News Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence

[vanesch]

I wrote a long reply to this, and then lost it. So I'll try again...

We don't know what a few centuries from now will be bring. But I do think that current oil price development is not something that drops down shortly, and will perhaps rise to even double the current price of what it is now.

What is sure, is that oil will sooner or later end, but what's nice is that the price is rising already now, so there will be a strong market incentive to find replacements. Look at the discussions about algae for instance. That surely looks promising on paper. Much more so than land-grown biofuels, or electricity, especially electricity from unreliable and expensive alternatives like wind and PV solar, which imply on top of that a totally different transport system (electrical cars and distribution).

Any idea on what that will do for price of living, food, etc?
In that respect, finding alternatives, is something that can not be postponed.
A worldwide recession is - given staggering oil prices, and no ways of replacing oil on the short term, something which could very well be the result of this.
In that respect I think we already rather late in developing real alternatives.

Finding replacements because of a scarce resource doesn't give me any worries: the market will take care of that. It will even be a new economical opportunity, which might stimulate economic growth in a new area. And again, the classical renewables like PV and wind really don't seem very suited to replace oil for transport, because in any case, you have to go through electricity. Once you have coupled (which isn't the case today, and which is a serious difficulty) the oil consumption with the electricity market then we have to look at the possibilities for electricity production in the coming decades. But again, the major difficulty with oil is that electricity cannot immediately help.

I mean we are talking here about technology that mostly deals with efficient usage of storage conversions of energy sources like heat, mechanical or direct sun-light, efficient methods of buffering and distributing them, and it ain't that technological complex as nuclear energy or rocket science, just that the field of application is very broad and very diverse.

There is for the moment, apart from of course fossil fuel (not oil! Coal and gas), only one existing technology which can deliver electricity in large quantities, unrestricted, when we want it, and that is nuclear. Wind and solar are in any case limited: they will not provide for unlimited electricity whenever we want it. You really seem to underestimate that problem.

Let's look at something simple like household energy (which in the hemisphere in which I live is mostly used for heating) which is in this country around 15% of total use of energy.

The techniques for building or adjusting a house in such a way that it's energy needs can be reduced by 40% or more (using EPC or other isolators) and for the rest can be almost completely supplied by capturing the heat from the sun in the summer and store it underground and use that in winter for heating, and vice versa store the cold in winter, and use that for cooling the house in summer, can save you perhaps 70-80% of your total energy usage. Could be supplemented with solar PVC panels for direct electricity needs.
If implemented on a large scale, and built into the house during building, these kind of techniques would pay itself back in perhaps less then 10 years.

This is in fact not true. It might be for new constructions, but it is very difficult to rework existing housing in a cost-effective way for lowering energy consumption. Moreover, I really don't think that we should look for economies of energy usage: we should have electricity flow in large and cheap quantities. It shouldn't be a scarce resource, which will become expensive by definition. Electricity must flow, and be almost too cheap to meter. Then we can take out all the confort it can give us. Of course, if there are cost-effective ways to diminish consumption, that really pay back, then they are a good idea, but they should automatically happen, by market forces. There shouldn't be any need to plan for it. It is sufficient that companies invent and market cheap techniques to save you a significant amount of money, and of course they will be bought. If there is sufficient economic incentive, no need to plan for it: it will happen on its own.

These alternatives have the advantage that the amount of energy that is used within a household can drop down significantly. So less energy that needs to be replaced with other alternatives.
Since oil and gas prices rise tremendously, such technologies will get a boost, and could even get a little extra boost with some government aid (tax reduction or something).

There is absolutely no reason to have government aids for something that has an economic incentive - it would only scew the market and avoid having the best solution.

For cars/transportation, I would suggest that an electic car is a good substitute. 3/4 of all your transportation is within short distance range (100 km or so), so for those situations, an electric car and current battery technique will fit. For longer transport: the alternatives are bus/train or hire a car (perhaps bio fueled).
Seems to me a reasonable alternative, and the chinese are already making progres in that area (electric scooter for instance). Unfortunately the electric car which emerged in California couple of year ago, was prematurely killed.

