Change-over to enewable energy

[Bill Sloman]

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=092211

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=092211

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter. Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

Anyway there is plenty of shale gas out there who needs renewables?

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=092211

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down? He doesn't mention how
storage would be accomplished. And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic. Of course, he throws in a plan for wasting energy to
produce hydrogen.

His math is silly. Why produce tiny amounts of energy from expensive
wave and tidal sources? Just because it could maybe be done? The major
output from wave-power sources is scrap metal.

He casually suggests that we'd need better weather forcasting!

Fact is, there is lots of natural gas underground, more than anybody
imagined a few years ago. It's cheap and clean. Nuclear works, too, if
governments let it.

IEEE Spectrum is junk.

Why don't you post on topic, about electronics? Even better, DO some
electronics and post about that. You are trolling to find reasons to
argue and insult people, and you only dare to do it around off-topic
trash that can't be proven one way or another.


John

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:23:35 +0100, Raveninghorde
<raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=092211

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter. Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

Super grids will have to reach halfway around the world to distribute
solar power.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 5:23 pm, Raveninghorde <raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter.  Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

If you were paying more attention, you might have noted that the
Desertec project envisages a super-grid coupling solar thermal plants
in the Sahara to Germany. A shortage of wind over northern Europe
could presumably be made up with electricity generated further south.

Anyway there is plenty of shale gas out there who needs renewables?

Anybody with enough sense to understand the scientific case for not
burning much more fossil carbon. Not you, obviously.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 5:56 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:23:35 +0100, Raveninghorde









raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power....

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter.  Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

Super grids will have to reach halfway around the world to distribute
solar power.

Current solar thermal plant design envisages keeping a reservoir of
hot heat-transfer oil (or molten salt)to keep the generators running
overnight. Odd that your creative insights missed that one.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 5:54 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down?

If you went to trouble of reading the article, you'd see that the
"idiots" expect to use a big and very extensive super-grid to average
out local variations in weather. The next generation of thermal solar
power plants are supposed to store heat during the day - as hot oil or
molten salt - so that they can sustain power generation over-night.

He doesn't mention how storage would be accomplished.

And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic.

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon
are finite, and we've extracted and burnt most of the stocks that were
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring in
the eventual cost of dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

<snipped usual incompreshension>

IEEE Spectrum is junk.

Why don't you post on topic, about electronics?

An article in the IEEE Spectrum isn't electronics? John Larkin has a
clearer idea of what constitutes "electronics" than the IEEE?

<snipped the usual routine about why anybody who isn't John Larkin
shouldn't be posting here>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Nico Coesel]

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 22, 5:54=A0pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down?

If you went to trouble of reading the article, you'd see that the
"idiots" expect to use a big and very extensive super-grid to average
out local variations in weather. The next generation of thermal solar
power plants are supposed to store heat during the day - as hot oil or
molten salt - so that they can sustain power generation over-night.

The concentrated solar power (CSP) at least makes some sense. Energy
can also be stored in large water reservoirs. The downside is that CSP
requires a lot of land and transportation over very large distances.
In Europe this means relying on North-African countries for energy.

He doesn't mention how storage would be accomplished.

And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic.

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned. Storing
CO2 is a very bad idea. A CO2 storage facility is much more dangerous
than a storage for nuclear waste. CO2 is a very toxic gas which will
stay dangerous forever.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:41:05 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 22, 5:56 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:23:35 +0100, Raveninghorde









raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter.  Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

Super grids will have to reach halfway around the world to distribute
solar power.

Current solar thermal plant design envisages keeping a reservoir of
hot heat-transfer oil (or molten salt)to keep the generators running
overnight. Odd that your creative insights missed that one.

I've heard the concept. What's the efficiency of that? I keep hearing
greenie-idiots saying "efficiency doesn't matter since sunlight is
free!"

How's the Baxandall circuit coming along? Think you'll have it
breadboarded by the end of the decade?

John

 

[Rich Grise]

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
snip
Why don't you post on topic, about electronics? Even better, DO some
electronics and post about that.

You are trolling to find reasons to
argue and insult people, and you only dare to do it around off-topic
trash that can't be proven one way or another.

Why did you ask if you already knew the answer? ;-)

Even _I've_ posted some electronics stuff recently - I even got thanked
for my suggestion of a mic preamp on .basics.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Nico Coesel wrote:

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned. Storing
CO2 is a very bad idea.

So, I take it you've never heard of forests?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Les Cargill]

Rich Grise wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned. Storing
CO2 is a very bad idea.

So, I take it you've never heard of forests?

Thanks,
Rich

They have fires! Prairies are worse! EVERYBODY PANIC!

http://coolit-themovie.com/

--
Les Cargill

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sep 22, 12:55 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon
are finite, and we've extracted and burnt most of the stocks that were
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring in
the eventual cost of dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.


Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I notice the article avoids any cost numbers including any cost
numbers for CO2 going into the atmosphere.

3.8 million wind turbines. That ought to kill off a lot of birds. If
two million were in the states. Nah, forget that. There isn't
enough viable sites for two million windturbines in the U.S.

Dan

 

[Nico Coesel]

Rich Grise <richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned. Storing
CO2 is a very bad idea.

So, I take it you've never heard of forests?

A forrest only stores a little bit of CO2.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Nico Coesel]

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 22, 9:28=A0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 5:54=3DA0pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power=
...

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down?

If you went to trouble of reading the article, you'd see that the
"idiots" expect to use a big and very extensive super-grid to average
out local variations in weather. The next generation of thermal solar
power plants are supposed to store heat during the day - as hot oil or
molten salt - so that they can sustain power generation over-night.

The concentrated solar power (CSP) at least makes some sense. Energy
can also be stored in large water reservoirs. The downside is that CSP
requires a lot of land and transportation over very large distances.
In Europe this means relying on North-African countries for energy.

He doesn't mention how storage would be accomplished.

And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic.

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon
are finite, and we've extracted and burnt most of the stocks that were
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring in
the eventual cost of dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned.

Probably not. Some of it is never going to be worth digging up, and a
lot of it is going to become chemical feedstock for more making more
interesting - and useful - moelcules than CO2.

Storing CO2 is a very bad idea.

Really? Oil fields have been doing it for millions of years

No, that is CxHy aka fossil fuel.

A CO2 storage facility is much more dangerous
than a storage for nuclear waste.

Spontaneous and unexpected CO2 releases have killed people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

This wasn't a CO2 storage facility, and it was lethal because Lake
Nyos could release the CO2 dissolved in its waters very quickly.

Underground CO2 storage doesn't offer the same capacity for rapid
release, and if you know it's down there you can check CO2 levels
remotely and automatically, and warn people long before CO2 levels
become dangerous.

And where do you want to send those people? Let me assure you that
evacuating a large city (or urban area) is impossible.

CO2 is a very toxic gas which will stay dangerous forever.

It's not very toxic compared with - say CO or HCN. One of the

OK, its less toxic than extremely toxic materials. But they're not
planning to store those underground under extremely high pressures.


--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 9:32 pm, "dcas...@krl.org" <dcas...@krl.org> wrote:

On Sep 22, 12:55 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon
are finite, and we've extracted and burnt most of the stocks that were
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring in
the eventual cost of dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

I notice the article avoids any cost numbers including any cost
numbers for CO2 going into the atmosphere.

It's an IEEE Spectrum article, not the two peer-reviewed publications
in "Energy Policy" on which the article is based.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf

There are other studies around that seem to support their point of
view

http://www.peopleandplace.net/on_the_wire/2011/2/5/mark_jacobson_and_mark_delucchi_wind_water_and_solar

3.8 million wind turbines.  That ought to kill off a lot of birds.

Think of it as evolution in action.

 If
two million were in the states.       Nah, forget that.  There isn't
enough viable sites for two million windturbines in the U.S.

There should be room for a few off-shore, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms

Europe seems have about a thousand already.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[NT]

On Sep 22, 4:54 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down? He doesn't mention how
storage would be accomplished. And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic. Of course, he throws in a plan for wasting energy to
produce hydrogen.

His math is silly. Why produce tiny amounts of energy from expensive
wave and tidal sources? Just because it could maybe be done? The major
output from wave-power sources is scrap metal.

He casually suggests that we'd need better weather forcasting!

Fact is, there is lots of natural gas underground, more than anybody
imagined a few years ago. It's cheap and clean. Nuclear works, too, if
governments let it.

IEEE Spectrum is junk.

Why don't you post on topic, about electronics? Even better, DO some
electronics and post about that. You are trolling to find reasons to
argue and insult people, and you only dare to do it around off-topic
trash that can't be proven one way or another.

John

The article is lunacy.

I'll admit I cba to look up exact figures, but the following costings
should at least give a ballpark idea on the level of costs involved.

One scenario that Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson and I
developed, projecting to 2030, includes:

* 3.8 million wind turbines, 5 megawatts each, supplying 50 percent of the projected total global power demand

If we said vaguely 10p/peak W, thats about Ł1.9 trillion

* 49 000 solar thermal power plants, 300 MW each, supplying 20 percent

If we said vaguely 2p per peak watt, that's Ł0.6 billion

* 40 000 solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants supplying 14 percent

If we said vaguely 2p per peak watt, that's Ł0.4 billion

* 1.7 billion rooftop PV systems, 3 kilowatts each, supplying 6 percent

If we said Ł3000 per system, that's Ł5.1 trillion

* 5350 geothermal power plants, 100 MW each, supplying 4 percent

I've no idea on costs, but if theyre no cheaper than pv, 2p/peak watt
= Ł11 billion

* 900 hydroelectric power plants, 1300 MW each, of which 70 percent are already in place, supplying 4 percent

If 0.8p per peak watt, that's Ł2.8 billion

* 720 000 ocean-wave devices, 0.75 MW each, supplying 1 percent

again if 2p/pk watt, Ł10.8 billion

* 490 000 tidal turbines, 1 MW each, supplying 1 percent.

If 2p/pk watt, 9.8 billion.

So total generation install cost = ballpark Ł2 trillion for all but
the domestic PVs, plus 5 trillion for those.
I dont know what the rest of the system plus administration costs are,
but typically they at least double final end user cost, so say 2+2+5Ł9 trillion total.

That should wipe out the NHS budget, resulting in wholesale death.

I'm not claiming the figs are accurate, but hopefully near enough to
give a rough idea of the kind of damage such an approach would do.


NT

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 9:28 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 5:54=A0pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power....

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down?

If you went to trouble of reading the article, you'd see that the
"idiots" expect to use a big and very extensive super-grid to average
out local variations in weather. The next generation of thermal solar
power plants are supposed to store heat during the day - as hot oil or
molten salt - so that they can sustain power generation over-night.

The concentrated solar power (CSP) at least makes some sense. Energy
can also be stored in large water reservoirs. The downside is that CSP
requires a lot of land and transportation over very large distances.
In Europe this means relying on North-African countries for energy.

He doesn't mention how storage would be accomplished.

And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic.

It may not be as cheap as burning fossil carbon is now, until you
figure in the consequences of dumping even more CO2 into the
atmosphere. And there is the point that the stocks of fossil carbon
are finite, and we've extracted and burnt most of the stocks that were
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring in
the eventual cost of dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

I've got news for you: all of the fossil fuel will get burned.

Probably not. Some of it is never going to be worth digging up, and a
lot of it is going to become chemical feedstock for more making more
interesting - and useful - moelcules than CO2.

Storing CO2 is a very bad idea.

Really? Oil fields have been doing it for millions of years

A CO2 storage facility is much more dangerous
than a storage for nuclear waste.

Spontaneous and unexpected CO2 releases have killed people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

This wasn't a CO2 storage facility, and it was lethal because Lake
Nyos could release the CO2 dissolved in its waters very quickly.

Underground CO2 storage doesn't offer the same capacity for rapid
release, and if you know it's down there you can check CO2 levels
remotely and automatically, and warn people long before CO2 levels
become dangerous.

CO2 is a very toxic gas which will stay dangerous forever.

It's not very toxic compared with - say CO or HCN. One of the
anxieties about pumping it underground is whether it will react with
olivine and similar silicates to turn them into carbonates, changing
the volume of rock involved and posibly producing local fracturing, so
it probably won't stay dangerous forever - unless you consider chalk
to be a dangerous mineral.

Local fracturing may sound dangerous, but this is all going on several
kilometers underground - if this happens we'll have years of advance
warning.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 9:39 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:41:05 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman









bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 5:56 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:23:35 +0100, Raveninghorde

raveninghorde@invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

Super grids and energy security are incompatible.

The Russkies shut off gas to parts of Europe every winter. Why would
anyone want to rely even more on power from unstable areas of the
world?

And without super grids ithe idea is a bust. Most of Northern Europe
was without wind last December. So 50% of energy gone in mid winter.
Lots of fun.

Super grids will have to reach halfway around the world to distribute
solar power.

Current solar thermal plant design envisages keeping a reservoir of
hot heat-transfer oil (or molten salt)to keep the generators running
overnight. Odd that your creative insights missed that one.

I've heard the concept. What's the efficiency of that?

It's probably not a very useful question. You need to have enough
stored heat to keep the generators running overnight. If there's no
phase change involved, a reservoir that stores twice as much heat as
required will halve its temperature overnight, and you've got to pump
twice as much water through at the end of the night as you did at
sunset to generate the same power, and you've got twice the steam
flow. It's going to be an interesting exercise optimising the size of
the energy storage against the size of the pipe-work carrying the
steam.

If you've got molten salt which you can allow to freeze, life gets a
bit more complicated.

I keep hearing greenie-idiots saying "efficiency doesn't matter since
sunlight is free!"

Or at least "too cheap to meter". Obviously efficiency matters, but
only in the context of getting the maximum power out for the minimum
capital investment and maintenance overhead.

Greenie idiots are quite as irritating as right-wing "there is no
gloabla warming idiots". In either case, they are failing to think
about what is - or will be - actually going on.

<snipped irrelevant question>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 22, 11:24 pm, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:

On Sep 22, 4:54 pm, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power....

What does this idiot think we'll do at night, or on cloudy winter
days, when the wind decides to die down? He doesn't mention how
storage would be accomplished. And of course part of his formula for
making all this stuff work is "reducing demand", another way of saying
it's uneconomic. Of course, he throws in a plan for wasting energy to
produce hydrogen.

His math is silly. Why produce tiny amounts of energy from expensive
wave and tidal sources? Just because it could maybe be done? The major
output from wave-power sources is scrap metal.

He casually suggests that we'd need better weather forcasting!

Fact is, there is lots of natural gas underground, more than anybody
imagined a few years ago. It's cheap and clean. Nuclear works, too, if
governments let it.

IEEE Spectrum is junk.

Why don't you post on topic, about electronics? Even better, DO some
electronics and post about that. You are trolling to find reasons to
argue and insult people, and you only dare to do it around off-topic
trash that can't be proven one way or another.

The article is lunacy.

Wrong.

I'll admit I cba to look up exact figures, but the following costings
should at least give a ballpark idea on the level of costs involved.

Why not argue with the authors' serious publication?

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf

<snipped guesswork>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen