This post is for comments not related to oil or natural gas.
There is a new post by Ron Patterson as well.
141 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum- Sept 13, 2016”
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This post is for comments not related to oil or natural gas.
There is a new post by Ron Patterson as well.
Comments are closed.
There has been a lot of discussion about how alternative energy produced by wind and solar have a major shortcoming which is that they are intermittent. The obvious solution to this problem is large scale grid storage batteries. The argument from the contrarian crowd is that this kind of storage is prohibitively expensive. Donald Sadoway is a professor at MIT who has been attacking this problem head on.
Dr. Donald Sadoway, HH Angus Ideation 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZFZGzB7O5E
My apologies to those who think technology and especially access to electricity is a bad thing. This lecture is definitely NOT for you. But the rest of you might enjoy it.
Cheers!
It looks like it will take a mínimum of 4 years to be a marketable product. It may have an impact in 10 years. Thus we can conclude that investing in intermittent renewables must be limited to 10-15 % of the total grid capacity until the battery problem is solved.
“Thus we can conclude that investing in intermittent renewables must be limited to 10-15 % of the total grid capacity until the battery problem is solved.”
Ok, the German VDE, not a very green but quite competend organization, wrote a few years ago that the current amount of storage is sufficient to allow 45% penetration of REs (45% of the TWh), and adding storage to early is stupid.
BTW: The alternative is more transmission capacity which is quite cheap and connects not correlated production, makes more sense than too much batteries.
Sometime this year I read an inteview with the boss of one of the four major grid operators in Germany.
He says that 80% renewables would not need batteries at all. Merely a couple demand adjustments (1) now and then and a couple kilometers of additional transmission lines. Can be had within a few years at a very low price.
(1)
Large industrial electricity customers already participate in load schedding. If a 1 GW nuke plant gets SCRAMed, the aluminium smelter is taken offline to prevent the big city from going offline.
When the grid is restabilized 5 minutes later, the smelter is taken online again. The company gets compensated for this.
It’s pretty cheap and not a new thing.
Not many seem to want to talk much about u-shaped cost curves to this and/or related forms of technology, such as once things ramp up (effects of scale; effects on stability of the grid); nor about relative EROEI for PV’s, such as above certain latitudes; nor affordability for different segments of the populations (have/have-nots); nor about Ghung’s early-adoption context and what it exactly means; nor about energy/fossil fuel cannibalization to get all this in place, up and running– and for how many people globally (effects of scale and effects on anthropogenic climate change); nor about apparent global lithium limits for batteries (effects of scale/EV’s and PV’s); nor about declining fossil-fuel-based economies and the complex, vulnerable just-in-time supply chain disruptions (thus support); nor about the continued viability of the technology in a shifting socioeconomic/geopolitical climate; nor about so-called ‘government’ and where it’s headed with decreasing revenue in a shrinking economy (such as with regard to roadway and power, etc., infrastructure maintenance and social unrest); nor about continued shrinking-oil-supply demand and usage globally and its sociopolitical effects; nor about disruptions to ways-of-life and their multitude of impacts; nor about hierarchy of needs and where some forms of technology fit in, such as with regard to priority; nor about alternative ways to live and forms of more simple technology and ways of life, as well as resilience to potential shocks; and so on, do they?
It’s not like this is ‘150 Dundar-strong’.
Hi Fred,
There are many strategies, backup by natural gas is an option for a while, overbuilding capacity by a factor of 3 with widely dispersed sites and a highly interconnected grid allows over 90% of power to be provided by Wind and solar, the other 10 % can be provided by fuel cells, batteries, pumped storage, and vehicle to grid. In addition demand can be managed with flexible electricity pricing.
The intermittency “problem” is only a problem for those with very limited vision.
“The intermittency “problem” is only a problem for those with very limited vision.”
The biggest problem is a sense of entitlement; consumers and industry who fully expect a continuation of affordable on-demand high-energy availability. God forbid our economic collective doesn’t have as much energy as it wants/needs, whenever it wants/needs it. Of course, we off-gridders came to terms with that issue, and get perturbed with a society that, with all of its resources, can’t. A little planning and change of habits is all it takes, at least on a local/personal level.
Our 52 kWh lead-acid battery set is performing well going into its 10th year of service; amortized cost of about $600 per year. Not sure why gridweenies can’t adopt a similar grid-tied strategy; buy (charge) low, sell high. Besides, a distributed strategy is more resilient.
I just heard the relay click that dumps electricity to our 1600 liter hot water tank indicating that our battery is fully-charged. It’s about an hour before solar noon here. In an hour or so, the controller will sense that the hot water tank is nearing its high set point and cut power to the heating element. Voltage will rise and the air conditioner will kick on automatically, cooling and dehumidifying the home during the afternoon. I’ll also have a surplus to do laundry and dishes, maybe run the vacuum cleaner. The water pump at the spring can be heard humming through the pipes, pumping our potable water to the storage tank. When it gets cloudy, we’ll draw on a full battery set, a full water tank, and a ‘charged’ hot water tank for several days while deferring some of the other energy-intensive tasks until the sun returns. Thermal mass (storage) will keep the home reasonably cool in summer, warm in winter.
This is mature off-the-shelf technology, and if folks like me can do it on a modest budget, not sure why society-at-large can’t. I suspect a little forcing will be required, including carbon taxes, demand pricing, and, eventually, rolling blackouts.
The biggest problem is a sense of entitlement; consumers and industry who fully expect a continuation of affordable on-demand high-energy availability.
It’s not consumers (either residential or industrial). It’s the utilities!!
Utilities don’t like Demand Side Management (DSM). They like building backup generation. That’s because backup generation requires a lot of capital expenditure, which justifies charging more and generating more profit under traditional ROI regulations. We recently saw Exelon and other utilities sue to make DSM illegal!
As EVs grow, they will provide enormous potential for very cheap, very very convenient DSM through apps that schedule charging when there’s surplus generation, and power prices are cheap.
DSM is far too cheap. Far too effective. Utilities just don’t like it.
Utilities have used DSM to their benefit for decades.
Absolutely. It’s commonly used, especially for industrial customers. Which is part of why it’s so frustrating that they don’t use it far more extensively.
US utilities are *required* by the 2005 energy act to provide time of day pricing/metering for residential customers, but…the utilities don’t like it. It might promote things like DSM. So…very few of their customers know about the option.
Great post Ghung. Similar setups to yours will probably be the norm in 10 to 15 years or at least quite common.
Just as adjusting to the trip planning and charging for an EV takes some adjustment, people will need time to adjust to the “new” way of thinking about energy(invented back in the 60’s and 70’s).
Hi Ghung,
It’s great to see you posting here.
It’s been a long time !
Thanks, Mac. Good to hear from you guys. I’m a high-tunnel grower now; keeps me out of trouble. I still pop up at peakoil.com occasionally to abuse the fantasy fools over there, but generally keep busy while watching our slow train wreck play out from the cheap seats. Good to see you (and Fred, et al) doing OK.
@GoneFishing; Thanks! I doubt this issue is even most folk’s radar in any meaningful way, and our society is essentially leveraged to the max, but paying some of these things forward will go a long way towards easing the greater transition. Our all-or-nothing economy will have to learn that some beats none every time. For the most part, it’s about avoiding energy entrapment and not being energy/debt slaves where it can be avoided.
