Change-over to enewable energy

[Jim Thompson]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:58:35 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

On a power plant scale, see APS' solar facility.

...Jim Thompson
--
[On the Road, in New York]

| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[NT]

On Sep 23, 10:10 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 23, 1:11 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:



On Sep 22, 10:48 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

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),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? 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

it gives the exact same figures
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf

And they were good enough to get published in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal. Are yours?

With respect that doesn't require an article to add up. Read some fo
the psych articles published if you doubt that.
Mine were intended to be tweaked where needed, so anyone can see what
the problem is


NT

 

[NT]

On Sep 23, 8:50 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 23, 2:21 am, John Larkin



jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT), 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),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? 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+5> > >Ł9 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

Chinese solar panels are selling for something like $1.25 per peak
watt. Your 2p is a tad optimistic.

It isn't mine, it's Mark Z.Jacobson and Mark A.Delucchi's figure.

Perhaps they are figuring economies of scale for a thousandfold larger
market; typically these the halve price for each factor of ten
increase in production, which would only get your figure down to

Perhaps? If so, they need to state it, otherwise its just imagination.

$0.20, but the authors may know stuff that we don't about latest
generation of nano-structured solar cell materials

Or may be unwilling to do the numbers and understand the economic
implications. You cant build a realistic plan on unobtanium.

You still have to install them, invert to AC, connect to the grid,
store energy somehow for when the sun sets,

Mark Z.Jacobson and Mark A.Delucchido seem to set a lot of store in
the capacity of hydroelectric power to fill in when the sun is down

perfectly fair

and. More of their solar power - 20% of the capacity needed - is
thermal solar, which can store energy as heat.

yes, but at a cost

Solar panels are listed
as supplying 14% of the energy budget, possibly just to drive air-
conditioning systems.

NT

 

[NT]

On Sep 23, 7:09 pm, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:

On Sep 23, 8:50 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 23, 2:21 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT), 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),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? 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+5> > > >Ł9 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

Chinese solar panels are selling for something like $1.25 per peak
watt. Your 2p is a tad optimistic.

It isn't mine, it's Mark Z.Jacobson and Mark A.Delucchi's figure.

Perhaps they are figuring economies of scale for a thousandfold larger
market; typically these the halve price for each factor of ten
increase in production, which would only get your figure down to

Perhaps? If so, they need to state it, otherwise its just imagination.

$0.20, but the authors may know stuff that we don't about latest
generation of nano-structured solar cell materials

Or may be unwilling to do the numbers and understand the economic
implications. You cant build a realistic plan on unobtanium.

You still have to install them, invert to AC, connect to the grid,
store energy somehow for when the sun sets,

Mark Z.Jacobson and Mark A.Delucchido seem to set a lot of store in
the capacity of hydroelectric power to fill in when the sun is down

perfectly fair

and. More of their solar power - 20% of the capacity needed - is
thermal solar, which can store energy as heat.

yes, but at a cost

What do you think the cost would be Mr. Sloman, and the implications
of spending it?


NT

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

So, you've NEVER had to run the A/C after the sun goes down?


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:58:35 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

On a power plant scale, see APS' solar

A company is adding another 300 acres to a solar facility in Lake
County, Florida. It's currently 100 acres.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

 

[Nico Coesel]

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

On Sep 23, 12:39=A0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 9:28=3DA0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 5:54=3D3DA0pm, 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 fo=
r
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-po=
wer=3D
...

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 o=
r
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 say=
ing
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 wer=
e
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring i=
n
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.

Wrong. Raw natural gas can contain up to 8% CO2, which is removed -
along with the other less-than-useful compnoents - before the methane,
ethane, propane and butane arefed into the distribution system.

That is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2 managed
to get out.

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.

You can assure me all you like, and you will still be talking
nonsense. You can't evacuate a large city fast, but deep underground
CO2 leakage isn't fast. If the city threatened was big enough, and

The system will probably be designed not to leak fast just like
nuclear reactors are designed to shut down in case of problem. Or
rocket engines which are designed to always fire as expected. We all
know how well that works out in reality.

Besides that, underground CO2 storage is a very bad idea because it
doesn't solve a problem. Basic rule: if something isn't part of the
solution it is a part of the problem. At some point the CO2 has to be
taken out for some reason and at that time it will pose a bigger
problem then than the CO2 is now. Its always like that when stuff is
put into the ground to 'get rid of it'. Just look at the impact and
costs of cleaning up chemical waste dumps. What seems like an easy way
out often is a one way into trouble.

Worst, in a couple of centennia the area in NL where the CO2 dumps are
planned will probably be covered by sea or ice. How about maintenance
-if people didn't forgot about the underground time bombs-?

The 1995 Rhine floods forced the evacuation of 250,000 people and
millions of farm animals in a couple of days.

In the event of a toxic gas spill you don't have days. Remember
Bhopal? Did you ever thought about why they tell people to close doors
and windows when the air-raid alarm goes off? Its because there is no
capacity to evacuate people in the event of a toxic gas spill.

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.

OK, its less toxic than extremely toxic materials.

No, it's toxic only in very high concentrations - 5% is disabling and
8% can eventually be fatal

5% is not much. Given the fact that CO2 is heavier than air makes it
even worse because it forms a blanked near the ground.

But they're not
planning to store those underground under extremely high pressures.

Nor have they remained safely stored underground - under extremely
high presures - for millions of years in (some) natural gas fields.

Again: that is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2
managed to get out. The fact it stayed there is just dumb luck. Its
there neither by design and neither by choice.

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

 

[Don Lancaster]

On 9/23/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:

On a power plant scale, see APS' solar facility.

...Jim Thompson

Whose website is now dark.

The APS Springerville site NEVER produced any sellable electricity.
All it did was PARTIALLY run some water pumps some of the time on the
adjacent coal fired plant.

Not one net watthour of pv solar energy has ever been produced.

pv solar at present remains a gasoline destroying net energy sink.
It is not in any manner renewable or sustainable and still has a
horrendous carbon footprint.

Detailed analysis at < http://www.tinaja.com/etsamp1.asp >

Renewability and sustainability (and the required net energy ) can
reasonably be expected a decade after the panel price drops under twenty
five cents per peak watt.

Present pricing is TEN TIMES what is required.

The average home synchronous inverter consumes the value of 150% of the
electricity sent through it.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[NT]

On Sep 23, 8:50 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 23, 6:40 am, Robert Baer <robertb...@localnet.com> wrote:

BillSlomanwrote:
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....

   Theoretically, these sources are useful for local loads in
specialized situations.

That's the current situation with solar panels. Mark Z.Jacobson and
Mark A.Delucchi are envisaging a thousand-fold larger market with the
consequent economies of scale.

Sufficiently large thermal solar plants seem to be close enough to
break-even that if we built enough of them to supplyu 20% of our total
energy needs.simple economy of scale would put them ahead of burning
fossil carbon (and that isn't going to stay cheap as we burn up all
the most easily extracted stuff and have to compete with the chineses
and the Indians for what's left).

   Economically, they are disasters - the government involvement (read:
interference) is proof.

And burning fossil carbon like there's no tomorrow isn't already a
disaster? Not as big a disaster as we'll have to cope with if we keep
at it until we've raised the global average temperatures by another
degree Celcius or two. We've already raised the temperature of the
Artic by some 3 to 4 degrees Celcius over the past century, and the
Greenland ice sheet is already sliding off into the ocean at an
alarming rate. There's six metres of sea level rise in the Greenland
ice sheet, and rebuilding every port around the world could be rather
expensive.

yes, global warming will cost us all money one way or another. But
what it would take to avoid it, if thats even possible, would cost us
enormously more. That is the massivest flaw of the whole green agenda


NT

 

[NT]

On Sep 23, 4:58 pm, upsided...@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

maybe, if its thermally powered ac, not if electrical. But really ac
should be the last port of call after passive measures have been
taken, not the first port of call.


NT

 

[josephkk]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:38:57 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:28:24 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:


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.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Horseshit! If all the CO2 were removed from the atmosphere your body
would forget to breath and you would die. Not to mention the devastation
of plant life.

Do you have any idea about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Let me give you some numbers: its about 0.04%. Dangerous concentration
is 5%. But you'll feel to start the effects at 1%.

If you lock someone up in a closed room that person will not be killed
due to the lack of oxygen but due to a toxic level of CO2.

Care to calculate how long that would take? Dehydration will take them
out first.

Besides, i was discussing complete removal of all CO2, down to less than 1
ppm.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 24, 2:35 am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 23, 12:39=A0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 9:28=3DA0pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 22, 5:54=3D3DA0pm, 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 fo> >r
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-po> >wer=3D
...

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 o> >r
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 say> >ing
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 wer> >e
easy to dig up, and consequently cheap. Fossil carbon is going to get
progressively more expensive, even before we get around to figuring i> >n
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.

Wrong. Raw natural gas can contain up to 8% CO2, which is removed -
along with the other less-than-useful compnoents - before the methane,
ethane, propane and butane arefed into the distribution system.

That is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2 managed
to get out.

Scarcely. If there's still 8% left after a few hundred million years,
it hasn't been getting out fast, which is what would be required to
create a Lake Nyos situation.

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.

You can assure me all you like, and you will still be talking
nonsense. You can't evacuate a large city fast, but deep underground
CO2 leakage isn't fast. If the city threatened was big enough, and

The system will probably be designed not to leak fast just like
nuclear reactors are designed to shut down in case of problem.
Or rocket engines which are designed to always fire as expected. We
all know how well that works out in reality.

Both of which involve managing energetic energy-producing reactions.
CO2 in porous layers of rock doesn't have a lot of spare energy to
invest in makig life complicated for design engineers. This is
argument by false analogy.

Besides that, underground CO2 storage is a very bad idea because it
doesn't solve a problem. Basic rule: if something isn't part of the
solution it is a part of the problem. At some point the CO2 has to be
taken out for some reason and at that time it will pose a bigger
problem then than the CO2 is now.

The CO2 that has been buried in some natural gas fields has been there
for hundrends of millions of years. We don't have to keep our CO2
buried for anything like that long - CO2 is taken out of the
atmosphere by the natural process of weathering olivine - and other
silicate rocks - to carbonates. In fact there is a plausible proposal
to reverse anthropogenic global warming by milling a lot of olivine
and spreading it on surf beaches around the world.

http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/files/%2B%2BFast%20weathering%20of%20olivine%20grains%20on%20beaches%20for%20cost%20%2825-05-2011%29.pdf

In the long term, these carbonates end up on the sea-floor, get
subducted into the earths crust and get hot enough to release the CO2
again - it eventually comes back out of volcanoes - but there's a
great deal of CO2 in transit, and we wouldn't be adding much.

Its always like that when stuff is
put into the ground to 'get rid of it'. Just look at the impact and
costs of cleaning up chemical waste dumps. What seems like an easy way
out often is a one way into trouble.

It's one of the ways that nature has been dealing with the problem
over the past billion years or so, and the analogy with Love Canal is
utterly misleading.

Worst, in a couple of centennia the area in NL where the CO2 dumps are
planned will probably be covered by sea or ice. How about maintenance
-if people didn't forgot about the underground time bombs-?

Natural gas fields have been underground time bombs? You are letting
your imagination run away with you.

The 1995 Rhine floods forced the evacuation of 250,000 people and
millions of farm animals in a couple of days.

In the event of a toxic gas spill you don't have days. Remember
Bhopal?

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

"During the night of December 2–3, 1984, water entered a tank
containing 42 tons of MIC. The resulting exothermic reaction increased
the temperature inside the tank to over 200 °C (392 °F) and raised the
pressure. The tank vented releasing toxic gases into the atmosphere.
The gases were blown by northwesterly winds over Bhopal."

The tank of methyl isocyanate was on the surface, not several miles
underground, on the other side of a layer of rock that had been
impervious to natural gas for several hundred millions of years. Again
this is an utterly false analogy.

Did you ever thought about why they tell people to close doors
and windows when the air-raid alarm goes off? Its because there is no
capacity to evacuate people in the event of a toxic gas spill.

From tanks of chemicals on the surface, not buried a few miles
underground. Do try to get some kind of feel for the nature of the gas
storage we are actually talking about, rather than making false
analogies with very different situations.

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 possibly 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.

OK, its less toxic than extremely toxic materials.

No, it's toxic only in very high concentrations - 5% is disabling and
8% can eventually be fatal

5% is not much.

5% in open air is an enormous mass of gas. If the "dense" gas cloud
over Bhopal was roughly a cubic kilometre if gas, the 40 tons of
methyl isocynate would have represented some 40 ppm contamination.
Methyl isocynate really is a very toxic gas and concentrations as low
as 10 ppm can be lethal. You'd have needed a thousand times more CO2
to create anything like the same effect.

Given the fact that CO2 is heavier than air makes it
even worse because it forms a blanked near the ground.

Only on a windless day.

But they're not
planning to store those underground under extremely high pressures.

Nor have they remained safely stored underground - under extremely
high presures - for millions of years in (some) natural gas fields.

Again: that is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2
managed to get out. The fact it stayed there is just dumb luck. Its
there neither by design and neither by choice.

Nobody "designed" the CO2 content into some natural gas fields, The
fact that there was some 8% left after a few hundred millions years
does suggest that the leakage rate is very low indeed - a great deal
lower than anything that could worry us. If you weren't quite so
dedicated to being a "not in my back yard" alarmist, you might be in a
position to appreciate this.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:14:56 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:58:35 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

The only reason there is a residential PV solar market in the USA is
because of heavy subsidies. Which means that the economics is, with
current technology, silly.

If the electric price is the same regardless of the day of the year
and hour of day and there are no extra charge e.g. for the peak power
consumed during the year or month, residential solar power does not
make much sense.

From the utility company point of view, a high peak-to-average load
ratio is problematic. Extra power generating capacity has to be
provided for the few peak hours, while most of the time they are idle.

To minimize capital costs, these are usually relative simple (and fast
starting) gas turbines with relatively low efficiency (no heat
exchanger). The natural gas is quite often an expensive fuel. For this
reason, the cost of producing electricity with these peak load gas
turbines is significantly higher than with any nuclear, coal or
hydroelectric base load stations.

At least in the European electric markets, the price for _all_
electricity on a specific time is determined by the most expensive
production method (e.g. gas turbines) at the time, after all cheaper
sources are already on line. Electric meters are being replaced with
new ones that are capable of measuring consumption by the hour or even
shorter periods. There is a risk that the electric price will vary by
the hour or even by the actual market price for a specific day at an
specific hour.

In such environment, it makes sense for the customer, if he/she can
reduce the peak load during a few peak hours. There are of course
several methods to reduce the air conditioning peak loads, using good
insulation, using massive building constructions, dump the a/c heat
into water (and discard it during off-peak hours) or using solar power
(either solar thermal for absorbtion chillers or PV for compressors).

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 24, 2:05 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:

On Sep 23, 8:50 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:









On Sep 23, 6:40 am, Robert Baer <robertb...@localnet.com> wrote:

BillSlomanwrote:
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...

   Theoretically, these sources are useful for local loads in
specialized situations.

That's the current situation with solar panels. Mark Z.Jacobson and
Mark A.Delucchi are envisaging a thousand-fold larger market with the
consequent economies of scale.

Sufficiently large thermal solar plants seem to be close enough to
break-even that if we built enough of them to supplyu 20% of our total
energy needs.simple economy of scale would put them ahead of burning
fossil carbon (and that isn't going to stay cheap as we burn up all
the most easily extracted stuff and have to compete with the chineses
and the Indians for what's left).

