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Now's The Time To Switch to Alternative Energy
As Robert Redford writes
this week:
Thursday, May 20, 2010, marks one month
since BP's oil rig exploded in the Gulf Coast ....
This is the
clearest picture we could have of our failed national energy policy --
which extends over many decades and administrations.
It's not just the one BP oil rig. For example, since the Deepwater
Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20th, the Obama
administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27
exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil
exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. Then there are the
12 new oil and gas drilling rigs launched in the U.S. this
week.
And a whistleblower who survived the Gulf oil
explosion claims
in a lawsuit that BP's operations at another oil platform risk
another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the Gulf oil spill,
partly because BP never even reviewed critical engineering designs for
the operation. And see this.
Indeed,
if Alan
Greenspan, John
McCain, George
W. Bush, Sarah
Palin and others
are right, the costs of our failed energy policy might be much
higher, as it would include
various military costs as well.
And the Department of Defense also apparently has some issues with
extensive off-shore drilling for security
reasons.
Many still believe that alternative energy is an expensive,
unrealistic pipe dream.
But that is no longer necessarily true, especially when the externalities of
environmental and military costs are taken into account.
Technological
Breakthroughs
As
I have previously pointed out:
One of the world's leading experts on
trend forecasting says that producing our own energy for our homes and
cars (called "micro generation") will become a huge trend in the next couple of decades.
What's he
talking about?
Well, energy and food prices will keep going up.
Every dollar we don't have to pay to the energy utility or food
producers is a dollar we get to keep. And the technology for
producing it ourselves is getting better and better.
So
increasingly over the next couple of decades, we will generate our own
energy and food.
***
Due
to high oil prices, major breakthroughs in energy production are
happening every day.
For
example:
- A scientist has figured out how to make and store energy by splitting
water with sunlight. He says:
"You've made your house into a fuel station [and we can get] rid of all
the ... grids" [he's recently discovered an even
cheaper way to do this]
- A new generation of highly-efficient
wind turbines (and see this) is being
introduced which can produce much more energy
- And
new approaches to solar energy [see below] are making residential solar
very cost-competitive
- It has been discovered that
alcohol made from donuts, grass and other abundant materials can run
cars and all other engines [see below]With recent
breakthroughs, individuals can now generate enough energy to get off
the grid and power their own homes. Indeed, some companies will even provide the equipment for you
(and see this).
Indeed,
an new government study shows that North Sea wind and wave power could
make Britain the "Saudi
Arabia of renewable energy". For more on microgeneration and solar
energy breakthroughs, see this,
this,
this
and this.
Moreover,
Japan and other countries are funding large-scale projects to place
solar collectors in orbit, and then send clean energy to Earth.
And
as I've written before, alcohol has more alternative energy
applications than you might know:
There's a
secret history regarding alcohol that you won't hear on the six
o'clock news:
- Cars and everything else running on
internal combustion engines can run on alcohol at least as well as they
can run on gasoline. Indeed, engines were built back in 1870
that could run using either alcohol or gasoline"Autoists
Discuss Alcohol As Fuel; Great Future Ahead For Use In Commercial
Wagons, Says Prof. Lucke. Tests With Motor Truck E.R. Hewitt Tells
Engineers Of His Results With Gasoline And Alcohol In Same Engine"
- Henry Ford said that alcohol was "a cleaner, nicer, better
fuel for automobiles than gasoline" (James Brough, The Ford Dynasty: An
American Story, p. 118, and cited in "Ford - The Men and the
Machine", p. 365). The Model T Ford had a knob right on the dashboard
to adjust the fuel-air mixture for either alcohol or gas
- Alcohol does not corrode or shorten the lifespan of modern
cars, and an inexpensive adjustment to regular cars will make them run
smoothly and inexpensively on alcohol***
Moreover,
those in the know actually are
using alcohol as a fuel today. For example, there are many
millions of cars being driven in Brazil that run on alcohol.And
many government and car fleets are actually required to be able to
run on either alcohol or gas. The car companies simply forgot to tell
the American consumer that these kind of cars are available. See this and this.