Adjusting and trip planning sure beats the alternative! 🙂
We live in a Province that is supplied by hydro to the tune of 100%, with rates now around $.09 kWh. This situation has made me put off establishing alternative energy sources; instead we have done super insulating, passive solar, new windows, etc. Adding in our wood heat our current electricity costs average $50/month Cdn, (which also includes admin fees, etc). If I run the welder heavy, or lots of shop tools this increases a bit.
A few years ago we lost power for about 5 days due to a massive storm. I flashed up the generator once to rechill the freezers, and occasionally to renew the pressure tank for toilet flushing etc. I looked at a hand pump for this as we only need to lift 12′, but a decent one (non-freeze) starts at $600. If anyone has a source for any hand water pumps that will do the trick please let me know.
We use LED lights and a few deep cycle batts for reading when the power is out. I think I spent around $50 for rv fixtures. This year I will be putting an 8′ under-counter LED strip in the kitchen so I won’t have to move lights.
To be honest, we really enjoy it when the power goes out. If supply turned more intermitent, we would improve our sources, for sure.
My wife is balking at an outhouse, though. For me it would be no big deal as that is all we used when I worked up north, but for her we use the flushies; sometimes by pouring water into the tanks from a bucket. No big deal.
“The intermittency “problem” is only a problem for those with very limited vision.”
Yup! Couldn’t agree more!
BTW the link I posted is about a technology which is just one of many possible additions to the full complement of solution arrows which civilized industrial society will need to have in it’s quiver going forward. It is not intended to be a silver bullet by any means.
I find comments like the one made by Fernando Leanme to be typical of the lack of vision crowd. Oh well, C’est La Vie. As Dr. Sadoway says in his lecture he hires highly intelligent nonspecialists and mentors them. The Fernando’s of the world are stuck in the past and can’t imagine a future that is different.
I like the way Sadoway thinks, he is not only visionary, but he is very practical about his inventions. Keep it simple as possible and use abundant materials if you want to scale it up.
Picture a liquid battery spill, it would solidify almost immediately. If the battery is made out of thousands of cells, most won’t leak, probably just a few and hardly any hazard to the environment. Just shovel it up and recycle. A small containment moat would solve any problems.
I know an ideal spot for a large scale test site. A defunct coal power plant could be removed and large liquid battery storage piles could be put there. The power company owns a couple hundred acres of unused land that could be turned into a large solar PV farm. There are several natural gas peaking generators on site already. It is also already connected into a small hydro dam nearby.
Quiet, non-polluting energy 24/7. Now that is the future.
All we need to do is convince the power company to leave the past and remove the coal plant (cold for years now). Then let the entrepaneurs take over. It would be a nice test plant to see how well it works and work out any bugs in the system.
I like the way Sadoway thinks, he is not only visionary, but he is very practical about his inventions. Keep it simple as possible and use abundant materials if you want to scale it up.
Contrast the way Sadoway thinks to Madame Doom herself, Gail Tverberg!
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/08/31/intermittent-renewables-cant-favorably-transform-grid-electricity/
Intermittent Renewables Can’t Favorably Transform Grid Electricity
Posted on August 31, 2016 by Gail Tverberg
In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.
Maybe she needs to take a couple of basic physics and chemistry courses. Someone should send her a poster sized periodic table to put on her wall.
An accountant versus a high level engineer? Come on Fred.
Wringing hands and claiming nothing will work is about what I would expect from that one person you don’t want along on an expedition.
We do not know if any of our efforts and methods will work in the long run. With all the horrors that people do to each other and their world I am not even sure some days that people should continue to exist, but for sure moving to renewables will move the ball way down the road and might even be a first step toward a fully sustainable way and harmless way of life.
We have to think ahead and deal with reality at that same time. But we have a delusional brain that can picture things that don’t exist, so why not use it?
It’s weird. She’s an actuary, and should have the statistical knowledge that would allow her to understand how the grid handles variation in supply & demand. She should also be able to understand the straightforward regulatory solutions to the price problem she pointed out (mostly payments for standby capacity).
Just baffling.
I am not baffled. I saw her once at a conference. She has a canned presentation and canned answers, and when she realized who I was she dodged my questions.
I don’t know if she actually believes what she says and publishes, or not, not having had an opportunity to actually ask her some questions and get actual answers.
She is probably smarter than you would think from what she writes.
My opinion is that she has a BRAND, a PRODUCT, and that she sticks to it and makes a living out of it.
Lots of other people do the same thing. The folks who run food conglomerates tell us all the time how great their processed food products are , but they seldom actually eat any of them, except occasionally in front of a camera.
I would really enjoy an opportunity to cross examine her in a court room type environment.
My first general line of questioning would be what she proposes we do given that fossil fuels are depleting one time gifts of nature, and the political situation pretty much guarantees there won’t be a whole lot of new nukes, etc.
My first general line of questioning would be what she proposes we do given that fossil fuels are depleting…
Oh, that’s an essential part of her schtick: “there is no answer, no solution, we’re in a predicament from which there is no escape!”.
Seen in an 1882 newspaper.
This concept of building coal powered power stations will never work. If the station shuts down the whole area will be left without power. Businesses will have to close people will be unable to work. A disaster. The only way to ameliorate this would be to construct alternative power stations and a huge grid to interconnect them. This, along with the devices to switch between them, would be massive and prohibitive. Surely this is folly.
NAOM
That’s a great quote. A quick google couldn’t find a source for it: do you happen to have one handy?
And indeed it was/is folly. It’s just took some time to run the program forward to see the results.
DC or AC?
Nick said: “(Oh, that’s an essential part of her schtick: “there is no answer, no solution, we’re in a predicament from which there is no escape!”.)”
Yes, you are bang on with your observation. What I find disturbing with her site are the comments that indicate an almost universal acceptance of Doom, and that there are no answers, either personal or collective.
You know, I accept humans have fucked up so many things in our short-sighted free-for-all race to accumulate. And yes, the world is full of avaricious dicks. But there are also many many wonderful people who put one foot ahead of the other as they do their best each and every day. Those are the people who I choose to associate with and who I call friends.
To use a simple cliche, are you a glass half empty person, or a half full? Do we roll over, or choose to do our best as new information arises? Do we smile and encourage; willingly try to live better? Or, do we simply roll over and give up? These are choices we can make in our world, and while society in general might fail going forward, individuals don’t have to.
regards
Well said, bravo.
Paulo, your words ring true. We are all doomed the day we are born. But, it never stopped your parents from making you and the world around you the best they could.
Her ideology is a cancer on society.
My first reaction was, that’s well said. And it is.
But…as I think about it…she’s not just preaching despair. She’s actually pushing against the transition from fossil fuels. She’s not just saying they won’t work as well as they need to – she’s actually saying that renewables are a bad idea, and we should drop all this foolishness with wind, solar and EVs.
Drill, baby Drill. Dig, baby, Dig. That’s what Gail is saying.
As a practical matter, she’s acting as a PR advocate for Exxon and Peabody coal.
Absolutely Nick, she is playing directly into the oil industry Republican disinformation narrative of current economic failure. It has become self fulfilling to themselves. I have suspected for years she is funded by the Koch brothers.
You guys might be right. As I understand it the actuarial business is very conservative…by nature it has to be. But I go back to how we view the data. If everything is a coffin nail then only a hammer works. I’m no Pollyanna with rose glasses, but by God I am going to enjoy each and every day to the best of my abilities until …..
Hi Nick,
“Oh, that’s an essential part of her schtick: “there is no answer, no solution, we’re in a predicament from which there is no escape!”.
I know, I have read a fair sample of her stuff.