   Economically, they are disasters - the government involvement (read:
interference) is proof.

And burning fossil carbon like there's no tomorrow isn't already a
disaster? Not as big a disaster as we'll have to cope with if we keep
at it until we've raised the global average temperatures by another
degree Celcius or two. We've already raised the temperature of the
Artic by some 3 to 4 degrees Celcius over the past century, and the
Greenland ice sheet is already sliding off into the ocean at an
alarming rate. There's six metres of sea level rise in the Greenland
ice sheet, and rebuilding every port around the world could be rather
expensive.

yes, global warming will cost us all money one way or another. But
what it would take to avoid it, if thats even possible,  would cost us
enormously more. That is the massivest flaw of the whole green agenda

Think about the Younger Dryas, which was a hiccup in the thawing
process that ended the last Ice Age

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

Basically, the Gulf Stream turned off for 1300 years, probably due to
massive amounts of fresh water being dumped in the North Atlantic when
the Laurentian ice sheet slid off into the ocean. The Greenland ice
sheet isn't as big, and doesn't show any immediate signs of sliding
off into the ocean as a single lump, but it might be able to do as
well. Do you want to find out if it is big enough and unstable enough
by seeing it happen?

We don't know what could happen if we let global temperatures rise by
another degree Celcius or so, and we probably shouldn't indulge our
curiousity by waiting to see what does happen. If the final state of
the planet is incompatible with the advanced industrial civilisation
we've got at the moment, inaction will cost us everything we've got.
That the massive flaw in the denialist argument.

Some of the right-wing nitwits here argue that the green agenda wants
us to move back to a medieval muscle-powered economy, which is total
nonsense. The rational green agenda does envisage roughly doubling the
price of energy in the short term - over a decade or so - and since
expenditure on energy currently represents 8% of our GNP this going to
knock off about two years of economic growth (assuming the the usual
4% per year beloved by actuaries and the like) which is no worse than
the US banking system did with the sub-prime mortgge crisis, and does
offer the US a chance to get the oil monkey off it's back.

Check out the 1973 oil crisis sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[NT]

On Sep 24, 5:12 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 24, 2:05 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:



On Sep 23, 8:50 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 23, 6:40 am, Robert Baer <robertb...@localnet.com> wrote:

BillSlomanwrote:
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...

   Theoretically, these sources are useful for local loads in
specialized situations.

That's the current situation with solar panels. Mark Z.Jacobson and
Mark A.Delucchi are envisaging a thousand-fold larger market with the
consequent economies of scale.

Sufficiently large thermal solar plants seem to be close enough to
break-even that if we built enough of them to supplyu 20% of our total
energy needs.simple economy of scale would put them ahead of burning
fossil carbon (and that isn't going to stay cheap as we burn up all
the most easily extracted stuff and have to compete with the chineses
and the Indians for what's left).

   Economically, they are disasters - the government involvement (read:
interference) is proof.

And burning fossil carbon like there's no tomorrow isn't already a
disaster? Not as big a disaster as we'll have to cope with if we keep
at it until we've raised the global average temperatures by another
degree Celcius or two. We've already raised the temperature of the
Artic by some 3 to 4 degrees Celcius over the past century, and the
Greenland ice sheet is already sliding off into the ocean at an
alarming rate. There's six metres of sea level rise in the Greenland
ice sheet, and rebuilding every port around the world could be rather
expensive.

yes, global warming will cost us all money one way or another. But
what it would take to avoid it, if thats even possible,  would cost us
enormously more. That is the massivest flaw of the whole green agenda

Think about the Younger Dryas, which was a hiccup in the thawing
process that ended the last Ice Age

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

Basically, the Gulf Stream turned off for 1300 years, probably due to
massive amounts of fresh water being dumped in the North Atlantic when
the Laurentian ice sheet slid off into the ocean. The Greenland ice
sheet isn't as big, and doesn't show any immediate signs of sliding
off into the ocean as a single lump, but it might be able to do as
well. Do you want to find out if it is big enough and unstable enough
by seeing it happen?

We don't know what could happen if we let global temperatures rise by
another degree Celcius or so, and we probably shouldn't indulge our
curiousity by waiting to see what does happen. If the final state of
the planet is incompatible with the advanced industrial civilisation
we've got at the moment, inaction will cost us everything we've got.
That the massive flaw in the denialist argument.

Suggesting that 'the final state of the planet is incompatible with
the advanced industrial civilisation' is a massively flawed claim.

And fwiw 'denialist' is not the most honest of terms.

Some of the right-wing nitwits here argue that the green agenda wants
us to move back to a medieval muscle-powered economy, which is total
nonsense. The rational green agenda does envisage roughly doubling the
price of energy in the short term - over a decade or so - and since
expenditure on energy currently represents 8% of our GNP this going to
knock off about two years of economic growth (assuming the the usual
4% per year beloved by actuaries and the like) which is no worse than
the US banking system did with the sub-prime mortgge crisis, and does
offer the US a chance to get the oil monkey off it's back.

Check out the 1973 oil crisis sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The level of green initiatives that true greenies want (not the very
watered down mainstream politican's version) would absolutely cripple
the economy. The resulting hardships would prove lethal, literally,
and on a large scale.


NT

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 24, 7:38 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:

On Sep 24, 5:12 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 24, 2:05 am, NT <meow2...@care2.com> wrote:

On Sep 23, 8:50 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 23, 6:40 am, Robert Baer <robertb...@localnet.com> wrote:

BillSlomanwrote:
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...

   Theoretically, these sources are useful for local loads in
specialized situations.

That's the current situation with solar panels. Mark Z.Jacobson and
Mark A.Delucchi are envisaging a thousand-fold larger market with the
consequent economies of scale.

Sufficiently large thermal solar plants seem to be close enough to
break-even that if we built enough of them to supplyu 20% of our total
energy needs.simple economy of scale would put them ahead of burning
fossil carbon (and that isn't going to stay cheap as we burn up all
the most easily extracted stuff and have to compete with the chineses
and the Indians for what's left).

   Economically, they are disasters - the government involvement (read:
interference) is proof.

And burning fossil carbon like there's no tomorrow isn't already a
disaster? Not as big a disaster as we'll have to cope with if we keep
at it until we've raised the global average temperatures by another
degree Celcius or two. We've already raised the temperature of the
Artic by some 3 to 4 degrees Celcius over the past century, and the
Greenland ice sheet is already sliding off into the ocean at an
alarming rate. There's six metres of sea level rise in the Greenland
ice sheet, and rebuilding every port around the world could be rather
expensive.

yes, global warming will cost us all money one way or another. But
what it would take to avoid it, if thats even possible,  would cost us
enormously more. That is the massivest flaw of the whole green agenda

Think about the Younger Dryas, which was a hiccup in the thawing
process that ended the last Ice Age

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

Basically, the Gulf Stream turned off for 1300 years, probably due to
massive amounts of fresh water being dumped in the North Atlantic when
the Laurentian ice sheet slid off into the ocean. The Greenland ice
sheet isn't as big, and doesn't show any immediate signs of sliding
off into the ocean as a single lump, but it might be able to do as
well. Do you want to find out if it is big enough and unstable enough
by seeing it happen?

We don't know what could happen if we let global temperatures rise by
another degree Celcius or so, and we probably shouldn't indulge our
curiousity by waiting to see what does happen. If the final state of
the planet is incompatible with the advanced industrial civilisation
we've got at the moment, inaction will cost us everything we've got.
That the massive flaw in the denialist argument.

Suggesting that 'the final state of the planet is incompatible with
the advanced industrial civilisation' is a massively flawed claim.

Alright. It is a wrst case argument so,

"If the final state of the planet were incompatible with the advanced
industrial civilisation we've got at the moment, inaction would cost
us everything we've got. That the massive flaw in the denialist
argument."

I don't think you can argue with that. The denialists argue that we
can't predict the detailed effects of anthropogenic global warming
with enough precision to absolutely justify doing anything to stop it,
but the flip side of that argument is that we can't predict the kinds
of things that have happened during warming episode - like runaway
methane release as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - and
should be correspondingly cautious.

And fwiw 'denialist' is not the most honest of terms.

Denialism isn't the most honest of activities. Most of the denialist
propaganda is bought and paid for by Exxon-Mobil and similar
oraganisations with a substantial financial interest in continuing to
extract and sell fossil carbon. The book "The Merchants of Doubt"
gives chapter and verse on the history of the business of generating
doubt about scientific evidence, which was started up by the tobacco
companies - the book's title is a reference to a 1969 tobacco company
memo on the subject.

Some of the right-wing nitwits here argue that the green agenda wants
us to move back to a medieval muscle-powered economy, which is total
nonsense. The rational green agenda does envisage roughly doubling the
price of energy in the short term - over a decade or so - and since
expenditure on energy currently represents 8% of our GNP this going to
knock off about two years of economic growth (assuming the the usual
4% per year beloved by actuaries and the like) which is no worse than
the US banking system did with the sub-prime mortgge crisis, and does
offer the US a chance to get the oil monkey off it's back.

Check out the 1973 oil crisis sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The level of green initiatives that true greenies want (not the very
watered down mainstream politican's version) would absolutely cripple
the economy. The resulting hardships would prove lethal, literally,
and on a large scale.

"True greenies" are lunatics. I wouldn't be in the least surprised it
it turned out that they were another wing of the denialist propaganda
machine. If they didn't exist the denialists would certainly have
found it useful to invent them.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Nico Coesel]

josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:38:57 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:28:24 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:


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.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Horseshit! If all the CO2 were removed from the atmosphere your body
would forget to breath and you would die. Not to mention the =
devastation
of plant life.

Do you have any idea about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Let me give you some numbers: its about 0.04%. Dangerous concentration
is 5%. But you'll feel to start the effects at 1%.

If you lock someone up in a closed room that person will not be killed
due to the lack of oxygen but due to a toxic level of CO2.

Care to calculate how long that would take? Dehydration will take them
out first.

Besides, i was discussing complete removal of all CO2, down to less than =
1
ppm.

Over here they are planning to pump the exhaust gasses from power
plants into underground storages like empty oil and gas fields. Its
not about taking CO2 from the atmosphere.

--
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 24, 2:35=A0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 23, 12:39=3DA0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

Nor have they remained safely stored underground - under extremely
high presures - for millions of years in (some) natural gas fields.

Again: that is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2
managed to get out. The fact it stayed there is just dumb luck. Its
there neither by design and neither by choice.

Nobody "designed" the CO2 content into some natural gas fields, The
fact that there was some 8% left after a few hundred millions years
does suggest that the leakage rate is very low indeed - a great deal
lower than anything that could worry us. If you weren't quite so
dedicated to being a "not in my back yard" alarmist, you might be in a
position to appreciate this.

You assume a deflated tin foil balloon will inflate again without
cracking. You know that mining oil, gas and coal (ultimately) causes
the surface to sink. This sinking must cause some cracking or a least
alterations in the layers beneath the surface.

Secondly you are missing my point: putting a problem underground does
not make a problem go away. This is a very elementary rule! It is not
about my back yard, I'm against the whole concept of burrying what we
don't need. Never heard of the saying 'keep your friends close, but
keep your enemies closer'?

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

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:03:45 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:14:56 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:58:35 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:49:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:


Residential solar doesn't make sense to me. The economy of scale is
all wrong. Solar water heating makes sense in some climates.

Running air conditioning with solar power makes sense, since during
high cooling demand, the power production is also high at the same
time, thus no energy storage is needed. It also reduces the peak power
demand from centralized power stations and reduces the distribution
network peak power levels.

The only reason there is a residential PV solar market in the USA is
because of heavy subsidies. Which means that the economics is, with
current technology, silly.

If the electric price is the same regardless of the day of the year
and hour of day and there are no extra charge e.g. for the peak power
consumed during the year or month, residential solar power does not
make much sense.

From the utility company point of view, a high peak-to-average load
ratio is problematic. Extra power generating capacity has to be
provided for the few peak hours, while most of the time they are idle.

To minimize capital costs, these are usually relative simple (and fast
starting) gas turbines with relatively low efficiency (no heat
exchanger). The natural gas is quite often an expensive fuel.

The price of natural gas has dropped dramatically in the USA in the
last couple of years. We have an enormous supply of it.


For this

reason, the cost of producing electricity with these peak load gas
turbines is significantly higher than with any nuclear, coal or
hydroelectric base load stations.

At least in the European electric markets, the price for _all_
electricity on a specific time is determined by the most expensive
production method (e.g. gas turbines) at the time, after all cheaper
sources are already on line. Electric meters are being replaced with
new ones that are capable of measuring consumption by the hour or even
shorter periods. There is a risk that the electric price will vary by
the hour or even by the actual market price for a specific day at an
specific hour.

That is an artificial, politically driven pricing structure, which
forces the economics in favor of PV solar.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 24, 4:29 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 24, 2:35=A0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:
BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 23, 12:39=3DA0am, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

Nor have they remained safely stored underground - under extremely
high presures - for millions of years in (some) natural gas fields.

Again: that is a meaningless claim since you don't know how much CO2
managed to get out. The fact it stayed there is just dumb luck. Its
there neither by design and neither by choice.

Nobody "designed" the CO2 content into some natural gas fields, The
fact that there was some 8% left after a few hundred millions years
does suggest that the leakage rate is very low indeed - a great deal
lower than anything that could worry us. If you weren't quite so
dedicated to being a "not in my back yard" alarmist, you might be in a
position to appreciate this.

You assume a deflated tin foil balloon will inflate again without
cracking.

You have this passion for misleading analogies. The "impervious"
layers that have stopped raw natural gas - including CO2 - from
leaking out over hundreds of millions of years are a couple of
kilometres below the surface and compressed by the weight of the over-
lying geology.

This a very different kind of seal than you find in a thin-walled tin-
foil balloon. It has survived hundreds of millions of years of
earthquakes and continental drift. When drilling for gas, it takes
serious engineering to keep the bore-holes open to let the gas come
out - search on casings and well screens.

You know that mining oil, gas and coal (ultimately) causes
the surface to sink. This sinking must cause some cracking or a least
alterations in the layers beneath the surface.

Over geological time the surface is bouncing up and down like a yo-yo
and there's a steady stream of earthquakes as the continental blocks
drift around and collide. The may be cracking at the surface, but not
a few miles down.

Secondly you are missing my point: putting a problem underground does
not make a problem go away. This is a very elementary rule! It is not
about my back yard, I'm against the whole concept of burrying what we
don't need. Never heard of the saying 'keep your friends close, but
keep your enemies closer'?

I didn't miss your point, but you've snipped my response to it

"We don't have to keep our CO2
buried for anything like that long - CO2 is taken out of the
atmosphere by the natural process of weathering olivine - and other
silicate rocks - to carbonates. In fact there is a plausible proposal
to reverse anthropogenic global warming by milling a lot of olivine
and spreading it on surf beaches around the world.

http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/files/%2B%2BFast%20weathering%20...

In the long term, these carbonates end up on the sea-floor, get
subducted into the earths crust and get hot enough to release the CO2
again - it eventually comes back out of volcanoes - but there's a
great deal of CO2 in transit, and we wouldn't be adding much."

The time constant for the weathering control loop in the various
sytems that control CO2 levels in the atmosphere is IIRR about 50,000
years, which isn't long compared with the life-time of natural gas
fields.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen