# We need an energy miracle



## begreen

Bill Gates is pouring a couple billion toward this goal and is challenging others. His conclusions won't resonate with everyone, but his perspective is still worth hearing out. 
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/


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## jackatc1

The facts warts and all.
I wish him success.


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## woodgeek

As usual with tech, Bill Gates is 5-10 years behind the curve.  And yet is seen as a tech visionary.

We will need to roll out wind/solar tech as it exists and EVs as they are currently on the drawing board for 2016/7, that is, affordable and 200+mi range.  None is a miracle.
Diurnal storage for RE will be battery based, and research is still underway.  The first battery tech that reaches scale probably exists right now.  Also not a miracle.
Seasonal storage?  Still needs fleshing out, but could be some combo of long-distance transmission, load shifting, and H-storage.  A miracle might be nice, but prob not required.


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## Seasoned Oak

We already have the solutions to clean energy production. The difference in my electric rates between coal power and renewables is 1 or 2 cts a Kwh. Peanuts!  The masses will not adopt clean energy solutions unless they are actually cheaper than the dirty ones.
We will however blow unlimited amounts of money on things that do absolutely nothing for us. Look what we spend on things like needless wars ,weapons,sports,pets,gambling,smoking,drugs  ect ect. But to suggest we spend a little more for clean energy and to stop climate change, you may be branded as a tree hugging whacko.


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## begreen

The problem with clean energy is storage. Mass storage solutions like pumping to a reservoir work in some locations, but not others like the desert where the sun is king. Expecting a miracle in battery tech is in alignment with Gate's point. Our grid technology is old and not nearly ready or in place to regulate and redirect wind and solar power on a vast scale yet. We need to turn a large portion of our resources to solving these problems. Diverting some of our obscenely large military budget seems like a good place to start. We also still are not aggressively working on conservation. This is a national security issue yet too many are complacent and will not probably react until we get into crisis mode.


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## Seasoned Oak

Probably nothing substantial will happen until seawater starts creeping into the living rooms of the right people. At that point im sure it will be way too late to do anything about it. Theres is not much long term thinking going on by the people running things. I dont see this changing any time soon.


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## begreen

That's why I'm glad Bill Gates is involved. He hangs around with many influential people and putting a couple billion in as a nudge is not trivial.


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## smokydaddy

Seasoned Oak said:


> We already have the solutions to clean energy production. The difference in my electric rates between coal power and renewables is 1 or 2 cts a Kwh. Peanuts!  The masses will not adopt clean energy solutions unless they are actually cheaper than the dirty ones.
> We will however blow unlimited amounts of money on things that do absolutely nothing for us. Look what we spend on things like needless wars ,weapons,sports,pets,gambling,smoking,drugs  ect ect. But to suggest we spend a little more for clean energy and to stop climate change, you may be branded as a tree hugging whacko.


Absolutely agree with you! Using the "dirt" energy sources will turn to us with hundreds trillions of debt in near futute from our mother nature.


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## Circus

The answer is obvious but it'll never fly while alec owns our state and federal governments. Carbon tax. Method details are trivial.


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## mass_burner

Circus said:


> The answer is obvious but it'll never fly while alec owns our state and federal governments. Carbon tax. Method details are trivial.


Details are trivial?  There's a way around everything. What's to stop polluters from starting a dozen shell companies who plant a few trees a year and "buy" their carbon credits.


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## begreen

The real miracle would be holding human greed in check.


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## woodgeek

begreen said:


> That's why I'm glad Bill Gates is involved. He hangs around with many influential people and putting a couple billion in as a nudge is not trivial.



Or more likely, he will simply take credit for the solution(s) after we get there.


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## begreen

That's a bit prickly. I think he has a bit more humility than that.  The Gates Foundation has done a lot of good in the world, especially in world health.


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## Seasoned Oak

begreen said:


> The real miracle would be holding human greed in check.


Greed is the driver behind a lot of it. And its hard to change the dark side of human nature,like hunting the last tuna into extintion, or the last whale or elephant or Rhino. Also bordering on extinction are clean water and air and a healthy non toxic food supply.  For a species that supposed to be intelligent ,its a pretty poor showing. We are still animals first and thinking,rational beings only occasionally.


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## Seasoned Oak

begreen said:


> That's a bit prickly. I think he has a bit more humility than that.  The Gates Foundation has done a lot of good in the world, especially in world health.


Copy that BG .You cant fault a guy who is giving most of his wealth to charity,even if he was slow to get started , sort of like his good friend Warren buffet.


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## woodgeek

Sure.  The guy makes billions for 20 years stealing the innovations of others, engaging in misinformation campaigns to destroy competitors and holding back progress, then gets religion in retirement and gives money to some worthy causes in public health.

Just nothing on his resume indicates he is an innovator or tech 'visionary' or knows anything in particular about energy or climate.  His demonstrable skills are making money by stealing ideas and giving some of that money to charity.


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## woodgeek

Seasoned Oak said:


> Copy that BG .You cant fault a guy who is giving most of his wealth to charity,even if he was slow to get started , sort of like his good friend Warren buffet.



Don't even get me started about our friendly uncle Warren.


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## mass_burner

Also, folks like BG, WB, are too close to the people that will potenttially be hurt or benefit from their actions. They are subject to extreme pressure when someone doesn't like what their doing. And if their "just doing it to be a good guy" , it's not worth the hassle .


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## DBoon

In 10 years we'll all look back and realize that the miracle started more than two years ago - solar PV capacity expanding 30% per year (10x growth every 7 years), wind generation already equal to nearly 5% of US electricity supply, coal stocks and production plummeting, etc.  

This curve, to me, tells it all http://assets.bwbx.io/images/iQYuKSosjb3U/v1/-1x-1.jpg
(from this article http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-30/seven-reasons-cheap-oil-can-t-stop-renewables-now)

Once clean energy is cheaper, it is just a matter of people making the obvious cost-based choices, dealing with those who will be the "losers" (the old companies, the electric companies, etc.) in the shift to the new technologies, and scaling up the technologies fast enough in terms of production, supporting elements (e.g. battery storage) and management change (e.g. electricity grid balance).  "Cheaper" doesn't require political solutions, carbon taxes or anything else - it just fits with the way our economy runs today. 

It is happening now, no miracles needed.  We just have to make it go faster.


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## Seasoned Oak

PP&L ,,My electric company saw the writing on the wall years ago. They have sold off most of their generating capacity and are just an electricity delivery company now. So no matter how cheap the generating side gets,they will be making their money frm owning the poles and wires and not from making the stuff. Even if you go solar you still need them for grid tie.


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## jharkin

I think we all agree that Bill Gates, while a business genius,  is not a certifiable tech genius like , say Jobs (who was reportedly a true a#@*(&#@(&  in person as well).

But that doesn't prove everything he says in this case wrong... And  I think the core point has a lot of truth to it - A revolution in the physical world of big energy is not going to come anywhere near as easy as revolutions in the digital world have.  I wish I could be but i just dont buy the "technology will save us" utopia vision.

For every one of you guys here Ive met with PV on your roof and a Prius or leaf in t driveway, Ive met 10 people in real life driving a 12mpg F150 to get groceries.  And this is in progressive New England.

I think technology_ can_ save us, but I agree with this article that its going to take a lot of hard work and effort.


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## woodgeek

I agree Jeremy, it won't be as fast as say, the smartphone revolution, which was basically at 0 in 2007 to near saturation now just 8 years later.  It's going to take more like 20 or 30 years.  But the bigger point is that wind and solar are out of the lab, and on an exponential rollout curve.  In many markets they represent a big share of new capacity additions...and normal fleet replacement takes ~30 years.

EVs are not curiosities like 5 yrs ago, nearly everyone has at least heard of them or knows someone who has one (and loves it).  Once we get multiple 200+ mi affordable EVs on the market (~2017), and people test drive them, get to know their low operating/maintenance costs, I think they will blow past the eco crowd into the 'fun car' crowd. The Prius was a failure IMO because it sucks to drive, and the value proposition is not there unless you log a LOT of miles.  A fun to drive car that is cheaper and greener than a Prius...where can I get one?  Fleet replacement takes 10 years, so lots of EVs on the road by 2030.

And to continue my crabbiness on this thread, after growing up in MA, and living in Chicago, LA and now Philly, I do not consider New England to be particularly 'progressive'.


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## begreen

I have to add that philanthropy is not a new religion for Bill Gates. It runs in the family. Bill Gates' Sr. has a history of philanthropy and he passed this on to his kids. They've done a lot of good with their success and wealth.

Agreed that EVs are not curiosities anymore. They can be very practical vehicles. We love the Volt. About 80% of our driving is all electric.


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## iamlucky13

woodgeek said:


> Once we get multiple 200+ mi affordable EVs on the market (~2017), and people test drive them, get to know their low operating/maintenance costs, I think they will blow past the eco crowd into the 'fun car' crowd.



If that happens, then yes it will be a big boon for electric car sales, but there's nothing on the horizon like that. I don't consider a $40-$50,000 car affordable. At best, it's the lower end of luxury car pricing. I'm really curious to see what things look like in 10 years, but the electric car pricing has a long ways to go.

And yes, I know Elon Musk claims the Model 3 will be $35,000 (which is still not in the "affordable" category - an $18,000 Honda Civic is affordable. A $33,000 BMW 3-series is not.) and available next year. However, Musk doesn't deliver anything either on time or on budget - and I'm pointing this out as a fan who has been following his work for over decade, long before most people had a clue who he was. He does cool stuff, but you have to take his performance and price figures with a big grain of salt.

The Model S was supposed hit the market in 2010 at $60,000. It came in at $70,000 in 2012. The Model X was slated for 2013 first delivery. It actually happened two months ago.

Likewise, his SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to cost $27 million and start launching payloads in 2008. It debuted at $54 million with its first test launch in 2010, and first customer launch 2012.



woodgeek said:


> The Prius was a failure IMO because it sucks to drive, and the value proposition is not there unless you log a LOT of miles.



The Prius has been pretty far from a failure - some of their competitor's best models don't even sell as well as the Prius. 2014 sales were 207,000 Priuses, versus 110,000 for the Mazda 3. Nissan's Altima outsold it at 335,000 units, but their second best model, the Sentra, only garnered 183,000 sales. Despite not being fun to drive, it's been quite popular. It's carbon emissions are almost as low as the Model S, too (based Tesla's own figures).

And the payback time has actually gotten pretty reasonable, depending on what car you're comparing too, even with our current low fuel prices. At $24,200 starting price, it's down to a mere $1130 price premium over the Camry, which it's closer to in size than the $17,230 Corolla. While that works out to a 225,000 mile payback compared to the Corolla, it's only a 29,000 mile payback compared to the Camry. There are Prius' out there that have exceeded 225,000 miles, though:
http://priuschat.com/threads/300-000-mile-club.137360/


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## jharkin

woodgeek said:


> And to continue my crabbiness on this thread, after growing up in MA, and living in Chicago, LA and now Philly, I do not consider New England to be particularly 'progressive'.



Well to carry on the crabiness... if you think New England is a problem how are you going to get all the red states to buy into clean energy and electric vehicles?


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## begreen

Affordability. Practicality. The Nissan Leaf is selling for $21,510 locally, and 16,510 right now with Nissan financing. Red states Tennessee and Georgia are in the top 10 electric car states. I was surprised to see that WA state apparently is #1.


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## Where2

jharkin said:


> If you think New England is a problem how are you going to get all the red states to buy into clean energy and electric vehicles?



I see plenty of Teslas on the road in FL, a state run by a Red governor + Red legislature... As for buying clean energy, most of this red state has no choice, our monopolized electric companies have been adding solar generation facilities and selling it to us for the same rate as fossil fuel based energy. The utility shareholders simply get more return on the rate payer's investment when we buy rebranded sunshine.

My PV system simply cut out the middle man and pays me for sunny days.


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## woodgeek

begreen said:


> Affordability. Practicality. The Nissan Leaf is selling for $21,510 locally, and 16,510 right now with Nissan financing. Red states Tennessee and Georgia are in the top 10 electric car states. I was surprised to see that WA state apparently is #1.



Indeed.  Nissan says the Leaf Gen 2 (in 2017) will be 2x the range (probably at least 170 miles EPA real world range) for the price of the current model MSRP....or $29k before rebates.  A couple years after that, they will be more affordable on the used market.


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## woodgeek

jharkin said:


> Well to carry on the crabiness... if you think New England is a problem how are you going to get all the red states to buy into clean energy and electric vehicles?



A lot of those red states have better energy policies than MA today.  There is more wind power in TX than CA, and MA is bringing up the rear.  I think west texas is doing more for wind power roll-out than cape wind. 

When the value proposition is there, things can become less political.


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## mass_burner

woodgeek said:


> A lot of those red states have better energy policies than MA today.  There is more wind power in TX than CA, and MA is bringing up the rear.  I think west texas is doing more for wind power roll-out than cape wind.
> 
> When the value proposition is there, things can become less political.


Agree, cheapness is purple.


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## iamlucky13

mass_burner said:


> Agree, cheapness is purple.



Funny way to put it, but very true.


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## EatenByLimestone

People look to throw money at things without thinking it through.  I've been able to cut my electric bill by 40% this year with about $3000 worth of home improvements.  Mostly storm doors and new appliances.  I replaced many of my lights with LEDs, but they were just icing on the cake.  The refrigerator was the main culprit.  

Spend the money intelligently on conservation and you'll get a much bigger bang for the buck.  Most of the houses in my area don't have any insulation in the walls and ceiling.  Spend $2000 blowing in cellulose and watch their bills plummet.  Cut their heating bills in half and then watch the dynamics of the household change.  With a 6 month long heating season those old houses could save thousands each year.  Which could save us thousands since we are probably contributing to their heating through subsidies.


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## peakbagger

The miracle was occurring during the Jimmy Carter administration, Unfortunately Ronald Reagan made the somewhat infamous statement prior to even taking office that he was going to cancel all renewable incentives as "our good friends the arabs had told him they would supply us all the oil we need"


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## Seasoned Oak

Its taking longer than anyone thought to suck every last drop of oil out of the ground,thanks to fracking ,but eventually it will happen. We should be well on out way to alternatives by then.


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## iamlucky13

EatenByLimestone said:


> Most of the houses in my area don't have any insulation in the walls and ceiling. Spend $2000 blowing in cellulose and watch their bills plummet.



I find it incredible that in a cold-winter state like New York, there could be anybody left who wouldn't have added at least moderate insulation to their house.


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## jharkin

Seasoned Oak said:


> Its taking longer than anyone thought to suck every last drop of oil out of the ground,thanks to fracking ,but eventually it will happen. We should be well on out way to alternatives by then.



But if we do suck every last drop out and burn it, the earth will have warmed so much it wont matter.


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## Monaco

I haven't the slightest use for this or any other rich hypocritical do-gooder telling the rest of us how to live, based on fishy theories.


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## Seasoned Oak

iamlucky13 said:


> I find it incredible that in a cold-winter state like New York, there could be anybody left who wouldn't have added at least moderate insulation to their house.