The best way I have found to deal with such people is to call them out as losers and quitters right up front and then proceed to talk about what can be done to solve the problem, rather than just giving up.
There’s money in having a message and a brand, and I think maybe she is doing quite well selling her doom and gloom.
Yeah, I think you’re right.
I remember someone on TOD who appeared to be doing that. Very frustrating.
And, yes, I just kept talking about solutions…
Hey Ghung,
I seem to recall, before wimbi (William Beale) passed away, that he mentioned running things directly off of the panels without batteries at all. Is that true? Would I have a nice candle-like flickering laptop? Ah, the old daze of dancing shadows…
In any case, things like solar electric power or electric cars or whatever have you don’t necessarily do well with time, scale and/or decline of civilization…
For examples, you have potentially-looming lithium shortages; u-shaped cost-curves (cheap now, but with adoption, potentially expensive/unaffordable later [such as also because more are out of work]); technology for the so-called privileged only; energy/fossil cannibalization for ramp-up of ‘alternative energy’ schemes; other countries continuing to burn the fossil fuels anyway (the ones that can get it and at a decent enough EROEI) and so forth.
National security? Get as many of the general public off of fossil fuel so the military can get the remaining dregs? What country has the highest, best-quality best EROEI oil these daze? Because maybe that’s where the militaries are pointing their guns, yes?
Hi Caelan,
Why will more be out of work? This assumes that which you are trying to prove. It will take people to manufacture and install the Wind and solar power, and to upgrade the grid, and to build more rail, light rail, EVs, as well as insulate and seal homes and other buildings. Often cost curves are not U shaped as economies of scale often reduce costs and competition leads to innovations that improve both the product and the methods of building it. When there are resource constraints, prices will increase and the scarce item will be used more efficiently and recycled.
Ghung: I think you nailed it with “A little planning and change of habits…”
Reminds me of the Dancing Rabbit ecovillage approach: first change behavior to reduce energy use as low as possible, then use the mature, off-the-shelf panels, turbines and batteries. I think that they reduces their energy needs by ~80% before going for the technology. The behavior change included getting used to intermittency.
Nice case study at: https://sspp.proquest.com/achieving-one-planet-living-through-transitions-in-social-practice-a-case-study-of-dancing-rabbit-ab7f8b2df28c#.6deay79rb
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
The real solution is demand management.
Of course, storage is helpful.
The 20th century was the century of energy harvesting. The 21st century will be the century of energy control. Sounds like I’m arguing that batteries will be everything, but conservation will always be more important.
Me,
I agree demand management and generally improved efficiency in the use of energy and materials will be a critical piece of the puzzle. I do believe we will need to develop wind, solar, and hydro power as well, and a switch to more rail, light rail, EVs, plugin hybrids, bikes, and walking will be needed also.
Fred,
I don’t have much time to watch a video – is Dr Sadoway addressing daily (diurnal) variance, or seasonal a week of low wind and sun that happens maybe once per year)? They’re very, very different problems that need very different solution, IMO.
His lecture is about chemistry and materials science and a cheap as dirt large scale batteries for grid storage. He has developed a high temperature molten metal anode Mg and Sb cathode battery separated by a molten salt electrolyte. He was inspired by the aluminium (not a typo) smelting process. I obviously think it is a good lecture otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it, but granted it is almost an hour long. Though I could think of worse ways of spending an hour of my time 🙂
“Cheap as dirt”
I wonder very roughly what $/kWh he’s thinking of?
In the video he actually gives some numbers and says his process could be more cost effective than the best cases for pumped hydro.
Here’s a link to a technical paper about it:
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-battery-molten-metals-low-cost-long-lasting.html
The molten battery technology seems well suited for large power storage applications, since weight and size are not a significant factor.
Pumped hydro capital costs are $2230 +/- 50% per kW. O &M is $30.8/kW-yr. Spin-up response time is 2 to 5 minutes. 30 months to build an 800 MW facility.
My opinion as life long reader of history and observer of politics is that when the time comes that we REALLY need a lot of new pumped storage capacity, it WILL be built, even if it means evicting people from their property by the tens of thousands and building hundreds of miles of HVDC transmission lines.
Now one other thing is also obvious with a little thought. If batteries can be built on the grand scale, adequate to deal with day to day intermittent issues and maybe adequate for two three or four days, by then we will have weather forecasts good enough to know when super storms that will wipe out wind and solar production will arrive, and about how long they will last. Under those circumstances, it will be possible to hold back every possible drop of water in hydro reservoirs to help get thru the shortfall of wind and solar power.
How much this will help in terms of the big picture of getting thru a mid winter week of cloudy windless weather is impossible for me to say but it ought to be enough to keep the water and sewer, etc, working in places with significant hydro capacity.
Since it involves a lot of mountain top land, West Virginia is going to be crying since they took the tops off so many mountains and buried the feeder creeks needed to keep up the reservoir level. Losing out on all that money, they could have been the power storage capital of the US.
Mountain top removal coal mining is truly an abomination, but there are still PLENTY of mountains and valleys in West Virginia that could be utilized for pumped hydro.
Most of the places that are suitable have relatively few inhabitants, and building pumped hydro capacity would not result in the loss of a whole lot of good farmland.
There is water enough, if it is recycled thru the pumped hydro systems, and the necessary new transmission lines wouldn’t have to be all that long, as there are a lot of cities within a few hundred miles.
I am wondering if it would be possible to combine pumped hydro effectively with recreational use of the lakes created. It would seem at first glance that the water level would rise and fall too much, but in some locations this might not be a big problem.
“Mountain top removal coal mining is truly an abomination, but there are still PLENTY of mountains and valleys in West Virginia that could be utilized for pumped hydro. ”
I was half joking, if you flattened out West Virginia it would probably be near the size of Texas.
“I am wondering if it would be possible to combine pumped hydro effectively with recreational use of the lakes created”
Sure, just put a water slide alongside the downpipe. Wave pool anybody?
I think that people getting sucked up against the inlet/outlet pipe would put a damper to most recreation, that and the huge currents created when it turns on.
“There is water enough”
Evaporation could be a problem out west, not in the east.
OFM,
Combine pumped storage with recreational use of the lake? Sure. That’s what they do with Banks Lake, the pumped-storage reservoir for Grand Coulee Dam.
The area is semi-arid but I’ve no idea what loss is to evaporation. Banks Lake is big, though, and it’s always there.
I haven’t watched the lecture yet myself.
But the problem is in my estimation overblown, in that it’s simply not a do or die question.
We aren’t going to die, and neither is industrial civilization, as the result of having to deal with times when we have to sharply curtail our use of juice because it’s just not there to be used.
First off, we aren’t going to simply RUN OUT of coal and gas in short order. There is enough remaining to keep the lights on for quite a while yet, and as the renewable electricity industries grow up the consumption of coal and gas will start to fall off, thus allowing us another decade or two in order to get our energy ducks in a row.
So -while the environmental camp doesn’t want to discuss it, and the anti renewable camp believes sufficient conventional backup capacity cannot be maintained and more built as necessary, due to the expense, I say bullshit to both camps.
FOR NOW, the necessary backup capacity actually DOES exist, as evidenced by the fact that there are damned few blackouts or rolling blackouts, excepting third world countries.
We CAN afford to build enough gas peaker plants, and even some new coal plants, to be used as necessary, to maintain a steady supply of juice. SURE this will be expensive, but so are aircraft carriers and tanks and airborne divisions. LOTS of things are expensive, including beer and the consequences of drinking it to excess. The war on drugs is expensive, and six thousand pound trucks used only to fetch beer by the six pack are expensive too.
We sure as hell can easily afford the cost of little used gas and coal plants as backup compared to the cost of doing without, and when the time comes , such conventional back up plants WILL BE built, as necessary, until one of two things come to pass.
Either coal and gas deplete to the point we don’t have enough to run the backup plants, or we will have viable electricity storage. Both times are far enough off that we need not overly concern ourselves with them as a day to day practical matter.
There are dozens of ways we can make excellent use of intermittent renewable juice without inventing any technologies at all. Just mandating the use of better insulated larger water heaters equipped with tempering valves in new construction would be as good as having a fair sized battery in each house so equipped. Bringing the larger heater up to a relatively high temperature when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing would enable most families to get by without using any juice to heat water for a day or two, without ever even knowing it.
The tech already exists to feed the necessary data thru the grid to control appliances this way, and it seems as sure as sunrise that a couple of decades down the road, everybody except old timers will have forgotten there was a time when the grid was DUMB rather than smart.
So far as I can see, we have at least two or three decades to work on energy efficiency and storage before we run short enough of coal and gas that there won’t be plenty available to power conventional back up generation.
So as far as I can see, we need to just keep the pedal to the metal building renewable capacity where the wind blows and the sun shines, and transmission lines to get the juice to where it is needed, as a short term practical matter. This is almost for sure the best available option, given that politics is the art of the possible, in respect to the environment as well as the economy.
Sufficient unto the day are the problems and needs thereof. The coming generations will have to solve their own problems, as best they can.
For now, as best I can see, the best single thing we can do for them on the energy front is to encourage the growth of the renewable energy industries. This is politically doable today. A carbon tax might be doable a few more years down the road.
Providing plenty of money for basic research is also doable, and the more the better. Fortunately both wings of our political system are generally in favor of spending money on basic science and technology, and hopefully we will see research budgets growing substantially over the coming years.
It hardly matters precisely WHAT such money is actually spent on, so long as it results in increasing our total knowledge base. New discoveries in any given field are soon integrated into the work of scientists and engineers in other fields.
Solving the day to day and two or three day intermittency problem is probably doable using new battery technology, building out long distance transmission lines, building out lots of wind and solar capacity in the best locations, etc.
But when it comes to that once in a few years week long winter storm that covers most of a continent, I doubt if we are apt to have sufficient storage capacity to deal with scenario, because building storage out to that extent, when it will be needed only a few days a year, will probably cost more than just having sufficient conventional capacity on standby.
A giant pile of coal is an eyesore in the eyes of an environmentalist, but so long as it is just sitting there, it’s not doing any harm.
And another thing. We hear endless BULLSHIT about how coal plants cannot be ramped up and down. It’s true that doing so costs quite a bit in terms of the life expectancy and maintenance costs of the boilers, and that it takes more coal per kilowatt hour generated to run them up and down, but coal plants have been ramped up and down since they were first invented, when the grid was first built out and the first coal plants were put on line.
And anybody that cares to investigate will find that the French didn’t get fat on their high fat diets, contrary to the conventional wisdom, lol. They will also find that the French have been routinely ramping their nuclear plants for decades now, on a daily and weekly basis.
If new nukes are built in the West, they will be designed to accommodate ramping up and down on a daily basis to some substantial extent. My guess is that some new nukes, maybe a lot, WILL be built, so long as the industry manages to avoid another catastrophic accident long enough to get new designs tested and permitted. This means breaking ground on the very first of them will be at least a decade plus and probably farther down the road.
Most people who keep up with the nuclear issue don’t believe it will happen, but let even the German people run out of gas mid winter for just a couple of weeks because the Russians turn it off………………
Coal plants can’t be ramped up and down without skyrocketing costs and or causing significant damages. The only good load followers are hydro, gas turbines, and batteries.
You’re talking about old coal plants, and it’s not even true for them: they can ramp up and down ok, though they do have to do it relatively slowly.
New coal plants, like those being built in Germany to replace old inefficient coal plants, are designed to ramp up and down just fine.
Yes I was talking about old plants, and yes it cost in terms of maintenance , and using extra coal. It also costs in terms of pollution, but running such old plants for a week or two once in a year or two won’t matter very much, assuming they can be put in mothballs in such a way that they can be brought back on line in a couple of days or so.
Coal fired plants were routinely ramped in the early days anyplace there was no other way of adjusting supply to demand.
It can also be done in the future, as necessary, with any old coal fired plant kept on a “near ready ” standby basis, so that it can be brought online within a day or so. The cost of doing so will hardly matter if they are used only a week a year on average, compared to the cost of NOT having them- at least until there is sufficient storage capacity built.
As fossil fuels deplete, there will come a time we are highly dependent on renewable electricity, but have not yet managed to build enough storage of whatever variety, be it pumped hydro or giant batteries, or whatever.
The amount of co2 they emit used this way will be trivial, in comparison to the cost of the grid going down.
Wind + Solar generation in 20 European countries
http://mylly.hopto.me/windineurope/
Just found a great timeline of human history and global temperate variation by xkcd:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/13/randall-munroes-xkcd-visualises-climate-changed/
Very visual.Highly recommended. Apologies if already posted.
JN2,
I am a fan of xkcd. However, There is a MAJOR error in the timeline: The glacial-outburst floods crossed Washington not Oregon.
(I’ve worked for decades in the Channeled Scablands. I take this stuff personally.)
(shambles away muttering)
“shambles away muttering” LOL
I also became a fan of xkcd. Catching up on old ones sometimes left me wondering about their true meaning. Fortunately, I found explainxkcd, which analyzed every cartoon.
An existential 1947 comic book is to be reprinted next month http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/09/12/italy-fiction-behavior-writing-to-belong/ http://www.nyrb.com/products/what-am-i-doing-here?variant=19215502663
New York’s answer to the Zika virus: Bats
http://www.geek.com/news/new-yorks-answer-to-the-zika-virus-bats-1661278/
Since the dawn of the 21st century, however, collisions with wind turbines worldwide and white-nose syndrome in North America are the primary reported causes of mass mortality in bats. In additions, storms, floods, drought, and other weather-related factors also historically caused mass mortality, and could increase in the future due to climate change.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-global-analysis-reveals-populations-decline.html#jCp
In any event, the ineluctable deduction would be wind turbines mass slaughter bats, Zika virus cases increase.
An open and shut case.
Wind turbines cause more Zika virus infections!
We are doomed! We will go bat shit crazy!
It’s official: Chevy Bolt EV EPA rated at 238 miles of range.
GM recently invited a bunch of automotive journalists to do a long-range test-drive. The embargo on reporting the results was lifted Tuesday, so now the Internet is overflowing with test-drive reports.
Here’s a link to InsideEVs summary of the various initial test-drive reports:
http://insideevs.com/chevrolet-bolt-first-drive-reports/
Bottom line: GM under-promised and over-delivered. Every driver made the 240-mile one-way trip through a variety of driving challenges with battery capacity to spare. Rave reviews all around for the Bolt EV.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-sea-ice-arctic-lowest.html
The ice is actually slightly more extensive than the record year of 2012, hopefully I remember the year correctly.
But the difference is so slight this year is really a tie.
There is less multi year ice too. It’s a lot more fragile, so easier to melt come the following year.
This NOAA video shows how the the multi year ice has declined over the years.
Watch 25 Years of Arctic Sea Ice Disappear in 1 Minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw7GfNR5PLA
Yet all the ice remaining at the center of the pole is both thicker and colder than ever observed before due to the increased ice retention resulting from the breakdown of the polar jet stream. What I have just said is both meteorologically and physically true, as proven by Breitbart Science and the like. Science is best left to the scientists, not the politicians or their mouthpieces at the vast leftist organizations such as NOAA and NASA.
Breitbart science?
WTF
What I have just said is both meteorologically and physically true, as proven by Breitbart Science and the like. Science is best left to the scientists, not the politicians or their mouthpieces at the vast leftist organizations such as NOAA and NASA.
Oh fer crimminie’s sake! Nancy Dahlink, you really do need to lay off that moonshine you’ve been drinkin! It’s starting to effect how you see things…
Those pink elephants, they really aren’t there sweetie!
Breitbart News
Syndicated news and opinion website providing continuously updated headlines to top news and analysis sources.
The only thing Breitbart News could possibly PROVE is that it’s readership is made up of blooming idiots!
Hi Fred,
It’s hard to come to any conclusion about people like Nancy other than that they are trolls, or else they just run across this site by accident, maybe, when doing a little market research. Hardly any of them ever hang around more than a couple of weeks.
But here’s the thing that’s mostly overlooked. Such people are often sincere in their beliefs and comments.
WHY? Because outfits like Breitbart publish stuff that suits their tribal outlook, stuff which is quite often true. If for instance you want to know about Clinton’s email people taking the Fifth Amendment over the last week of congressional hearings, you will find it at Breitbart but not on NPR.
Ya want to tell a lot of lies, the best possible strategy for getting people to believe them is to mix them in with some actual facts. If you catch a person lying to you, by omission or commission , just a few times, you simply don’t trust them about anything thereafter. This is your explanation for Nancy and her kind. ( Of course you knew this already, but not every body has given this sort of thing any thought.)
Nothing is more important in determining the beliefs and behaviors of naked apes than their tribal affiliation.
NOTHING.
You really and truly can graduate from an Ivy League university taking only one so called survey course in any real science, which means you are apt to learn nothing at all that adheres to the gray matter.
The average technically illiterate ( that means ninety percent of them, more or less, this is my personal estimate of technical literacy in this country ) liberal would not believe in global warming if it were a RIGHT wing issue.
It is extremely unfortunate that environmental issues are inextricably entangled with partisan politics, to put it as mildly as possible.
Yeah OFM, I know. I just no longer can put up with either ignorance or deliberate pushing of bullshit. I just call a spade a spade as I seee em!
Cheers!
Mac,
Sad to say, the two sides are not equivalent.
The Republican party has chosen to appeal to rural & Southern culture, which has a strong streak of violence, anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism. I don’t like to say it, but lack of education in agricultural areas, and the violence and general oppressiveness of slavery left a long lasting mark in these areas (it’s no accident, for instance, that dueling lasted much longer in the South).
Are some on the “left” just following their tribe? Of course. But not quite as many as on the “right”. There is a distinct difference in the average level of independent thought in the two sides.
The left is devoid of violent tendencies. It is peace and love throughout the entire world for them.
Yeah, right.
” There is a distinct difference in the average level of independent thought in the two sides.”
Deplorable
Hi OFM,
The tie is with 2007, 2012 remains the lowest year by a fair margin.
Here’s a good gif of a chart of temperature anomalies from NASA Earth Observatory.
Visualizing the Warmest August in 136 Years
The unskewed data (i.e. data not subject to the routine readjustments NASA makes which always cool down the temperatures of prior years) still shows the warmest modern year on record to be 1934.
Troll it is! (referencing OFM at 6:25.)
AWS referenced an article about August, not the whole year. So unless you provide a reference, and some kind of reasoning about how your reference is better than NASA, I feel comfortable ignoring you.
Especially since the general point (It’s hot, and getting hotter, and people are causing it) would not be diminished even if 1934 were hotter.
Nancy Gebauer,
The high temperatures of the 1930s were real but they were North American temperatures not global ones. The NASA article refers to global temperatures.
Unskewed like the unskewed polls that predicted a landslide for Romney. Republican propagandists need to come up with less obvious terminology.
It turns out that flowers and insects have a better understanding of global warming than you do, Ms. Troll. While the carbon pimps can fool some of the people none of the time, and the people like you all of the time, they can’t fool the birds and the bees.
Before the Time of Global Warming, Data Shows Spring Sprung Later
Records of the flowering of plants, the arrival of migrating birds, and the onset of frog mating calls show spring is arriving as much as 14 days sooner.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29072015/time-global-warming-data-shows-spring-sprung-later
=
The Heat Is On: Climate Change Causes Birds To Hatch Early
http://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2016/02/18/the-heat-is-on-climate-change-causes-birds-to-hatch-early/#33516f983f0c
CALSTART survey of major auto suppliers finds 70% don’t want US to change CAFE targets; split on amount of electrification needed
“Overall, federal agencies project a fleet-wide fuel economy average of between 50 and 52.6 miles per gallon under test conditions for the 2025 model year. That translates to an average of 36 miles per gallon in actual on-road performance, which is about what today’s gasoline-powered Honda Fit already achieves.”
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2016/09/20160915-calstart.html
Are we all crazy, that would explain a lot about the way civilization has evolved.
Check here to see if you qualify for admission to the insane asylum.
http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2008/12/125-reasons-youll-get-sent-to-lunatic.html
Does anyone know where I can find world crude oil production for all of history? I would like to be able to download the raw data.
All the tables that I have found on the eia website only date back to the 70s and sometimes the 50s. I’m looking for data that navigates back to the 1800s when oil started being produced.
Hi DougM,
Use the following link
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2013.ems
This gives carbon emissions (in millions of metric tonnes of carbon) for petroleum liquids from 1870 to 2013. Then convert to millions of metric tonnes of petroleum liquids (C+C+NGL) multiply by 1.274 and then by 7.33 to get barrels per year. If you want millions od barrels per day divide b/a by 365.25. I would use BP data from 1965 to the present, but this gives data before 1965. BP data at
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Does anybody here have some good links to articles or papers about the reprocessing of lithium used in batteries?
Thanks in advance.
This isn’t what you asked for but EV batteries will likely be repurposed for stationary storage before being recycled.
The Road to a Thriving Second-Life EV Battery Market
Thanks AWS,
I will add this link to my files. The demand for old ev batteries to be used in stationary applications might actually mean very few of them are recycled for as long as twenty five years or even longer, say ten to fifteen years in the car and another ten or more in a stationary application. Most likely nobody really knows yet.
I don’t yet have any good numbers for how long a used EV battery will last used as a stationary power supply. Once the necessary little storage building, wiring, etc is in place, the owner of such a battery will be reluctant to give it up even if it will hold only a very modest charge, unless he can get a replacement for it that will hold a bigger charge.
Or new batteries purpose built for stationary use might get to be cheap enough that there might not be all that big a market for used EV batteries.
Yogi sez predictin’ is hard, ‘ specially the future.
OTOH, as the small scale ( homeowner, small business ) solar industry grows up, used EV batteries may prove to be worth five or even ten thousand bucks. Plenty of people who live in sunny climates could probably disconnect from the grid and hardly even notice any necessary changes in their lifestyle with a couple of them in a little tool shed behind the house, lol.
