solution. Belgium is researching clay now. The promises are good, but does history have a lesson to learn here as well?
Why not go forward in a sustainable and be a real sinner at the same time by dropping our economical dogma's?
"Dropping our economical dogma'" is simply *NOT* going to happen voluntarily. It is not an option in the world and society that we live in. We as individuals can make choices and encourage others to make choices.
You may find it depressing, I simply accept reality and try to find the best, if imperfect, options, rather than the worst (burn more coal for increased consumption).
The radioactivity released, perhaps, by the French is dwarfed by the radioactivity released by German coal plants. Not to mention the CO2 and mercury that we live in.
Yes, reprocessing shrinks the volume of waste by about 99%. And if one waits a couple of centuries, that waste can be processed again to extract platinum group metals.
Alan
What about energy decent, climate chaos and resultant economic dislocations strikes you as voluntary change agents?
Yes, it is a very simple thing to keep track of dangerous trash over the course of centuries. Everybody does it, even my cousin, Joe.
;)
That is of course not acceptable, one must get most of the work done while
there is cash flow(energy...) from the powerplants.
Heavy PWR core loop compinents such as steam generators can be shipped
to Sweden for decontamination, packaging of the waste and recycling of most
of the steel. This technology were developed to handle our own waste.
It is of course not a free service.
We also export other services and knowledge and we have a high level
waste repository method for you if you have granite bedrock, it is very
close to certification and buildng of the Swedish repository. The Finns
has the same kind of bedrock and will use the same method and are slightly
ahead of us in building it, their test facility is the likely start of a
final repository while our deep test facility is not.
The interrim storage for high level waste is an underground pool system.
Our low and high level waste is continously put into a final repositry,
a much shallower one then the one planned for high level waste since it
does not need to last for multiple glaciations.
We do however not accept other countries waste for storage in Sweden.
It would be even better to recycle the waste in more advanced reactors
but that technology is not available. (yet...)
Yes, I agree it's not acceptable, but are we doing it none the less? I remember US operators requesting life extensions because the funds for decommissioning were not sufficient. This is exactly the point of my last quote. Why move forward taking big risks if we are constantly reminded that the ones responsible for the risk are not capable of properly handling it?
You speak highly of the Swedes and their storage methods, but iirc the entrance to their storage facility is nearly at sealevel and possibly drowned within 2 centuries. Like the Germans and their ultimate solution saltdomes that proved to be leaking within decades, how is Sweden guaranteeing the containment of the waste?
And hoping for better reactors to clean up the mess of today is hedging on the future of generations to come, again. With how much confidence, and is that responsible?
Venial sins compared to the mortal sins of coal burning. By every metric, including release of radioactivity into the environment, coal burning is worse, and often terribly worse. Even if the problems are never resolved, the unresolved problems of nukes are better than the destruction wrought by burning coal.
Your approach is "nuclear has unresolved problems, so let's not do it:. Well, if we do not build more nukes, we will burn more coal. If Denmark would build a single nuclear power plant, they could stop burning coal.
The Danes do a number of very good things (wind power, new Metro in Copenhagen, 50% of trips in Copenhagen by bike in 2015, widespread CHP, the coal they do burn is in the second most efficient coal plant in the world, energy conservation) BUT THEY STILL BURN COAL !
Alan
The Swedish low and medium lewel waste repository is actually built under the sea.
The idea is to avoid preassure differentials that can move ground water thru the repository.
I realy cant answer why too few nations act in a responsible way. It ought to be some kind of political deadlock.
The vast majority of the flat plains of the midwest have no reservoirs.
Yes, but the adjacent mountains have huge reservoirs. Some of these are pumped-storage reservoirs.
In addition, they also have considerable wind power potential.
One of the problems the US has is that the vast majority of the population does not live in these areas. It is too mountainous and/or too arid for them.
Well this wind critic wouldn't, nor would most, I suspect.
The critique of wind power is not that it is inherently different in terms of its fluctuations and intermittency than other natural resources we harvest, such as crops or water, but that it is far harder and more expensive to store.
Consider the following two examples:
Kielder Water
Completed: 1981
Cost: £167m
Water Storage Capacity = 200 billion litres
Days of UK Average Water Demand = 200 billion/17 billion = 11.8 days
Dinorwig Power Station
Completed: 1984
Cost: £425m
Electricity Storage Capacity = 9.1 GWh
Days of UK Average Electricity Demand = 9.1 GWh/980 GWh = 0.01 days
Two and half times the cost for one thousandth of the relative demand. While the difference in storage costs remains so vast, any comparison between rainfall and wind is specious.
Say, doesn't the unpredictable nature of rain lead to massive flooding?
Where in the grand scheme does it specify to control that perfectly?
Well, you can't, just like you can't control by-products of wind such as tornadoes and hurricanes.
We learn to live with it, and perhaps even harness some aspects of it. Oh my gosh, what a specious argument.
In some places, at some times, yes.
Um...there is no grand scheme (how long have you been reading this website?)...and we do not have to control flooding perfectly to survive.
Indeed, you're right, you can't control tornadoes or hurricanes.
History shows you're right again.
.....What?
You seem to be under the impression that I disagree that rainfall, crop yields and wind speeds are inherently stochastic processes.
I don't.
However, despite floods and tornadoes and hurricanes and droughts and famines, storing water and food is easy. We can cache months or years worth to tide us over during these unpredictable, though inevitable, events.
Electricity is different. It's hugely expensive to store in bulk and pretending that it isn't is spec... is superficially plausible, but deceptive.
MCrab
Electricity is different. It's hugely expensive to store in bulk and pretending that it isn't is spec... is superficially plausible, but deceptive.
You are confusing the very specific role of many pumped hydro schemes, to provide very flexible SHORT term( ie several hours) electricity storage with LONG term electricity storage that is provided by dams.
Purpose built pumped hydro is expensive because it is designed to give a rapid, high capacity flexible buffering of the grid primarily to handle peak demand and provide power when large generators dropping off grid, but only until reserve generators can come on line.
If wind energy was to contribute say 50% of the yearly electrical energy, a small amount of pumped hydro storage would be required to allow for rapid changes in wind output. Longer term storage however such as seasonal storage could be less expensively handled by traditional hydro storage (even if this is located thousands of km distant) or by using very large natural lakes at different elevations, coupled together by a relatively small capacity turbines. While some of that remaining 50% is coming from FF this could also provide seasonal flexibility at little cost.
It wouldn't seem it would take all that long to bring what you call long term storage on line if the grid were up to it.
The difference - and don't try to tapdance around this one - is that you can store water, for years if you have a big enough reservoir. You can't store wind at all.
This makes wind power and hydro power complementary. If you have enough hydro storage, you can get through periods of no wind by dumping water through the hydro plant. When the wind blows you shut off the water flow.
However, you do need about 100% backup for the wind generators - the hydro plants have to cover 100% of the load when the wind doesn't blow. If you don't have that, you need an alternative power source that you can count on.
Most countries don't have that kind of hydro potential - particularly not the UK. It needs a different kind of backup if it wants to use wind power.
No need for me to tap dance.
Do these guys understand the origin of fluctuations? Do they realize it is related to entropy?
I note that you are in the Rocky mountains. Fluctuations in the terrain slope and elevation of the mountains prevent you from getting from point A to point B via ground in the most direct route. So we learn how to adapt; in this case you can go around the mountains if you want, or find some sort of pass to go through, or drill a tunnel, or take your back-country skies out. What storage exists here? There is none and you have to change your behavior; your storage consists of knowledge of what the best route is.
So in the abstract, storage can exist in the temporal domain or in the behavioral domain. Yes, conventional, linear thinking leads you to believe that the only hope is to store the energy in the temporal domain, say in batteries, or a big flywheel, or to store the energy in a gravity potential reservoir.
But we can also change our behavior and essentially store the energy by redirecting our route (so to speak). So we use the wind turbines to work on an as-needed basis, say to pump water or do some other non-real-time tasks. This is exactly what you are saying and what I am saying.
Those guys think I have some vendetta against nuclear power. Actually since I started blogging some six years ago, I have not spent any time criticizing nor promoting nuclear power.
I just find it amusing that people have this weird disconnect when it comes to stochastic energy. Like I said no one is used to thinking how to analyze this correctly.
Webhubble
In the real world the factory employing a thousand people making shoes, needs the power when those people come to work.
If wind is not blowing for 3 days, how do you ensure there is sufficient power so factory does not have to close and send people home.
Kindly answer question without using the word stochastic. thanks
Yair...jaz, this is a perfect example of the point I made upthread.
We have to think different, in the scenarios being discussed here BAU is not an option.
If the wind is not blowing those folks get a text or whatever saying not to come to work...and then when the wind or solar kicks in they run some sixteen hour shifts.
Inconvenient? Perhaps but folks will learn to adapt. Provided there is enough installed capacity to do the job when the wind blows or the sun shines it's doable...on a small scale I do it now.
I believe that as as fossil fuel winds down the first casualities will be convenience and speed.
Here's an exercise in seeing if what I understand is what WHT means.
When the factory opens, the wind is blowing somewhere. Use that energy. If that wind is oversubscribed, there is a hydro plant somewhere, that is likely well-stocked with water, because usually wind supplies the energy needs.
Which is to say, you need a grid, to average wind availability over large areas, and you need enough wind deployed that you cut back on your baseline use of hydro, so that you have more of that available to cover the rare times when the wind is not blowing much most places.
So far in UK the 2.6Gw of wind has cost more than ONE modern Nuclear plant.
If we go along with this.
http://www.bwea.com/media/news/articles/pr20100629-2.html
The £100 billion will pay for 30Gw of installed power.
This would provide 50% of our needs on windy days, however last week this amount of installed wind, would have provided on average about 3 to 4 GW.
This £100 billion does not include any backup costs or pumped storage building costs,we would need 25GW of backup for those days.
For the same cost you could have including decommisioning costs 15 nuclear power stations producing between 16Gw and 24Gw depending on which type. This is electricity every hour of every day, when you need it.
Do you know how much it cost to build 1Gwh of pumped storage?
When you look at these costs and the unreliable wind problems, then nuclear has to be the main answer at the moment.
However, that ONE nuclear plant is coming on-line in 2018, or later. With no more wind installed and declining North Sea NG production, my guess is flickering lights by then.
Alan
Do you know how much it cost to build 1 Gwh of pumped storage?
The total energy storage capacity of Turlough Hill Pumped Storage (Ireland) is about 1.6 GWh (292 MW for a little over 5 hours). Built between 1968 and 1974 at a cost of around £20 Million. More today due to inflation.
Alan
Yes, and there is fundamental problem. When the wind is not blowing in England, it may not bre blowing in the adjacent countries, either, because weather systems tend to be content-wide. Norway may (or may not) be well stocked with water, but its hydroelectric plants may be tied up supplying Denmark, because the wind is not blowing in Denmark either.
I think the key issue is that England needs reliable backup power in or near England. France is the only country near England with large amounts of reliable power, and the French may not be that enthusiastic about keeping the lights on in England, except at considerable cost to the Brits.
Understand, I don't fully endorse this proposal, I just wanted to get some confirmation that what I understand from the reading, was what WHT thought he was writing. And absolutely, we have more to work with, than England does. If you're averaging over area, it helps to have more area. This also argues against "carve out one big hunk of vacant land in Nevada and do weather-dependent-X on it to run the whole nation". Ideally, you would study the issue ahead of time, and choose multiple sites whose windiness (or sunniness, or what have you) is least-correlated over time. If you did this, that is. Lacking a national grid, we're probably not doing this.
And there's tons of money on the line, no matter what we do, so I think it matters that we understand what people are talking about, and can tell when someone is arguing against a strawman (whether accidentally or intentionally constructed), and can try to get a feel for the math involved. Just for example, I've heard that windmills are bad for birds, and maybe bad for bats, but how bad, compared to what? Do they rise to the level of feral cats? How about DDT, or habitat destruction? Because, if I wanted to make money selling coal, I would be sure that lots of people heard about how windmills killed lots of birds (this is just an example, not an accusation, and it's one of the many reasons I don't work in PR. I don't know how those people can live with their own selves.)
The distribution of wind speeds is completely determined by entropy (not chaos). A time-averaged mean energy exists in the wind. This means that higher energies in one location are balanced by low energies somewhere else. The sun presents pretty much the same radiant energy to the earth over time and this gets converted to kinetic energy at a reasonably predictable fraction; how this gets distributed is entropic. It is harder to argue why this wouldn't happen than why it should.
We have a problem in communication here.
this post should have been titled "Renewables Won't Keep BAU On"
all you are saying is that the nature of the resource requires either
1. temporal storage/auxiliary power. The feasibility of this is debatable but if achieved could keep BAU ticking over
or
2. Behavioural adaptation.. only consume when the wind blows etc. which is not BAU
this is not rocket science as they say
only consume when the wind blows.
Back in the real world. How would you run your factory employing 500 people making shoes.
Imagine three or four day wind lull, the power company says they will cut your power tomorrow(thursday) at 3am. for two days. So you tell your workers they are off with no pay tomorrow and friday.
Then on Saturday morning the power company tells you the wind will pick up on sunday by lunchtime.
So you phone all your workers up and get them in on sunday, never mine many had plans with friends or family.
Multiply this to though every school, factory and office and you got chaos.
Could you really run things like that?
no you couldn't so your behaviour would have to change
we do not disagree
the point you are missing is questioning whether the way we now behave is all that to start with?
BTW I am for more nukes
Yair...it's the point I made upthread. I don't know what bloody world you blokes live in. Welcome to the real one. Even now this sort of thing happens all the time.
It's easy to see jaz you have never worked on a fishing boat or a farm...too freaking bad folks have got "plans with friends and family on sunday" if they have to work they work.
You are stuck in a BAU mindset. All this nine to five B/S is going to change.
I don't really see what it has to do with entropy, I thought it was just related to the characteristics of a chaotic system. You can't predict a chaotic system, you can only respond to its fluctuations.
However, yes I do live in the Rocky Mountains. In the mountains behind my house is a large hydroelectric storage reservoir, which many people do not realize is a hydroelectric storage reservoir. It looks like a mountain lake. It can probably store a six month supply of water for the local hydroelectric power plants, which again many people do not realize are power plants. They look like nice stone buildings with big transformers hidden behind them.
Further south, strategically positioned directly in line with a mountain pass are hundreds of wind generators. The wind that comes through the pass is highly predictable, at least compared to most places. Most of the time it blows extremely hard from the West. Some of the time it blows hard from the East, but occasionally it doesn't blow at all.
When the wind doesn't blow at all, the hum from the local hydro plants gets much louder, the rivers get much faster, the word goes out, "The River is ON!" and all the whitewater kayakers get their boats out and go paddling in the eddies.
But the thing is, if it wasn't for the hydro plants, when the wind stopped blowing, the lights would go out. You can't store wind, so you need some kind of backup storage. A hydroelectric reservoir is ideal because it can store a lot of energy for windless days, and the water can be turned on and off at will.
Natural gas plants are also useful because they can be turned on and off quite easily, and we have lots of those as well. Every old gas plant seems to have a brand new gas power plant sitting next to it. You can easily store six months supply in an old gas field, of which we also have lots of.
Nuclear is less useful as backup for wind because you can't just power nuclear plants up and down at will, and coal plants are similar. The problem the UK has is that they don't have a lot of backup they can turn on and off when the wind generators stop turning, so I think they will have a lot of problems with the lights going out at random in the next few years.
Chaotic systems are very rare.
Entropy drives the relentless sedimentation of the reservoirs until they become glorified waterfalls. Point is that you deal with it.
Chaotic systems are very rare.
Really? I thought they were rather common, weather being the classic example.
Disordered systems are the common ones. A weather system that enters the mountains which may have had some chaotic nature to it is sufficiently broken up by the terrain that it is better to classify it as disordered.
What you end up measuring, be it wind speed dispersion, rainfall distribution, ice cloud crystal sizes, are much easier to categorize by assuming disorder in the environment than any particular chaotic attractor.
I thought the original studies on chaotic systems started with weather prediction. The classic case was when they ran a computer weather prediction system, and then decided to restart it from the middle with the same data. They ended up with completely different results at the end. They eventually realized that the simulation was behaving completely different from what they thought computer predictions should do because of rounding errors.
And, of course, the Heisenburg uncertainty principle ensures there will always be rounding errors in natural systems. Weather, in other words, is inherently unpredictable in the long term, so all those billions of dollars they spent building computer systems to do weather predicton was a waste of money. No matter how big a computer you build, it still can't predict the weather over the long term.
From the Wikipedia article on Chaos theory
Chaos rules!
They really don't know if the mechanisms are deterministic at the core.
There's not an overabundance of sediment, there's an under-use of soil for composting and food production. I can't imagine it being that difficult to be able to filter the water as it flows into the basin and make use of this resource while also keeping the reservoir fully functional.
It could be dredged out for spreading but sediments tend to accumulate pollutants eg heavy metals and chemicals.
NAOM
It would seem the UK would have much more predictable tidal potential which shouldn't require a full 100% backup. Tide high/low outputs can be reliably balanced if enough locations are utilized. But as I've seen little about it lately I assume tidal generation is not quite ready for prime time.
The problem with renewables isn't renewables, it's unrealistic expectations. We don't need to, and should not try to, generate enough energy to meet current demand levels. We should be looking at meeting a demand of, oh, 30% of current levels. I'm not buying that renewables can't do that.
Another problem also has to do with expectations. We don't need $35k energy systems. DIY systems made largely from detritus can fill a large percentage of needs.
So what? Besides that this money actually does create jobs, tax income and corresponds to only 0.1% of the German GDP: The UK will in fact spend close to €1000 billion on its military during the next 20 years. And as opposed to German PV this military won't produce any free power after 20 years nor will it somehow find and produce more oil:
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/Organisation/KeyFactsAbou...
But this will contain unemployment. For a bit. And unethically. But so are builded empires.
Roman Empire paid so much for an army, until they peaked in 211 AD some 50000 ordinary army and 400000 auxiliary regiments, all these jobs speeded up and securized economy and create some decades of peace. But in almost 100 years after the peak of efficiency, epidemics, barabarian invasions, corruption at the borders, depletion of crop and hay (for horses, think that Sicily was the "Saudi Arabia" and now most of the roman era hay soils lie completely eroded and sterilized) production in colonies lead the Roman Army to complete disintegration.
The real problem was that high feed-in-tarriffs, which are supposed to help an infant industry get onto its feet were not limited (in capacity), so a lot of people saw a sure-fired investment and took it. If tariffs, or subsidies in another form, had been designed to automatically scale back as the installed base scales up a lot of greif would have been avoided.
There are signs of a smoother FiT phase out, and better linking with capacity growth :
http://international.pv-tech.org/news/german_government_solar_industry_a...
Besides that they already did introduce automatic scale back depending on the installed PV capacity last year and Germany will continue to do so and German PV-tariffs are meanwhile already below household electricity prices.
Germany spent 0.1% to 0.2% of its GDP on PV and created jobs, tax income, small reduction of fuel imports and clean electricity with it and you call this grief?!?
The US spends 4.7% of its GDP on its military and over 3% of its GDP on fuel imports every single year and the last number will continue to raise! Are you out of your mind?
Oh poppycock! not this tired tune again.
Well if that's true and the world is running out of coal oil and gas, plus the fact that it is highly unlikely that we will be able able to quickly build enough nuclear plants because of economic and resource constraints. May I suggest that everybody should just go and kill themselves the sooner the better because we're all f@cked!
As for myself, I'm going with Decarbonizer's approach... Because I've tried it myself and know that it actually works! Too bad the anti renewables crowd just doesn't get it!
And yes, the bright city lights will be considerably dimmer but they have been a short lived abberration that couldn't be sustained. The future belongs to those who understand very low energy highly efficient systems. Think fireflies and bioluminescent deap sea organisms, not massive garish neon signs promoting profligacy!
A pox upon the houses of the anti renewables crowd, their way of life and thinking are the root cause of our predicament and now they want to tell us we can't do things differently. Bah!
Fmagyar
what have you done?
I was going to go for wood burner with back boiler, combined with solar heater on roof, but the cost was four times what my new central heating system is with a A rated condensing boiler.
I design, build and install, low voltage solar powered LED lighting systems. And even though a well designed passive solar hot water system has higher up front costs than the central heating system you describe it will generally pay back the cost in relatively short order. Granted there are locales where this kind of system might not be an optimum solution. Your mileage may vary.
Have you found a decent LED bulb that will work in the standard floor lamp that has a conical shade? One where you want light to come out a more than 180 degree angle, where the bulb is base down and light needs to come out towards the floor? The bulbs with less than 180 degree beam just don't provide the needed light to read by with these lamps.
In our kitchen I have two 48" T8 LED lamps, they provide just as much light as the replaced fluorescent lamps and only draw 30 watts total. Yes, they cost more, but sure helps when on off-grid solar.
"Have you found a decent LED bulb that will work in the standard floor lamp that has a conical shade?"
Don't hold your breath, rebuild the lamp. I had a swag lamp with 5 candelabra base 60 W bulbs. Bulb base was at the bottom with the power line fed down through the central tube to a little disk thing with the 5 bulbs. They were set too close together for the CF bulbs to fit.
So I went to the hardware store and got a socket that matched the rest of the lamp. Dismantled the lamp and discovered the heat from the 5 bulbs (300 W total) had baked the insulation inside the central tube to a crackly crunch (who knows how old the lamp is.)
I shortened the center tube, installed the new socket, and screwed in the T6 40 W double tube circular fluorescent. Now I have more light with a better distribution. And it wasn't very hard. I used a tubing cutter to shorten the center tube, and a hacksaw for the threaded section inside of that.
Just unplug the lamp first. :-) Lamps are mostly standard parts. And many of them can be found at the thrift store. They seem to be full of old lamps. Even if the lamp as a whole is ugly, the parts are just parts.
Just unplug the lamp before taking it apart. :-)
Try the Philips 12W A19 Ambient LED.
Costs $40 and looks like a strange yellow bug light when turned off, but it lights up just like a regular incandescent 60 watt bulb with an all-around soft white light.
Draws only 12 watts, works with dimmers, and any lampshade will fit.
The metal heat-sink base gets pretty darned hot though. Don't know how that will affect longevity, but all my other Philips LED lights have worked perfectly over the past year. No failures or problems.
Thanks Lee! I found that Home Depot carries them. I just bought one to try out, it's exactly what I needed. Yes, it's strange looking, probably why I didn't really notice it before, but it works great. I'll end up with 3-4 of them around the house in the fixtures that are on the most at night.
That's right, hit the places that will do the most good first. Let us have some feedback on how you get on with them after a few weeks.
NAOM
I've been very pleased with all the Philips LED lamps. I use the candelabra style, PAR20, PAR30 and the weatherproof floodlights as well. I also have quite a few of the "Feit Electric" PAR 20 and PAR 30 LEDs where I want a dimmer, more mellow light. The Feit lamps might not be found at Home Depot, though.
Here is a review which reveals some deficiencies (its base gets hot and its color temperature is 2700 K): Philips 12 watt (60W equivalent) A19 Ambient LED Soft White Light Bulb, Dimmable (Candle Power Forums, December 2, 2010)
Renewables will never run our high-power society at current levels of consumption.
I've always liked Amory Lovins' concept of 'negawatts', which reminds us that the electricity we don't use doesn't need to be generated.
Low voltage LED's are highly evolved and perfect for off-grid systems. If you're on the grid, you can find a variety of LED lamps that use no more than a quarter of the power of incandescents and give out a much nicer color light than fluorescents. They are expensive, but they should last for tens of thousands of hours. I use lamps made by Phillips and Feit, available in local hardware stores here in western New York.
Solar hot water heaters have been around for centuries in various forms and work fine if you're in a sunny place. Otherwise, you can find plenty of fuel efficient on-demand heaters or super-insulated tank heaters.
There have been other energy efficiency advances in home insulation, appliances and lighting, but simple household conservation measures are just not as impressive and politically gratifying as high tech mega-projects enacted on a regional or national scale.
When faced with problems, consumer cultures have been conditioned to look outward to authorities, corporations and governments for remedies, rather than inward to communities, neighborhoods and individuals.
We must remember that the solution to the power problem is in our own hands, and always has been.
If renewable energy is ever going to keep our civilization going, we will have to forever forsake careless consumption in favor of ongoing and strenuous conservation.
Fred;
Do you think this is the writing on the wall at TOD?
Is every discussion around renewable energy going to be the same uphill struggle against the economists whimpering that 'it's not cheap enough, and sometimes it doesn't work perfectly?' 'There's too much to do to get it past that miserable 1%, but anyway, it really can't create jobs, either..' etc etc ..
The land of Shackleton.. the land of Thatcher. sigh..
I'm afraid it is. TOD staff and readers are not immune to BAU think. They simply can't imagine any life beyond the current paradigm.
It's like a conference of T Rexes witnessing the approaching asteroid while discussing the future and saying those furry little rats will never be able to survive, so all life on earth is doomed. Well the T Rex is extinct and the little rats are doing quite well thank you...
Jeez, Fred. It's hard to relate to anything when one hasn't been there, done that, and most folks won't go there until they're forced to. Even now, when the inevitable crunch arrives, the 'central
plannersdolers' scratch their heads and argue about what won't work. "What we have here is failure of imagination".Even I didn't imagine, 15 years ago, how much less I could live well on, though there was a point when I understood that I had better plan ahead, pay some things forward (albeit at some expense and sacrifice) and start making real change happen, if only in my little life. Despite a few false starts, I am now at the point that "failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". Even though I feel that we are at a good point, I have identified many more ways that I can reduce our energy use, and other ways to scrounge a bit more energy from my surroundings, all without depriving other folks of one precious watt. Another hoaky cliche comes to mind: " We have been doing so much with so little for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing".
I'm finding myself fighting resentment of this overall lack of imagination and inability to plan and sacrifice. Resentment is just more wasted energy.
Resource depletion is like a disease; the longer one waits to address the causes, the worse will be the cure. If I lived in the UK, I would be considering emigration to sunnier climes.
"failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part".
Ghung, you are one of my favorite peoples. But, man, I know you can't really believe this.
Those of us who "planned" are outnumbered 1000s-to-1.
The majority's emergency will become our emergency whether we like it or not.
(insert cartoon - frame one shows a guy stirring his stew pot telling the hungry mob the line above, frame 2 shows who in the stew pot???)
Of course you're right snarlvark. Therefore; "I'm finding myself fighting resentment of this overall lack of imagination and inability to plan and sacrifice."
Comes a time to forge plowshares into swords, mefears.
About the resentment - I have it in spades.
I think Stoneleigh addresses that in her talks. That is the poison that will kill those of us who are distracted by the noise. Orlov is right - ignore the distractions and take cover. The Machine is dying, let the distracted children of the machine play ... there was nothing we could do for them.
Nice. Thank you.
Is every discussion around renewable energy going to be the same uphill struggle against the economists whimpering that 'it's not cheap enough, and sometimes it doesn't work perfectly?' 'There's too much to do to get it past that miserable 1%, but anyway, it really can't create jobs, either..' etc etc ..
Yes, but it'll be sprinkeled with references to Fission/Fusion/Zero Point/Super-duperCaps from EEStor/Hydrinos and Magnet Motors.
So ya don't need to go looking for magnet motors, heres someone with GRAPHS! from UL/TUV so you know we are saved.
http://terawatt.com/
(If one is offended by the same uphill struggle you can write a tome like 'why your anti spam solution won't work' kind of reply to stick in your profile, once profiles come back, then link back to the profile with Reason 4,5,20,51 - please feel free to address those reasons)
Let me see, fossil fuels have had about a 200 year build out. Yet some people are expecting renewables to replace this built up infrastructure in 1/10 the time and complain about the expense. How expensive is a flooded England? How expensive is a starving England? How expensive was/is a smog chocked England? How expensive was the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? These are some of the expenses that fossil fuels have to account for.
It is not simply a question of complaining: it is a question if there is going to be enough money and enough fossil fuel energy for this transition.
'Money is the bugaboo of small minds' RA Heinlein
Money is a function, not a source. We have materials and people and knowhow.
.. And then we have arguments. ("I thought this was contradictions..?")
As far as 'enough FF energy'.. what we need is Energy. The idea that it HAS to all be FF energy to be valid is yet another bugaboo.
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind." Marcus Garvey
Hi Fred,
I agree with Pat Murphy in his book "Plan C" that conservation and efficiency will not be sufficient - we need what he calls "curtailment" -
As this essay is UK centric, I'll offer my observation about that part of the planet. I worked for awhile in the UK (around York) but I've spent even more time cycling the western shore of Ireland. I see little difference between Wisconsin and UK/Ireland as relates to energy usage. Certainly, their cars are more fuel efficient and private homes are smaller. But, the mindset is pretty much the same - a car culture and all the energy waste that goes with it. A consumption culture that values "growth" just like we do.
Gasoline here in WI (in my area) is now $3.09 a gal - outrage is rising. The other day, the tea party moron on CNBC (financial cable channel) went into a rant about tree huggers being responsible for "high" pump prices because they were standing in the way of the "drill-baby-drill" folks. Hard to believe many drivers are really serious about fuel prices - as our expressways are dominated by motorists greatly exceeding the speed limit - I saw no difference in the UK or Ireland (this being 2 years ago - doubt if it has changed much). Complaints about high energy prices in our respective countries is simply evidence that the general public is clueless about the real problems.
Ireland had a great train system and lots of people bicycled in days gone by. Now, many train routes have been abandoned and most of the cyclists I saw were foreign tourists. In Westport, a B&B lady said that she would not even consider endangering her child riding a mile to school on a bike - just like mothers feel here.
My observation was that the western shore of Ireland had lots of wind. After returning from a tour of Achill Island (one of the great wonders of the world) I commented to the B&B lady that the ride was wonderful except for the strong wind. "Wind?" she said, "there was no wind today!". I've since been there on days when standing was best done at a 45 degree angle. At face value, it seems like there is great wind potential in that area - maybe I'm missing something, but I've never seen a turbine in that area (again, it has been 2 years). In WI we have the same issue, lots of wind off of Lake Michigan and no turbines in the water (however, we do have a substantial issue with ice).
Sure seems like an opportunity here (wife and I - Achill Island):
Anyway, my point is that both UK and Ireland, along with Wisconsin, have hugh opportunities to both curtail demand and create renewable supply. Of course, this assumes the ability to recognize and understand the problem.
And yet the Danes are so different. Is this an anglo saxon cultural problem that applies both in the UK and the US?
I like "Plan C" too, and curtailment has to be a major part of the adjustment. That this does not come up in posts like the main one above just shows us how far from reality even relatively thoughtful posters are.
As I recall from another book, "Ecological Debt" by Andrew Simms, domestic gasoline usage dropped 95% in the UK during WWII. If people understood our current situation as a similar (or actually more extreme)existential threat, perhaps we could match or exceed this kind of level of curtailment, at which levels all kinds of alternative energies become a significant part of the equation, even at current levels of production.
It is the imperative to keep up anything close to BAU that we have to get over.
Unfortunately, I see precious little evidence of this level of awareness arising anytime soon, especially when relatively enlightened forums like this are posting such sadly mis-informed and mis-informing articles as this one.
Very good article on the UK's race to keep the lights on.
I was just reading the 2030 Energy Outlook lauched recently by BP, maybe you can also comment some very interesting vision they have on our future!
Am I the onlyone who read this as "another global financial crisis will" occour "during the next decade"?
If by "with the next decade" you mean "within the next two years", then yes.
We will somehow paper over the cracks until September 2012 - after the Olympics.
It's a nice article, if a little long.
Unfortunately it is already out of date since the government announced its new "Electricity Market Reform" in December 2010. The EMR will be the third complete "about face" in market structure in the 20 years since privatisation. I often wonder why TheOilDrum, a global (but US initiated) energy blog, has such a large proportion of its articles about the little old UK. The answer I believe is two fold; that so many global energy trends (especially depletion) are happening here first and in a big way; secondly that our market structure is by far the most open and transparent anywhere in the world.
It is a giant experiment, and we are about to fire up the Bunsen burner to maximum again, this time in an oddly Stalinist way (especially given that it has been initiated by a Conservative-dominated government). Politicians (for which read Civil Servants - the politicians can't begin to understand the complexities of this market) will, from now on, take an iron grip over the future development of generation sources, determining exactly how of much of which technology gets built and when (and maybe even where), an outcome which will apparently please many in this online community, but which fills me with dread and fear. I do not pre-date privatisation but I have been in this industry long enough to witness the echoes of the absurd and disgraceful mismanagement perpetrated by the Central Electricity Generating Board, and its equivalent the Coal Board. The free market has delivered unprecedented security of supply, and a historically low ratio of electricity prices to fuel input costs. The civil servants at the Department of Energy and Climate Change now have their icy fingers around the throat of these happy trends. Well, life will go on, but it will be a poorer and less secure one nonetheless.
In other words, since privatisation, this country has burnt through its one-off bonanza of free energy right on its door step, using the cheapest technology possible, as fast as possible.
It has done nothing at all to plan for the time that North Sea gas would run out.
I am not saying the old managing structures would have done any better, but I very much doubt they would have much worse.
Time to wolf down paper money and credit cards! Time to tear each other apart for crumbs.
- - - - -
"I saw this in my mind not long ago: in my vision the electric light will stop sometime. ... The day is coming when nature will stop the electricity. Police without flashlights, beer getting hot in the refrigerators, ... even the President can't call up somebody on the phone. ... People are being too smart, too clever; the machine stops and they are helpless, because they have forgotten how to live without the machine."
Lame Deer prophecy; Lame Deer is a 20th century shaman among the Sioux
Thank you one million times plus one for that quote cicerone. It will become a poster in my classrooms and the footer quote on my email. Many natives recall the effects of alcohol on their culture but seem completely unaware of the effects of the industrial pigstye on what little remains of their culture.
UK diesel up from an average of 126.2 pences a litre in mid-December to 132.7 p/l in mid-January.
A 6.56 p increase, the 2nd higher in petrol's prices history after the 6.8p/l set in July 2008.
This is too quick. Refining is becoming a nervous industrial sector, reacting immediately to retrieve profits in a gruesome fuel market's atmosphere (almost in Europe, where refineries are going litterally bankrupt, 1 refinery closing every 3 month since spring 2008.
Fuel prices are still rising, even if UK demand for fuel is steadily falling down. Retail petrol sales between January and September 2010, compared with the same period in 2007, showed a tough 13% decline.
In the UK there will be a significant socioeconomic damage in spring 2011 with further losses of jobs. And another step down in lifestyle, urgently the brits had to remodel the food production, logistics and supply.
The article meanders considerably, but boils down to;
- "Renewables are expensive and can't work"
- "Coal is cheap, though undesirable due to pollution/etc, though gosh look at all the power"
- "Natural gas is virtually infinite, though will rise in price as unconventional percentages rise, so should we really jump on that bandwagon?"
- "Nuclear is cheap, just do that and forget about anything else"
No mention of approaches to reducing demand, though this site is well known for identifying ways to reduce energy use.
No mention of geothermal power generation.
Jumps between the UK and the US and fails to distinguish between very different resources on both the renewable and non-renewable side.
Fails to mention the cost of nuclear power in developed countries with safeguards, especially the budget busting cost overruns. Does he stop to ask why the nuclear industry has insisted on taxpayer bailouts via loan guarantees?
The bias and slanted presentation of the material points to yet more thinly veiled nuclear advocacy.
I personally believe the future relies on a mix of;
- Wind
- Solar
- Natural Gas
- Geothermal
- Nuclear
- Other minor but helpful sources
Coal will likely hang on in some form, though a couple of years of bad weather may turn the tide completely against it in non-repressed countries.
"Of course"?? Sure, everything I say is true, because I say it is...
The CFL lights in my energy efficient home are indeed kept on through significant reliance on renewables (grid-tied solar PV with any additional power needed being purchased through a 100% renewable option from the power company). Heat comes from the house's passive solar designed feature, with a woodstove backup. In the US, the Pacific Northwest runs predominantly on renewable hydro power, even exporting significant amounts.
Thailand may generate as much as 5% of power from biomass and biogas plants, most using organic waste sources or byproducts. Biomass power or CHP provides the bulk of this. There is no reason many tropical countries with large agriculture sectors couldn't achieve 10% in the next five to ten years.
Some countries can get a lot of power from small run of the river type hydro, often in remote locations. Geothermal can be a great source of power, but only for a small number of countries.
So how did this cost? (I just don't think the poor have enough capital available to afford this.)
Oh, so they have enough to pay for new expensive nuclear plants?
CFL bulbs more than pay themselves back. The passive solar features were basically free (rearranged windowspace, adjusted eave dimensions, tile near windows with modest concrete underlayment).
The area I live in has fairly upscale homes. I chose a more modest home, did the general contracting (easy to do on a manufactured home), and saved more than enough money to pay for the PV system.
One could make the argument that the poor can't really afford much of anything, so no answer would be acceptable.
"..don't think the poor have enough capital .."
How did they ever get cars?
At least with Solar, you can buy a bit at a time and build it up.. or you can get a loan.
I think it's at the other end where the capital is coming up short, where larger concerns don't feel that people owning their own power will be reliable ratepayers any more. That's got to be a scary prospect for an industry to consider. Democratically controlled Utilities..
How did they ever get cars?"
They buy very cheap used cars. And while they might be able to buy CFLs, beyond that there's no sensible way for them to invest (by adding insulation, solar panels, etc.) in real estate that they can't afford to own.
Actually the above is a very real problem, of split-incentives between landlord and tenant, so that even upgrades with very high ROI do not get implemented.
Fortunately it is easily addressed with energy efficiency standards for rental properties, currently implemented in several European countries (especially Germany), several US states (especially Wisconsin), and many US cities (such as my hometown of Boulder Colorado). Boulder recently passed Smart Regs (http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article...) which requires landlords (such as myself) to upgrade all rental properties to minimum energy standards. Standards were set such that annual savings would be greater than amortized costs. Fortunately, our properties were already upgraded to exceed the standards, but I was a strong supporter of SmartRegs in the public process.
A great many working-poor people get car and/or house loans, and work really hard to improve their position in the world. That would also be the way to get solar and serious insulation as well. At least those two investments have a clear payback, while the house and car simply depreciate and require constant maintenance, refills and repairs.
There is a great deal beyond 'CFLs' that they could and should be encouraged to do.. suggesting they absolutely cannot is being willfully ignorant.
It's not just the MSM or the Government that is failing to encourage them by offering creative ways to utilize scant assets to their best advantage. They've also got you Paul, and all those voices that constantly ring out that 'You can't afford insulation or renewable energy' .. and so they don't. But a whole lot of them WILL be paying energy bills, cable, cell phone, house, car and furniture payments this month and next..
The SPIEGEL piece contains this:
No talk about fertilizers? No talk about coal gas (which helped replace whale oil and prevent whale extinction in the 19th century)?
And, of course, the best of all is the outright beneficial automobile.
Maybe we should consider saving energy. Transport systems in industrialized countries offer a few opportunities.
Even the Corporate Task Force headed by Richard Branson
some months ago and reported in TOD made a transition from
cars to public transit, walking and biking central to
their recommendations to save oil as the North Sea oil production
falls off a cliff.
The thrust of this piece that basically nuclear with all
its incredible capital costs, nuclear wastes and risks is
the answer evades the issue of peak uranium, also discussed
in TOD in the past.
Unless nuclear fusion is developed, nuclear fission plants
reliant on uranium will also run out of fuel in decades especially
if they are burdened with all energy production.
And the acres of nuclear garbage which will be washed into the Irish sea pretty soon:
http://www.stephenson-halliday.com/portfolio/waste4.html
I agree about conbentional nuclear but what about LFTR technology using abundant thorium.
I think most people's lives would be measurably improved if they were able to get off the automobile. Most of those people would disagree prior to the auto being ripped from their cold, dead hands, but I think the health effects for them personally and those around them would be measurable, not immeasurable. After all the costs and benefits are tallied at the end of the auto era, it will have been seen as a supremely gross mistake.
For starters, as you point out, the millions of dead from direct and indirect impacts, have not had their lives improved. Walkable and bicyclable towns and cities provide obvious health benefits for their inhabitants. Decreased pollution is another obvious health benefit.
You failed to mention all the soldiers and people who have died fighting to make it possible for the oil to flow for the industrialized world.
Best hopes for a kindler, gentler, and healthier world that is not so dependent upon the auto machines of death.
Strangely enough, I detect one significant similarity between the UK and its tropical former colony where I live. That is the propensity to set up talk shops and deliberate until the cows come home while very little actually gets done.
Successive Jamaican administrations have reduced their stake in the once nationalized electricity utility, with little if any improvement in the cost of electricity to the consumer. An arrangement has been set up for private companies to build and operate electricity generating plants and sell the power to the utility. We now have a ridiculous situation where private investors seem quite willing to build and operate power plants where the utility has been reluctant, although I understand that the utility might be reconsidering their stance.
In the meantime the government, with funding from the World Bank has done studies concluding that coal is the least cost option for generating electricity but, in the face of that, has made a decision to use NG fueled plants in the current replacement/expansion cycle. On the other hand, while searching for a electric pump for my rainwater catchment system, I noticed construction in progress close to one of the city's power plants that, I understand, is a new, oil fueled, slow speed diesel plant.
This is why i keep harping on the disservice being done by the IEA/EIA et al, with their totally unrealistic forecasts of world oil production (see Slide 8/23 of the IEA’s press pack, 9 November 2010.). If a more realistic view of future oil production were to become more widespread, planners could make decisions with a little more confidence, instead of the paralysis that results from the current climate of uncertainty.
While in the UK "Renewables Won't Keep the Lights On", in Jamaica it's the case that, BAU might not keep the lights on either, as we will quite likely be quickly outbid for declining oil supplies. I am staking my bets on the most abundant renewable energy in my little corner of the world, sunshine.
Alan from the islands
Alan,
The Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which could feed off the warm seawater that passes by, would be an ideal fit to produce electricity for Jamaica.
Google "waterspouts" or "tromba marina" to get an idea what the vortex might look like. Also
http://tiny.cc/0dwgs
http://vortexengine.ca
Do you really think one will ever be built? People are scared of tornadoes, which is essentially what that vortex is. If even once in a while a vortex breaks free, that will be enough to kill the idea. Now, I happen to think it is a really neat idea, the vortex is a virtual extension of a solar chimney, whose efficiency increases with height. But I don't think you'll ever see it get anywhere.
I suspect that my great-great grandparents (maybe I should add a few more "greats") didn't wake up one day and decide to shoot themselves because they realized that they would never get to drive a car, use central heating or AC, or waste endless hours in front of a computer discussing energy on the Oil Drum 8^). How could they have possibly endured such an existence?!
This author is spot on -- both "renewables" and FF energy will be but a distant memory for future generations, at least as far as electricity generation is concerned. It's not the end of the world -- just the end of our present reality. I'm looking forward to it myself.
Indeed my grandmother was born the year after the motor car.
And as she lived in rural Wales, she was probably 15 or more before she saw one.
No electricity except 'wet' batteries.
Light was (mineral) oil lamps. Whale oil was already history.
Piped gas hadn't reached them. heating by open coal fire.
Photographs were rare luxuries.
They did have steam trains and traction engines, and the telegraph.
She lived to 100.
Typical Willie the Scotsman doomer porn.
The UK has an offshore wind potential at 40 meters deep of 40 Gw,
80 meter of 80Gw totaling 120 Gw and even more further out(2.2 Tw!? aka massive North Sea wind farms)).
The UK uses about 400 Twh per annum of electricity; 31% from coal, 44% from gas, 13% nuclear, 2% wind and 10% others according to the IEA. The consumption is about equally divided between commercial, residential, and industrial.
Denmark uses about 37 Twh; 46% coal, 19% gas, 19% wind and 16% other. The consumption is about equally divided between commercial, residential and industrial(smallest) use. Obviously there is no reason why the UK cannot easily achieve the 19% Denmark has done.
Wind is far from an ideal resource however with sufficient investment in turbines, transmission lines and battery storage it can shoulder +50% of Britain's electricity needs.
Wind in a multifarm system can directly feed the grid useable, compatible steady 'average' power about 1/3 of the time, 2/3 of the time the power is too unsteady, fluctuating.
Let's say the capacity factor for offshore wind is 2400 hours per year. This means that 120 Gw/a would produce 96 Twh/a of grid compatible electricity(~25% of UK current electricity).
What about the other 2/3?
Utility scale batteries(NaS) could convert wind AD to DC, store and reconvert DC to AC steady baseload power at a (.75 x .75) ~50% loss so that would produce another 96 Twh of grid compatible electricity. The problem with deep draw batteries is the life span after which they need to be replaced.
Another option is hybrid CAES(underground storage) where wind is used to compress air in underground caves to be feed to gas turbines.
The advantage of this system is that its overall efficiency is higher than batteries,
the disadvantage is that it would require natural gas (or syngas or hydrogen).
Using this method, converting 192 Twh/a of unsteady wind to 192/a Twh would require 826 Gcf/a of natural gas(23.4 Gcm/a).
OTH, 192 Twh/a of CCGT would require 1344 Gcf/a(38 Gcm/a).
After building out wind perhaps going to CAES and transitioning to MW battery storage when battery prices drop and before natural gas is exhausted (in 60 years?) would work. Hydrogen storage would also work with CAES though with a greater energy penalty.
Given the long run precarious nature of finite natural gas it make more sense to stick with batteries.
Of course, CCGT will die with natural gas supplies.
Can the UK survive on renewable wind amounting to 50% of its current electricity?
I have no doubt it can, doomsayers not withstanding.
It will have to further de-industrialize (as it will be forced to do anyways in a world of finite mineral resources) and it will be forced to radically increase reduce consumption; the Danes estimate that
the average residence with efficient technology can live on 1000 kwh/a per person x 70 million Britons = 70 Twh.
A 2%/a reduction
in electricity compounded over 30 years is a ~50% reduction in electricity use; 400 Twh --> 200 Twh.
There is probably no country in the world better situated to take advantage of wind resources--a densely populated small country surrounded by fairly steady wind (short transmission distances).
The cost of utility compatible wind is high $6/watt but offshore wind turbines is $3/watt. At $6 per watt, 120 Gw would be about $720 billion dollars or $240 billion dollars over 30 years. The UK GDP is 2 trillion dollars.
A combination of utility scale wind and negawatts should allow the UK to survive quite nicely.
"Now cheer up mi lads, it's to glory we steer"
this storage solution is dependent on excess production in the good times... otherwise its a non starter, yes?
and excess production is a matter of definition.
It is POSSIBLE to save, even in hard times.. but requires serious discipline.. forget whether 'they' can do it, let's just start with us. Can we?
thats the rub because you have to escape the market. you need to invest in infrastructure that creates more supply than demand on an immediate basis and/or restrict demand to your capacity which varies depending on the weather?
I am sure it can be done but its a very different kettle of fish economically and politically .
In summary:
Luckily, some of these will work in some places some of the time.
That's right. It'll have to be whatever, wherever, whenever.
In other words, we will just have to learn how to adapt to these entropic and dispersive forms of energy.We are definitely not used to thinking this way so will have to go through a learning curve process.
It is realy good to have a wide spread and solid high tension grid for connecting various power sources and thus give a much better stability for manny electricity users.
So you left out the one thing which will always work:
OIL!!
Sorry, I simply assumed that it was well understood that OIL doesn't work because it will run out in a couple of years. If it doesn't run out, the oil exporting countries will use it themselves and not export it to us. But that doesn't matter, because we won't be able to afford to import it anyway.
Its alway darkest just before it goes pitch black.
http://www.despair.com/lithographs.html
Oh well, as none of them will work, we may as well just give up and do nothing.
NAOM
Actually, they all work in some specific situations. The fact that there is no single silver-bullet solution is not surprising. The fact that engineering, business, finance, economics, politics, sociology, etc is messy and hard is not surprising.
Regarding wind power, the argument that the installed wind capacity cannot be relied on when needed is not a valid argument against installing wind power with an objective of reducing fossil fuel consumption. True, you have to install enough fossil fuel generating capacity to deal with peak periods of consumption which coincide with periods of light wind, or you have to arrange to shed non-essential loads during those periods.
However, when the wind is blowing, you don't consume as much fuel in the somewhat oversized fossil fuel plants.
Well some days we would get 100% from wind, since you just cannot shut down all your coal, nuclear and gas what do you do with all this spare electricity?
That is the first thing you do, except with nukes, if you have a bit of hydro or pumped storage to get over the daily demand cycle. And even nukes have been "turned on low", reducing fuel burn & output when there is an excess of hydro in the past.
See my list just posted of how to use "too much wind".
Almost every hydroelectric dam every built occasionally "spills" water. Too much water to use.
So 10x the installed wind "spills" 2% of the annual wind ?
Quite frankly a very small (like 2%) deal.
Best Hopes for 15x expansion of UK wind,
Alan
Exactly. I am sick and tired of these lame excuses being trotted out. If we listen to all the nay sayers we are forked. There is no one magic solution. Let me repeat, there is no one magic solution. It is a matter of taking a large range of solutions and building a combined system to provide the new power scheme including both supply and demand redesign. It will take time. We need to get on with it now, preferably 30 years ago but that chance is past us. If the governments and companies are too bound to BAU to get on with it then it is down to individuals and businesses to get on with it.
Everyone looks at renewables as if there is only one solution in town and if that has a problem then it is no good. Take BAU power, does it use one source of electricity? No, we see a mix of oil, coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. It is more than about time to move new sources into the mix. Solar in northern Sweden may not be an ideal solution but how about wind whereas wind is not worth much here but we certainly have plenty of sun for solar. It is a case of blending the best mix of solutions.
Also power savings need to be factored in. The individual can make their own contributions by choosing more efficient means of using electricity but businesses can make huge contributions too. How many office buildings have lights, computers, photocopiers switched on while the building is unoccupied? Power being used for 3/4 of the week without any use being made of it. For a start computers can be made to switch themselves off automagically right now.
Let change begin.
NOAM
It is my understanding that the UK came within a hairsbreadth of running out of natural gas the last couple of winters.
Subtract the limited contribution of wind and the resulting increased natural gas demand would have caused supply shortfalls. Without wind, the lights would have been turned out.
Wind and solar PV can be installed faster than any alternative except conservation & efficiency. And Britain has "painted itself into a corner" with renewables the best option for the near and medium term. Quite frankly, price be dammed, the Brits need power !
It is my understanding that one of the major Scottish North Sea oil fields (Forties ?) is "blowing off it's gas cap" before final abandonment. A surge in domestic gas supply that will simply not be there in just a couple of years.
Norwegian gas production should peak in 2012 and Germany, Denmark and France are the preferred long term customers (at premium prices) and the UK is the marginal one at discounted prices.
After over a half century of careful management, Dutch gas production is now declining towards just supplying their domestic market while ending exports.
The UK is pushing the limits of safety in extending the operating licenses for it's nuclear reactor fleet. None-the-less, UK nuclear generation will decline significantly until the first two EdF reactors comes on-line. Imports from France may help a bit. More than the announced reactors will be need for nuclear power to make a positive contribution to resolving the mess that the UK is in.
None-the-less, in 12 to 15 years, many more nuclear reactors is likely the best UK option.
Best Hopes for keeping the lights on with renewables till 2030,
Alan
PS: The UK could have had the German wind fleet if they had chosen (or twice as much as the Germans, since the UK has a better and greater wind resource than Germany). The graph above would have a MUCH larger slice for wind with the German wind fleet in place in the UK. Double that and wind would displace both natural gas and coal on many days.
So claiming that wind is insignificant in the UK is disingenuous.
Right, Alan.
Natural gas is the real false firemen. Europeans went for it because of the North Sea and GW fears but I think it will not last long.
Notice that BP is going to try drilling in the Kara sea off the gas paradise of Yamal in the Arctic Ocean. It is an act of British desperation.
Their best bet is to go back to coal imports and maybe super deep British coal on a Danish mix 50% coal, 25% wind plus some old nukes and back out of LNG because all LNG will go to East Asia(Japan, Korea, Taiwan).
Wind is a real resource but they're going to have to make the commitment.
One thing about the Germans--they know how to commit themselves to a goal.
That would be Brent, where the gas cap is already blown down.
Yes we are in big trouble, expressed most clearly by a trade balance running out of control as we import more and more energy for every year that passes. Something has to give.
One of our biggest problems is that the debate is dictated by rhetoric and not reasoned analysis. This has left our political system paralysed, virtually all parties determined to be Greener than the next, all ignoring the real problem - the decline of UK primary energy production. This has created a crazy mix of policies, which as Hugh points out, analysts know in private are crazy, and energy companies are starting to pack up shop and go else where.
I think there is a significant role for wind and tidal to play in the UK, but it will be a supporting role for many years, not the leading role. We need more storage: pumped storage, batteries and perhaps even chemical storage. This needs to be supported by nuclear and CCGT, and in Scotland, hydro. And of course we need much more CHP and energy saving measures that need to be locked in somehow to permanantly lower J/capita. And there needs to be acceptance that FF plant will run on greatly reduced loads and all this is going to result in much, much more expensive electricity.
People seem to think that only storage of electrical energy or mechanical energy can make a difference. NOT TRUE! Thermal Energy Storage is also possible both on a diurnal and seasonal basis.
Above I gave a link to an article saying that the Urban Heat Island effect in London approaches 20 degrees C, which should correspond to a temperature above 30 C during the day for June, July and early August.
Wouldn't it be possible to "heat pump" this from 30 C., up to a temperature of, say 60 C, using heat pumps with a COP of 3-4 and store it in boreholes under the city for use during the winter? This thermal energy would significantly reduce the amount of gas now needed for space heating during the winter (with or without heat pumping of the "thermal"), or at least postpone the need to use gas until the "second half" of winter.
They do this at the Drake Landing in Alberta, at about the same latitude as London.
http://www.dlsc.ca/
Such a system has been operating at the Swedish airport Arlanda since 2009 but with a lower temperature swing.
http://www.arlanda.se/en/Information-about/Environmental/Reducing-carbon...
There has been numerous suggestions about seasonal storage for district heating to use summer solar heat or excess heat from industries or garbage incineration, heat that is cheaper then heat pumping. The problem is that you need a vast water or rock volume and when you try to get it to high tempeatures it needs to be insulated or absurdly big.
One of the odd tests were a torus shaped bedrock chamber in Lyckbo, Uppsala, Sweden, 100 000 m3 volume and it took about 5 years to reach thermal equilibrium.
The most common type of large scale heat storage is to pump down heat into ground source heat pump boreholes. It is used in micro scale to save too shallow boreholes for individual houses by adding a solar collector.
Over a century of heating has caused the London subway (the Underground or Tube) to become uncomfortably hot (47 C has been measured) in the summer.
Several years ago the London mayor asked for ideas in a "Cool the Tube" contest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
London has one of the smallest cross-section subways and very tight clearances between train and wall. This, and inadequate ventilation, appears to have made the issue worse in London than elsewhere.
Best Hopes for Regenerative and not Friction braking,
Alan
PS: The Swiss plan to use the waste heat from a ventilation shaft near the mid-point of the new Gotthard Tunnel (57 km long) to warm a greenhouse in the midat of the Alps. Heat from radioactive decay in the rocks plus frictional losses from the trains.
"Over a century of heating has caused the London subway (the Underground or Tube) to become uncomfortably hot (47 C has been measured) in the summer."
Wow...a ready made source of heat for the AVE.
With the outside temperature dropping to 20 C at night during the summer, a 40 C stream of air (at steady-state) extracted from the subway could generate a considerable amount electricity.
Assuming the "tube's" temperature is "just" 30 C during the winter, and with the outside air being at 0 C., multiple air stream extracted from the "tube" would rise like gangbusters due to buoyancy. Give it a "twist", install expansion turbines around the periphery, and you could produce the net electrical output of a "small nuke" for every 100 km2 (or less), without adding much CO2 to the air (only during construction).
You would need large diameter ducts, for sure, to keep the flow velocity through them at or below ~25 m/s.
http://vortexengine.ca
My first thought was heat pumps and, looking at the article, they've already thought of that:
Install heat pumps for the buildings above the Tube and put auxilliary evaporator coils on the Tube ceiling to use all of that heat in winter. Store coolth for summer.
Richard Duncan has argued as late as 2007 that failure of the grid will be one of the leading indicators of terminal decline. The Olduvai Theory: Terminal Decline Imminent
I have argued the exact opposite, that the grid will be the last thing to go. That is because liquid fuel will go long before coal or even natural gas. Of course may have rolling blackouts or even periodic grid failure. But they will not be serious, or nearly as serious as the liquid fuel transportation problem.
Peak oil will be the problem, peak natural gas may come next, several years later, but peak coal, at least for a few parts of the world, is still well down the road. So let's not get excited over grid failure right now. We have far more immediate problems.
Ron P.
Cheers,
Jerry
Agree completely -- I expect the grid will be maintained at all costs as long as possible since losing electrical power would be even more catastrophic than losing liquid fuels.
You say: "Renewables Won't Keep the Lights On"? Well someone disagrees with you. They say renewables could power everything by 2030. That is lights, transportation, plastics and everything that fossil fuels bring us today. Headlined on today's DrumBeat:
All energy could be renewable by 2030
So not to worry about anything. No more importing oil from countries that don't like us and no more polluting the air and best of all, no more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. No more global warming.
All we have to do is... Well they did say could not would.
Ron P.
I had to laugh when I saw that, millions of wind turbines and billions of PV systems. Sure, no problem! Just send me the fossil fuel bill to pay for all that, but oh, by the way, don't come crying when it all needs to be replaced and I can't pay the bill anymore. So sorry.
Cheers,
Jerry
..only Jerry, it's NOT like walking around picking up all those pennies, it's creating a bunch of big funnels that those pennies collect in buckets beneath. It's pennies that hit your roof every day and then go Poof!.. unless you can catch them in funnels, and keep them for later. Then, when you go to work and tediously pick up all those widgets off the conveyor belt, a lot less of them are going to pay for your firewood or your lamp oil.. your boss, who runs his conveyor belt on Renewables now, sacrifices fewer WidgitBucks towards the Conveyor Power Bill.. as it has finally paid itself off.
Please do send me the fossil fuel bill for all the funnels, and widgits, and conveyor belts, won't you?
Cheers,
Jerry
Interesting link, but as a school science project I'd only give it a bare pass grade.
Missing entirely from the 'maths extrapolation' exercise, is any mention of storage.
Yes, absolutely right, congratulations to Euan for his ability to see past the year 2002, (unlike almost every other graph posted on TOD) and for posting this interesting article.
Wow, that's an eye opener. Export land anybody?
Large scale roll out of Chinese nuclear will solve our problems? Really? That's a head-scratcher until you see his bio:
Marketing director for a China based energy company, hmmmm...
Cheers,
Jerry
Given the looming "Peak Coal" in China, the Chinese will be using their resources (people and supply chain) to build more nukes in China and not for export. Same for wind turbines (this year China may install more wind than the rest of the world combined).
I find the "build Chinese nukes" in the UK to be fanciful at best. Certainly not going to happen !
One expedient is for the UK to "buy/rent" new EPR nukes in France. The two going in at Flamanville and Penly are obviously sited to export to the UK anyway and building two more EPRs in France plus two at Hinkley Point creates some "common design risk" but that is hardly Britain's greatest risk.
Taking a work crew that is halfway through one nuke at Flamanville and using them to start a second, twin unit is low risk and efficient. Likewise, staging two EPRs at Penly instead of a "one off" would be good management.
This bi-national approach also diversifies the workforce risk. Those that built Sizewell B are mostly retired or dead by now, and building just two EPRs will absorb much of the qualified workforce in the UK.
Best Hopes for More New Nukes than retiring nukes,
Alan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
Good suggestions about building several units at the same site.
China will probably trade components even if they focus on their own need for electricity. Building factory capacity and delivering on time is not a completely predictable process, sometimes you need to import and sometimes you get excess capacity and since China aims high
it is likely that they get some for export.
I find it unlikley that Chinese skilled workforce will stay cheap, they are learning what they are worth and that is a good thing.
Step 1
Peak oil, then switch to...
Step 2
Peak coal, then switch to...
Step 3
Peak or nuclear fuel, then...
You could add natural gas to your country mix. And change the steps' order.
I hear there are millions of very well educated Chinese without jobs. I think the competition may keep the wages low.
Cheers,
Jerry
Who are you quoting? Alan's post doesn't say that.
Humanity lived within a solar budget until about the second world war. (95% of all oil has been consumed since then.)
Lately there has been a lot of hand-wringing about humanity's inability to work within nature's bounty again.
We have three options: the abyss (peak everything), magic ("zero-point" energy or revival of nuclear power), or renewables.
If it costs money to shift to renewables, well, is that a surprise? Do I hear any votes for the other two options?
Only a ideologue hoping to sway unthinking listeners would make such a statement, given the established record of nuclear electricity generation;equating nuclear power to magic or zero point energy is not going to win any debates in this forum.
Such remarks have no place in a reasoned discussion.
While the eventual commercial success of breeder reactors is not a given, we do know that the process works in principle, and can be made to work in practice, as this has already been done; the only real question is whether such reactors can be made to run reliably and economically.My personal opinion is that our last ,best, slim hope for avoiding a world wide clusterfxxk is that we are able to build one hell of a lot of new nukes-and fast!
I readily admit that am not an expert in any energy technology, but I have carefully studied just about every post and article on TOD for well over a year now, and have read a substantial number of books written by energy experts.Furthermore I am well grounded in the basic physical sciences.
I believe the following conclusions are basically inescapable:
We are in very deep and very hot water in respect to climate change over the medium to long run and fossil fuels in the short run.Facts, indisputable.
While climate change is the greater problem, in terms of our long term welfare, our fossil fuel problems are such that worrying about climate change first is approximately equivalent to worrying about a stock portfolio or a long term health problem such as cancer while flying in a plane over the Himalayas with the engine sputtering for lack of fuel.A lifetime spent reading serious literature of every sort, and history in particular, plus a modest measure of common sense, indicates that the odds of our actually collectively engaging in remedial action on such a scale as to solve the impending ff depletion problem , never mind simultaneously solving the codependent climate problem,are not much better than zero.Opinion,technically speaking, but well supported by many other well reasoned and fact backed articles by many contributing authors and commenting members here on TOD.I believe those of us who are truly objective and rational will deem this opinion to be an established fact.
I do understand and appreciate that many serious leaders who may ( and almost certainly sometimes do ) have grave personal reservations concerning the success of such various remedial measures as they endorse will find it expedient to conceal their doubts in order to maintain the morale of coworkers in their movements, as well as the political and cultural coalitions that supply funding for these initiatives.Opinion, but based on good understanding of principles of leadership, and on personal experience.
It is sometimes possible to win against long odds, but only if the team believes in itself and fights with real conviction.
Renewables are simply too damned expensive, in terms of the "art of the possible" aka politics, for us to expect that the public will ever go along with any program grand enough in scale to enable us to maintain some semblance of business as usual.We can hope that the actual "turn key " or installed costs of renewable energy will fall fast enough to dodge the depletion avalanche , but the odds of this happening are extremely slim at best. Opinion again, but I have yet to see any solid (in my opinion!) evidence to the contrary, unless perhaps the fossil fuel supply does indeed last thru at least a couple more human generations of business as usual. Again I believe rational and well informed members will agree that we may accept as factual that renewables will not enable the continuation of business as usual.
So I conclude we are well and truly trapped between a rock and a hard place.This does not mean that we should give up hope, for all is not lost.A good many of us, and our children and grandchildren, are likely to continue to live reasonably happy and healthy lives, barring WWIII;and even then, some will survive, and prosper-eventually.
The question then becomes what course(s) of action should we pursue?
I would argue at this point that while debate is proper and necessary in respect to determining the limits of what is technically possible, within the limits of physical laws and economic constraints,such debate becomes academic very quickly, for the reason that it is simply naive to think that Americans will willingly give up their cars, or that Chindia will stop burning as much coal as can be had, or that Europeans will be willing,or able, to bear the extraordinarily heavy costs of the necessary fast switch to renewables on such a scale as to support bau.
Fortunately, there are some realistic strategies that may not deliver everything we might wish for in terms of results, but which will nevertheless generate very satisfactory returns and enable most of us, possibly even all of us, at least in the rich countries, to survive and lead reasonably dignified if materially modest lives.
The first and foremost of these strategies is to fight like hell for conservation and efficiency on every front.Anybody who argues that renewable energy across the board is a better deal than conservation and efficiency, especially during a time of economic crisis, is simply deluded.
A high gas tax might be politically impossible in the US, but a gas guzzler tax, and a tax on vehicle weight or engine displacement is doable -we need any and all legislation that serves primarily to reduce energy consumption without unnecessarily hindering productivity.I believe we can dismiss any arguments respecting Jevon's Paradox from here on out in respect to gasoline, diesel fuel, and gas for heating our homes and businesses-rising prices will soon eliminate profligate use of such fuels.If prices don't, rationing will, shortly.
It is critical that such efforts be focused on the low hanging fruit-it is patently ridiculous to give Detroit more billions for such programs as cash for clunkers rather than spend the same money on insulation , double or triple glazed windows, top notch heat pumps,street cars, and other such investments, in such places as these things are already economically viable, or nearly so.
As the lowhanging fruit is gathered, the focus should gradually shift to less advantageous strategies, such as building local passenger rail transit systems;but we must remember that one man's mass transit is another man's knife in the back-the owner of a store, office, house, or apartment located within a block or two reaps a giant windfall;his envious competitor farther away gets the shaft.We should therefore not expect much progress on this or similar fronts for quite some time.Failure to keep such considerations in mind is a sure fire formula for gridlock or outright failure, politically speaking.
As the costs of less advantageous efficiency and conservation options rise, along with costs of fossil fuels, the relative value of renewable energy rises almost in lockstep.As a matter of indisputable fact, the costs of some renewable energy technology technologies or strategies are already low enough to make them quite attractive even without subsidies if the investor is planning for the long term.These include solar domestic hot water, passive heating and cooling architectural designs, correctly selected and placed landscaping, and investments in home grown food and energy infrastructure-things such as a wood fired stove and woodlot, ,a small greenhouse,a fenced garden with irrigation, or even a draft animal-a horse or pony can be kept in many places at little or no out of pocket expense, and enjoyably used as an alternate form of transportation.I expect that I will live to see pleasure or draft horses ridden to work and to run errands again in rural areas if I live to be as old as most of my recent honorable ancestors.
Those of us who have the money and wish to do so should obviously go ahead with any plans they have for personally owned renewable energy systems.This is especially true for those of us with the necessary technical expertise to build and maintain our own systems-I am myself almost finished building my own solar domestic hot water system, and have a gravity powered irrigation system that can be used in a pinch to supply domestic water, in addition to the woodlot, wood heat, and a properly shaded house with a family sunroom that requires no heat during daylight hours.
If I were more knowledgeable in respect to electronics, I would be actively considering a photovoltiac system soon.As things stand, I am waiting for an idiot proof package deal to be put on marked down sales left over after Fathers Day display at my local big box building supply store-I hope to see this very thing within another five or six years.
We need to be extremely conservative in accepting arguments in respect to subsidizing any given industry.There is a very high risk that any subsidy of any sort will assume a life or its own, and become so entangled with the rest of the economy as to be immortal in the sense that it cannot be excised by any practical means.
Einstein told us that the power of compound interest is the greatest power in the universe- meaning of course the power of any exponentially increasing factor to eventually overwhelm or destroy the system of which it is a part.
Old Farmer Mac is telling you that the need to go along to get along is just about as compelling, in human terms, as the exponential function in physical terms;hence we have the analysts who know but say nothing, referenced in the keypost ;we have the well made arguments outlined in the recent False Fire Brigade article;we have ethanol, we have industrial ag, we have banks too big to fail, we have Detroit to big to fail,we have big law, big law enforcement, big education, big real estate,too damn much of way too damn many things to big for our happiness or safety-all of them in large part having gotten so big, and become so dangerous to our well being, by virtue of direct or indirect subsidy.
( And yes, nuclear too-which is the exception that proves that even wrong headed policies occasionally turn out long term winners against the odds.)
The marginal value of even a little bit of intermittent energy will be enormous in a few more years, a decade or two at most-valuable enough to cover the costs of even excruciatingly expensive renewable energy, probably.Furthermore, as Alan Big Easy among others has pointed out, we don't have to justify a great deal of renewable energy on the basis of available storage technology-we already have the storage in the form of coal , oil, and natural gas still in the ground, or in stockpiles.Every ton of coal,or barrel of oil, or thousand cubic meters of natural gas saved on a sunny or windy day when the temperature is moderate is that much more available for use on days when the weather is rotten.
Every barrel, or ton, or cubic meter saved, is a barrel, ton, or cubic meter of reduced demand, and therefore a lower market price.Since energy prices and demand are generally inelastic,to the best of my knowledge,the net costs of renewables to our society may turn to be much less than we would ordinarily expect-but I haven't seen any good figures quantifying this possibility.
Having made these points as well as I know how, allow me to say that I believe we need to keep the pedal to the metal in terms of research and development of all sorts of renewables, while praying for a miraculous breakthrough, or at least steady incremental improvements;and that while I am opposed to subsidies in principle as medicines that create more problems than they cure over the long term, we should copntinue subsidizing existing renewables technologies to the extent that they can achieve critical mass -hopefully- before we go broke for once and for all time.Uncle Sam's checks aren't bouncing-yet.
I just hope we can do it in a way that the bankers and bureaucrats aren't able to skim off their usual boss hogs share.;)
OFM gave a long windy speech in which he proclaimed,
Here's the thing: while you and a multitude of others say stuff like this, wind has grown to 200GW worldwide. In the past decade, it has been growing at greater than 30 percent per year. If wind alone continues to grow at, say, 25 percent per year, by 2030 wind alone would be producing roughly as much energy as the world currently uses.
This doesn't even count direct solar, which has much larger potential than wind, and is also growing at a rapid rate.
So, while people hem and haw, it is happening anyway. The problem is we are facing a period of years where oil decline (more specifically, NET ENERGY) is happening faster than renewables are coming on line. This has led to massive unemployment and budget deficits. Nuclear cannot help this situation because it takes too long before there will be any return on investment -- 10 years or more. Other sources -- nat gas and coal -- cannot cover the decline either. Therefore, we need to step up renewable installations.
Characterizing OFM's post as long and windy is insulting. Can't you just respectfully respond to the points he is making without the snarky comment?
"OFM gave a long windy speech"
I think he's trying to out-Nestor Nestor?
But at least he uses punctuation, unlike memel.
Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for the ideas of both. But they both somehow missed the lesson that posts longer than a screen size tend to get passed over.
Perhaps, though, the error is in our own short attention spans? Can all important ideas be expected to be boilable down to screen-size?
Well, Old Farmer,
I encourage caution in characterizing one's opinions as rational while castigating those of another. The established record of nuclear power is at the core of my concern, and I'm certain that many well-informed readers here will have no difficulty sharing my concern without needing ten paragraphs to grasp the meaning. And you don't need to have friends who've been to Olympic Dam to know the perils of continued uranium mining (powered by unsustainable diesel fuel of course). You also may have an opinion about breeder reactors. But opinions don't produce electricity; solar panels do.
BAU is not in the cards, and it is not something to wish for in any case. My solar electric system meets 100% of electric demand, and cost less than the forced air heater which I never use because the house is well-insulated with high solar heat gain windows oriented south. I don't have the expense, nor the noise, nor the blowing of dust around the house. I prefer solar heat to fossil heat.
Anyone arguing in favor of BAU in transport must ignore the engineering folly which kills over a million people a year. Operating within a solar budget with off-the-shelf technology humanity will re-engineer transport. It will be better than what we have. By far.
Going beyond "conservation" we must re-engineer to achieve order-of-magnitude improvements in energy performance. Once we stop trying to conform renewable solutions to the old paradigm (solar EVs?) the ff party will be over and we will have a better party!
Thanks, OFM, for an eloquent and well-reasoned post. As I read through the posts on this thread I realize that it really comes down to belief systems. Do you want to believe renewables are viable or not? If you want to believe, you can come up with some encouraging numbers. Yet, when you step back and look at the paltry contribution that renewables make today after considerable effort, what are you going to believe -- their rosy numbers or your own eyes.
To those who believe that renewable energy will come to the rescue in any meaningful way, I truly hope that you are right. I don't think so, but I sure hope I am wrong.
"To those who believe that renewable energy will come to the rescue in any meaningful way, I truly hope that you are right. I don't think so, but I sure hope I am wrong."
Renewables may not come to your rescue, though they've been 'rescuing' my family for years, at least on the home front. Then again, I never expected to be rescued.
"Yet, when you step back and look at the paltry contribution that renewables make today after considerable effort, what are you going to believe -- their rosy numbers or your own eyes."
My grid-weenie neighbors just recieved another rate increase notice. That, along with new, 'more accurate' smart meters has many of them paying electric bills well above my entire living expenses. Since I'm one of the few folks around who's energy expenditures are actually dropping over time, I think the numbers are indeed "rosey". In my little world, the 'eyes' have it.
I agree with one thing; the 'system' isn't going to fix it for you.
I wonder if half the people on TOD live their entire lives at home, with food, clothing, health care, water, waste collection, TV, phone and computer services provided to their front door by elves.
For the rest, home electricity consumption accounts for 1/3 of the electricity that supports our lives.
For those who gloat about their reduced home consumption, what do you propose for the other 2/3?
what do you propose for the other 2/3?
Reduce retail space per capita in the USA to twice what it was in 1950 (i.e. an 80% reduction) combined with a modest reduction in hours. Let HereinHalifax clones go after the remainder.
Another 20+% reduction in total demand there.
LED traffic lights and less street lighting and security lighting (lower, more efficient lumens or remove totally).
Increased industrial efficiency.
And more (this is just a 30 second response).
Best Hopes for Efficiency,
Alan
Reduce retail space per capita in the USA to twice what it was in 1950 (i.e. an 80% reduction) combined with a modest reduction in hours.
The retail numbers you suggest correspond very well with the numbers downtown revitalization schemes quote as optiomal. One big problem, how do you reduce that square footage without a Gail the Actuary type envisioned crash and thus manage to keep the funds flowing to do anything else? Time frame is everything in that sort of contraction.
Build urban rail as a carrot and Peak Oil will be the stick.
Best Hopes for TOD (the other type)
Alan
In other words get at that urban rail yesterday. Glad you are working on it. Had to look up TOD. I was envisioning the other one as something involving toe tags ?- )
Hope some unanticipated (but more or less gentle) boosts come its way.
Luke
That's practically changing the subject, first of all.
That 1/3 of the electricity that people use at home is, 1) the electricity they have the choice to sign up for, and 2) the electricity that they pay for. The other 2/3 is also important.. you simply offered a false choice. People only solve or try to solve one problem, and that's it?
I think Ghung is perfectly in his rights to 'gloat'.. which is simply a negative way of describing his being proud/content at having set up his home with an independent source of power, while his neighbors are still at the mercy of piped in sources completely beyond their control, and at whatever prices and availability they end up leaving these people.
It's also been widely reported that people who have installed their own Solar PV will frequently become far more conscious and watchful over their consumption, since they are eager to avoid buying grid KWH unnecessarily, much like cell-phone users trying to avoid adding surplus minutes onto their monthly usage..
OFM:
PV systems don't require a knowledge of electronics. PV is basic DC electrical, much like a car. Panels are the generator, the controller is the voltage regulator, the batteries are, well, the battery. Add an inverter for AC. The math is simple, the balance of system devices are things like breakers and fuses. Anyone that can do basic electrical repairs on an old truck can grok PV. Codes, wire sizes, etc. can be handled by anyone who can understand a basic shop manual. PV shouldn't be intimidating.
That said, if you decide to go for it, I'd be glad to help. BTW; nice post!
Nice point. I would like to modify one of OFM's cliches--Instead of being
"between a rock and a hard place"
I would say we are:
"between a rocky and a hardy place"
Either we:
1)ignore the likely shortcomings approaching us, and hope something will come along and save our BAU lifestyles, in which case our future will become more and more rocky, with the rocks becoming sharper and sharper...
or we:
2) start becoming much more resilient, as OFM and you already are doing. That means lowering our need for energy, but also becoming more knowledgeable about how to produce our own--not just energy, but food, clothes, housing...These were skills and abilities taken for granted by most, especially country folk, just a couple generations ago. In other words, we become hardy (though a good bit of rockiness is pretty much unavoidable, even down this path).
Of course, even if by some miracle we power down and all become resilient and self- and community-reliant, global warming, which may already be in runaway mode, could cook our collective goose (gosling? gander??).
Ghung,
I second everything you've said here. PV is easy for someone who knows how to learn and teach themselves how to do things. You and OFM know what you speak of!
Hi Ghung,
Thanks! Actually I have been hoping that someday maybe we could get together for a visit-if you ever decide to have an open house for nearby TOD members, I think I can make it, as I live in southwest Virginia.Likewise if you ever have business in the Galax , Virginia area, I hope you can make time to drop by for a day.
Actually I could install a solar system and wire it up, without help-if I bought everything new and depended upon the advice of the people selling or designing the system;what I can't do is mix and match and repurpose salvaged or second hand components the way you can, or repair complex electrical components, or program a homemade system-I can barely manage a little basic word processing and a simple spreadsheet.
So I would have to buy everything at retail-which goes against my Scots/Irish grain;for instance my primary personal pickup truck is an 84 Toyota which I bought for scrap for two hundred fifty dollars because the frame was rusted out;it took me two long days to fix it, if I live long enough, I expect to drive it over a hundred thousand miles while spending next to nothing on it other than some time,except for gas, tires, and insurance.
Expect an email soon!
Best, Mac
Thanks,Mac. Looking forward to it!
Mac, this just isn't true. Here is a more accurate analogy: Ignoring climate long enough to transition energy is a bit like repairing the nerves and torn muscles in a gangrenous leg.
But let's try your analogy: worrying about Peak Oil first is approximately equivalent to doing liposuction to process bio-fuels for your out-of-fuel airplane flying over the Himalayas with the engine sputtering instead of putting on your parachute.
In reality, pay dear attention to both, or you will fail at both. There is no chicken-egg argument here, only chicken and egg.
I saw a post on a physics website which said that in the 1960's, small thorium reactor prototypes had been developed and were operational, but that Admiral Rickover wanted all the research money to go into uranium power plants in order to obtain the plutonium for nuclear bomb usage. Is anyone researching thorium based nuclear power in the US? I saw on Wikipedia that India has several thorium reactors in operation. They hope to have 30% of electrical power from thorium by 2050.
Recently in the Uk it was reported wind generated 10% of electricity on ONE day.
Today it is 0.5% and 0.3% in last 1/2 hour
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
This sums up the problem with wind. It simply is not there when you need it.
Please see HereInHalifax's comment, below, about the City of Summerside. This gives an excellent example of where wind power can be a huge benefit while utilising its variable nature. We had electrical storage heating for many years, while I was in the UK. It worked well. It is a perfect fit with wind power.
NAOM
For Rickover at least, I think it was a question of getting reactors for submarines as fast as possible.
Here's some links on thorium:
• http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1
• http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/01/09/liquid-fuel-nuclear-reactors/
• http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/index.php/george-stanford/195-the-ifr-v...
• http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/pb-ahtr/
Interesting article Hugh. Great voice.
But your comment
No more significant amounts of incremental, new pumped hydro can be built anywhere in mainland Europe.
gives me great pause. The Mediteranean, to the Arctic Ocean to the Urals all maxed out. I didn't know the east block was ever that thoroughly developed, or the north. They have already destroyed the wild salmon with fish farms in Scandinavia. Damming above a few more fiords for cleanish power wouldn't do any worse than that.
The part of these issues we see is huge but the trade offs we will be wrestling with are the submerged part of that iceberg.
What is this place coming to--one slam after another against renewable energy?
Since all here at TOD know that energy is money, as long as an energy source has net positive EROEI, then no matter how much subsidy you have to throw at it, you will always get more than your dollar's worth back in the end.
But getting virtually no wind power when the demand was greatest does point up a big problem--if wind is too great a part of the mix or even taking too much of the available capital. The fact that you will get your money back with a positive ERoEI does not say when that will occur. Scarce capital is going to chase returns--higher risk returns (less proven track record) will have to yield higher rewards more quickly than lower risk returns. Structuring subsidies to properly funnel capital to slower, higher risk returns is tricky business and even the best of plans will be flawed and need adjustment. It does not sound that Britain's plan could be described as 'the best of plans.' It could even be worse than the US plan which is no plan at all.
Statements that include
then no matter how much subsidy you have to throw at it won't help the cause of renewables. This is all a very tough battle especially if the developed economies are stagnant. Renewables projects are going to have to stand much tougher scrutiny now, 2008 made sure of that.
Energy that is reliable and dispatchable is valuable. On the other hand, wind dominated grids sometimes have low or even negative prices. You can lose money with a positive EROEI.
The City of Summerside, PEI commissioned four 3.0 MW wind turbines in 2009 and we're told that they supply more than 30 per cent of the City's electricity needs (source: http://www.journalpioneer.com/News/Local/2011-01-21/article-2144404/City...). We're also told that these four turbines generated a total of 30,277,885 kWh (although not made explicit, I presume during calendar year 2010). Thus, the annual capacity factor appears to be 29 per cent.
Summerside purchases additional wind energy from a neighbouring wind farm and, taken together, wind supplies approximately one-half of the city's total needs and at times its contribution tops 100 per cent (source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-a...). With the exception of Ontario, Canadian utilities are winter peaking and, happily, our wind resources are strongest during the winter months when demand is highest.
The problem facing Summerside is what to do with excess wind energy, in particular at night when demand is low. In the past, it was sold to neighbouring utilities at a sizeable discount and the City has decided it makes more sense to sell this energy to its customers who can store in electric thermal storage (ETS) heaters for subsequent release the following day (source: http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article/id42531). These storage heaters will be controlled via a fibre optic network and can be topped up at any time day or night as conditions require.
Approximately 80 per cent of all homes in PEI are heated by oil (all of it imported from foreign sources) and wind powered ETS heaters have the potential to displace a good portion of this. Presently, fuel oil in the Maritimes retails for about $1.00 per litre or 11.5 to 13.5-cents per kWh(e) depending upon the efficiency of the boiler. The five year, lock-in rate for this ETS wind energy is 8-cents per kWh which puts it some 30 to 40 per cent below the current price of oil. It's estimated that a home equipped with a supplementary ETS heating system can save approximately $600.00 on their annual heating bill. And with the cost of fuel oil five years from now, the savings potential could be even greater.
In addition to reducing the Province's dependence on foreign oil, it makes more sense to keep this money circulating within the local economy than to export it overseas.
Cheers,
Paul
HydroQuebec also has a program where consumers get cheap power down to a certain temperature, when electrical heating is cut off and they switch to natural gas, oil or wood.
Such a program works well with new generation heat pumps.
Perhaps the UK, with a bit more pumped storage and a lot more wind, could do something comparable. Heat pumps with good wind and not too cold, electrical resistance with great wind (>100% of non-nuke generation) and quite cold, and natural gas heat the rest of the time.
Best Hopes for adaptive loads,
Alan
That's correct. Hydro-Québec's dual-energy rate is popular with oil heat customers. When temperatures are above -12° or -15°C (depending upon where you live in the Province), electricity is used for space heating purposes and below this point its automatically switches over to oil or gas (see: http://www.hydroquebec.com/rates/pdf/dual_energy_customer.pdf). Currently, dual energy customers pay 4.33¢ for each kWh consumed when temperatures are above the cut-over point and 18.32¢ when they fall below. The majority of homes in Québec are electrically heated so this dual-energy programme provides a measure of relief when the utility is under heavy strain.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul, Alan, thank you so much for your continued contributions on how to make a positive difference! I find them encouraging, even moving...
Thanks, JN2, for your kind words. I've learned a lot from my time spent on this forum and continue to do so each time I log on, and it's folks like Alan that keep me coming back.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul ..
How would these ETS units compare with the
high SEER air source heat pumps you frequently mention ..
I'm in SW VA and need both heat and AC ..
Thanks for any input ..
Triff ..
Hi Triff,
These ETS heaters only make sense when used with off-peak rates and provided you can shift the bulk of your space heating demand (and other household demands such as DHW) to these off-peak periods. Without TOU rates, they're a complete waste of money. Since you also require air conditioning, a high efficiency heat pump would seem a better choice and if you don't have a forced air heating system (e.g., your home is heated with electric baseboards), then a high efficiency ductless heat pump is your best option by far.
In a more moderate climate such as your own, a conventional heat pump should operate with a seasonal COP of about 2.5, so if you currently pay 12-cent per kWh, say, your effective cost is less than 5-cents. For a high efficiency ductless heat pump, a seasonal COP of 3.0 to 3.5 is not unreasonable, so a kWh of heat would thus fall below 4-cents. And with SEER ratings as high as 25 and 26 (the current minimum is 13 SEER), your cooling costs should be a lot lower as well.
Cheers,
Paul
I wonder when we will see ETS combined with ducted systems? Surely all systems of acquiring heat could be combined into a ducted system; ETS direct electric, heat exchange, boiler. direct solar etc? Who will be the first to the multi-heat source system?
NAOM
Hi NAOM,
They do exist, at least in North America.
See: http://www.steffes.com/about-us/product-downloads.html
I consider a heat pump heating system with ETS backup the cat's meow. ;-)
Cheers,
Paul
The Rural Electric Cooperative I worked at in the White Mountains of Arizona sells the Steffes residential products, we couldn't keep enough in stock. Nightime lows in the winter there range between -10 and 20 F. People mostly bought the room units but we did sell some of the forced-air units. People love the ETS units, in fact the couple that are living in the rental I own there asked me for permission to install one at their expense! They heat the whole house with one of the large room units.
They're quite popular here as well and Nova Scotia Power has been busy promoting them as well as in-floor radiant heat and heat pumps equipped with ETS backup (see: http://www.nspower.ca/site-nsp/media/nspower/Electric.Thermal.Storage.WE...). Very popular in new home construction due to the significant cost savings over oil and conventional electric baseboard (we don't have any natural gas service in this province to speak of, so the choice boils down to either oil or electric and electric appears to be the safer bet).
Cheers,
Paul
Interesting, now that needs to be combined with the other sources of heat and a controller that selects the most efficient and cost effective mix.
NAOM
Thanks Paul...How do we get you to write the main stories rather than all this anti-renewable doom and gloom. Of course renewables won't maintain business as usual, and the prices will be slightly higher than we have been used to in the fossil fuel party of late 20th and early 21st century. But as your example makes clear, a little creativity with some discipline and foresight can easily keep the lights on.
Well, first presenting the notion that 12 GW of wind running on 29% capacity is sufficient to power 30% of a city is a little problematic for me. And then you need to raise awareness of all the infrastructure required to keep the lights on when the wind doesn't blow, and the cost implications of that. And you need to be aware that the weather pattern in other more populated parts of the world is not the same as in Nova Scotia.
And then Paul claims that Halifax, Nova Scotia, part of Canada, one of only three OECD countries that actually export oil (the others are Norway and Mexico) has to import it.
And then you need to consider scalability from "The City of Summerside" which I imagine is a small rural town surrounded by billions of square miles of wilderness and ocean and ask will this work in New York.
And you also need to be careful about assuming that Joe Blogs who doesn't give a sh*t about the environment or have the remotest clue about where his electricity comes from has any creativity.
But setting all these minor details aside, from what I recall Hereinhalifax is a long term and very reasonable commenter here and if he wants to send me a short post (1000 words) detailing his local experience I'm quite sure I will mange to have it posted - so that's an official invite.
TheOilDrum has no policy on renewables and energy policy. We listen to reasoned argumentation, and I think it is actually quite sad how many very valid arguments in favor of massive expansion of renewables have become lost in hostile responses to those who do not agree 100% with the renewables point of view immediately. Gentle, reasoned, logical arguments will work much better.
And then Paul claims that Halifax, Nova Scotia, part of Canada, one of only three OECD countries that actually export oil (the others are Norway and Mexico) has to import it
Eastern Canada imports 1 Million b/day from OPEC et al. Western Canada exports 2 million b/day, mainly to the Midwest USA. There is no practical & economic way to ship an extra 1 million b/day from Western Canada to the Maritimes. Paul is correct (except for residual production off Nova Scotia, almost gone).
IMHO, Germany should consider promoting "Dual Fuel" space and water heating. Let the utilities decide when to have commercial & residential customers heat with high efficiency heat pumps and when with natural gas (or oil/propane if no NG (or wood if they prefer)).
Alan
I'm not questioning the accuracy of the claim but the validity and strength of argument. The UK has a huge 2 way trade in oil. Even at its peak, it imported oil, but exported more. It would then be pretty weak to argue that something had to be done to stop our oil imports when these were beneficial to us on trade and refining grounds.
The real argument for Paul is that his little community has boosted Canada's primary renewable energy production thereby releasing more net Canadian oil production to the international market, boosting Canada's wealth and easing energy concerns else where, whilst maybe increasing trade imbalances.
Canada has the longest oil pipelines in the world, but they do not reach all the way across the country. Actually, they do, but at this point in time the Eastern parts of the system are importing into the Central Provinces. They are reversible, so they could go either direction, depending on market conditions.
Eastern Canada is closer to the oil fields of the North Sea than it is to the oil fields of Western Canada, so it makes no sense to pipeline oil that far. It is more efficient to export oil from Western Canada, and import it into Eastern Canada.
However, it is quite right that it is economically efficient to export energy we do not need and use energy that we cannot export. I lived in Calgary, the oil capital of Canada, for years. The Light Rail Transit System there that I rode to work was wind-powered. I felt that it was useful to do that because it freed up more oil that the oil companies I worked for could export to the US.
It is also the case that most of Canada's electricity production uses renewable resources. It is about 60% hydro. The small town I live in has two hydro plants within walking distance of my house that produce far more power than the town can use. There is considerable undeveloped hydro potential in the North.
The UK, unfortunately, is not in such a good situation. In fact, I think it is in serious trouble due to a lack of forward planning. Western Canada will bail out Eastern Canada if it gets in trouble - it always has done so in the past. If the UK gets in trouble, nobody will bail it out, not even the EU.
Hi Euan,
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss a few of these points in a little more detail. First, I'd like to acknowledge that what works well in one area may not be a good fit elsewhere and that some of the biggest challenges we face are related to scaling these renewable resources to meet a larger share of our overall energy needs.
Just to clarify a couple things if I may: the City of Summerside, which is located in Prince Edward Island and not Nova Scotia, is a relatively small city of some 15,000 souls and according to the sources cited above, the municipality's four 3.0 MW turbines supply a little more than 30 per cent of the city's electricity needs and with the additional energy purchased under contract from a neighbouring wind farm, wind satisfies roughly 50 per cent of their total electricity demand. The balance is mostly imported from neighbouring New Brunswick via an undersea cable.
Secondly, the oil we consume here in Atlantic Canada is, in fact, acquired from overseas sources. From the Energy Bulletin website:
Source: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/39947
Thus, any oil we displace with wind means more dollars are available to support our local economy. In addition, less pollution is generated (e.g., fuel oil in Atlantic Canada can contain up to 5,000 PPM of sulphur) and our CO2 emissions are likewise reduced. To encourage residents to install these ETS heaters, the local utility has recommended to Council that they offer participating home owners a five year fixed rate of 8-cents per kWh (source: http://www.journalpioneer.com/News/Local/2010-12-10/article-2035057/Heat...). As noted above, fuel oil at $1.00 a litre works out to be anywhere from 11.5 to 13.5-cents per kWh(e) depending upon the efficiency of the boiler so, again, this is potentially a 30 to 40 per cent savings over fuel oil at current prices.
I'm told that the City of Summerside wants to increase the amount of electricity supplied by wind but can only do so if they can economically dispose of these periodic surpluses and the most cost-effective way to do so is through ETS heating. Another relatively inexpensive option would be to install an electric water heater to pre-heat the water supply to an oil-fired water heater, indirect/side arm tank or the boiler's internal DHW coil. These electric pre-heaters can be recharged whenever surplus energy is available and oil is thus relegated to boosting the final temperature as required. This alternate sink has the advantage of being available to the utility year round.
For the residents of Summerside, surplus wind is already competitive with residential fuel oil and I expect it will be even more so in the years ahead. With luck, perhaps some of the lessons learned here can be applied elsewhere -- every little bit helps.
Cheers,
Paul
"Renewables Won't Keep the Lights On"
Read the article, read the posts.
Renewables already heat and light my house. Can't say I care much what the rest of you do.
Bicker in the dark and cold I guess.
Don in Maine
I envy you, Don. Whilst wholly dependent upon grid power, I purchase 100 per cent renewable energy through Bullfrog Power (http://www.bullfrogpower.com/), enough to cover-off 115 per cent of our home's annual needs. And at a modest 2-cent per kWh premium over standard rates, why not?
Cheers,
Paul
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2011/01/biofuel-breakthrough.html
Oil at $30 a bbl from CO2, sunlight, salt water (can be fresh), and cyanobacteria.
See especially the comment by Brock.
Oil at $30 a bbl from CO2, sunlight, salt water (can be fresh), and cyanobacteria.
Well that is bulls that get hit right on its face.
CO2, sunlight, water do not have the rest of the building blocks of bacteria.
There is Calcium, Nitrogen, Sulfur (Calcium channels in cells, Nitrogen/Sulfur as protein)
There are other parts to this plan.
Things like building and keeping a large scale system operating. How much does it cost in materials to set up an acre?
If you are so hip on this thing, rather than posting it over and over write a front page post explaining it.
It's also much discussed on Slashdot, several commenters there suggest that their claims are unrealistic -- e.g., 50% of the theoretical peak efficiency of pure chlorophyll, that sort of thing. Not clear if it needs to be fed concentrated CO2, either; that would be a minor problem, since the easiest source of CO2 is from burning coal. It's also dubious on cost of infrastructure -- many square miles of tanks and tubes. Seems like there's many details for the devil to hide in.
On the other hand, minus the CO2 issue, it has the advantage of not needing nice soil (so deserts, ok, building tops, ok). If I could leave a rig running on my roof all summer long, dripping fuel oil into the tank I already have, that would be nice. (Replace my furnace with a cogeneration unit, be prepared for one of those week-long no-wind winter cold snaps I've been reading about.)
If you want to talk about costs to consumers don't forget to count the costs of climate change.
Also don't forget to count the shorter term costs as peak oil shifts energy demand over to gas
and coal. And don't forget to count the costs of the constant wars fought in the middle east.
Fossil fuels are very expensive, you just don't pay most of that cost up front...
Doesn't seem all that bad to me spending 60 billion to produce 2% of Germany's energy consumption. From what I gather that's 2.4% of current GDP, the following year would be a boon (output less maintenance costs). Wouldn't be long before you'd be in positive position on the expenditure out laid.
Thanks Chris,
I am not a huge expert on the wondrous German economy where they make things that others, all over the world, want to buy. That is what UK used to do!
All the same, German consumers are already complaining about the rise in their utility bills and the renewable energy law will be revised next year, probably to the detriment of further fast expansion of the renewables industry.
Furthermore, it is noticeable that Germany's electricity spot prices turn negative when there is maximum renewable generation. This is probably a clue that much of that heavily subsidized power is not being used in Germany at all but is "leaking" through its inter-connectors to France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Denmark. This is what happens to Denmark's wind power when this exceeds 500 MW (on average). It therefore follows that even this tiny amount of power is saving no coal and gas, at least in Germany. So it is NOT a good deal at all, at least for Germans!
Electricity storage would address this issue. But then I would say that, wouldn't I!
The Germans want to reduce their electrical demand by half by 2050#. There are few conservation incentives that equal higher prices.
And if the rate doubles and the consumption halves, the bill is the same.
All the Germans need to do to eliminate any overall negative effect is conserve at the same rate as rates climb.
Electrical demand is NOT a fixed quantity !
Best Hopes for Conservation,
Alan
# I personally think that there are strategic/national security motivations behind German plans, and not just Green ideology.
Obviously, renewables delivering "stochastic" energy will be different from what we have gotten used to. Nevertheless, the post is far too negative about renewables. Just some obvious things that seem to have been forgotten:
1) Our energy use is incredibly high, and a lot of it is totally unnecessary (e.g. jetting to Bali to roast in the sun for a week). We should compare what renewables can deliver with what we need, not with what we have gotten used to. I'd guess that would be about a factor 2 for Europeans, at the very least.
2) Well insulated modern houses need (i) far less heat energy than traditional houses (factor 4), (ii) can be super-efficiently heated with heat pumps with COP of 5 or greater (for a factor 20 together with the insulation), and (iii) importantly in this context, lose so little energy so that houses with heat pumps can act as energy storage, balancing the stochastic generation (Turn your heating on while the wind is blowing and heat up to 22°, let it drop down to 18° when there's a lull - requires a bit more flexibility, but come on - what kind of price is that to pay??).
3) With the outcry about rising cost per kWh of electricity, please stop to ask yourself for a second what you are getting for it! Currently, I pay ~1600$ per year for ALL my home energy use (I have one of those heat pumps so use electricity efficiently, not like those electric thermal storage units mentioned in the comments, which are plain terrible in comparison!), that is for 12'000 kWh of electricity per year. For 1600$, I get electricity for space heating for a large house, hot water, lights, dishwasher, washing machine, fridge, deep freezer, stereo and PC+internet. Be honest - is that a bargain or not? For me, it's an incredible amount of bang for the buck. I'd happily be willing to pay twice that much for what I get out of it.
4) With simple conservation means, the average Joe can easily save a lot of electricity, offsetting the increase in prices per kWh. High prices for electricity are actually something GOOD, not bad - if you don't have high prices, you have no incentive for conservation and efficiency gains. It's unfortunate that it needs the higher prices for this, but that seems to be human nature (tragedy of the commons)
People are starting to pick up on the word "stochastic". A very popular blog post making the rounds recently was called "Stochastic Terrorism". It means exactly what you would think, that sporadic unpredictable events can have an effect. Not quite the same as wind energy but consciousness on the topic is being raised.
This would make a great article for TOD.
Is there a difference between 'stochastic' and 'random' and, if so, how would it be defined?
NAOM
NAOM, Both terms essentially describe the same thing.
Scientists like to use stochastic because random often gives the impression of something being "completely random" or having equal probability of occupying any state. But random or stochastic can also mean that the occupancies are distributed unevenly. And that is the idea that stochastic is trying to convey.
In other words a subset of random, lumpy randomness?
NAOM
Lumpy in the sense that certain states are more likely than others, yes.
Spoken like a person who enjoys a lifestyle better than 90% of all people and 98% of all people who have ever lived. Humans worked hard for 200,000 years to be in a position where they have time and resources to do things that are unnecessary.
The most severe environmental problems tend to be associated with poverty and lack of energy. If we develop clean abundant cheap sources of energy they can be used to fix environmental problems around the world. Expensive intermittent energy sources will not do that.
You mean, like most/all people reading and writing on TOD? Those people living in OECD countries like me (and probably you) use by far most energy globally, and we are the ones who should adjust our lifestyle. The article is about renewables in Germany and the UK - not about the third world. The article argues that renewables are more or less useless for our societies, and too expensive - that's what I'm answering to.
I'm very happy that we humans have the time and resources to do unnecessary things - that's great. I'm not propagating going back to some primitive society. All I'm saying is that we could be doing things so incredibly much more efficiently (e.g. space heating today with well-insulated houses and heat pumps with COP 5 is 20 times (!!) less wasteful than today's standard heating scheme of burning fossil fuels in the not-well-insulated house) that renewables can make a meaningful contribution to our society, and not a piddling 2% as suggested by this article.
As for your answer, I would argue that the most severe environmental problems come from our overuse of cheap energy (including for example global warming and nuclear waste - it's great that our children and grandchildren will have to deal with the mess we made...).
it's great that our children and grandchildren will have to deal with the mess we made...).
Well in a way yes. When I was a junior high kid crouched under a desk during a nuke attack drill (this was during the Cuban missile crisis) that many generations forward looked pretty iffy. Seventh grade science fair--at least twice as many projects dealt with fallout shelters as with the next most popular subject.
One more thought: This article uses the classic ploy of throwing around giant numbers without putting them into perspective.
So the germans paid 9.3 billion € in 2010 for subsidies for renewable energy. That's a lot of money, indeed. But by suddenly switching to percent calculations - "only 2% of Germany's energy use" you are mixing different metrics - huge numbers and small percentages. To be more fair, you could compare with, for example, the amount of money Germans spent on tobacco in 2009 - that's ~23 billion €. And all they're getting for THAT money is a few thousand lung cancers...
So let's restate it this way: Germans spent more than twice as much money on tobacco in 2010 than on renewable energy. Now doesn't that sound like they spent very little on renewable energy? It's all a question of perspective!
I read somewhere one of the oceans-Pacific or Atlantic-is higher than the other. It seems we could use siphoning between these two oceans to drive water turbines. A good location to drive the water turbines might be around the Panama Canal. Siphoning is used now to move drinking water over mountains into thirsty regions. The water turbines are available.
Not really enough for power generation, even though
Now a pipeline dumping water into the Dead Sea (400 m below sea level), Qattara Depression (-130 m), or Lake Assal (-150 m)....
Yeah, I read about those projects many years ago. I think the Dead Sea project is very likely to go forward. It would have such a great and immediate return on investment, it is incredible it has not happened yet.
As for the Qattara Depression, I think there have been a multitude of proposals over the past 80 years or so. Here, I think they should think big ... way bigger than a pipeline. I'd suggest a large canal, maybe several hundred feet wide and at least a couple of hundred feet deep -- fully navigable by large ships -- from the Mediterranean to a large hydro dam .. maybe 20 GW. The hydro power could run at full speed (initially dedicate 20GW power to fresh water and hydrogen production, pipe it around the shore for construction) until the depression fills, then you'd have a sea the size of England.
Along the shores of the sea, construct solar power plants and solar desalination plants. Green cities. You could start to green the Sahara. Once full, the 20 GW plant could be varied from say, 1 GW to 20 GW as needed to make up for the intermittency of the solar sources, while keeping sea at a relatively constant level (around 100 feet lower than the Mediterranean).
I went through the math a long time ago. I think you get 5 GW just on evaporation. As you pull out more water to make fresh water rivers and lakes in the Sahara, you can increase the flow of the hydro to get more power and more water.
Apparently the potential isn't all that big — more like 300 MW; though it'd be cool and probably worth doing.
This is a different proposal -- very limited. One of the differences: I am talking about 100 ft head (30 meters). At 100 feet, the payback is longer for the generators, but the size of the Qattara Sea becomes very much larger, thus much greater evaporation. I'm not sure about the evaporation figures -- I haven't looked at this in a long time. But I seem to remember 5 GW.
The other main difference: I am assuming development of cities along the shore, where they would be pulling out large quantities of water from the Qattara Sea for desalination. Suppose a city had 1 GW of solar power (most likely solar-thermal power tower) and, say, half that was dedicated to water desalination and pumping. And then suppose there were many such cities. The 20 GW hydro would be justified because these cities would need the water.
The 60 meter 300 MW proposal would support no such development of the desert. It has little value for energy storage. It is just a place to dump some water to get some energy. They say it would take 35 years to reach that level.
As I recall, the 20 GW proposal would fill the sea in a year or so. It would have a much higher initial cost (like the Suez Canal or Panama Canal plus one of the largest hydro dams in the world), but would produce a great more energy and support development cities along the shore of Qattara Sea.
Dear TOD readers,
Thanks for your interest. I have learned much. May be I get the last rambling words?
When I wrote half way through these comments, that I have "no agenda", I should have qualified that with "except to keep the lights on".
As a grand dad, aged 70 in next month, my dearest wish is that my children and grandchildren should have a life as rich and fulfilled as mine could have been, had I only lived mine with the knowledge of hindsight.
All the same, an abundance of affordable energy during my lifetime has hugely enriched my experience and smoothed out many of my mistakes. That abundance - and with it the lifestyle flexibility - will be imminently snatched away from us and our children. I do regret that because I know a lot about societies where energy is scarce and expensive - and life is so much poorer.
Peak oil is bad bad bad.
We "war" and post war children are very badly adapted to the circumstances we are now about to face. "Spoiled" does not begin to describe our circumstances relative to all previous generations of humanity. The expectation of progress is one of the most basic "givens" by which we live today. Social chaos follows when this does not happen.
Available and affordable electricity is one of the bed-rock commodities without which society will certainly fail. We had better look after that above almost all other "necessities" except food.
When I set up Conservation Tools and Technology (CTT) in the 1970s, I really was fired up by what could be achieved had we only been able to reduce our (UK)lifestyle from one based on 6 kW (at the time) to 1 kW (all energy consumption).
It is odd, 40 years later, lots of the same sort of people who have heaped opprobrium on this paper, were attacking me then for fear that I might have been successful and gained some mystical advantage in the rat race.
Well, their concerns were absolutely unnecessary. CTT was a dismal failure. Mostly my fault. Lots of sad things followed.
This month, some readers have "joined the dots" and believe that because I am working with a China-based electricity storage company, I therefore have mystical influence with Chinese nuclear in UK.
If only! plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
Thank you for your insights.
Same here, Hugh.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. We're all here over the same very serious concerns, and the opportunity for this conversation is a real gift.
Bob
Available and affordable electricity is one of the bed-rock commodities without which society will certainly fail.
However, affordable can be multiples of current rates. If one doubles the rates and halves one's consumption (the goal of Germany BTW). the bill is the same and is quite affordable.
There are very few incentives to conserve as effective as higher rates. Work in the USA in Austin, Texas and California demonstrates that efficiency can be taught and have a significant effect on overall demand. Add some incentives and waste shrinks.
The common assumption, that electrical rates *MUST* stay level, is simply not going to happen.
IMHO, lights in Britain can stay on with a combination of conservation & efficiency, renewables, nuclear power, pumped; storage, shifted use, trade (I am pushing Iceland in particular) and ever reducing imports of NG.
In private eMails I pointed out how the largest Icelandic hydro project could be re-engineered to provide 1= GW of surplus power on demand for a month if it was pre-paid or repaid in kind from wind and/or solar PV.
I am sympathetic to your motivation but TOD has long been a "meat grinder". A passing phase though as it transitions to a "kinder, gentler" site and I transition out.
Best Hopes for the Future,
Alan
In private eMails I pointed out how the largest Icelandic hydro project could be re-engineered to provide 1= GW of surplus power on demand for a month if it was pre-paid or repaid in kind from wind and/or solar PV.
However, the Icelandic government is no doubt wondering why it would supply backup power to Britain, when it could use the same reliable electric power to attract British companies and jobs to move to Iceland. National governments usually aren't that generous in their planning, particularly when unemployment rates are high.
Norway may feel compelled to keep Denmark supplied with backup hydro power for the Danish wind farms, mainly because Norway has more North Sea oil money and jobs than it knows what to do with, but even they must be feeling less generous given the low levels of their hydroelectric reservoirs. It's not as if Danish wind power has any advantage for Norway, given that it is usually available when the Norwegians don't need it.
Fail to see the wonderment. If Iceland gets paid for it, they can do whatever they want with the money, including using to attract investment, etc.
I think it's a great idea.
I think it was actually the Norwegians who first proposed the North Sea Interconnect.
http://www.statnett.no/Documents/Consultancy%20services/Worldwide%20proj...
(PDF warning)
The German Advisory Council on the Environment (Sachverstaendigen Rat Umweltfragen SRU) has published a 680 pages detailed study of how Germany can transition to a 100% renewable electricity system while phasing out nuclear, today[1].
At least it seems to think (and backs it up with simulations and numbers) that BAU (500 - 700 TWh/a) is possible with 100% renewables till 2050 in Germany and provides a number of different scenarios including cost estimates of how it can be done. From a quick glance at it, on and off shore wind provides the backbone of supply with a wide mix of other sources filling in the gaps.
If it is possible in Germany, it should be possible in the UK as well...
As with any study predicting the future, it will have a number of assumptions included that one may criticise, but at least it provides some good numbers on how 100% renewable can work and a thorough basis for discussions.
Unfortunately the full version is in German, but there is an earlier summery in English too
[1]http://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/02_Sondergutachten/2011_Sondergutachten_100Prozent_Erneuerbare.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
[2] http://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/04_Statements/2010_05_St...
Consider all the people who would have been killed by horses and wagons without the automobile. Consider the greater ease of robbing, raping and otherwise attacking a pedestrian and bicyclist. Consider the ease with which bicycles are stolen compared to cars. Consider the increased food production needed to power the pedestrian and bicyclist. Reducing demand for crude oil and increasing demand for food seem equally unsustainable. Around and around we go addressing symptoms of the underlying problem: overpopulation.
Consider that automobiles kill 3000 pedestrians each year, and the lack of exercise resulting from their overuse, kills an order of magnitude (or more) of their drivers each year (a Danish study observed a 39% higher mortality rate for non-bicycling commuters).
The increased food production required to propel a cyclist need not be large; fed 1% milk for travel fuel, considering fossil-fuel inputs (but not the GHG footprint, which also matters), a cyclist gets the equivalent of 145 mpg. Fed carefully cooked oats, 3000 mpg. Beef (85% lean) gets you 30mpg, which is not so great, but in an energy-tight future we're not going to be eating that much beef.
I ride my bike a lot, and I can tell you, the primary concern of every cyclist I know, is not rape or robbery, but getting run into by some careless driver. As a sanity check, you can compare the per capita rape rate here (almost nobody on bikes) with the Netherlands (lots of people on bikes). Their rate is about 1/3 ours; clearly, there must be other much larger influences on this rate than the use of bicycles.
I hope I have addressed your concerns about the replacement of cars with bicycles -- fewer people would die, rapes would most likely not go up, and we would save energy.
May I also suggest that I find a one-year 10% reduction in energy consumption (which is 100% technically possible, though socially a non-starter) to be much more attractive than a one-year 10% reduction in population. To get to 10%, you do the following (this is cocktail-party math, bear with me):
1) ride a bike wherever possible. 50 miles per week is the goal, displacing use of a car.
2) carpool whenever possible for those trips that are not bike-feasible.
3) quit eating beef, pork, lamb, deep-sea fish, and non-farmed shrimp. Go mostly vegetarian.
and you're done. 50 miles/week on a bike (versus a 25mpg auto) gives you 5% right there. Carpooling and going mostly-veggie gets you the next 5%.
There would be some infrastructural changes -- you'd need real bike lanes and paths, and more of them, but in the short run, paint is cheap and quick. There are some feeble attempts at car-pool-enabling websites and smartphone apps, but they don't work too well; they need to be better.
What's your proposal for a 10% reduction in one year?