Theres still people who have no idea what insulation even looks like let alone if their house has any. ID estimate only about 60 % of houses or less, in my area are fully insulated. These houses were built from 70 to 120 years ago so its all retrofit. they didnt have indoor plumbing or bathrooms at the time either.


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## Seasoned Oak

jharkin said:


> But if we do suck every last drop out and burn it, the earth will have warmed so much it wont matter.


I dont think theres any reversing that no matter what we do, a comet or a volcanic eruption will change the whole equation may offset the warming or even more.


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## EatenByLimestone

Seasoned Oak said:


> Theres still people who have no idea what insulation even looks like let alone if their house has any. ID estimate only about 60 % of houses or less, in my area are fully insulated. These houses were built from 70 to 120 years ago so its all retrofit. they didnt have indoor plumbing or bathrooms at the time either.



That's exactly what we have here too.  

Compounding the age of the house issue is the lack of education of the owner.  Or the house is a rental and the owner has no want or desire to fix it up as it cuts into the profit margin.


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## jharkin

Seasoned Oak said:


> volcanic eruption will change the whole equation



Common myth that just wont die... volcanic activity in any given year is only a small fraction of human emissions.



> This seems like a huge amount of CO2, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO2 tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, *not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.*


from http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html



But I do agree that human nature will probably mean we burn every last drop, consequences be dammed.


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## jharkin

EatenByLimestone said:


> That's exactly what we have here too.
> 
> Compounding the age of the house issue is the lack of education of the owner.  Or the house is a rental and the owner has no want or desire to fix it up as it cuts into the profit margin.




I disagree, I own a 200 year house and have done extensive insulating and tightening up.  Ive lowered my bills over 40% since Ive lived here.

I am lucky to live in a state that subsidizes such work. Many sates dont and the upfront cost can take a long time to pay back if you gotta pay it all out of pocket.  Or the programs are their and just push measures that have a negative ROI like replacement windows.

But being on a number of old house boards in my experience old home owners are very attuned to the costs of heating and cooling old houses and do all they can to improve, without destroying the historic character.


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## EatenByLimestone

I'm not talking about historic homes.  I was thinking about the thousands of homes that line the city streets around here.  Most were made between 1900 and 1950.


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## jeffesonm

Most of the US isn't hanging around a renewable energy forum on a wood stove board, they're watching Dancing With the Stars and Keeping Up With the Kardashians.


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## BrotherBart

jeffesonm said:


> and Keeping Up With the Kardashians.



Did Kim get a new even weirder dress? I don't have TV so you guys need to keep me up to date.


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## jebatty

If the goal is to satiate human greed and excess, then no amount of energy will be sufficient. Perhaps what is more needed is development of a sense of well being and enough, along with a realization that stuff is ephemeral but what is eternal are things like the worth of every person, equal opportunity and justice for all, and acceptance of each person for who or what the person is.


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## jharkin

jebatty said:


> If the goal is to satiate human greed and excess, then no amount of energy will be sufficient. Perhaps what is more needed is development of a sense of well being and enough, along with a realization that stuff is ephemeral but what is eternal are things like the worth of every person, equal opportunity and justice for all, and acceptance of each person for who or what the person is.



The problem is that our economy is built on the premise of perpetual growth. There is no model I'm aware of where capitalism works in a steady state system.   

We know that someday population growth has to stop or its game over... but I fear we are in for a real shock to the system when it finally happens.


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## Seasoned Oak

jharkin said:


> Common myth that just wont die... volcanic activity in any given year is only a small fraction of human emissions.
> 
> d.


Was talking eruption not regular year to year activity. A few years ago we did have an eruption that lowered the global temp by 1 degree i read somewhere. We  will get more of those at some point.


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## jharkin

Seasoned Oak said:


> Was talking eruption not regular year to year activity. A few years ago we did have an eruption that lowered the global temp by 1 degree i read somewhere. We  will get more of those at some point.



Read the article I posted. Another sub page on that site https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php  has a chart showing  it would take 3,500 mount St. Helens size eruptions to equal just one year of human emissions.  

What you are probably thinking of is the short term cooling caused by particulates and sulphur dioxide from a big one (Pinatubo?) . Thats significant, but the effect is temporary and dissipates.  We would need a continual sting of them every couple years to offset CO2 warming, and that would cause other havoc with the environment. The effect of yearly CO2 just keeps compounding.


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## sportbikerider78

Seasoned Oak said:


> We already have the solutions to clean energy production. The difference in my electric rates between coal power and renewables is 1 or 2 cts a Kwh.


...with MASSIVE government subsidy.  That is not affordable or scale able.
Wind and solar are also very localized.  Many places have little sun and wind.
The answer is nuclear. 
I've worked in many different energy industries, including wind.  Wind falls on its face without taxpayer money.

Electric cars?  More like coal cars.


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## begreen

sportbikerider78 said:


> Electric cars? More like coal cars.


That entirely depends on the location. We are mostly hydro and for 4 months this summer our car was powered by the sun. Coal is down to 39% of US power.


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## semipro

sportbikerider78 said:


> Electric cars? More like coal cars.


I suspect that even if we fueled the grid utility power plants with gasoline we'd probably still come out ahead using electric cars WRT overall system efficiency; and maybe pollution.
Power plants and the distribution grid are relatively efficient.  Electric motors are too.  Infernal combustion engines, and the fuel distribution network that supports them --  not so much.

The best thing about EVs is that they are basically multi-fuel vehicles.  Generate the electricity however you like.  Grid power is getting cleaner while advances in ICE technology are slow and engines pollute more with every mile.


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## peakbagger

EVs have their value as they potentially shift load to off peak hours. I work in the power industry and the reality is that the bigger the power plant the longer the bigger incentive for the owner to keep it running. Nuclear plants effectively run at one speed, full out, they can ramp their power rate but its generally days. Same with coal plants. Combined cycle gas plants can rapidly change their output in a matter of minutes. This sound great until the fact that ramping up the gas in gas line supplying the plant can 24 hours. The gas plants need to call the gas supplier 24 hours in advance so even if they have the capability to speed up or slow down, they practically can not due to limits on the gas supply. The underlying bedrock soils in most of New England make large underground gas storage unlikely so the only remaining alternatives for short term dispatchable power are oil fired gas turbines "peakers".

If the power system could be shifted to having a large portion of the demand capable of charging up off peak there are two benefits, while charging if there is a sudden demand for power on the grid, the chargers can be remotely paused until the short term demand goes away and if there is great demand, the batteries being charged can even be used to support the grid. There is much speculation that Tesla will be getting major subsidies from power utilities by selling this potential of batteries that they will be leasing. It should be transparent to the owner but it is quite valuable if Tesla can sell the rights to a utility for MWs of power that can be dropped off the grid rapidly and the potential of MWs that can be drawn from the batteries for grid support for short periods.


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## renewablejohn

peakbagger said:


> If the power system could be shifted to having a large portion of the demand capable of charging up off peak there are two benefits, while charging if there is a sudden demand for power on the grid, the chargers can be remotely paused until the short term demand goes away and if there is great demand, the batteries being charged can even be used to support the grid. There is much speculation that Tesla will be getting major subsidies from power utilities by selling this potential of batteries that they will be leasing. It should be transparent to the owner but it is quite valuable if Tesla can sell the rights to a utility for MWs of power that can be dropped off the grid rapidly and the potential of MWs that can be drawn from the batteries for grid support for short periods.



Already doing this in Germany they call it a swarm battery system

http://www.sonnenbattery.com/sonnenbatterie/virtuelles-kraftwerk/


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## peakbagger

The german experiments to date have been "throw money at it until it sticks", approach. Prior energy incentives have really hit their federal budget hard and I think that even the government and the consumer have avoided these battery projects as being too expensive even with a major subsidy.


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## woodgeek

They are already giving EV drivers an ultralow nighttime rate for charging in California.


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## peakbagger

Heck time it right in states with wind turbines and they will pay you to "buy" power http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-withers-in-u-s-as-wind-pummels-prices-energy

Definitely a case of federal tax policy having unintended consequences.


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## renewablejohn

peakbagger said:


> The german experiments to date have been "throw money at it until it sticks", approach. Prior energy incentives have really hit their federal budget hard and I think that even the government and the consumer have avoided these battery projects as being too expensive even with a major subsidy.



Dont think you can say that when they already have 8500 users and the technology has not been in the market very long.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...any-idUSL8N13J3C620151125#FhXHejftUcyrKYwc.97


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## peakbagger

Lets agree to disagree on this one.  Its easy to use someone else's money to deploy new technology at a loss, another thing to have a viable model that stands alone and actually makes am impact on the environment. I would expect that the EPA's Energy Star program, despite its "warts" has a far more greater effect than a complex battery approach.

A few high profile examples of using someone else's money  

Bloom Energy http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/the-bloom-is-off-bloom-energy/.

Sunedison is trying to pull it off with solar,  http://www.forbes.com/sites/antoine...-slide-when-financial-engineering-goes-wrong/

Dare I mention Solyndra?


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## woodgeek

peakbagger said:


> Heck time it right in states with wind turbines and they will pay you to "buy" power http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-withers-in-u-s-as-wind-pummels-prices-energy
> 
> Definitely a case of federal tax policy having unintended consequences.



In 2008 wind was bad because it would cause your electric bill to 'necessarily skyrocket'
In 2015 wind is now bad because it is displacing higher cost marginal production, reducing your electric bill.


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## FTG-05

You want an energy miracle?

I give you LFTRs.  Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors.

Let's count the ways it's a miracle energy source;

- Uses thorium, which is literally cheap as dirt.
- Improved inherent safety, far more stable than water cooled reactors.
- Unlike water cooled reactors, no high pressures involved, pressures are similar to home potable water pressures.  Hence no TMI or Fukis.
- Due to the liquid fuel, +95% reduction in waste material, plus all waste is reduced to background in 300 years.
- Fail safe, if power is lost, a frozen salt plug melts and the reactor fuel drains into passively cooled chambers; no possibility of a "meltdown" since the fuel is already melted.
- Highly resistant to proliferation.  In fact, this is the one reason that thorium reactors were dismissed 60-70 years ago: extremely difficult to make nuclear weapons from the fuel cycle.
- Much higher power efficiencies due to using molten salt vs water; i.e. higher temperatures.

Downsides:

- The last molten salt reactor to be operated in the world was shut down in 1969 at Oak Ridge, TN (the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment).  Hence, we would have to virtually reinvent the technology, including probably the design, build and operation of a pilot or demonstration plant, adding to the development time of the technology.
- Virtually the entire nuclear power industry, and specifically in the US, is wedded to the water cooled, solid fuel nuclear power reactor business model.

More reading and videos:
http://thoriummsr.com/
http://www.wired.com/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/


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## renewablejohn

The world only needs one nuclear reactor which has already been working for millions of years and will carry on working for millions of years. Its also sufficiently far away from us so that we can easily cope with the radiation and there is no subsequent clean up costs to account for.


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## jebatty

Just like a perception that we need a miracle for this or that (energy, diabetes, obesity, gridlock, etc.), we already have the miracle but refuse to use it: us. Virtually every problem we face is of our own causing. The obstacle to the "miracle" is the lack of will to change behavior.


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## Seasoned Oak

jebatty said:


> Just like a perception that we need a miracle for this or that (energy, diabetes, obesity, gridlock, etc.), we already have the miracle but refuse to use it: us. Virtually every problem we face is of our own causing. The obstacle to the "miracle" is the lack of will to change behavior.


I couldnt agree more. When i ask my doctor if i could just change my diet instead of taking all those pills for heart disease ,he said yes but hes never seen anyone do that.They just do what they've always done and take the pills.


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## Seasoned Oak

Theres another thread on this forum about wind power driving prices into negative territory. Seems our miracle is already here.


----------



## iamlucky13

Seasoned Oak said:


> Theres another thread on this forum about wind power driving prices into negative territory. Seems our miracle is already here.



Negative energy pricing is not a miracle. It's an energy management challenge turned into an energy management nightmare by lawyers and politicians.

This has a high price that falls on the ratepayers.

Energy coming onto the grid has to be used or it will lead to a voltage increase that damages appliances. Meanwhile, the wind farm owners in Washington (most of which are large corporations) fought for and successfully got an absurd court ruling that doesn't allow the regional public transmission agency (BPA) to decline to buy electricity from them even when BPA is overloaded with generation from hydro dams on the Columbia River. The hydro dams are not allowed to curtail production except in genuine emergencies, because they have to maintain minimum flow rates for the endangered salmon (not to mention keep the dams from overtopping), but also are generally not allowed to use their spillways, because excess nitrogen churned into the water also can harm salmon.

As a result, BPA is forced to pay industrial users to run equipment they normally wouldn't run in order to use that excess power. This is the "negative rate." The "negative rate" is not money paid by the wind turbine owner to the utilities/BPA. The wind turbine owners

They continue to charge the same amount as usual. Us the final ratepayers end up paying three times when this happens:

1.) The contracted price for the hydro power
2.) The contracted price for the wind power (which, incidentally, is higher than the hydro price)
3.) The "negative rate" paid to the industrial scale users

Unfortunately, hydro production and wind production both peak in the spring in our region. But power demand is near its minimum then. Demand peaks in the winter, and hydro production is generally high all winter, but wind production is low because we frequently get high pressure zones settle on us that drive temperatures and energy demand up, but leave wind turbines idle.


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## AmbDrvr253

Necessity is the mother of invention. Jimmy Carter, necessarily due to the embargo, created a national energy policy designed to reduce oil use. With the lift of the embargo it went away. There will be no "miracle" until it is necessary. Human beings are creatures of habit (oil). Until that habit no longer exists there will be no change. There are many EXISTING replacements for oil, mostly carbon based, today. However all would require significant investments in infrastructure the US population will not fund as it is not "needed".


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## semipro

iamlucky13 said:


> Negative energy pricing is not a miracle. It's an energy management challenge turned into an energy management nightmare by lawyers and politicians.
> 
> This has a high price that falls on the ratepayers.
> 
> Energy coming onto the grid has to be used or it will lead to a voltage increase that damages appliances. Meanwhile, the wind farm owners in Washington (most of which are large corporations) fought for and successfully got an absurd court ruling that doesn't allow the regional public transmission agency (BPA) to decline to buy electricity from them even when BPA is overloaded with generation from hydro dams on the Columbia River. The hydro dams are not allowed to curtail production except in genuine emergencies, because they have to maintain minimum flow rates for the endangered salmon (not to mention keep the dams from overtopping), but also are generally not allowed to use their spillways, because excess nitrogen churned into the water also can harm salmon.
> 
> As a result, BPA is forced to pay industrial users to run equipment they normally wouldn't run in order to use that excess power. This is the "negative rate." The "negative rate" is not money paid by the wind turbine owner to the utilities/BPA. The wind turbine owners
> 
> They continue to charge the same amount as usual. Us the final ratepayers end up paying three times when this happens:
> 
> 1.) The contracted price for the hydro power
> 2.) The contracted price for the wind power (which, incidentally, is higher than the hydro price)
> 3.) The "negative rate" paid to the industrial scale users
> 
> Unfortunately, hydro production and wind production both peak in the spring in our region. But power demand is near its minimum then. Demand peaks in the winter, and hydro production is generally high all winter, but wind production is low because we frequently get high pressure zones settle on us that drive temperatures and energy demand up, but leave wind turbines idle.


I had no idea.  
I guess this demonstrates just how badly we need to come up with some energy storage solutions.


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## woodgeek

In West Texas, the wind providers can pay grid customers 1 cent/kWh for electricity they put onto the grid, and then collect the 2.2 cent/kWh tax credit, netting 1.2 cents/kWh profit.   So, because of the PTC, the wind operators can clear a profit at a (small) negative price, while other producers cannot...so those other producers curtail first.
Adding wind power to a grid has been shown to consistently lower average energy costs to customers.


----------



## iamlucky13

woodgeek said:


> In West Texas, the wind providers can pay grid customers 1 cent/kWh for electricity they put onto the grid, and then collect the 2.2 cent/kWh tax credit, netting 1.2 cents/kWh profit. So, because of the PTC, the wind operators can clear a profit at a (small) negative price, while other producers cannot...so those other producers curtail first.



That's not a miracle. That's a subsidy that expands the viable range of operating conditions.



woodgeek said:


> Adding wind power to a grid has been shown to consistently lower average energy costs to customers.



Up here, our electricity prices are going up faster than inflation even though it should be pretty well insulated from inflation by the fact that the overwhelming majority of our generating capacity is paid off.

* Edit *

I wanted to add, the scenario you're describing in Texas is a lot better than what I'm familiar with up here, so most of my rather abrupt criticisms above probably don't apply down there.

Lowering the price when your marginal cost allows it (since the fuel is free) to competitively find a market when demand is low is different than judicially compelling a market when demand is genuinely exceeded by preexisting supply. What you describe actually lowers costs. Our situation raises them.

Furthermore, with Texas currently getting over half their electricity from natural gas and most of the rest from coal, there is never an over-supply from higher priority sources. Wind complements their existing generation capacity far better.

If I'm not mistaken, the seasonal wind supply is also better matched to the seasonal demand than up here.


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## sportbikerider78

I think what is often over looked by many is obvious to me, simply because of my profession.  When your average Joe thinks of power needs, they like of home power.  What you are forgetting is industry and commercial power needs.  At my plastic injection manufacturing facility, every day we use $3,000 in natural gas, $12,000 in electricity (at a very cheap 4.5cents/kw).  We operate around the clock 24/7.  This is only one facility on a 3 mile road of other manufacturing facilities..many being 5-10x our size. 

Cheap power is what keeps us a 1st world country, because it allows us to be productive and to actually create wealth through manufacturing.  If we over subsidize and over regulate we will quickly raise the price of power (or burden the taxpayer) and price ourselves out of power.  After that, manufacturing leaves the country and everyone pulls out the violin and screams "corporate greed".  

Fun fact.  The vast majority of power is used by electric motors.  Both commercial and residential.


----------



## peakbagger

_Adding wind power to a grid has been shown to consistently lower average energy costs to customers._
That is not the case in New England. Wind turbines are being built despite little or no demand for their power  unless a state passes a renewable portfolio standard, even then for every MW of wind turbine that displaces a conventional generation plant an oil fired simple cycle peaker  with similar MW capacity is built as wind is not dispatchable. Add in storage and the equation changes but the wind turbine folks want someone else like the ratepayer to pay for it.


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## semipro

sportbikerider78 said:


> Fun fact. The vast majority of power is used by electric motors. Both commercial and residential.


And yet my understanding is that motor controllers that can significantly increase motor efficiencies are way underutilized-- probably because power is so cheap (e.g. 4.5cents/kw).


----------



## woodgeek

peakbagger said:


> _Adding wind power to a grid has been shown to consistently lower average energy costs to customers._
> That is not the case in New England. Wind turbines are being built despite little or no demand for their power  unless a state passes a renewable portfolio standard, even then for every MW of wind turbine that displaces a conventional generation plant an oil fired simple cycle peaker  with similar MW capacity is built as wind is not dispatchable. Add in storage and the equation changes but the wind turbine folks want someone else like the ratepayer to pay for it.



With all due respect, NE is a mess in terms of its energy policy.  There is negligible onshore wind power development compared to many other regions of the country, and the offshore situation is an even bigger mess, which has set back the entire industry nationwide for prob a decade.  In a period when most of the country is enjoying the benefits of cheap nat gas, NE is running periodic shortages related to transmission, that bring up the average cost/risk considerably.  I don't follow RE policy up there that closely, but it seems that your regulators and policy makers have been willing to sign very unfavorable (i.e. costly) incentives and rate contracts for RE, having a mindset that 'it has to cost', which is out of the 2005 playbook.  In other parts of the country the incentives are much less generous, and yet somehow people manage to make money hand over fist at wind and solar.

Edit: Also, the whole 'Adding a MW of peaker for every MW of RE' is a canard.  The fossil grid needs a lot of peakers because of pre-existing demand surges with time of day, hot weather, etc.  It is clear that up until a certain penetration (at least 5% RE power) little to no additional peakers are required.  AFAIK, no NE state is anywhere near that level of RE penetration, so I doubt that any peakers have been added for that purpose.  Even running randomly, RE often cuts into the peaker plant operation, and that is the major source of the cost savings by RE on customer bills.  For producers that make most of their profit on peakers, it looks like a cost, and they try to block RE whenever possible.


----------



## sportbikerider78

semipro said:


> And yet my understanding is that motor controllers that can significantly increase motor efficiencies are way underutilized-- probably because power is so cheap (e.g. 4.5cents/kw).


Depends on the application and size.  Typically, large motors deserve a control and that will have a good payback.  
Some need to run full bore all the time.


----------



## peakbagger

Seasoned Oak said:


> Its taking longer than anyone thought to suck every last drop of oil out of the ground,thanks to fracking ,but eventually it will happen. We should be well on out way to alternatives by then.


 Unfortunately, the ability to extract fossil fuels have exceeded the amount of CO2 that can be dumped in the atmosphere. Barring  a CO2 miracle there will always be fossil fuel to extract but vastly changed world that is not interested in extracting it.


----------



## peakbagger

I beg to differ




woodgeek said:


> With all due respect, NE is a mess in terms of its energy policy.  There is negligible onshore wind power development compared to many other regions of the country *The wind resource is  not that great in new England, where there is a resource there is pretty good penetration. Unfortunately the resource is remote from the demand so new transmission lines are required and no one wants to write the check to pay for them. Maine just spent over a billion dollars to upgrade their grid to improve wind access and the ratepayers are paying for it, not the wind developers *, and the offshore situation is an even bigger mess*(offshore isn't a mess, the technology is available but no one wants to subsidize it, Cape Wind didn't die because of the kennedy clan, it died as no utility was willing to pay the long term 30 cent per KW rate for  what is still an intermittent resource*, *The European developer proposing a large wind farm off the Maine coast wanted a 20 year guarantee for well over market rates for the intermittent power they produced. *which has set back the entire industry nationwide for prob a decade.  In a period when most of the country is enjoying the benefits of cheap nat gas, NE is running periodic shortages related to transmission, that bring up the average cost/risk considerably.  *New England did not build out the gas infrastructure as fracking is fairly new technology that changed a lot of paradigms, there actually was a big gas boom in new England about 15 years ago and almost every plant built went bankrupt because the price of gas was too high. Folks forget for quite  few years the US banned any new gas powered generation as the US was running out  gas. New Englands big issue is that due to air regs they got off coal too quickly and didn't replace it fast enough. It also was one of the earlier adopters of nuke and as a consequence several base load plants have closed in the regions as they were some of the oldest   *I don't follow RE policy up there that closely, but it seems that your regulators and policy makers have been willing to sign very unfavorable (i.e. costly) incentives and rate contracts for RE, having a mindset that 'it has to cost', which is out of the 2005 playbook.  In other parts of the country the incentives are much less generous, and yet somehow people manage to make money hand over fist at wind and solar. *When  I look through the DSIRE website I don't see where New England as a whole has net higher incentives than any other region. A lot of it comes down to geography, northern climates need more energy than a southern climate and a lot of the resource doesn't line up with seasonal demand.  People make a lot of money hand over fist by sucking up incentives, whenever there is even a hint that the PTC is going to expire every wind developer starts beating the drums of doom. Already there is discussion of a massive failure of the solar industry due to the removal of the 30% federal tax credit. If you look at RE penetration by state its directly related to the incentives and policies in place in each state. Many of the large solar installers have turned into creative tax shelters basically monetizing long term tax credits with artificially low interest rates, incidentally are all in serious long term debt and most are set up to fail before the debts come due.  *
> 
> Edit: Also, the whole 'Adding a MW of peaker for every MW of RE' is a canard.  The fossil grid needs a lot of peakers because of pre-existing demand surges with time of day, hot weather, etc.  It is clear that up until a certain penetration (at least 5% RE power) little to no additional peakers are required.  AFAIK, no NE state is anywhere near that level of RE penetration, *I dont know where you get your info but most New England states have renewable portfolio standards, generally in excess of 20%,  *so I doubt that any peakers have been added *There have been several large blocks of peakers built in New England in the last few years, I am aware  0f at least 400 MW of peakers in CT in a two year block.  *Even running randomly, RE often cuts into the peaker plant operation, *Peakers rarely run except when the grid is constrained they are mostly there for peaks and unlike RE they are dispatchable * and that is the major source of the cost savings by RE on customer bills.* This is an interesting contention I would like to see evidence of cost saving for RE except for folks like myself who install solar and effectively get subsidized by the other customers who don't have RE*  For producers that make most of their profit on peakers, it looks like a cost, and they try to block RE whenever possible. *I guess you are not familiar with the capacity market, as RE penetration increases, someone has to supply the capacity to back up the crappy dispatchability of wind and the cheapest dollar per kw to build to meet the capacity market is distillate fired peakers, NRG  loves wind turbines as every wind farm built means a better capacity market and more incentive to build more peakers  *


----------



## jebatty

The energy miracle happened in our back yard: 12.3KW solar supplying 16MW of electric energy annually and meeting 100+% of our household's use of electricity.


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## peakbagger

The miracle happened at my place  also, I haven't bought net power for 4 years and generate enough extra to heat the house with mini split.

Its a miracle to me but a bane to other ratepayers who haven't hopped on the bandwagon as they are subsidizing my miracle whether they know it or not. Arguably, the intent of the subsidies was to create a larger solar market to drive down costs and that is what happened therefore I was rewarded for being a guinea pig and stepping up to be an early adopter. Part of the bargain was that I was making a long term commitment so the state made a long term commitment to net metering.

My first solar panels cost $6.60 a watt versus my most recent panels  were $0.68 cents a watt. My original 1000 watt inverter was $1600, my last 3KW inverter was $1600. The first array went in prior to the 30% tax credit so all I got was a 10 % deduction (not credit). I had a hard time justifying to anyone on the payback of that system. Once the 30% credit went in, the market grew exponentially. The big question now is should the government be subsidizing RE given that the price has dropped down so substantially.


----------



## jebatty

peakbagger said:


> ... but a bane to other ratepayers...


 Not exactly. You have added to your utility's generation capacity at your expense and saving other rate payers paying for new plant facilities, you have taken the risk, and you bear the costs of maintenance, etc. You are providing power with near 0 line loss vs the approximate 10% line loss your utility experiences. Also, you are giving freely to others fresh air and fresh water, untainted by mercury, acids, particulates, etc. Little need to even mention the carbon reduction. 

Importantly, your solar is little different than any rate payer conserving vs those who have not conserved. Every effort to conserve and reduce power usage, like putting in LED lighting, turning down the thermostat, installing a mini-split, turning out the lights, etc., has the same effect on other rate payers as you generating your own power. Everyone who conserves shifts costs to those who do not, no different than your solar.

Also important, you have the right to choose! Your choice is an exercise of freedom which we need to work hard to preserve and protect. And, if your utility or others would develop Community Solar Gardens, then everyone would have the opportunity to choose as well. Kudos!


----------



## woodgeek

peakbagger said:


> I beg to differ



We agree on a lot.
--Offshore is not there financially with current tech (and incentives).  MA went for it anyway, no one else did at scale.  That is messed up.  I suspect that somebody got paid off.
--When I said no peakers were built, I meant no peakers were built specifically to service RE needs.
--Your gas story in NE is an interesting one of regs and building at the worst possible times.  That's an (accidental?) mess.
--I would offer that the bigger story up there is pop density and resultant land use regs and NIMBY-ism when it comes to siting large-scale generation centers, transmission or NG storage.  Also happens in other locations.  I see these 'tiny' isolated wind turbines in high density locations along I95 and I just shake my head...why?

and then there is....
--The fact that RE reduces aggregate costs of grid power, and does so by reducing expensive peaking is currently canon, i guess we won't agree.  IF you look at opponents/advocates of RE among utilities its pretty black and white.  Utilities that own peakers and profit from them oppose RE, and utilities that buy power from other entities peakers are generally in favor of buying RE from other providers instead.
--I do know a little about capacity markets...a former student/friend of mine is a operator in the one running PA and NJ.

See:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8837293/economic-limitations-wind-solar


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## OhioBurner©

With the plants I am involved with, I know of a few dozen simple-cycle CT 'peakers'. They are all gas fired, though quite a bit more costly than combined cycle plants, but none I am aware of run oil. And I have never heard of one being fired up with anything to do with wind. Wind does often drive prices negative because there is too much when we don't need it, but it mainly drives all the coal plants down. These past few years coal plants have ran at the bottom a lot more or bounced back and forth all over the place because of wind. We even have to cycle off and on many plants which was almost unheard of a few years ago (not entirely due to wind mind you).


----------



## peakbagger

Just to make sure I used CT to mean Connecticut but I can see the confusion. The 400 MW of Connecticut peakers, 8 50MW LM 6000s  built by NRG in Connecticut are multifuel, but since there is no significant gas storage and pipeline constraints, gas availability is poor unless its nominated a day in advance. Generally in a capacity situation they run off jet fuel (generally called distillate but very close to kerosene), The two facilities have 1 million gallon tanks of fuel on site. I also worked on another facility in the middle atlantic area (PJM) to upgrade its output. It also is a multi fuel with a big tank of jet fuel. It just sits there as a capacity machine but PJM is running low on capacity machines due to renewables so the owner  getting paid a nice chunk of change to upgrade to the turbine even though they never run it (they get paid capacity which means they get paid to guarantee that they can bring it on line within a few minutes)

ISO New England doesn't tag events wind related, they just have occasions when the grid is imbalanced and they run into a case where the they are getting close to their legally allowed reserve capacity. When that happens, they crank up the peakers until they get back above the reserve margin  as the large gas plants cant typically add any generation due to lack of gas. These cases of grid imbalance are increasing as the wind and solar resources are increasing and big baseload plants are closed.

Texas is the poster child for wind related grid issues. They don't make capacity payments for standby generation so when there is big drop in wind they occasionally run out of power and end up browning out the grid. They have had to import power from Mexico on occasion. The federal government requires grid operators to guarantee reliability and there have been several studies showing that Texas is dangerously close to not meeting the grid reliability standards. As far as I am aware of no solution has been implemented as it is expected that the solution will substantially increase the cost of power in the state so its a political football.


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## begreen

Ontario just said ix-nay on oal-cay.
http://www.biomassmagazine.com/arti...ill-banning-coal-fired-electricity-generation


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## jebatty

I recently took a road trip from Detroit east into Ontario just about to Toronto. About 100km of travel east from Windsor, across the border from Detroit, was one nearly continuous mass of wind turbines on the south side of the highway. Biggest wind farms I've ever seen. Probably related in part to the flat terrain lying north of Lake Erie and high average wind speed. And probably in part to Ontario's clean energy goals. On the other hand, once the border is crossed into the US, Michigan was barren of wind turbines.


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## peakbagger

Ontario made the decision to get off coal several years ago and put in place significant incentives to subsidize renewables. I expect Michigan didn't. Renewables follow the incentives, put in place good incentives and the turbines pop up. Ontario also some has significant hydro in that region so they can use the hydro to offset the variability of the wind. Europe does something similar, Norway has very large hydro facilities including a lot of pumped storage, they act as the large scale grid storage for Europe and make a bundle doing it. The US could do a similar effort but it would require a national energy policy to share the costs to implement the policy nationwide.


----------



## OhioBurner©

peakbagger said:


> Just to make sure I used CT to mean Connecticut but I can see the confusion. The 400 MW of Connecticut peakers, 8 50MW LM 6000s  built by NRG in Connecticut are multifuel, but since there is no significant gas storage and pipeline constraints, gas availability is poor unless its nominated a day in advance. Generally in a capacity situation they run off jet fuel (generally called distillate but very close to kerosene), The two facilities have 1 million gallon tanks of fuel on site. I also worked on another facility in the middle atlantic area (PJM) to upgrade its output. It also is a multi fuel with a big tank of jet fuel. It just sits there as a capacity machine but PJM is running low on capacity machines due to renewables so the owner  getting paid a nice chunk of change to upgrade to the turbine even though they never run it (they get paid capacity which means they get paid to guarantee that they can bring it on line within a few minutes)
> 
> ISO New England doesn't tag events wind related, they just have occasions when the grid is imbalanced and they run into a case where the they are getting close to their legally allowed reserve capacity. When that happens, they crank up the peakers until they get back above the reserve margin  as the large gas plants cant typically add any generation due to lack of gas. These cases of grid imbalance are increasing as the wind and solar resources are increasing and big baseload plants are closed.
> 
> Texas is the poster child for wind related grid issues. They don't make capacity payments for standby generation so when there is big drop in wind they occasionally run out of power and end up browning out the grid. They have had to import power from Mexico on occasion. The federal government requires grid operators to guarantee reliability and there have been several studies showing that Texas is dangerously close to not meeting the grid reliability standards. As far as I am aware of no solution has been implemented as it is expected that the solution will substantially increase the cost of power in the state so its a political football.



Yeah, I'm not to familiar with New England (except for hiking  hey you need to throw up a hiking avatar) my familiarity is controlling plants in PJM, SPP, and ERCOT. The gas supply issues are of course local issues... we have a couple dozen CTs and generally have no issues with gas supply. Some of our bigger CCs and gas-fired boilers run into limitations now and then, especially in the peak of heating season when residential use is peaked. Some have up to 3 gas line available often with a base-load contract on one and another pipe that can swing much higher when demand spikes. Some can be online within 20 minutes (no special secondary fuel needed) to count for quick start reserves. I know they were debating adding some large secondary fuel tanks at one CC plant but that was for blackstart purposes, and I think the environmental red tape for putting them in was a big deterrent.

I guess I only brought this up since many seem to throw around that wind causes us to fire up these peakers, and maybe it does is some cases but not multiple times a day like some say. Last time we fired up a peaker in PJM was probably a month or two ago, and that was for economics actually. Our peakers in SPP run a bit more frequently but they are also pretty cheap - so usually economic but ever since SPP became a market and a BA they don't necessarily tell you why a unit is called on.


----------



## begreen

They're gaining steam and partners. More than 20 billionaires have signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The Univ. of Calif. has also joined.
http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html


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## Seasoned Oak

I have been enjoying an energy miracle every sunny winter day for about 15 years now since i enclosed a south facing porch with 8 foot tall windows.
It shaves about 40% off my heat load during winter. Probably 60% in spring and fall. For the roughly $500 i spent on materials to do the job i got that back early in the first year. Every year since has been money in the bank, not including things like raising Lime and banana trees in central PA ,something that would not be possible without a sunny winter space.


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## woodgeek

begreen said:


> They're gaining steam and partners. More than 20 billionaires have signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The Univ. of Calif. has also joined.
> http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html



Looks like the usual suspects:
http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/who.html

Hopefully they won't give all the $$ to Khosla.


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## begreen

Seasoned Oak said:


> Every year since has been money in the bank, not including things like raising Lime and banana trees in central PA ,something that would not be possible without a sunny winter space.


Do you get any bananas? Our banana plants lives outside. No bananas but they are big showy plants.


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## Seasoned Oak

begreen said:


> Do you get any bananas? Our banana plants lives outside. No bananas but they are big showy plants.


They are supposed to after 2 or 3 years ,but they get so tall over the summer i have to cut the main plant to get em back inside for winter which leaves just the shoots to grow so im starting over each year. Our lime trees we have for about 15 years now. always loaded with limes. Its  the miniature limes called "kalamansi" or "calamansi" common to the philippines.


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## vinny11950

Here's a good article on the coming shift in energy consumption because of technological advances and changes in behavior, ultimately driven by profit.

From Amory Lovins:

https://medium.com/@amorylovins/the-troubled-oil-business-21ad430eff10#.4vb43b1vm

I like this paragraph:

"That’s not hypothetical. In 1975, the U.S. government and captains of industry all insisted that the energy needed to make a dollar of GDP could never go down. A year later I heretically suggested it could drop by 72 percent in 50 years. So far it’s dropped by 54 percent in the first 39 years — partly through shifts in the structure of the economy, but more because we used smarter technologies to wring far more work from our energy."


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## jebatty

The downside (and upside) of my energy miracle. Living where the sun doesn't shine. December 10 saw 0.84kWh of total production, with a total of 5 days out of 15 that production did not get above 5kWh. And the heavy clouds and forecast snow set to continue for several more days. Would take quite a bit of storage to get through this.







The upside is that we could modify our living style substantially to get through such a period. The only critical need is for the fridge and freezer, secondarily for the well pump. Since its cold outside, we also could move most of the fridge and freezer stuff outside. One to two hours/day from our portable gas generator probably is all we would need. Our heat is wood, lighting is all LED, and it might be quite enjoyable to keep the electronics "off" for a few days -- we actually would need to orally communicate! What a change.


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## woodgeek

vinny11950 said:


> Here's a good article on the coming shift in energy consumption because of technological advances and changes in behavior, ultimately driven by profit.
> 
> From Amory Lovins:
> 
> https://medium.com/@amorylovins/the-troubled-oil-business-21ad430eff10#.4vb43b1vm



And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!

Quote:
"Yet my team found in 2011 that far more powerful technologies and design methods, enlightened regulation, and maturing financing, marketing, and delivery channels then available could save nearly twice what I originally thought, at one-third the real cost. We showed how the U.S. could run a 2.6-times bigger economy in 2050 with _no _oil, coal, or nuclear power, $5 trillion cheaper, with no new inventions nor Acts of Congress, led by business for profit. Now, four years later, many of those assumptions look conservative."


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## peakbagger

jebatty said:


> Since its cold outside, we also could move most of the fridge and freezer stuff outside.



I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer. When the unit senses that its cold enough outside, the refrigerant would be routed around the compressor and out to the radiator. Always annoys me that I am paying to cool an interior space when a foot away on the opposite side of the wall its 20 degrees. Commercial HVAC does this all the time for winter climates. There would need to be a defrost mode like a minisplit that pulls some heat from inside the house on occasion when the outside coils frost up.

I have seen somewhere where some individual had a huge ice block with a food box in the center in his basement. He forms a huge block of ice around the food box  in his basement during the winter using a refrigerant loop that thermosyphons with no power. When its colder outside the refrigerant sinks down the tubes from the outdoor coil and the slightly warmer refrigerant rises to displace it. If it warms up the flow stops once the air is warmer than the ice.

I have thought, take the ice block concept and make a small version with just a separate coil inside the refrigerator separate from the  normal cooling system and then mounting a separate radiator high on my back wall outside the house.


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## vinny11950

woodgeek said:


> And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!



As I get older, I grow more and more suspicious of rich philanthropists selling a new future carved out of their beliefs and ideas.  Generally they have some other hidden motive, or are seeking a larger legacy now that their end is near, or just have too much freaking money that they don't know what to do with.


----------



## semipro

peakbagger said:


> I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer. When the unit senses that its cold enough outside, the refrigerant would be routed around the compressor and out to the radiator. Always annoys me that I am paying to cool an interior space when a foot away on the opposite side of the wall its 20 degrees. Commercial HVAC does this all the time for winter climates. There would need to be a defrost mode like a minisplit that pulls some heat from inside the house on occasion when the outside coils frost up.
> 
> I have seen somewhere where some individual had a huge ice block with a food box in the center in his basement. He forms a huge block of ice around the food box  in his basement during the winter using a refrigerant loop that thermosyphons with no power. When its colder outside the refrigerant sinks down the tubes from the outdoor coil and the slightly warmer refrigerant rises to displace it. If it warms up the flow stops once the air is warmer than the ice.
> 
> I have thought, take the ice block concept and make a small version with just a separate coil inside the refrigerator separate from the  normal cooling system and then mounting a separate radiator high on my back wall outside the house.


Or just use the waste heat from the fridge to assist with the production of domestic hot water...


----------



## jharkin

woodgeek said:


> And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!
> 
> Quote:
> "Yet my team found in 2011 that far more powerful technologies and design methods, enlightened regulation, and maturing financing, marketing, and delivery channels then available could save nearly twice what I originally thought, at one-third the real cost. We showed how the U.S. could run a 2.6-times bigger economy in 2050 with _no _oil, coal, or nuclear power, $5 trillion cheaper, with no new inventions nor Acts of Congress, led by business for profit. Now, four years later, many of those assumptions look conservative."




The thing that frustrates me is that there is so much contradictory reporting on this, and few of us have time to read thousands of pages of source research to be truly informed.  the other day I was reading an op-ed response to the Paris deal(it was in my LinkedIn feed, have to see if I can find it) claiming that even the most optimistic projections where that all the pledges in that agreement would amount to something like < 1% of the carbon reductions required to meet 2C.

So how do we separate the real story from the hype?


----------



## jharkin

peakbagger said:


> I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer.



You don't even need the complexity of the refrigerant loop.   I once saw a show where some ski resort had a setup with the walk in freezer for their restaurant where in addition to the refrigeration equipment the freezer also had a set of damper controlled, direct air ducts to the outside.  If the equipment detected the outside temperature was below the freezer set point, it would shut down the refrigeration altogether, open the ducts and turn on a fan to bring cold air in directly from outside.

Now that is what I call KISS engineering at its finest.


----------



## peakbagger

I think one of the Waitsfield VT gang who started all sorts of businesses, Vermont Castings, Vermont Elm, Northern Power, Controlled Energy Corp and several others was selling that for commercial walk in coolers a while back . As long as there is good screen on the inlets to keep the critters out.


----------



## woodgeek

jharkin said:


> The thing that frustrates me is that there is so much contradictory reporting on this, and few of us have time to read thousands of pages of source research to be truly informed.  the other day I was reading an op-ed response to the Paris deal(it was in my LinkedIn feed, have to see if I can find it) claiming that even the most optimistic projections where that all the pledges in that agreement would amount to something like < 1% of the carbon reductions required to meet 2C.
> 
> So how do we separate the real story from the hype?



IN 2015, it is hard to separate truth from fiction....its the 'disinformation age'.

I liked this article: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9981020/paris-climate-deal

Basically, you are talking about bending emission projection curves. And then translating those emission curves into projected temperature curves using another model.  The plot in my link suggest 2100 climate is 2.5-2.7°C elevated with the Paris pledges, 3.3 - 3.8°C without, BAU.

If true, is that better?  Yes.  Is it enough?  No, we can and will opt to do better.

Keep in mind that most of the pledges only run until 2030-2040, and then assume that emission flatline at that (reduced) rate forever.  The action is in the **process**...by which emissions are tracked/audited internationally, countries are compared to their pledges, and pledges are enhanced.

All that really happened was a commitment by 195 countries to avoid the 'crazy' BAU projections that led to +5°C climate in 2100 if everyone tried to have American energy tastes for the next 85 years.

The pledges are disappointing because they are still somewhat less than what some analysts (like Lovins) would consider negative cost.  If every country pledged to reduce emissions in every way that saved them net money overall (including health externalities), the pledges would have been a little more aggressive.  I think the leaders know this, and thus as folks get a better feel for Lovins' disruptions, the pledges will get tighter over time.


----------



## vinny11950

woodgeek said:


> If true, is that better? Yes. Is it enough? No, we can and will opt to do better.



The problem is going to be psychological on different levels.  1) People are going to complain the deal didn't fix it (which is kind of true because it only begins to mitigate greater damage), and critics will use this "didn't fix it" to debunk the science and solutions; at the very least muddy the waters in the debate.  2) Big changes are already baked into the future, so a defeatist attitude or "as long I am alright" attitude will probably develop and create more inertia towards the issue.  The issue will never get the war footing "can do attitude" of WWII, for example. 

At this point, we are banking on major technological shifts, attitudes, and breakthroughs to save the day.  Basically, to use a football analogy, it is the beginning of the third quarter and we are down big time.


----------



## woodgeek

vinny11950 said:


> The problem is going to be psychological on different levels.  1) People are going to complain the deal didn't fix it (which is kind of true because it only begins to mitigate greater damage), and critics will use this "didn't fix it" to debunk the science and solutions; at the very least muddy the waters in the debate.  2) Big changes are already baked into the future, so a defeatist attitude or "as long I am alright" attitude will probably develop and create more inertia towards the issue.  The issue will never get the war footing "can do attitude" of WWII, for example.
> 
> At this point, we are banking on major technological shifts, attitudes, and breakthroughs to save the day.  Basically, to use a football analogy, it is the beginning of the third quarter and we are down big time.