A small gasoline powered generator would be adequate to keep the necessities running during the occasional spells of very cloudy winter weather which must be expected. That wouldn’t require much gasoline at all, and some generators run on propane, which a lot of people use for heating and cooking anyway, in places without natural gas service.
Some people insist that EV batteries can’t be economically recycled. I know it costs more to recover the lithium in sufficiently pure form than it is worth, at the current price, but I have not been able to come up with any good current figures on this cost, and nothing on how much it might cost in the future, when it is reasonable to expect that the lithium battery industry will scale up, as more batteries become available for recycling.
And nobody knows how the market for used electric cars with “worn out ” batteries will play out. I personally strongly suspect that a car such as a Chevy BOLT or Nissan LEAF will sell for a lot more than expected, ten or fifteen years down the road, if it will still reliably go as little as thirty or forty miles on a charge. Gasoline won’t stay cheap forever. There will be times when it is rationed, more likely than not.
There are millions of people who can get by with a car that will go that far on a charge, people who for now at least are compelled to have a car to get to work and shopping, etc. The autonomous taxi market might or might not eventually meet these people’s needs. There might not ever be enough such taxis to take care of the morning and afternoon rush hours, etc. There may be legal road blocks that delay the autonomous taxi industry coming of age for quite a while.
And there are millions more people more who can make use of such a short range car as the second or third household vehicle. Most people go to work for months and years at a time without having to make an unexpected necessary detour on the way to and from work. They could call a cab if necessary, lol.
Anybody interested in our civil liberties and what our government is up to is invited to read this link.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/either-edward-snowden-is-lying-or-his-former-boss-is.html
Apparently the ICE is fighting back. Getting “Iced” is the new term for the growing number of EV charging spots with an ICE parked in the spot, preventing charging.
Lots of articles on this.
So much for those few and far between charging stations. Getting there and not being able to charge the EV could ruin the trip and the day.
Hi Gonefishing,
Maybe the solution is to put the EV charging spots in a less convenient location where the spots are less likely to be taken, or put up signs that say a non-EV will be towed if it parks in a spot with a charging station.
Properly designed free markets are usually the best solution.
In this case, it’s clear that people are charging for the wrong thing. They’re charging for the electricity, when they should be charging to park in the spot.
Hi Nick,
Good point. Charge for parking in those spaces, equal to the cost of using the electricity to charge the battery.
Stop behind them and say “Sorry, old chap, can’t move, battery is flat.”
NAOM
Tit for Tat them and glue their fuel filler door shut.
“[…]tit-for-tat strategy has been of beneficial use to social psychologists and sociologists […] in studying effective techniques to reduce conflict. Research has indicated that when individuals who have been in competition for a period of time no longer trust one another, the most effective competition reverser is the use of the tit-for-tat strategy.[…]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
😉
“The U.S. Patent Office has a nine-member committee that screens patents in order to protect ‘national security’…
All those inventions are in a big warehouse, boxed up with the Ark of Covenant, right alongside the perpetual motion generators and the anti-gravity devices. All protected by the suppressed force field generator. It’s called Warehouse 14. Now that you know this, you will be visited by Men in Black. 🙂
As Fred pointed out, it is no longer necessary to send the men in black, drones are cheaper these days, lol.
Bullets are cheaper, which would be the response to a drone knocking on the door.
Yeah, but whoever has the Ark of the Covenant always wins in the final analysis… ain’t no bullet can hold the candle to that! 🙂
If the Arc of the Covenant shows up at my front door, I am out the back. I saw what happened to the guys that possessed the Arc in Indiana Jones. Not winners at all.
However, drones are another story.
Too late anyway, we opened Pandora’s box.
Oh, but those guys hearts weren’t pure… BIG GRIN!
Those of us who think history is over, and that peace and good will shall prevail indefinitely between countries has another think coming.
China is on the move these days, and the fact that the Chinese have historically had little to do with outsiders is totally irrelevant to TODAY’S reality.
Make what you will of this article, but read it carefully if you are interested in gaining some insights into what the future may hold.
It’s a fairly long read, but otoh, it’s damned near impossible to communicate effectively using sound bites except when the goal is to control the behavior of simple minded people.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-increasing-overseas-ambitions-with-maritime-silk-road-a-1110735.html
“There is also a medium-to-long term risk for Tesla…
Whoever wrote the last link “There…. Tesla” doesn’t know hot stinky doo doo from apple butter.
Of course the last paragraph is a dead give away that the author is an enemy of electrified personal transportation, etc, and gives ample indication that he is an ardent advocate for the current fossil fuel business as usual scenario.
The truth hardly ever matters to such people.
Their first assumption is that coal and gas will always be cheap and plentiful. They couldn’t be further wrong no matter how hard they try.
Which says sweet nothing about energy cannibalization and then from there, anthropogenic climate change, etc., from your electric society buildout.
Do you think we can have it both ways? Do tell.
Two more examples of mental diarrhea. Does not understand the many forms of power storage or the effects of energy reduction from using EV’s.
2nd article looks like a lot of guessing and fails to recognize that EV’s and renewable energy is likely to save the fossil fuel industry from early self-destruction.
Thanks for the holy smoke, Gonzo. I’ll have the wine and crackers now.
I just placed another article after your comment here.
Hey Guys,
Ghung appears to be living in a little bubble in the current context. So what. Might have worked for all of us in the 70’s or 80’s. Think it will work now?
Take a look at the green revolution or nuclear (waste). Or fossil fuels and ecologic degradation, including anthro climate change. They all looked grand back then, too.
Or the current ‘pseudoeconomic-contraction financial central bank instruments’. Or my recent comments upthread.
Or don’t. It’s your church.
Time and scale… and 7 billion plus…
“The overall finding from the sensitivity analysis is that we can say with a high degree of confidence that the EROI for PV electricity supply, under any conditions, will be less than…
Just a quick note/thought about EROEI and/or the application of any technology:
If ‘your’ technologies– EV’s, PV’s, whatever have you– and how and why, etc., they are implemented are contributing to the decline/collapse of civilization, then those costs need to be factored into your (EROEI, etc.) analyses as well.
“Reaping the environmental benefits of solar energy requires spending energy to make the PV system. But as this graphic shows, the investment is small. Assuming 30-year system life, PV-systems will provide a net gain of 26 to 29 years of pollution-free and greenhouse-gas-free electrical generation … So, for an investment of from 1 to 4 years worth of their energy output, PV systems can provide as much as 30 years or more of clean energy.””
http://solarcraft.com/solar-energy-myths-facts/
Looks more like 15:1 to 30:1 to me. Since there is no known lifetime of these panels, they may go well beyond 30 years and still produce power.
Have you flipped your wig? You appear to be quoting from a solar energy company about solar energy.
Don’t forget the Testimonials section while you’re at it.
Experts in the field, not yahoos.
Independent testing shows less than one percent degradation per year for panels.
You know how to use a calculator, figure it out yourself, since you apparently have not been paying attention to the many posts on this site.
I am fairly sure they take your solar panel degradation qualities into consideration for the EROEI, and conservatively.
There are a lot of ‘experts’ that come out of the field when they’re trying to sell us something.
AFAIK, there’s no warranty for a dangerously-warming anthropogenically-changing climate, at least none that we could afford if there was.
GF,
Please don’t feed Caelan. He is completely incapable of any rational thinking. He is stuck in his cultish view of the world that we are all being manipulated by the evil empire.
He is unable to incorporate facts such as: “Independent testing shows less than one percent degradation per year for panels.” into his world view.
Since he thinks all technology, especially electricity, computers and the internet are also evil it is unlikely he can even bring himself to use a calculator.
I just wish he would quit his proselytizing.
He scours the internet looking for anything that might support his contention the alternatives such as wind and solar are useless and a waste of time. He keeps posting crap from Gail Tverberg site and doesn’t have the science background to understand that Prieto and Hall’s analysis of PVs EROEI is deeply flawed and has been thoroughly debunked.
He doesn’t have any capability for thinking on his own all he can do is copy and paste failed philosophical and political ideas. He doesn’t live in the real world at all.
So please do not feed him!
With Toyota pushing the hydrogen car, hydrogen production from wind towers and solar farms during overproduction periods might just be the upcoming money maker for power producers. It could also serve to run leveling generators day or night.
“Who cares about electric CARS? Civilization ends when trucks stop running
Hi Caelan,
You might want to think about hanging out someplace else, where everybody is into inevitable doom and gloom.
You would be happier that way. Misery LOVES company.
Now it is possible that we are badly burnt toast, and that the entire world is headed to hell in a hand basket. I thought so myself a few years ago.
But there has been so much progress made so fast in the renewable energy industries, that I am now cautiously hopeful that a fair portion of humanity has a decent shot at transitioning to a low energy per capita economy using almost all renewable energy.
Throw in the fact that birth rates are falling fast, etc, and it is possible to make a case that we have a GOOD shot at going renewable.
Now here is some thing to think about.
NOTHING WHATSOVER is truly permanent.
This rock we live on will be vaporized by the sun that keeps us warm.
There is plenty of oil, coal and gas that can be burnt to produce wind turbines by the thousands and pv panels by the square kilometer, for at least a generation or two.
Now we have a choice in this matter, we can burn that oil, coal and gas so that it is lost forever, in cars, poorly insulated houses, building football stadiums, flying here and there for the fun of it, whatever.
OR we can invest that energy in something that provides a substantial return.
Wind turbines and solar panels provide a SUBSTANTIAL return of energy above and beyond what is needed to manufacture and set them up.
It’s easy as pie to go on the net and find lots of people who believe in little green men, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Santa Claus, vertical farming, you name it.
It’s equally easy to find lots of people who either believe the sort of stuff you post, or who are happy to lie about it, because they have skin in the game.
Those of us in this forum who believe we have at least some hope of a successful transition to a renewably powered economy have invested a substantial amount of time and personal energy in learning the hows, whys, wherefores and possibilities involved in going renewable.
The bottom line is that renewables work, and that they work BETTER year after year, as the technology improves and the costs of them continue to come down.
And as a matter of fact, I strongly suspect that such subsidies as they get for now result in society getting a net dollar and cents profit on the subsidies, due to wind and solar power cutting into the market for coal and gas.
When the consumption of a commodity declines, the price of it declines as well.
And we all use coal and gas in indirect form in large quantities. I don’t own a gas stove or range or crop dryer, but I still purchase a substantial quantity of gas in the form of nitrate fertilizers. You purchase that same gas in the form of bread.
Even if we fail, and there is no transition, we gain a few decades more of modern industrial life, because renewables at the very least extend the life of our depleting supply of fossil fuel.
“One way out of this quandary…
Yep—
The diesel engine is what keeps the system together:
http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-278-alice-friedemann-trucks-stop-running/
Hi Caelan,
Trucks can be replaced by rail and local routes on over head wires or using short haul trucks with batteries. Electricity can be provided by widely dispersed wind and solar with natural gas, fuel cell, battery, pumped hydro, and Vehicle to grid. As fossil fuels deplete they will become more expensive and will be replaced by less costly alternatives as well as energy in general being used more efficiently.
Lots of room for improving walkability and bikeability of neighborhoods so that fewer cars are needed for personal transportation and light rail and rail can be expanded in densely populated areas as well.
There are many solutions to fossil fuel energy scarcity, we just need to implement them.
Live programs on trucking and more tomorrow. Boone is not exactly unbiased.
———————————————————————————————————-
“T. Boone Pickens will be on the road and online this coming Monday, September 19, participating in two online events. You are invited to join him for these conversations about America’s energy future!
First, the American Trucking Association and Securing America’s Future Energy will present a special Transport Topics LiveOnWeb program on the topic of natural gas technologies and trucking at Noon ET. This conversation will feature Boone along with FedEx’s Fred Smith and Natural Gas Vehicles for America’s Matt Godlewski. Tune into http://liveonweb.ttnews.com to watch.
Also on Monday, Yahoo Finance will host a livestream from the 2016 Concordia Summit in New York featuring a live discussion with Boone at 2:20 pm ET. Watch at http://finance.yahoo.com.
https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revolution-27860f05fa91#.bg6ykpkrz
The Third Transportation Revolution
Lyft’s Vision for the Next Ten Years and Beyond
Disclaimer: My posting of this link doesn’t constitute an endorsement nor is it intended as a promotion of Lyft and it’s business model. Since it comes from the CEO of Lyft it is just a view straight from the horse’s mouth. I do have a few quibbles with some of his points.
I do however tend to agree with the general premise that we currently have a failed transportation model and that individually and privately owned vehicles are part and parcel of a paradigm that is already in the process of being radically changed.
If someone doesn’t like the term ‘Disruption’ to describe radical change to a previously existing paradigm then by all means feel free to come up with another term.
I have absolutely no idea if a given disruption will be good, bad or indifferent! I am not passing judgement. I only see and recognize that disruption is happening on a massive and increasingly accelerating pace and it is happening all around us. To deny this simple fact requires both, wearing blinders and engaging in some rather intricate mental gymnastics.
So, is it a tacit endorsement of the use of fossil fuels? All it really is. Faster horses!
All it really is. Faster horses!
No, it’s about fewer horses, fewer barns and a system to share those fewer horses much more efficiently.
It’s also about making hay when the sun shines, har!
Interesting ideas. I think the Lyft and Uber system use more energy than private cars but that might be reduced to the point where is does not matter.
I am not too sure how this system would need very many less cars, without making the riders wait long periods of time for the car to show up, since many people travel in the same time slot.
I usually run multiple errands on one trip, how would that work with having to wait at each stop to get another taxi to pick me up or pay to have it wait?
When travelling, my itinerary is very flexible, so I would have to hire the car for all day and it would not be able to drive in some of the areas I go.
Just paint all those cars white, then when parking or traveling, they reduce global warming by sending back some energy to space.
I am not too sure how this system would need very many less cars, without making the riders wait long periods of time for the car to show up, since many people travel in the same time slot.
Lyft is about ride sharing. Imagine a car with five passengers slots and those passengers slots being filled as passengers are being picked up and dropped off along a specific route. This is controlled by software and individuals access the system through their smart phones. So let’s say in a typical 20 mile trip, one vehicle might have transported 15 or more passengers. Every vehicle in the fleet would be doing the same thing.
Our current system requires one car for each of those 15 passengers going along the same general route and then being parked for most of the day. The Lyft car would not park it would go back out on different route and pick up and drop off another 15 passengers and continue doing that throughout most of the day. Thereby drastically reducing the number of individual cars on the road and practically eliminating the need for massive parking lots all over the place.
Note: I’m quite sure the nay sayers can come up with 1001 reasons why such a system can never work. I’m only interested in having a conversation with those people who are willing to try it out and find ways that might make it work.
Since it is quite clear the current system doesn’t work any more and we really don’t know what might work, I guess we are going to have to try a few things and see what does!
Cheers!
Ok, I was thinking Lyft and Uber were similar.
Uber also has a ride share option. And in metro areas they use pick up and drop off “hot spots” to help maximize this. Personally I don’t think Lyft and Uber are all that different, other than Lyft has a tipping function built into the app.
Yep!
There is a real potential for geothermal heating on a large scale in the North East, but it’s going to take some money to get the potential changed into a reality.
Cornell is the outfit that is apparently in the lead at the moment.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/cornell-has-a-plan-to-prove-that-the-east-coast-can-have-geothermal-heat/
I don’t have more than the foggiest idea what the underground portion of the plumbing will look like in such a system, but the rest of it is pretty much straight forward conventional HVAC type stuff.
Getting a well down to twenty thousand feet is apparently a routine job these days for oil rig operators, and they will probably use an oil drill rig for the boring.
What I would like to know is how they will work the stone down that deep to get a good flow of fluid from a down flow to an up flow well.
This sort of thing has enormous potential anywhere up north houses and buildings are close together, just about any city, with the hot rock nearby, if the people can get together and agree to install the necessary pipelines.
It seems nobody has yet done enough research to know how many towns and cities are close enough to such hot spots to be potential candidates.
A three hundred F reservoir will be fine for space heating purposes. Will that be hot enough that the heat can be used to supplement industrial heat needs in the summer time? That would help with paying for the system.
Tidal power will be highly predictable, and the technology is about to grow out of the toddler stage.
I am not sure how many hours a day a given tidal power system will produce at or near full capacity, but the only time it will produce nothing or nearly nothing will be just as the tide is changing.
A well placed tidal system will probably produce at least some power eighteen or more hours a day.
http://interestingengineering.com/meygen-worlds-largest-tidal-power-project-launched-scotland/
There is a link inside this link that you can use to get on the interestingengineering free email list.
“With declining system costs and assuming a short energy payback period, photovoltaics (PV) should, at face value, be able to make a meaningful contribution to reducing the emission intensity of Australia’s electricity system. However…
“In order for an ’emission free’ power plant to have a net negative impact on the greenhouse gas emissions of the energy supply…
Could a lithium shortage de-rail the electric car boom?
You have to understand that, in a large-scale, ‘just-in-time supply-chain’ crony-capitalist plutarchy pseudoeconomy/pseudogovernment context, such that this is, is that it’s in large part about ‘taking the money and running’, as per the power-prerequisites, and as much of it as it can (before things collapse), rather than about, say, conscientious community-centric, long-term sustainablitity, resilience, observation and planning. And so, while there may be a little of the latter, its direction is going to be guided more generally by the former.
The butcher, baker and candlestick maker supply the needs of their customers not out of concern for their customer but out of concern for their own needs.
The shoemaker supplies shoes to all of them in exchange for his meat, bread and candlesticks.
There is no reason to believe that businessmen will not continue to operate on this same principle, so long as we don’t wind up with the wrong sort of government,one wherein the businessmen and the government are one and the same.
We may indeed run severely short of lithium, but it CAN be recycled more or less indefinitely, and it doesn’t take all that much to make a battery sufficient to propel a car thirty or forty miles.
As Gandalf said, it is given to us to do what we can in the time we have. Future generations may have to walk or ride mules again. For now, it is a sure thing that renewables are at the very least good enough to stretch our finite supply of fossil fuels out a good many years., and soften the hard landing sure to be associated with the inevitable eventual depletion of affordable fossil fuels.
There’s an enormous amount of lithium out there – far more than the proven reserves of the USGS, which were never, ever intended to be used for this kind of long-term planning exercise. But…it doesn’t really matter.
There are many, many different chemistries for making batteries. Lead, aluminum, sulfur, iron…the list is almost as long as the periodic table. Lithium is a little cheaper, a little more powerful than most, but…they’d all work, in a pinch.
For instance, there was a company recently developing an advanced lead battery that was at least twice as energy dense as convention lead-acid and half the cost, but it couldn’t quite compete with the li-ion juggernaut, and it went out of business.
Think VHS vs Beta. Beta was better, but VHS was a bit cheaper and better marketed, and got to economies of scale before Beta. Both worked.
Think Laserdisc vs Blueray. Laserdisc was a bit larger, and it didn’t quite compete with DVD and Blueray. But…it worked just fine.
What we can do is not necessarily what we will do.
Of course it will be motivated by system dynamics that also flow from individual and group dynamics– status/pecking orders, power-vested-interests, and all that.
But then, what will probably happen is that we enter into a decline and/or collapse scenario, such that we seem to be entering into, and we keep doing them over time, such that we have– and over very considerable lengths of time– until which time as we cease to survive as a species, or until we or our progeny ‘figure it out’.
But what does this imply? Maybe it implies that we will not be traveling to the stars– not now or forever– unless we can figure it out and if that’s what we want to do. It seems that traveling to the stars, like keeping civilizations long-term and stable, requires what I keep mentioning; pure democracy and/or anarchy and/or equibility/equality. Otherwise, it’s half-assed for now and forever, all the way. It’s almost fusion energy and almost artificial intelligence, and almost interstellar travel, but never really quite– whatever it is we want that requires some sorts of large-scale energy and/or complexity and organization.
The only leaders we need, assuming they’re needed, are the ones that are true, willing and complete marionettes of us. The rest are pseudo, like so much of what we take for society, for reality.
Nick; if we want competition, a stable, long-term civilization (So how do we get it? Maybe like I just said.) and vis-a-vis the environment is the way to go. Anything else doesn’t compete. And certainly not if we kill keystone species and/or ourselves in the process. Think Darwin and even where our own Ron Patterson seems to be coming from in that regard.
How is this for a thought experiment?
It seems that you can now build a solar farm turn key for no more than four dollars a watt rated output, or four thousand a kW.
Now let us suppose a one kW array will supply five kWh per day, average, for twenty years, that’s about seventy thousand kWh’s.
How much coal do you have to burn to provide seventy thousand kWh?
How much coal do you have to burn to provide seventy thousand kWh?
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=667&t=2
Old Farmer, you might want to look at this article from way back in 2012.
Stunning Fact: PA’s Biggest Solar Farm To Cost Just $1.80/Watt!
http://johnhanger.blogspot.com/2012/09/stunning-fact-pas-biggest-solar-farm-to.html
Total operating costs using coal(2014 prices) to produce 70,000 kWh is $2800. .
If the panels and installation costs $2000 then the PV is ahead of coal. In reality the panels may last much longer, So there is a good amount of wiggle room for the cost of power storage.
Madness – Photon Harvest Glut of 2016 – Q3 / Q4. Pallet price – 280w-60cell or 340w-72 cell HQ Modules prices too low to publish… Under .60 USD. Container price much less.. http://pv.energytrend.com/pricequotes.html
Thanks guys,
I used the highest figure I have heard about recently in posing the question. You can get a turn key residential system in some places ,such as Germany, now for four bucks or less a watt.
It’s perfectly obvious that even if the ENTIRE cost of a solar farm was all spent on embedded energy, the farm would still return more energy than it took to build it.
In actuality, most of the cost of a solar farm consists of land, labor, taxes, new transmission lines, interest, profits, etc, rather than the panels themselves.
I was going to look up the amount of coal needed and post that data myself but got distracted and forgot.
Australia: installed solar at US$0.80 per watt.
http://disq.us/p/19nvfuh
Also:
>> Here in Australia fully installed solar is under $1 per watt (for a 4Kwh system). <<
http://disq.us/p/16969qt