Indeed,
as I've previously noted, running equipment using alcohol should not
increase food prices:
The leading proponents of alcohol
as fuel are not talking about corn. Corn is a lousy crop for making
alcohol, and there
are many other crops that are much more efficient. Indeed, the
leaders in this field promote growing a wide variety of crops
(appropriate for whatever specific climate you live in) , and many of
the crops they suggest are also valuable food crops.And you
don't even need to use plants . . . you can make alcohol fuel out of rotten fruit, stale soft drinks or donuts.
And as I pointed
out last year:
Heat
can be used to generate electricity. This is true not only on the
industrial scale, but even on the level of your home faucet. Indeed,
inventors have already built home faucet kits which turn the unused heat
from your hot water into electricity.In hot climates, black
thermal-electric mats could be installed on roofs to generate
electricity.Heat is a byproduct of other processes, and so
nothing special needs to be done to create it. Just about every human
activity and many natural processes create heat, so we just have to
utilize it.***
Another use of a free, wasted byproduct
to generate electricity is piezo-electric
energy. "Piezo" means pressure. Anything that produces pressure
can produce energy.
For example, a train station in Japan
installed piezo-electric equipment in the ground, so that the foot
traffic of those walking through the train station generates electricity
(turnstiles at train, subway and ferry stations, ballparks and
amusement parks can also generate electricity).
Similarly, all
exercise machines at the gym or at home can be hooked up to produce
electricity.
But perhaps the greatest untapped sources of
piezo-electric energy are freeways and busy roads. If piezo-electric
mats were installed under the busiest sections, the thousands of tons of
vehicles passing over each day would generate massive amounts of
electricity for the city's use.
***
Scientists have figured
out that solar
collection is much more efficient if you focus the sunlight:
And see this.***
One
day, virtually every surface will be turned into an energy-production
medium. Instead of having discreet energy-producing machines, roofs,
exterior walls, sidewalks, roads and many other surfaces will be
coated with "smart materials" which convert light, heat, pressure and
other inputs into useful energy, which are then collected, stored and
distributed as needed.Hundreds or thousands of years in the
future, mankind might even learn how to collect the virtual particles
which are constantly popping into and out of existence.Harvesting The Ocean of Energy
Perhaps
the biggest evolution needed in people's thinking - in any area of
life - is how we think about energy.
The current paradigm is that
energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations
through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and
manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we
the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a
lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't
question the methods or results of their energy production.Our
life will become much better when we begin to understand that energy
is all around us - as an ocean of electromagnetic forces and as a
byproduct of other processes in the form of heat, pressure, etc. - and
all we need do is learn how to harvest it.The Gulf oil
spill disaster must not be in vain.We must use it to finally
find the vision and the will to make the switch to alternative energy.
Note: While energy conservation is not as sexy as
generation, it is worth noting that power usage in American buildings could be reduced by 50%,
largely by programming
unused appliances to be shut off.
Moreover, approximately 6.5% of all power transmitted in the U.S. is
lost through transmission line losses and other inefficiencies every year. By improving
the efficiency of transmission lines, energy conservation can be greatly
improved. There is alot of money to be made by those who can invent more efficient electricity transmission systems.
- advertisements -
DOE funds and pursues projects with large "flash" factor. Tell them that you can build a reverse nano-reactor based on bucky balls and self assembled monolayers to pico-manufacture nanobots, and they will give you the world. Tell them the solution is to run cars on NG while you work on a battery, and they yawn.
Exactly. Although I have to admit, the nanotechnology has the potential to pan out nicely
Crab cake and Rebel--------- thank you for the accurate insite. The prospects are out there but you gotta pay attention to detail as outlined by these two contributors. Remember, California is a "different" place with many varied ideas and Hollywierd types. Like the current budget crisis, all do not play out well.
Thank you, and Hulk has had some very good insight as well. I have an uneasy feeling I have met him in real life. OK, no more comments from me on alternative energy.
You just reminded me of a study, done at Oak Ridge, on the results of coal combustion. very readable and is a must read
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
As time goes on, we will be forced to burn more coal, not less.Any talk by the present administration of reducing coal power generation is a fiction, as is clean coal..
Dr Patrick Moore, founder of greenpeace, has some very level headed thoughts on our above discussions. Best I have ever heard, in fact.
http://www.greenspirit.com/home.cfm
Y'all need a reality check here, people !
Alcohol as motor fuel - I am SOooo sick of having to debunk this old hippie mantra.
Alcohol is a lousy fuel for a piston engine! Low specific energy to begin with, hygroscopic as hell, high latent heat of vaporization, requires very high compression ratios to obtain its' best efficiency, (which means that no, you can't also burn gasoline in that engine at peak efficiency), costs a lot to produce, production takes up farmland that is needed to grow foodstuffs, doesn't ship well, (did I mention it's hygroscopic as hell?).
Hydrogen as a fuel? If anyone moved in next door to me with a hydrogen-fueled car, I've sell up and move away, pronto! Gaseous hydrogen has to be stored under very high pressure. Any hydrogen leakage creates a potential bomb that's even more energetic than natural gas. Every see a house that was exploded by a natural gas leak? I have. Parts could be picked up three blocks away. And natural gas is delivered at just a few PSI. Hydrogen has to be stored at hundreds or even thousands of PSI to get enough of it into a tank to make it useful. (And BTW that tank is heavy.) There is a convenient way of storing hydrogen that's much safer - bind the hydrogen into a molecule that's liquid and room temperature and normal pressure. Oh, but that would be, (wait for it) gasoline!
That said, I'm all for micro-generation. I hate paying the electric bill, and of course having grown up in hurricane country, I learned to be prepared to go without the grid for anything up to to weeks. I'd go 100% off-grid right now, but I CAN'T AFFORD IT! The cost of the necessary equipment would pay my electric bill for the rest of my life! Even if I were to do a lot of the design and building myself, which I can do, since I'm a retired engineer. Indeed, I once built a micro-hydro generator, and a small wind turbine generator, too. Back in the dope-smokin' '70s before all this became so cool. Neither one could supply enough to run my refrigerator reliably.
Seems like ZH has a well blowout of it's own to deal with here - ol' George has drilled in to a high-pressure pocket of irrationality, (i.e. Robert Redford) and the blowout preventer has failed.
here's some more hippy turds for ya merlin -- coffee grinds!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6xuDY6MFN4&feature=PlayList&p=959CA4D076...
"Indeed, I once built a micro-hydro generator, and a small wind turbine generator, too. Back in the dope-smokin' '70s before all this became so cool. Neither one could supply enough to run my refrigerator reliably."
You're a sucky engineer. Take a refigerator. Glue some stiff mylar laminated insulation on it for extra insulation. Tack on linoleum or counter top material for appearance. Gut it replace the cooling system with a 24 volt high efficiency sytem and you got a refigerator that uses as little as 1 to 2 kw a day. 300 to 400 watts of panels will run it with 24 volts 100 amp hour batteries. The way it works best is to bend the centralized system over screw it over in huge ways. Super small installations that are not at all completely self reliant but only use the grid rarely. If people would just generate 25 percent of thier own power it would take enough load off the grid to make thier choices of small wires with tons of losses and a wacked out power factor less of a problem. Using the grid for only pure resistive loads such as water heating and electric house heating would destroy 50 percent of all power waste in america.
Wind energy patterns can be TAILORED to meet your area. They got turbine profiles that can produce massive amounts of energy at low wind speeds. They look exactly like the turbine in a turbocharger but with higher curving and steep profiles. I looked at wind and solar charts all over the world. It's weird. 9 place out of 10 when they don't have sun have wind. When they don't have wind they have sun. You have to use both even in deserts and you have to have solar even in cloudy prone regions.
The reason renewable is so shunned by corporate america is it CAN'T be effectively centralized. Huge windfarms suck. Huge solar installs suck. Decentralized it's not so bad. But that leaves you with tons of factories, tons of suppliers and competition and a thriving economy. Something the system hates. It likes huge contracts, huge business from one or two sources and the ability to manipulate by centralizing supply and laughing at everyone while it charges some people double and other people half and harks about the favored being smarter and better and more "capable".
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-results.html
Nice article. I'd rather see them do articles about how if your a woman over 40 don't leave your husband. You'll have a better chance at being attacked by a terrorist than finding love again. You know public service stuff like that about the harsh cold realities of leaving big oil and monopoly electric.
well all we need is some slave labor to get everyone onto alternative energy... give up a generation for the good of humanity! :)
junk if you wish but if we choose to believe AlGorey, etal's version of green, this is exactly what's going to happen.
Merlin12
In the late seventies I was a college journalist. I interviewed R. Buckminster Fuller.
He stated that during WW2 they ran two engines, a Ford and a Chrysler, on alcohol for a year. He claimed that Alcohol was %40 more efficient. He stated that the expense of retooling present, the 40's, factories to produce those engines was prohibitive.
Somewhere I have the tape.
The cost of the necessary equipment would pay my electric bill for the rest of my life!
To be blunt, that's because you are old.
You are right, you can't do it, you don't have the time, strength, or resources anymore. I'm sorry for you.
I can't afford not to evolve. This world has it out for the lower middle class, and I'm not going gently. I've run the numbers, and I can get it done, and I can get it done with 3 or more paid off rental properties generating constant return from nearby colleges to boot. I will own everything outright. I can't afford to count on SS/Medican't. I need low expenditure, and constant lifetime income. I'm going to make that happen.
Merlin,
Your comments are insightful on hydrogen. Add to it, that hydrogen burns transparently. For a small leak, a small hydrogen fire can not be seen, unless it catches something like your house on fire. Hence, you can walk into a hydrogen fire and not know it, until you notice your clothes and hair on fire. Hydrogen is a small atom, and hence has a propensity to leak, no matter what you do. Hydrogen anywhere in or near the home would be a disaster, with today's storage technology.
You folks need to understand that near freedom is possible.
There are people that build EarthShips in Arizona and Colorado. They are self sufficient. They were designed, originally, for use in mountainous areas where the grid (water/power/phone/etc..) was not accessible.
Granted, they were mostly built by hippies with tires and twigs, but it doesn't discount from the idea. Even in the most arid regions, a recycling cistern system will work, to say nothing of the rest of the US where cistern rainwater only systems could easily provide all water needs. Rammed earth burmed S facing structures, with S facing windows, and thick load bearing walls provide a much decreased need for climate control. The front of the house is basically a green house. With a prepared site, a few acres can easily provide all the energy one needs from solar and solar thermal arrays, and wind generation.
If you haven't seen these, then you should. MagLev VAWT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Qs2gFlt-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGSlzj99pWc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45pouokCu9A
Near freedom is possible. You don't have to have a mortgage. You don't have to pay for water and electricity. You don't have to pay store prices for quality produce. You can do this and not change your lifestyle in any meaningful way, right now.
What people don't realize is that, while perpetual motion may not be possible in our reality, near perpetual motion is. In fact near perpetual is just fine because our earth is a a dynamo. Every harvestable change in nature is a modable source of power to kickstart near perpetual maglev power generators. (rivers, sun, wind, tides, volcanos, etc..) Perpetual is to say they are such that in practicality they just need a starter, and maintenance.
Here are some pictures of EarthShip designs. Google it.
http://api.ning.com/files/Fsd24G8aUv-JUz3FmctsJD9OQzaN2V6r1XV3-MyZiQCyH9...
http://kwarearealestate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/brighton-earthship.jpg
http://www.architectstudio3d.org/AS3d/images/people_nautilus.jpg
http://www.dennisweaver.com/earthship/Earthship_exterior.gif
http://www.chromasomatic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/brighton_ea...
Some of you folks on this site have money. My wife and I have a dream to achieve one of these structures for retirement in the next 25-30 years. If you have, could get, or could reasonably finance your independence from the grid, right now, why wouldn't you? I'm sorry but a lot of you are crazy. You could be independent right now, start a new life that costs virtually nothing, do whatever you want. It makes me sad that people don't see what's right in front of them. People bitch all day long about this and that, and they could be free men. Get out of the system.
word
The only thing alcohol fuels in my household is hangovers but I'm open to alternatives. Can you power HVAC with pot? That would take care of the yellowing on my fingertips. I read somewhere that we'll have all the solar energy we need once Exxon gets title to the sun.
There's a few things everyone should know about so called "alternative" energies, before taking the plunge:
Solar, in Spain (roughly = Cali), costs ~5x "regular" energy; in Germany, ~8x.
Wind also costs more and generally produces when least needed (night); also, its death toll among wild birds (many, "protected") is rampant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RcTjdY1aN4
Each "green" job costs 2+ "regular" jobs.
By 2012, the subsidies alone, will have costed Spain a total of ~20 billion euros:
Food for thought:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/leaked-spanish-report-obamas-model-green-ec...
Or ask the french:
http://www.science-et-vie.com/AnciensSV/1086.asp
dutch:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-results.html
danish:
http://www.windaction.org/?module=uploads&func=download&fileId=1889
or the scots:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/ice-tossing-turbines-myth-o...
Price of energy ($/kWh) - 2007:
0.3237 Denmark
0.2731 Holland
0.2529 Italy
0.2261 Ireland
0.2205 UK
0.2124 Germany
0.2041 Portugal
...
0.1647 Spain
0.1515 France
...
0.1135 Greece
...
0.1002 US
...
0.0676 Canada
(wind power isn't cheap...)
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/nppdf/free/2007/key_stats_2007.pdf
etc.
Obviously, right now everyone is (rightfully) concerned with you-know-what, but later on, when it's time to put a price on "green"?
One issue in comparing energy cost is figuring out the indirect subsidized cost of petroleum. A certain % of our military budget is a subsidy for oil which isn't in a per barrel price or in the pump price. Has anyone figured out the socialized component cost of petroleum products? It would help apples to apples comparisons.
t n t--I ran the numbers for Rochester, NY when their City Council was dreaming of putting in solar electricity to power city hall. Using 1% interest rate, neglect all O&M costs, and use solar data for upstate NY, the capacity needed was 10x the demand and the payback period was 104 years. Good work if you can get it and fund it with other peoples' money.
- Ned
It is in the end all about the cost to produce and the cost to operate. If that cost can't win in the energy game. YOU GET BEAT.
When and if the costs come down, we will have alternative energy. Until then, guess who will get FED support.
Just that the you in get beat, at the moment, is the consumer/taxpayer who gets to pick the tab of keeping this XracketX "market" running, even thou it has no viability whatsoever in any foreseeable future.
And lets not forget that oil companies started researching alternative energies (solar, bio, etc.) since the oil crisis back in the 70s (that's when and why BP changed its logo to present 'sunflower') - if there was any semi-honest money to be made in this market, there would be no chance anyone else getting in, even less, as late to the game as these XpimpsX punks are.
edit: line-through not working?
Where is thorium in your analysis?
Who's using it?
Like many here, I am a proponent of alternative energy. So much so, in fact, that my house runs on a solar array and a wind turbine. At present, I produce 150% of the energy I consume in the home (balance is put back to the grid).
While I was against the recent stimulus package, one wonders if you were going to blow a trillion dollars, whether it might have made more sense to simply use that entire amount to retrofit homes to solar and wind energy. A trillion would have gone a long way to providing a viable alternative energy infrastructure in the country, and would have created real and sustainable domestic jobs.
As much as I like solutions like wind and solar, a closer examination reveals that they are not technologically capable of significantly reducing our need for fossil fuels. The challenge is that the nation's power infrastructure has to be sized for peak demand, not average demand. When people get up in the morning, and it is dark, and they turn on their ovens to cook breakfast, wind, solar, or wind and solar can not be counted on to meet the demand. Since, the sun does not shine at night, and the wind does not always blow. True, the wind is always blowing somewhere, but it is not always blowing enough where the turbines are. Hence, when a wind farm is brought online, you really don't get to shut down a coal plant. Bringing on a 10 Mwatt wind farm would reduce the need for a traditional fossil fuel generator by only 2 Mwatt. You would not need to run the fossil fuel plant while it is windy, but is has to be there for those occasions when the wind is not enough in the right places at times of high demand. While the fossil fuel plant might be able to run less, it still has to be staffed, and hence you are paying for the wind farm and the fossil fuel plant at the same time.
What is desperately needed is a drastic improvement in battery technology or other storage technology. Presently, batteries are improving at something like 5% per year, and an order of magnitude improvement is needed to make wind and solar viable on a large scale. A better battery is also the key to a practical electric vehicle.
Perhaps the government should demand that the Department of Energy actually start working on energy, and to take the $28 Billion per year they are getting, and use their "crown jewel" national laboratories, and actually create a breakthrough in battery technology. Give them three years, shut them down if they do not do it. They have the technical horsepower to do it, but lack the will or the mission.
wish i had that wind trubine !!!!!!!!! the hell with arab oil !!!!!!!!!!!!!! long fire wood for my 2 wood stoves !!!!!!!!!!! more money for silver and gold and yes some art !!!!!!!!! tax free baby !!!!!!!!!
Yep, need to get our peak energy demands met first. Any money left over and if it makes sense, then so called alternative sources.
You are correct, the DOE needs to get focused on energy or turned off. currently, less than 50 million a year (actually less) for battery research, which is a joke...
And the $50 million is primarily a scattered set of ill conceived and poorly coordinated science fair projects.
Exactly. Friend of mine is a battery researcher at the DOE and he thinks the whole program is a joke. Which is too bad because this fellow in a serious program could do some real good...
While always the optimist, even I wonder if the DOE could be salvaged. When Bell Labs managed the National Labs, they were really something. When taken over by Big Defense Contractor they each day look more and more like DMV or post office.
Certain government research centers are designated "national labs". They are all independent entities. Most are run by universities: Argonne National Lab run by Univ. of Chicago, Oak Ridge National Lab run by Univ. of Tennessee, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab run by University of California, Berkeley, Jet Propulsion Lab run by Caltech, etc.
Only Sandia (and its former subsidiary Lawrence Berkeley Nat. Lab) was run by AT&T. In 1992, AT&T decided it no longer wanted to run Sandia and Lockheed Martin took over. Sandia was always a weapons lab (an offshoot of Los Alamos) so having a defense company run it seems appropriate.
enjoyed your guys exchange very much. "The energy crisis we presently face is the most serious problem ever faced by humankind." You said it Hulk. All that money we are throwing at criminal bankers, wars and whores, when our entire energy and focus should be on this. The biggest challenge we've ever faced and so far our biggest failure. I think it's a little ironic when folks say that an alternative isn't "economically viable" as if we have a choice, as if we make the time line, as if we're actually going to discover or develp a resource as cheap as the stuff that took millions of years to form and a hundred to draw out. Last time I checked, mother nature and peak resource draws the line and we're the ones who walk it. We could spend the next twenty years tinkering, invading and lying when we should be building the structures now and because were not, it's going to be ugly
Spot on Davey. Think about those derivative bets we paid off for AIG alone.
180 billion big ones could have gone along way and put folks to work on energy
One of the guys I work with is one of the leading solar researchers in the country. We have had quite a few conversations. I wrote up on my white board a simple calculation for him, which just about knocked him over. I simply multiplied the energy density of gasoline, 33kwh/gallon * the number of gallons of gasoline used in california in a year, which is 7,300,000,000 gallons (20 million gallons a day)= 240,900,000,000 kwh of energy used each year in california alone just for gas.
The solar eq energy costs would be:
8 bucks a watt installed cost for solar
240,900,000,000 kwh / 8760 hours * $8/watt * 1000w/kw = $220,000,000,000
Thats pretending its noon 24 hours a day and that we have energy storage capabilities, which it isn't and we don't
Your facts are all correct. Your avatar is giving me the creeps, along with the precision of your words. Please tell me you do not have a black helicopter. I was just kidding, honest. I love the National Labs.
The national labs pretty much mirror the rest of the country...sad
Here's your battery right here.
Hmm, uses platinum catalyst, hmm. Many hmm's....
Well, lookee here ...
Not to rain on your parade GW, but these discoveries happen all the time. I work at one of the national labs and getting these things from the laboratory to the real world is as rare as a balanced budget. The energy crisis we presently face is the most serious problem ever faced by humankind.We really needed to get focused on it 30 years ago, but we didn't. It is really too late now. The magnitude of this problem is that big...
Building hundreds of nuclear plants and converting our cars to NG should have been well underway at this point. along with massive conservation efforts and designing our cities so that car driving could be kept to an absolute minimum...
Yes! Conservation first, NG cars as we look for a practical battery, and (gasp) nuclear to provide round the clock stable, affordable power. There probably is a solution without nuclear, but back to needing a better battery.
I would add to the mix, distributed, home based solar and wind.
GW,
Another very interesting technology. The challenge in introducing hydrogen into the mix is the issue of storage of hydrogen. To store reasonable energy (excess solar capacity produced during peak sun) the hydrogen has to be compressed (costs energy, introduces expensive mechanical devices, with associated maintenance costs) and hydrogen is hard to store. Traditional high pressure tanks are subject to a nasty problem called hydrogen embrittlement. Basically, hydrogen, as a small atom, works its way into the atomic structure of the metal, and causes to become brittle, and subject to fatigue, and catastrophic failure. This means your storage tank becomes a bomb waiting to go off. For operations like NASA with unlimited budget, it can be dealt with, but for practical home use, it is just not there yet.
Wow, I hope I dont sound like I am poo-pooing alternative energy. I am only pointing these things out because I want a workable solution, but to get there, we need to understand the challenges, and focus resources on those problems. Today, it is easy to get funding to develop a more efficient solar cell, but solar cell efficiency is not the issue preventing wider scale deployment. The energy storage to load level the 24-48 hours that can occur between peak production and peak use is needed.
There is a power plant in Alabama that stores excess power (generated at off-peak hours) as compressed air in a salt-mine cavity (i.e., in a large cavern underground). A good description of this plant and similar ones in the works can be found at http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/compressed-air-plants:
Note that last part: this isn't on the drawing board, it's been operating for decades.
that's seriously cool shit. thanks jack.
GW,
I am familiar with that technology, and yes it is interesting. There are a number of promising "bench top" demonstrations, but it takes incredible money and infrastructure to go from the bench top to practical deployed systems. As we used to say, you can make anything work once in a lab . . . the real problems come when you try and make practical systems. Yes I believe it can be done, but will not happen on its own. It will take the type of resources that exist at the National Labs.
"Renewable energy" (ex hydro and nuclear) is fraud.
Spanish government sick and tired of the waste
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/spains-gree....
PJTV has alot of good stuff. i don't care for all the religious angles taken by many of the hosts but allan barton's friday economic review show is good. joe hicks is good. and the coverage of the lebanese/syrian/iranian vs. israel showdown is good. oh, and the piece about how any and all words associated with islam or jihad have been erased from national intelligence handbooks etc. is pretty intriguing.
Can you give us an executive summary? What is Spain's energy policy, and what about it is fraudulent?
That's fraudulent because any economy powered by something else than oil grows less competitive.
That's where the fraud lies. The US's made this world order, their responsibility. Or more likely their irresponsibility.