As for Paris, I will just parrot what Dave Roberts said so well---its a conceptual and process breakthrough, not a solution:

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10172238/paris-climate-treaty-conceptual-breakthrough

I guess I am getting a bit more blithe on the the 'climate debate'.  I think climate deniers have utterly lost, and they just don't know they are dead yet...they're zombies.  At this point the fraction of the population that believes in climate denial is shrunk down to the minority of the minority.  That is, (weak) majorities of **registered Republicans** want to regulate CO2 and foster renewable energy.  These majorities become significant minorities among independents and huge majorities of Dems.

In other words, rather than being a wedge issue for the left, AGW is a *wedge issue for the right*...only a minority of GOP voters deny AGW and yet 100% of the candidates deny AGW!   When the same thing happened for gay rights a few years ago (going from a multi decade wedge issue for Dems to a wedge issue for the GOP) then suddenly we had change.  And everyone was totally surprised.

In summary, the GOP is standing in a hole re AGW, and still digging for all its might to try to get out of it.  I can't wait to see how that will work out for them.  

If the above is true...why would all the GOP candidates take these positions?? Follow the money:

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10246986/republican-donors-climate


----------



## vinny11950

woodgeek said:


> As for Paris, I will just parrot what Dave Roberts said so well---its a conceptual and process breakthrough, not a solution:
> 
> http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10172238/paris-climate-treaty-conceptual-breakthrough
> 
> I guess I am getting a bit more blithe on the the 'climate debate'.  I think climate deniers have utterly lost, and they just don't know they are dead yet...they're zombies.  At this point the fraction of the population that believes in climate denial is shrunk down to the minority of the minority.  That is, (weak) majorities of **registered Republicans** want to regulate CO2 and foster renewable energy.  These majorities become significant minorities among independents and huge majorities of Dems.
> 
> In other words, rather than being a wedge issue for the left, AGW is a *wedge issue for the right*...only a minority of GOP voters deny AGW and yet 100% of the candidates deny AGW!   When the same thing happened for gay rights a few years ago (going from a multi decade wedge issue for Dems to a wedge issue for the GOP) then suddenly we had change.  And everyone was totally surprised.
> 
> In summary, the GOP is standing in a hole re AGW, and still digging for all its might to try to get out of it.  I can't wait to see how that will work out for them.
> 
> If the above is true...why would all the GOP candidates take these positions?? Follow the money:
> 
> http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10246986/republican-donors-climate



All true, and when people are faced with such tall tasks, they either go to work on it, or just accept the fate that is coming and learn to live with it.  I think most people accept it and are willing to live with the consequences, especially it they are not going to be around for the nastier stuff 90 years later.


----------



## begreen

I'm not sure if the Paris talks outcome is going to have much positive influence in our corporate driven country. If the President has put something in action the current Congress is sure to try to reverse it. Example, the new budget has removed restrictions from exporting crude oil. This sounds like a wide open door to mass drilling and a lot more carbon heading into the atmosphere as it is drilled, refined, shipped and burned.
http://www.newsweek.com/big-oil-companies-cant-wait-repeal-us-export-ban-406518


----------



## jebatty

Selling price of oil is based on supply and demand. And even with a cartel, attempt to raise price is based on limiting supply. Currently a large over supply; hence low price. Putting more oil into the world markets from US exports is not likely to raise any prices. So long as key countries are dependent on oil revenues, supply is not likely to be cut back, prices stay low, and effect of lifting the export ban may not have much effect.

I suspect that the ban on exports was related to the belief in limited oil resources. Although limited, the limit is a long, long way off. So, no need to conserve for short-sighted people, governments, etc. It seems most humans are incapable of conserving and are programmed to be wasteful.


----------



## begreen

I actually expect this to lower oil prices by increasing the glut on the market. The squeeze is being put on oil dependent economies. Russia is having  to redo their budget due to revenue shortfalls.
http://neurope.eu/article/putin-blames-low-oil-prices-for-russian-budget-gap/


----------



## Seasoned Oak

If we were smart we would think in terms of energy security ,use the new found supplies to hedge our future energy security from an oil thirsty world. Also it could go a long way to correct the massive federal debt we have racked up. But alas we will probably do the opposite and squander the excess oil we have found by pumping it at fire sale prices into a glutted market driving prices down and hindering transition to a less oil dependent society when the debt bomb finally explodes and trashes our economy. IMHO


----------



## Lumber-Jack

FTG-05 said:


> You want an energy miracle?
> 
> I give you LFTRs.  Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors.
> 
> Let's count the ways it's a miracle energy source;
> 
> - Uses thorium, which is literally cheap as dirt.
> - Improved inherent safety, far more stable than water cooled reactors.
> - Unlike water cooled reactors, no high pressures involved, pressures are similar to home potable water pressures.  Hence no TMI or Fukis.
> - Due to the liquid fuel, +95% reduction in waste material, plus all waste is reduced to background in 300 years.
> - Fail safe, if power is lost, a frozen salt plug melts and the reactor fuel drains into passively cooled chambers; no possibility of a "meltdown" since the fuel is already melted.
> - Highly resistant to proliferation.  In fact, this is the one reason that thorium reactors were dismissed 60-70 years ago: extremely difficult to make nuclear weapons from the fuel cycle.
> - Much higher power efficiencies due to using molten salt vs water; i.e. higher temperatures.
> 
> Downsides:
> 
> - The last molten salt reactor to be operated in the world was shut down in 1969 at Oak Ridge, TN (the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment).  Hence, we would have to virtually reinvent the technology, including probably the design, build and operation of a pilot or demonstration plant, adding to the development time of the technology.
> - Virtually the entire nuclear power industry, and specifically in the US, is wedded to the water cooled, solid fuel nuclear power reactor business model.
> 
> More reading and videos:
> http://thoriummsr.com/
> http://www.wired.com/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/



FTG I can't believe that your post hasn't received more (any) discussion in this thread. I have been following LFTRs for a few years now and these are the only *real * "energy miracles" that stand a hope in hell of breaking mankind's fossil fuel addiction and providing the kind of energy at the rate we are consuming now and will likely be consuming in the future. Everything else is pretty much just sticking a finger in the dyke.


----------



## peakbagger

Thorium reactors are an interesting concept, the Indians were pursuing it as they have plenty of thorium but little uranium. I haven't seen if they have made any progress working up a commercial version. I don't see deployment happening fast enough. I see the small modular reactors based on 50 year old submarine reactor technology far faster to deploy.


----------



## woodgeek

You can keep your Thorium Reactors....they are way too expensive.  The fuel reprocessing is a mess chemically and no-one knows how or wants to do it.

The only energy miracles you need are EVs and Solar:  watch this if you haven't seen it already.


----------



## jebatty

Great video. Regardless of the exactness of the predictions, great change is underway.


----------



## CaptSpiff

woodgeek said:


> ....
> --Offshore is not there financially with current tech (and incentives).  MA went for it anyway, no one else did at scale.  That is messed up.  I suspect that somebody got paid off.
> --....


Looping back to the Wind discussion, I not sure what you meant by "Mass went for it anyway".
If you're referring to the Cape Wind proposal, I don't think that ever happened (or did I miss it?).

While the list of Offshore proposals is long, the only real site with platforms in the water I know of is the Block Island site.
That site in RI is under construction for a half dozen big wind turbines (read 400-500 feet high) to come online in 2017.
They only have the base platforms in the water presently but construction schedules look promising.
The project was personally "hand-walked" thru the application process by the governor's chief of staff; now he's the CEO.
The project will have huge visual impact on the residents of Block Island, but since they were never mainland grid connected with
their rates about $0.50/Kwh, they expect to see a 50% cost drop once grid-tied. That's an incentive they could, and did, support!

That same company is now trying to convince our local utility LIPA to sign up for a 2 dozen wind turbine paper project about 30 miles east of Montauk Point. The initial financials are projecting a energy purchase cost of $0.50/Kwh with a 20 year power purchase agreement. No that's not a misprint, and yes those costs are wholesale to the utility, not the customer. Critics estimate it could raise the cost of the avg customer by $0.04/Kwh. And yes, it did make the short list for final consideration.

In keeping with thread title: I think I need an energy miracle


----------



## woodgeek

Cape Wind has been on again and off again for 15 years.  I don't know the current status, or care.  But the state did at one time sign a purchase agreement at 15 cents/kWh wholesale, with the increment to be borne by the consumer.  

I happen to think offshore is prob important technology for the future, esp in New England with a lot of winter energy demand and little winter solar resource (aka cloudy).  And the costs will likely come down once folks start building it.  But asking retail consumers to shoulder the burden is ridiculous...it will just build an army against it, as it has in MA.  Dumb.

Now that the 2.2 cent onshore wind PPA is being phased out (over the next 7 years), then they should put in a 5 cent 10 year PPA for grid-tied offshore.  That would bring you LI quote down to a nice 2 cents wholesale.


----------



## peakbagger

I used to work for a manufacturer of "community" wind turbines. They are currently hyping "grid parity" installations. Along with wind engineering, there is a lot of financial engineering associated with wind. Take very low interest rates, add in substantial federal and state credits and then statewide RPS requirements along with SRECs and in most cases the grid parity is that the turbine generated power is equal to what the customer would be paying for utility power. The utility power rates are actually subsidizing wind in the rate and gird parity gets even slipperier.

In my area of northern NH, the wind resource is about as good as it gets in the northeast, yet wind farms go elsewhere. The reasons they do are that the wind farm developers are unwilling to pay for transmission upgrades. Most of the offshore proposals are also based on someone else building the underwater transmission infrastructure. There was one large wind farm built and a much smaller one going on line currently in the area, when there is large demand for power south of our area, all the plants in the area are limited in output due to transmission capacity so the wind farms really don't help when they are needed.

Massachusetts tried to force Cape Wind at similar high costs down the utilities throats using coercion. They utilities eventually capitulated but the FERC stepped in and pushed back.  Once Cape Wind lost the long term well over market rate power rates it crumbled.


----------



## vinny11950

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/o...ight-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Bill Gates talking about his moonshot investment funds.  I guess it doesn't hurt throwing different ideas at the issue and seeing what sticks.  However, when so many billionaire interests and governments get together they then become a force in of themselves that may obstruct better ideas from developing.

Seems to me they should go heavy on what has worked - tax credits to individuals and businesses to get efficient, and get renewable.  The market then figures out how to best get those tax credit dollars.

Gates also talks about developing nations like India, which will require much electricity to grow, however, their government is having a very hard time providing basic services (look up strikes and water shortages), which indicates the challenge is not technological so much as organizational and political.

On a side note, anybody else notice the stock prices for solar companies lately?  SunEdison?  This is a tough growth / maturity moment for them, transitioning from startup technology companies on the road to mature companies that have to now survive in the market space with all the other energy competitors out there.  I imagine some will fail and the business will consolidate into a couple of market leaders.  May take a few more years of pain.


----------



## woodgeek

Good points.  The investing atmosphere is the energy field has, IMO, a lot of amateur speculators.  A lot of people are looking at falling oil prices and having the bright idea of buying oil stocks and shorting solar cos.  As if oil stocks have to rebound, and solar is obviously going to cease to exist.
It will all work itself out eventually.


----------



## sportbikerider78

vinny11950 said:


> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/o...ight-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
> 
> Bill Gates talking about his moonshot investment funds.  I guess it doesn't hurt throwing different ideas at the issue and seeing what sticks.  However, when so many billionaire interests and governments get together they then become a force in of themselves that may obstruct better ideas from developing.
> 
> Seems to me they should go heavy on what has worked - tax credits to individuals and businesses to get efficient, and get renewable.  The market then figures out how to best get those tax credit dollars.
> 
> Gates also talks about developing nations like India, which will require much electricity to grow, however, their government is having a very hard time providing basic services (look up strikes and water shortages), which indicates the challenge is not technological so much as organizational and political.
> 
> On a side note, anybody else notice the stock prices for solar companies lately?  SunEdison?  This is a tough growth / maturity moment for them, transitioning from startup technology companies on the road to mature companies that have to now survive in the market space with all the other energy competitors out there.  I imagine some will fail and the business will consolidate into a couple of market leaders.  May take a few more years of pain.


I also worked for a wind company. 
Financial engineering is a polite way to put it.  I used to call it the most effective way to remove taxpayer money and put it in the wind manufacturers pockets.  Wind has its place in places where power generation and/or transmission is very expensive....mountaintops, islands, very remote areas, ect. 
There it needs no subsidy.


----------



## woodgeek

vinny11950 said:


> On a side note, anybody else notice the stock prices for solar companies lately?  SunEdison?  This is a tough growth / maturity moment for them, transitioning from startup technology companies on the road to mature companies that have to now survive in the market space with all the other energy competitors out there.  I imagine some will fail and the business will consolidate into a couple of market leaders.  May take a few more years of pain.



Actually, courtesy of speaker Ryan the RE subsidy was extended well into the next POTUS admin, with a planned gradual phaseout.  Both sides thought they got a deal, figuring their guy would either cancel or further extend the policy in 2017.

I am ok with a modest 'US style' subsidy for RE b/c I honestly believe it levels the playing field versus fossil companies that get an effective subsidy through externality costs paid by all of us directly and through our taxes (say, in additional health care costs, cleanup, etc).  I also think that much more generous subsidies, as in Japan and the EU, have lead to mal-investments that have subsequently become political footballs and stifled further growth.  The US had a bad experience with that during the Carter admin, re domestic solar HW, which I think has immunized us a bit afterwards.


----------



## begreen

sportbikerider78 said:


> I also worked for a wind company.
> Financial engineering is a polite way to put it.  I used to call it the most effective way to remove taxpayer money and put it in the wind manufacturers pockets.  Wind has its place in places where power generation and/or transmission is very expensive....mountaintops, islands, very remote areas, ect.
> There it needs no subsidy.


That might be true if the competition was not already very heavily subsidized. So by that same logic oil & gas need no subsidy, instead of the $22B it gets annually. And ethanol, don't get me going.


----------



## sportbikerider78

I agree with that as well.  Let us keep our money.  What a revolutionary concept.


----------



## woodgeek

Still wouldn't touch the health costs associated with chronic exposure the fossil fuel combustion products.  Certainly more than $20B/yr just in the US.


----------



## iamlucky13

begreen said:


> That might be true if the competition was not already very heavily subsidized. So by that same logic oil & gas need no subsidy, instead of the $22B it gets annually. And ethanol, don't get me going.



This is kind of besides the point, as I don't support targeted subsidies for petroleum companies, but I'd like to see a good clear breakdown of what those subsidies are. I get the strong impression that most of them are the same sorts of R&D and related tax breaks that almost every company in the US gets.

That itself segues towards another conversation about why our corporate tax code is so absurdly convoluted, but while the big numbers frequently get thrown out as talking points, an apples to apples comparison never gets made. Solar gets a massive 30% credit just for the sake of being solar, and that's just one of layers of subsidies. $22 billion to the US oil and gas sector is only something like 2-3%, and more to the point, I haven't seen it confirmed that it's a subsidy specifically for being oil and gas companies, as opposed to a subsidy for simply being a company.


----------



## begreen

There are many sides to that debate. The petroleum industry does get a lot of special tax rates that essentially are subsidies. They also are able to form instruments like MLPs to avoid corporate tax rates. Globally the amount is much larger.
http://www.taxpayer.net/images/uploads/Understanding Oil  Gas Subsidies(3).pdf
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-with-550-billion-in-subsidy-hurt-renewables


----------



## Doug MacIVER

interesting read. don't know how truthful maybe someone here can cut through the weeds http://www.investors.com/politics/perspective/can-we-afford-free-wind-and-solar-energy/


----------



## begreen

The author is a prolific conservative writer who often defends corporate interests in biotech, energy health. What he does visit in this article is the quid pro quo of fossil fuel and ethanol subsidies that wind and solar power are up against. I got turned off when I read "Obama's DOE". That is partisan tripe. 

There is a very well funded effort and campaign to kill alternative energy programs spearheaded by the Koch brothers and some utilities. Most recent is the ridiculous solar amendment on the floor in Florida. 
In reality this is an effort to destroy net metering in the state. The amendment is now in the hands of the Florida Supreme Court due to deceptive language in it. Counterpoint article here:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/03/florida-solar-amendment-utility-companies-electricity


----------



## sportbikerider78

Doug MacIVER said:


> interesting read. don't know how truthful maybe someone here can cut through the weeds http://www.investors.com/politics/perspective/can-we-afford-free-wind-and-solar-energy/



His points are valid.  That is the difficulty of wind...it is very localized and it's not always there.  When there is too much wind, you have to use massive brakes to slow down the speed of the turbine.  This causes heat and can catch the gearbox/turbine on fire...and you lose energy.  

There are plenty of places where wind makes sense,,but it isn't ready to replace major power generation for many reasons.


----------



## semipro

sportbikerider78 said:


> His points are valid. That is the difficulty of wind...it is very localized and it's not always there.


Its pretty much always somewhere and we do have an distribution grid in place. 
Many power plants import their fuel from somewhere distant.  What's better: generating locally and transmitting power by wire elsewhere or transporting fuels to more local power plants? 
Admittedly I don't know the answer.
I do know that energy gets transported around whether as fuel or electricity and there's costs associated with that.


----------



## iamlucky13

I'd say he uses some legitimate points to dismiss wind and solar on a blanket basis. It is true that big investors like Warren Buffet are raking in big profits due to the subsidies. It is definitely true that they are intermittent sources and that moving energy around to balance regions with high production with regions of high demand is expensive - an expense currently factored into the wholesale prices of existing sources where the fuel is moved around, but not priced into plans for significantly growing renewables. It's also true that the DOE is shaped by each president who oversees it and appoints their own secretary, so it is affected by political winds at least as much as science, engineering, and economic considerations.

But I can't sign on with blanket dismissals. Each project to develop more energy in a given area or for a specific utility is its own decision. The costs, advantages, and drawbacks should be evaluated for each. So if, for example, a utility in California can install a large-scale solar farm that will have 20-year amortized costs of $0.11/kWh (which is a realistic, unsubsidized number today, including interest or equivalent lost opportunity cost), and being in a region where the primary demand cycles align fairly well with the production cycles from solar (biggest in the summer near mid-day), and where spot wholesale prices for electricity at those times are often over $0.15/kWh, there is a strong economic case to be made for the solar option, in addition to their existing portfolio of more controllable energy sources. The same can not be said in my area, where the amortized cost would be more like $0.18/kWh, but the spot prices during the peak production season are usually less than $0.06/kWh.

That's not the same as trying to convert the whole grid to wind and solar in very short time periods, most plans for which are delusional. Reaching 20% wind and solar on a national average over the next 15-20 years is still extremely rapid growth, and far more credible.

There's also quite a few mistakes in the article that don't do much for his credibility.

One that jumped out at me was his mention of the Westinghouse AP1000 WPR Small Modular Reactor: There is no such thing. The AP1000 PWR (he wouldn't have flipped the letters if he actually knew the acronym means "pressurized water reactor") is by definition not a small modular reactor. It's the latest iteration of the traditional large stand-alone designs Westinghouse has been building since the 1950's.

You'll also won't find an AP1000, or even a small modular reactor, installed on only 5 acres. The reactor building itself might be about that size, but the entire facility - reactor building, turbine building, cooling tower, coolant ponds, spent fuel-holding area, operations center, transformers, etc usually covers several hundred acres. The San Onofre plant in California is the smallest I know of, with extra effort having been made to keep it compact due to its location, and with a lot less land needed because its cooled with sea water instead of a conventional cooling tower. It's 130 acres.

He also jumps on the long dead fallacy that land used for renewable energy is dead to other uses. The reality with wind farms is that over 95% of the land they're installed on is untouched, and in most cases, continues to be used as it was before the wind farm was erected (especially if it's agricultural land). Solar panels more significantly affect the land, but we're far from running out of roof-top space, nor desert.

He claims solar prices have been increasing, but while they are expected to bottom out eventually (probably fairly soon, in my opinion), this has not actually happened yet. Meanwhile, existing energy source prices have bottomed out - that is to say, the competition is also increasing in price.


----------



## iamlucky13

sportbikerider78 said:


> That is the difficulty of wind...it is very localized and it's not always there. When there is too much wind, you have to use massive brakes to slow down the speed of the turbine. This causes heat and can catch the gearbox/turbine on fire...and you lose energy.



You actually feather the blades (turn them parallel to the wind), so the torque they produce is reduced. At top wind speed, they feather so far the brake can safely stop the turbine completely. The few instances of turbine fires that sometimes make the news are due to a failure of either the blade pitch control, the brake, or the gearbox. Winds high enough to necessitate shutdown are relatively common, but this kind of failure is actually pretty rare.

Which does not diminish your main point, however. Overspeed conditions, just like underspeed conditions, are part of the intermittency of wind that make it effectively a supplemental source of electricity. Improved transmission and storage can mitigate this intermittency, but not for free, and with eventual limits.


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## zelachowski

Nicoli Tesla had a plan to harness free electric. George Westinghouse and JP Morgan, cut all his funding driving him into bankruptcy. Their point was with free electric how do they make money. Bill Gates is a smart, wealthy man, but how does he get that past Wall Street and government officials and lobbyists that own the lawmakers. I don't see it happening, in my opinion. I love technology, but the biggest lobby group in Washington is the public utilities.


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## iamlucky13

You make money by selling the devices that generate the electricity. General Electric and Westinghouse both largely got out of the business of generating electricity in favor of selling the devices to do so a really long time ago. Some of their newest competitors are companies like Solarworld and Vestas.


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## woodgeek

Ugh.  The original article has quite a few errors.  The author makes a *single observation* of still turbines and concludes that wind power nationwide is a farce?  Jump to conclusions much?

Capacity factor for turbines (average power to rated power) is ~30%.  Of course, this does not mean 100% power for 30% of the time, but it prob does mean still turbines at least 25% of the time or more.  So what? 

As for the govt subsidy for building the turbines?  Actual its a modest _production credit_.  If people build a wind farm that doesn't produce they get no tax subsidy and lose their shirts.  In reality, people usually survey wind speed carefully at a site for a year or more before deciding to build...and then it turns out to be a very low risk investment.

Wanna talk about bogus energy sources....how about fracked oil?  The frackers total outstanding debts (run up when oil was $100/barrel mind you) are close to $40 for every barrel they have produced to date!  IOW, even when they were getting $100 barrel, they still needed to borrow _another_ $40/barrel to keep the lights on.  Anyone actually think they are making a profit at $35?  Anybody think they can make a profit at $50 or even $75, when their costs to date have been $140??


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## jebatty

In Minnesota there are few generating local utilities. Most buy electricity from very large, and often distant, generating and transmission facilities, and the local utilities make their money on local distribution. The distant generating facilities can be anything: coal, gas, wind, solar, hydro, etc. Distribution, whether local or high tension transmission lines, doesn't care where the electricity comes from. Solar, wind and hydro within a fraction are cost competitive with coal and gas and have few if any of the hefty health and environmental costs of coal and gas. We already have the guts of the "energy miracle" in place or available. It is the proverbial elephant in the room.


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## sportbikerider78

semipro said:


> Its pretty much always somewhere and we do have an distribution grid in place.
> Many power plants import their fuel from somewhere distant.  What's better: generating locally and transmitting power by wire elsewhere or transporting fuels to more local power plants?
> Admittedly I don't know the answer.
> I do know that energy gets transported around whether as fuel or electricity and there's costs associated with that.



This is how a typical plant power generation facility works.  You have numerous systems like this cogen facility I grabbed a google image of.  You have some fossil fuel powering a turbine which directly generates electricity and then a steam turbine which runs off of the exhaust heat to create steam and generate electricity.





This system is quite efficient.  Companies like GE, Westinghouse, Siemens, Dresser Rand, Alstom and many others have gotten very good at this.  The systems stay at maximum efficiency when they are run at their designed load, all of the time.  They lose a great deal of efficiency when they are cycled on and off.  Just like your car, when it is started and stopped, it pollutes the most when it is put in this condition.

Picture the above system as something that just stays on.  It is run at 80% capacity and just stays on like a light bulb.  Always running.  This is your base power generation for a city.

Now when everyone wakes up in the morning, and when they come home from work, there is a surge in power demand.  In order to meet this demand, many power companies turn on auxiliary power sources that many times don't have cogen power generation...not as efficient systems.  Some overseas smaller towns may even fire up an aircraft engine generator (Samsung makes these) or large diesel generators. Then when the power surge is over and everyone goes to work or goes to bed, they turn them off till the next surge.

Now enter wind power into the grid.  The big base cogen unit stays running,,,that doesn't change.  But when and to what capacity do you fire up the smaller generators?  These smaller guys end up polluting much more with a wind system in place, even if they are not running as much, because they are getting turned off and on more.
Yes you are using wind as power, but you are not improving the overall environmental situation at all and may even be making it worse.

I've spent 7-10 years of my career having these types of conversations with experts while working in the gas, steam, nuclear and wind field.   There are many political sides to this issue, but this one is NOT a political issue.  This is an engineering challenge.  Sadly, the politics of "let's get more wind power" ignores the reality that it may be causing more pollution, not less.


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## begreen

Wind power is supplemental, not intended for sole source. The article echoes similar energy corporate funded attacks on wind and solar. The idle wind generator attack was in full force around 2011? when some of the more famous wind generators in Altamont Pass were shut down. Opponents pointed out that the idle generators in the ideal wind site were a waste, but actually this was just temporary and intentional. Old smaller and shorter generators were being replaced with large and much taller generators. Part of this changeout was to better protect raptors flying there. IIRC that changeout should be complete by now and more power than ever is being generated in those passes.


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## begreen

All power systems have their pros and cons. Respecting the opinions of those with vested interest in gas power generation, there appears to be differing opinions on the load demand issue.
_“The argument that we need this baseload power ticking over in the background is basically false,” Heron told RenewEconomy after the conference.
“We don’t have a constant demand, so this idea that we need a constant supply is a myth.”
And as for the suggestion that wind energy is too unreliable to make any kind of meaningful contribution to the National Electricity Market, that’s a myth too, says Heron.
_
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/28/wind-power-cheaper-reliable-natural-gas/


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## semipro

sportbikerider78 said:


> Sadly, the politics of "let's get more wind power" ignores the reality that it may be causing more pollution, not less.


Point well made.  
It seems to me though that this situation only exists because of how we've historically handled variable power demands which made complete sense given historical available technologies, circumstances, and economics.  As we develop new tech including RE and grid storage this should change though and those smaller dirty generators hopefully won't be needed.   
As RE is tossed into the grid mix it definitely creates some new challenges and some opportunities as well.   In situ residential and commercial PV is one example.  The benefits of local generation and the impact on the grid as far as line losses, reliability, and capacity are potentially a game changer.  More local generation may open up capacity for better distribution of sources like wind over longer distance transmission lines. 
Its a very interesting optimization challenge.


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## woodgeek

My own reading on the subject has suggested that generation utilities hate RE because it **reduces** peaker demand, and peakers are quite inefficient and expensive (and thus profitable to operate).

On the other hand, its not like we have any choice....climate concerns will require a mostly RE energy system.  If we need to build out long distance HVDC transmission, grid battery storage, advanced demand control or all the above, so be it.  When the 30-50% 'efficient' fossil plants are scrap, they will not be emitting anymore and we can stop arguing.


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## iamlucky13

begreen said:


> We don’t have a constant demand, so this idea that we need a constant supply is a myth.”



Constant supply is not the issue. The real issue is you need supply that meets your varying demand, and if you can't schedule the supply sufficiently, you can't meet the demand. Wind can fit within that supply as long as there is enough total supply to meet the peak demand simultaneously with the minimum wind production. You will end up buying nominally a lot of excess peak capacity (combined wind + traditional). You do have redundancy with traditional sources, too, but with traditional sources, that might credibly be single-digit percentage margins, where as with wind, it would be high double digit. Part of the excess cost is made up by the lack of fuel consumption by the wind turbines, but not all of it.

You don't need all of your backup power constantly running as spinning reserve, however, and even when spinning in reserve the fuel consumption is reduced compared to under load, so your emissions are definitely smaller than depending solely on scheduleable sources.

His comments about it being extremely unlikely to have hundreds of wind turbines simultaneously break down is misleading. That was never the concern. An actual concern, proven in real events such periodic brownouts in Texas, which is the third most wind-dependent region on the planet after Germany and Spain (with over 3 times as much capacity as frequently-vaunted Denmark), is the regular occurrence of region-wide calm periods. At the moment, the magnitude of wind variation is in the same ballpark as what already happens with conventional sources - like he points out, accidents at conventional plants can and sometimes do take a GW or two off the grid instantly. As wind expands, however, so does the magnitude of capacity dropouts.

Currently, no single large region has the amount of renewables installed where this becomes a major problem with the current system. Germany is getting close with just shy of 15% of their electricity coming from wind last year. Denmark was significantly higher, but is such a small area it has to be looked at in the context of the surrounding region, with which it trades electricity back and forth constantly.


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## begreen

Good insights from everyone here. This is a great discussion.


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## jebatty

I haven't seen a control system for home solar PV that would automatically shunt excess power to  storage when PV output exceeds house demand, and then draw from storage when house demand exceeds PV output. Maybe the concept of the Tesla wall packs do this. My estimate is that 20 kWh (maybe 10 kWh with some care in usage) of storage on such a system would allow our household to go off-grid. The point is that I think there are lots of ways to skin the cat, and power management down to the household level is not unreasonable, some is already being done on AC, peak load management schemes, interruptible power management, etc. What is unreasonable is the expectation for every person/business to have available unlimited variability in energy supply.


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## woodgeek

The Tesla powerwall DOES do what you want Jim, and its for sale...not a concept.

Not that I would want to pay for one.  I think their early adopters are doing their beta testing.


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## iamlucky13

begreen said:


> Good insights from everyone here. This is a great discussion.



It's rather refreshing to have this sort of discussion online while remaining generally civil all around. That doesn't happen on topics like this on most sites.


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## DUMF

begreen said:


> The author is a *prolific conservative writer* who often *defends corporate interest*s in biotech, energy health. What he does visit in this article is *the quid pro quo of fossil fuel and ethanol subsidies* that wind and solar power are up against. I got turned off when I read "Obama's DOE". That is *partisan tripe. *
> 
> There is a very well funded effort and campaign to kill alternative energy programs *spearheaded by the Koch brothers* and some utilities. Most recent is the ridiculous solar amendment on the floor in Florida.
> In reality this is an effort to destroy net metering in the state. The amendment is now in the hands of the Florida Supreme Court due to *deceptive language i*n it. Counterpoint article here:
> http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/03/florida-solar-amendment-utility-companies-electricity



Fine discussion, except for the extreme confirmational bias of "sides" in some posts as illustrated here.
Try to discuss without looking at issues as the intellectual hammer: that if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Evil conservatives, oh so good us liberals. Meaning seeing issues from a single point of view; searching for online information that only confirms our point of view. Mother Jones indeed.

For every Koch, there's a Buffet. Can we call out "liberal" as some do calling "conservative" ? So, should people of lower income be forced to subsidize those who can afford a Tesla or turbine or solar collectors by taxes and higher electric rates ? It's a valid concern that is truly non partisan. In northern New England do we destroy landscapes for intermittent power generating turbines ?  The right and left righteousness is not solving anything.


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## Doug MacIVER

the weeds in this case will always point in one direction with some here. the distribution and cost  side of the original article made sense to me. as an example Kingston ,mass. built a single large turbine. they forgot to factor in the connection costs, it almost derailed the project. problem was construction was already underway. with significant additional cost it was connected. personal experience is a relation that built a large turbine and paid 125k to connect. the side garbage posted aside, I've managed to learn some with what has been discussed.
 as an aside "Obama's DOE" is a cabinet position and policy comes from the President


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## begreen

Point taken. As noted, I've learned a lot from this thread.


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## peakbagger

jebatty said:


> I haven't seen a control system for home solar PV that would automatically shunt excess power to storage when PV output exceeds house demand, and then draw from storage when house demand exceeds PV output.


Outback (and others) has some very powerful software control of their off grid systems. I believe they have an operating mode that does what you describe. Essentially it is a standard off grid control mode with an import from utility if the state of charge (SOC) of the storage media drops below a minimum setpoint. If the system is not connected to the grid its the same setpoint that would turn on the generator.  I expect they also have an export to utility function if the batteries are fully charged and grid is available. In an off grid scenario, the system can turn on "opportunity loads" if the SOC exceeds a setpoint.  Unlike grid tied inverters that are designed to be plug and play and "dumb" , off grid gear is designed to be quite flexible. The trade off is set up is far more complicated and is essentially custom for each install. The Outback equipment is modular with a central control bus so different configurations of hardware are controlled by the same integrated logic. There is substantial upcharge for the battery bank and extra electronics plus the PV array has to be configured differently although the high voltage Schneider system is capable of high voltage strings.  

One of the operating modes that the utilities really don't like is peak shifting, the house runs off utility power at night and then exports the solar generation from day time hours stored in the batteries ,at the highest day time rates in areas with tiered rates (like southern California). Some folks also have been charging up the batteries with night time power and reselling it as solar during peak rate periods . There is a big incentive rate in CA for grid batteries that effectively act as load regulation, the technology is still being developed but some is deployed. Of course it comes down to who pays for the batteries?.  

How Europe gets away with very large solar and wind generation is using very large pumped hydro installation in Norway for grid stabilization . There is some minimal capacity in the US (Greenfield Mass has an example) but no where near enough. There was a large system called "Dickey Lincoln" in Maine that was proposed 30 years ago that was shot down to environmental issues. Hydro Quebec is proposing to supply the US with power from a huge interconnected pumped hydro system in northern Quebec. Its the size of a land mass starting at the Mass NY border and going all the way to the eastern tip of Maine. The trade off is a couple of terrorists with a little C4 could knock down the New England grid for weeks by taking out the transmission lines that run for hundreds if not thousands of miles.  A few idiots knocked out one of the existing lines in VT target shooting a few years back and the replacement power cost to the grid  was in the 10 of millions of dollars.

Much of  "miracle" is already here in the US if society wants to make the environmental security and economic tradeoffs. Those with unsustainably cheap power are opposed to paying higher bills and some states use cheap power as an economic an advantage to pull in companies from other states.


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## semipro

peakbagger said:


> hydro installation in Norway for grid stabilization


Anyone know offhand how efficient this method of storage is?  
I imagine losses might be significant with generator and pump inefficiencies and hydraulic friction losses.


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## iamlucky13

Large scale turbine and pump efficiency is generally quite good: 90% or higher each direction. You end up in the same general ballpark as lithium ion batteries and better than flow batteries, but usually lower initial costs and longer service life. The downside is limited locations you can build them cost effectively.


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## peakbagger

I have seen claims of 70 to 80% efficient for pumped hydro. The problem is energy density. It takes lot of water or high elevation to store much power. If its pumped storage, it means an upper lake that gets drained and filled daily. Not really good for wildlife and fish as the turbines act like fish grinders and there are issues with methane release in The Hydro Quebec area. . The Dickey Lincoln project I mentioned was around 80,000 acres (125 square miles) of impacted land. It could put out over 1000 MW but I don't know how many hours it could continue to generate at that rate.  If there are no environmental restrictions, pumped hydro can dump a lot of power into the grid quickly. There are several large dams in Maine that are not pumped storage but they crank down the turbines at night and then open them up in the morning, they are restricted to how much water they can draw out of the lake and put in the river.  The Hydro Quebec projects have an environmental black eye for their impact to the upstream lakes and rivers but its mostly unpopulated territory, the government owns the land and relocated whatever natives were there to begin with. It got a lot of bad press the first time around as the natives were just kicked out of the homelands, HQ now buys off the tribes and makes sure that anyone  in the tribe who wants to work on the projects get priority.


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## DUMF

There is sufficient inland hydro capacity in many states such as Vermont and Maine to power consistently much of these states.

We have not touched on more productive and reliable energy sources than wind or solar ( the glamour sources now) in northern and shore states :
1. TIDAL
2. OFFSHORE TURBINES
and.......
3. NUCLEAR

Any one of these can be a start to conversations.


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## begreen

One part of Grand Coulee is pumped hydro. The storage at Lake Roosevelt is huge, 150 miles long covering 80,000 acres.


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## iamlucky13

Yep, although the the Banks Lake pumping station is relatively small, making up about 5% of the Grand Coulee Dam's total capacity. They were sized for filling Banks Lank for summer irrigation, with pumped storage being an afterthought.


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## woodgeek

Pumped hydro is cost inefficient when built for the purpose.  Most was built for the nuclear industry back in the day....which have the opposite problem as RE...can't throttle up and down.

The future is grid batteries...lots of grid batteries for day-duration storage....and long range HVDC lines for seasonal balancing.  Won't need the first for a decade or so, or the second for another decade after that.

As for politics...whatevs.  But FWIW, as a liberal, I refuse to accept the characterization that Buffet is a liberal.


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## begreen

iamlucky13 said:


> Yep, although the the Banks Lake pumping station is relatively small, making up about 5% of the Grand Coulee Dam's total capacity. They were sized for filling Banks Lank for summer irrigation, with pumped storage being an afterthought.


At 314MW Banks Lake pumping is not small, except by comparison to Grand Coulee's huge 2280MW capacity.


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## Doug MacIVER

i,m really not against these ideas, but? another story that gives another side to the RE story. unfortunately I do not subscribe to the wsj and can't read the whole story.http://www.marketwatch.com/story/co...r-power-plant-be-forced-to-go-dark-2016-03-16. reminds me of second city tv, not ready for prime time. I do know they have supposedly corrected the bird problem . think they will  get things extended. one of their other misses was a backup gas supply, that  was an early surprise, now this?


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## jebatty

The simplicity of energy storage in my wood gasification hot water boiler system with 1000 gallons of storage is my picture of an RE future. I burn wood when convenient or when storage is depleted; storage is charged up to about 190F directly from the "high output" boiler and recharged when as low as 100F. Demand is satisfied as needed from storage. 

In many respects the boiler operates or can operate the same as when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. The heated space doesn't care whether or not the boiler is firing and doesn't care when or where the btus come from, just that they are there. The 1000 gallons of storage is usually sufficient to provide up to one week of heat; 2000 gallons of storage would double that. The storage does not wear out, is highly efficient (heat losses from the well insulated tank are extremely low), is technologically simple, is non-polluting and fully recyclable, and is inexpensive. 

An electricity storage and distribution system of the future should be the same. Charge the storage when the sun shines or the wind blows, deliver electricity constantly from storage based on variable demand when needed. If cheap fuels (wood, coal, petroleum, maybe nuclear) had not existed and all that was available were wind, water and solar, then I think the electricity system we would have today would be much like the boiler with storage system and we would live in an accommodating culture. 

In my mind, set the goal, eliminate the barriers, and develop the system of the (near) future.


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## peakbagger

Unfortunately plants built with heavy upfront and ongoing subsidies don't necessarily have to run long term to make the original developers money. They build the plant, get it commercial and very quickly to sell the project to other longer term investors that may not understand what they are buying. Eventually reality kicks in and there is a financial restructuring to get the project to the point where it can make money.Sometimes that doesn't work and the project ends up with one of these epitaphs   http://clui.org/ludb/site/abandoned-solar-power-plant

Unfortunately solar thermal economics went south when PV prices dropped, the installed cost for PV is now far less than a solar thermal plant. There were several solar thermal plant projects that died due to cheap PV and a few of them got converted to PV.


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## jebatty

Our co-op electricity distributing utility, which serves a rural and politically conservative area, recently floated the idea of a community solar garden built by the utility and conducted a member (37,000 members) survey to determine interest. Members could buy one or more panels, get kWh credit for the purchased panels, and the utility would build, manage, insure, and maintain the system for its useful life. Only members wanting PV electricity would pay the cost, no cost shifting to non-buying members.

The member survey was designed and conducted by a professional organization, the survey questions: views on solar electricity, importance of solar/wind as energy sources, reasons for interest in solar electricity, differences in attitudes of different demographic groups, breakdown of member interest based on their views, and willingness to pay a higher cost for electricity from solar. 

The results were: 44% of members would pay more for electricity if the result was CO2 reduction; 53% of members would pay more for electricity from renewable (solar, wind) sources. Only 21% of members were not willing to pay more. The breakdown was: 27% of members were willing to pay an extra $20/month, 34% of members were willing to pay an extra $10-15/month, and 15% of members were willing to pay an extra $3-5/month.

Finally, as to member willingness (market potential) to actually purchase community solar garden panels: at a represented cost of $1200-1600/panel (about $3-4/watt of panel rating), 4% of members definitely would buy and 15% of members probably would buy; and if  financing was available over 5 (?) years, 7% definitely would buy and 17% probably would buy. 

These numbers represent 20-25% of co-op members, or if each member willing to buy would buy only one panel (400 watt panels are being considered), 7400-9250 (8250 average) panels would be purchased: that equates to a 3,300 kWh (3.3 MW) solar system.

An interesting side note is that the IRS in a letter ruling recently determined that an individual buying into a community solar garden qualified for the federal 30% tax credit. If this becomes a binding determination, then I would assume member interest in buying would increase substantially, as the cost/panel would be reduced to $840-1120/panel ($2-3/watt).


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## begreen

peakbagger said:


> Unfortunately plants built with heavy upfront and ongoing subsidies don't necessarily have to run long term to make the original developers money. They build the plant, get it commercial and very quickly to sell the project to other longer term investors that may not understand what they are buying. Eventually reality kicks in and there is a financial restructuring to get the project to the point where it can make money.Sometimes that doesn't work and the project ends up with one of these epitaphs   http://clui.org/ludb/site/abandoned-solar-power-plant
> 
> Unfortunately solar thermal economics went south when PV prices dropped, the installed cost for PV is now far less than a solar thermal plant. There were several solar thermal plant projects that died due to cheap PV and a few of them got converted to PV.


Morocco appears committed to large scale thermal solar.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ils-a-massive-solar-power-plant-in-the-sahara


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## woodgeek

peakbagger said:


> Unfortunately plants built with heavy upfront and ongoing subsidies don't necessarily have to run long term to make the original developers money. They build the plant, get it commercial and very quickly to sell the project to other longer term investors that may not understand what they are buying. Eventually reality kicks in and there is a financial restructuring to get the project to the point where it can make money.Sometimes that doesn't work and the project ends up with one of these epitaphs   http://clui.org/ludb/site/abandoned-solar-power-plant



Hard to see how a solar demo plant built by a chemical/oil company in *1983* with defective cells is relevant to the current economics and prospects of PV solar.  

I suspect that ARCO built the demo plant to sell cells at scale to others when peak oil started to bite in 1988....which then didn't happen.  I wonder how all those tight oil fields will look as investments in 33 years.


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## peakbagger

The Arco Solar plant is just the first of many. I could have just as well put up a picture of the Solyndra factory, The Nanosolar factory, the Razor Technologies ORC low temperature geothermal plant , The Sterling Energy Systems never built concentrating dish plants, the linear Fresnel concentrating plants and a fair share of other technologies. They all were built to chase incentives. with marginally proven technology. Throw in  Vinod Koslas's two massively subsidized failed cellulosic ethanol facilitys who never produced any commercial amount of fuel. The connecting theme is the government throws money on the table and folks with political connections grab it with marginal pre commercial technology and run when the economics don't work out or in Solyndra's case make a second windfall reselling tax credits saddling the government with the debts rather than restructure.

I am not down on renewables but the current system where developers have no skin in the game and can cash out long before the plant ever gets to break even is a recipe for failure.


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## woodgeek

And 70% of small businesses fail before making a profit.  Should we not have incentives for small business?  Or is it creative destruction?

It is clear that technology innovation in the US is a pale shadow of what it was decades ago, and other nations have taken up the slack....I have a hard time thinking too much govt support for that activity is a big part of the US' problem.


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## vinny11950

The Solyndra mess was part of a bigger DOE portfolio that hasn't been a failure like people like to think.  That fund took on high risk projects for new technologies to advance the industry and push innovation forward.  Some ideas made it (Tesla) and others didn't (Solyndra).  The point is to purchase something that is priceless - energy independence and diversity - which seems to be the goal of the DOE.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-5-billion-from-program-that-funded-solyndra


----------



## Where2

jebatty said:


> Our co-op electricity distributing utility, which serves a rural and politically conservative area, recently floated the idea of a community solar garden built by the utility and conducted a member (37,000 members) survey to determine interest. Members could buy one or more panels, get kWh credit for the purchased panels, and the utility would build, manage, insure, and maintain the system for its useful life. Only members wanting PV electricity would pay the cost, no cost shifting to non-buying members.



Did the terms for this plan also include members continuing to pay a distribution charge on the energy your garden panel(s) generated which needed to be transported from the remote garden location to your house over the grid wires (toll road) owned by the Co-Op?

I'm not against solar gardens, I just realize that the letter I received in the mail yesterday of a proposed >8% rate increase in electricity distribution costs for one of my electric utilities will not be the last rate increase letter I see in my lifetime. In which case, dropping a PV array on my own property and paying once to own the wiring necessary to connect the array to my home is probably a "better deal" for the long term, especially while IRS Form 5695 is still a viable tax credit.  

When the utility begins to charge ridiculous monthly fees to "grid tie", I'll already own the panels. I'll just need to install on-site energy storage, rather than dump my excess to the grid via net metering.


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## jebatty

Where2 said:


> Did the terms for this plan also include members continuing to pay a distribution charge on the energy your garden panel(s) generated which needed to be transported from the remote garden location to your house over the grid wires (toll road) owned by the Co-Op?


 Something to watch for as the plan develops, but at this point represented only as a kWh credit against the member's electric bill. MN law allows for the utility to charge a distribution fee on small PV (<=40kW) which is owned by the user, but so far I am not aware that any utility is doing that. This proposed development would be owned by the utility with member's owing the output of a panel. I seriously doubt that a large PV system will be built. I believe the utility was a bit surprised by the large extent of member interest and support for RE.


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## stoveguy2esw

"His points are valid. That is the difficulty of wind...it is very localized and it's not always there. When there is too much wind, you have to use massive brakes to slow down the speed of the turbine. This causes heat and can catch the gearbox/turbine on fire...and you lose energy."

feathering the prop (or varying the pitch of the blades can account for most of the "overspeed" though it doesn't help much with "underspeed" due to lack of wind. simply adding a multigear transmission to vary the speed transmitted to the generator while losing some efficiency through the gear train could help steady out the ratio as well. I doubt they are direct drive to start with.


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## stoveguy2esw

zelachowski said:


> Nicoli Tesla had a plan to harness free electric. George Westinghouse and JP Morgan, cut all his funding driving him into bankruptcy. Their point was with free electric how do they make money. Bill Gates is a smart, wealthy man, but how does he get that past Wall Street and government officials and lobbyists that own the lawmakers. I don't see it happening, in my opinion. I love technology, but the biggest lobby group in Washington is the public utilities.



I assume someone would have to staff the plant that generates this "free energy" or repair it when it malfunctioned. so, in essence their point was valid. that said making more money than they should have is a horse of a different color and is WAY outside the current discussion, so im gonna just leave it at that


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## sportbikerider78

woodgeek said:


> And 70% of small businesses fail before making a profit.  Should we not have incentives for small business?  Or is it creative destruction?
> 
> It is clear that technology innovation in the US is a pale shadow of what it was decades ago, and other nations have taken up the slack....I have a hard time thinking too much govt support for that activity is a big part of the US' problem.



No, but the government deciding what technology gets taxpayer money gives unfair advantages to companies...which destroys the competition and ultimately wastes money.

How does the government fairly determine who gets money and who doesn't?  It is impossible to make a fair decision and it is always at the whim of whatever political mandate the year/month/day/min/sec dictates to create a positive image for the person(s) in power.  It is a smokescreen, nothing more.

It is up to us to solve our energy and environmental problems.  Not the government.  Do we really think the government cares more about the environment than us?  I sure hope not.


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## woodgeek

The govt doesn't decide who gets funding....its a _peer-review_ process that tries to evaluate based on merit, feasability, societal benefits of succcess, etc. 

Scientists write proposals to do scientific research, and these are reviewed by panels of scientists from the same research area, who are vetted to eliminate anyone with the slightest conflict of interest.   These grant and loan programs to small businesses are reviewed the same way....not personally by BHO giving out grants to his cronies.


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## iamlucky13

woodgeek said:


> The govt doesn't decide who gets funding....its a _peer-review_ process that tries to evaluate based on merit, feasability, societal benefits of succcess, etc.



Peer review evaluates the research itself to determine if it is validly done and therefore credible. Conflict of interest is nominally irrelevant to peer review. You can have a conflict of interest but still design a valid study, and since at the end of the day, valid data is what counts in the scientific world, that's to some degree a check on the influence of personal interests.

For funding, it is the government that decides what counts as merit worthy or beneficial enough to fund further. Members of the government can have conflicts of interest, too, but the process of sorting all this out is much more arbitrary. It's not a peer review. At best, oversight organizations like the Government Accountability Office do analyses that sort of resemble peer review, but generally after the fact, their input is non-binding, and the consideration of value is indirect - they might point out, for example, that alternative energy loans broke even on an absolute dollar basis, while losing a small amount of money to inflation, but the decision whether or not that was worthwhile is up to the politicians who DO have conflicts of interest, not the people doing the quantitative review.


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## sportbikerider78

Don't you guys remember this?  What peer review is done when congress or the POTUS pushes a bill?

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2...een-energy-failures-leave-taxpayers/?page=all


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## woodgeek

Sorry.  Not correct.  The govt decides to fund an agency (like the DOE), companies submit proposals for funding to the DOE, and the funding decisions are made after a merit-based peer review by independent scientists who are affiliated with the agency, and who have no conflicts of interest.  

The 'govt', as in the congress, sets the agency funding level, and the agency might alter its 'calls' to appeal to the congressional cmte and to get more funding.  But the POTUS does not set the agency funding level nor pick who gets funded by the agency.  The DOE director, as a cabinet appointment IS named by the POTUS, but the director doesn't pick the grantees.  IF the director tried to send funds to programs that the congress didn't like, the congress would cut the agencies funding.  Checks and Balances.


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## iamlucky13

Well, that's a pleasant interpretation of the ideal anyways. I've been watching NASA's budget too long to mistake the ideal for what actually happens.


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## woodgeek

Have you ever sat on one of these review panels at an agency?  Reviewed any proposals for funding?  Written a proposal for agency funding?  Talked to a program managers about how they get their funding from congress (how they justify their funding to congressional staffers)?  

Or are you just making cynical assumptions about how it must work?

My own experience with such processes is that they are far from perfect or ideal...but the idea that the POTUS (or congress) could stuff an agency with lackeys who who shovel money to their cronies....just kooky.

As for defense (and NASA) contracts...I am probably at least as cynical as you are.


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## sportbikerider78

No one is doubting that the house has the pursestrings of the govt.  Fact is, they never reign back spending...and bills many times don't even get read..let alone vetted to see if there is corruption or conflict of interest.

Corruption and theft.


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## semipro

woodgeek said:


> merit-based peer review by independent scientists who are affiliated with the agency, and who have no conflicts of interest.


I can attest to this having done both the proposing and the reviewing to/for the DOE.


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## iamlucky13

woodgeek said:


> My own experience with such processes is that they are far from perfect or ideal...but the idea that the POTUS (or congress) could stuff an agency with lackeys who who shovel money to their cronies....just kooky.
> 
> As for defense (and NASA) contracts...I am probably at least as cynical as you are.



I've talked to a few people involved in grant requests. I've also read a few hearing transcripts.. I'm sure I haven't been as closely involved as you, although I have been involved with other big bureaucracies on the private side that have their own internal policy struggles, and watched them make bad decisions based on satisfying the not necessarily well-informed whims of people higher up. Yes, I'm sure the defense side is more prone to political interference, and I do believe that most decisions in other departments get made with minimal interference. However, I do not for a second believe that other departments are entirely free from interference.

Yes, the president appoints lackeys. Replacing the cabinet is one of the first things every president does, and the organizational changes propagate downstream to a non-trivial degree. Sometime they replace their own lackeys with new lackeys. Dr. Chu, for instance, appeared to be a liability because he did not approve of President Obama's negligence in dealing with existing nuclear waste. As carefully as he did tread on the matter (sticking only to promoting alternatives to leaving it in temporary storage containers in numerous parking lots around the country, with no plan for ever moving on to a longer term solution), his combined technical and management expertise were not enough to keep him in favor.


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## vinny11950

Steven Chu is not a lackey.  He is a Stanford professor who accepted the call to serve his country.  He is really smart guy, and we need really smart people in government, not paid-for-lobbyists ready to go back to K street.  Sure he spoke candidly and got himself in hot water, but his focus on new energy alternatives for the DOE to fund was positive.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ps-down-as-energy-secretary-so-how-did-he-do/

As for the nuclear waste issue, the Supreme Court ruled that nuclear waste sites have to last 1,000,000 years!!  Good luck meeting that requirement.  And good luck getting any state to accept the waste (NIMBY).

http://k1project.org/interviews-ste...-and-nuclear-waste-securing-nuclear-materials


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## iamlucky13

vinny11950 said:


> Steven Chu is not a lackey.



That was not intended as a substantive part of the discussion, and I only used the term because woodgeek did, not because I'd really call Dr. Chu a lackey. My point was that each new president always replaces the outgoing president's cabinet with one that he expects to support his policies. Actually, of all president Obama's cabinet picks, Dr. Chu was probably the one I was most satisfied with. But even he is subject to pressure to make the decisions Obama wants made, not necessarily the best decisions from a technical or economic standpoint:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/soly...rgy-programs/2011/12/14/gIQA4HllHP_story.html



vinny11950 said:


> As for the nuclear waste issue, the Supreme Court ruled that nuclear waste sites have to last 1,000,000 years!! Good luck meeting that requirement. And good luck getting any state to accept the waste (NIMBY).



That was way back in 2008. The NRC then extended their analysis based on that ruling for the 10,000 to 1 million year period and found that the facility met the requirements. That analysis held up to scrutiny, because although the risk of a failure to contain the waste cumulatively increases over time, the radioactivity of the waste declines. The total risk (factoring together likelihood of exposure and degree of exposure) actually peaks around 200,000-300,000 years (if I'm remembering correctly), and is within the requirement to limit exposure to less than 1/3 the level of natural background radiation, regardless of whether it's through air, drinking water, surface exposure, etc.

Talking about single elements of a multi-layered protection scheme like the titanium tunnel liner failing after 5,000 years is misguided. It's not like that liner failing means people start dying. It was known it would fail. Then the next layer of protection, the waste storage casks, becomes critical. Eventually they fail. Eventually some of the waste then leaches out of vitrified glass. Eventually it then percolates down to the ground water. Eventually it then migrates laterally to  a drinking water well. The long term question is what the levels of contamination look like out to 1 million years, and is there a definite risk to it?

The closure of the project was a dangerous move, trading a 1 million year strategy for a 60 year one (design life of the dry casks used for temporary storage). For that matter, even if we actually did only get 10,000 years out of Yucca Mountain, we end up way ahead. Remember, this waste exists today, and dealing with it doesn't get any easier (or cheaper) the longer you put it off. We already made that mistake once with the military nuclear waste at Hanford, and we're spending a fortune to deal with it.

The state's rights matter is not a current issue. It's well-established precedence for the federal government's authority to supersede individual states' authority when there is compelling cause. They already apply such authority on matters ranging from where military bases are located, to how close a stream you can cut down a tree, to how states manage basic health care funding, to whether an individual who owns a cow can sell milk to a friend. There's not even a prayer a state's rights challenge to resolving the nuclear waste issue would hold up in court.


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## begreen

Not exactly comforting considering the govt. site at Hanford with 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid and 25 million cu ft of highly radioactive solid waste on site that is only 70 yrs old and is leaking and contaminating soils and leaching into the Columbia River.


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## vinny11950

iamlucky13 said:


> The state's rights matter is not a current issue. It's well-established precedence for the federal government's authority to supersede individual states' authority when there is compelling cause. They already apply such authority on matters ranging from where military bases are located, to how close a stream you can cut down a tree, to how states manage basic health care funding, to whether an individual who owns a cow can sell milk to a friend. There's not even a prayer a state's rights challenge to resolving the nuclear waste issue would hold up in court.



Thank you for the great reply.  What I meant to say with the NIMBY portion of the issue are any chosen state's congressional delegation (regardless of party affiliation).  Mostly they will stand in the way of becoming the perceived dumping ground for the rest of the country's nuclear waste.  Nevada being the great case in point.  Harry Reid was the Senate majority leader and stopped the project for cooperation on other issues.  I can't say I blame him, he was leveraging his power for the interests of his constituents.  And they have a point.  Why should one state be the dumping ground for the nuclear waste of other states?  Especially when this waste will be around for thousands of years and may kill you if something goes wrong.


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## vinny11950

iamlucky13 said:


> But even he is subject to pressure to make the decisions Obama wants made, not necessarily the best decisions from a technical or economic standpoint:
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/soly...rgy-programs/2011/12/14/gIQA4HllHP_story.html



This article feels like it has major flaws in its arguments because it stretches to make conclusions from bits and pieces of incomplete information.

What I think happened was the government wanted to help establish a US solar panel company even if it was at high risk and cost (just to put people to work and on the chance it might work).  Well, the Chinese kicked their manufacturing butts like they do in most everything else that involves manufacturing.  Was it the right choice to make?  I don't know because I don't know if there was a more deserving US solar start up that could have been helped with that funding.  But I do like the fact that they tried kickstarting a US based business.

I just wish that the same crowd that calls for financial accountability for the $528 million loss of Solyndra, did the same for the billions spent for F-35 fighter or the Littoral combat ship, both of which have big questions regarding their efficacy in combat.


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## Doug MacIVER

meanwhile back at the oasis? http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-solar-plant-fire-20160520-snap-story.html


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## woodgeek

Doug MacIVER said:


> meanwhile back at the oasis? http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-solar-plant-fire-20160520-snap-story.html



Quite a science experiment they have there....I wonder how often PV farms have fires?  I guess the inverters could fail...


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## Doug MacIVER

woodgeek said:


> Quite a science experiment they have there....I wonder how often PV farms have fires?  I guess the inverters could fail...


running out of extended time to get things righted.  another setback, probable they will get another extension of the july,31 deadline!


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## semipro

All because of a mirror focusing error?  Sounds like a scene from a Bond movie.


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## Doug MacIVER

semipro said:


> All because of a mirror focusing error?  Sounds like a scene from a Bond movie.


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...031BCEE5DAD8EB88309A031BCEE5DAD8E&FORM=VRDGAR


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## semipro

Doug MacIVER said:


> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...031BCEE5DAD8EB88309A031BCEE5DAD8E&FORM=VRDGAR


Impressive props even for a bond movie. 
I love how Bond estimates a generated temp of 3500 F based only on watching the system operate.


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## begreen

The cheesy background props like the data tape decks are hilarious.


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## begreen

An agricultural change to more sustainable practices may be more practical in the short term. No till, cover crop farming can sequester a lot of CO2. Reducing usage of fossil fuel based fertilizers and world consumption of beef will also help. No till, cover crop farming also reduces the loss of precious top soils, labor and fossil fuels for tilling. 
https://www.geneticliteracyproject....benefits-so-why-do-organic-farmers-reject-it/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ing-is-on-the-rise-thats-actually-a-big-deal/


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## Doug MacIVER

the miracle has arrived! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china...vbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDVklEMDZfMQRzZWMDc2M-


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