Again, it might be possible to couple the transport sector and the electricity market, but it is far from obvious that this will happen or even can happen soon, and it is absolutely not said that it is the best solution: what do you do when you have invested an enormous quantity of money and resources in electric cars, and then a cheap solution with biofuel (from algae) comes along ? Wouldn't you feel very silly ?

I do think electric cars have an advantage (no direct output of any pollutant, can use green energy, a powerfull engine, and large enough radius for short distances) and is a technology that has potential to replace most fossil fuel for transportation. The only disadvantage would be that current battery technology would not allow for longer travels, but then, changing your battery at the fuelpump could be an option (no wait for loading, just change the battery with a fully loaded one, and off you go), so I don't see a compelling reason why electric car transportation would be undoable.

It is not undoable, but is it the best way to allocate resources ? In any case, if oil becomes expensive (I think it is a very good thing that oil starts already to become expensive) there will be a serious economic incentive to find solutions. They will happen "by themselves". However, we already see here that it would be stupid to LIMIT electricity production, and make it a scarce resource: it would STOP you from looking at electric cars!

For long distance travels, the alternatives are using biofuels or hybrids as well as trains.
Super fast electric train systems could replace most continental flights, which just leaves the intercontinental flights that uses fossil fuels.

Trains are already in place, and they are not the main form of transportation. In fact, our current train network couldn't cope with the flow of traffic that is now taken care of by cars. There's a factor of about 10 missing at least. This means that people have seen the economic and practical advantage of cars over trains. One shouldn't go against the choice of the market. One shouldn't dictate how people should live, but one should provide the means so that people can live the best the way they want themselves.

In my opinion the real danger are economically and is the danger that less fortunate people are not able to keep up with rising prices for basic consumer goods, as oil prices will cause a rise of about any product.

If you are worried about the less economically powerful, then the thing that shouldn't happen is that a resource such as electricity or as transportation, which is a main resource of comfort of living, becomes scarce and hence expensive. You should provide it in large quantities, unrestricted.

So the global warming (although to some extend also a concern) is not the most important, I would guess replacing fossils and avoiding total dependence on less-wanted energy resources like coal/nuclear, is the most important one (and in doing so also contributes to lower CO2 levels).

I really don't see why you associate coal and nuclear here. If CO2 is no problem, then electricity is no problem with coal (except for some extra pollution, but that seems to be socially accepted). It is also possible to turn coal into fuel which can replace oil. So again, there's no issue there. The only reason to worry is if we have to restrict CO2 emissions. If not, really, there is no problem for the next few centuries.

If CO2 is a problem, then that's still not a problem for nuclear. Again, there is absolutely no scarcity in resources for nuclear, given that we already HAVE the stuff that can provide us with plenty of electricity for 600 years at least. So the "fuel" argument really doesn't work for nuclear. It doesn't work for most of coal either, but coal has the CO2 problem.

So the real problem is an economic one, and is basically between either people in poor countries can afford to eat, or we can drive a car, putting it extremely.

That's only a problem with land-grown biofuels. Nor the use of coal-fired plants, but especially not the use of nuclear power plants, stops people far away from eating.

And it is not just about energy, as like said, availability of fresh drink water and food are even more important issues. And to my opinion, certain solar alternatives (like CSP) come with the additonal benefit that can tackle those issues too (provide fresh drink water from sea water, and using dry un-used farm land for bio-fuels/jathropa and later agriculture).

I didn't say that everything has to be nuclear. I say that it is a very good solution to provide us in the foreseeable future (and beyond) with loads of electricity, as much as we want. That wouldn't stop to have specific applications of solar such as desalination, but I really have my doubts about the technological, and economic sense of wind and PV solar. At this point in time, it really doesn't make any sense beyond research and prototyping (which is ALWAYS a good idea), simply because it is confronted with an as of yet unsolved technical difficulty. Proposing it in the place of a reliable source such as nuclear simply doesn't make any sense.

Of course we do not need to build technology for centuries ahead, not implied that, but what IS important is that we need to provide the right direction. If we decide to do more on using real renewables, later generations will get a head start in utilizing that even more efficiently. If on the other hand we choose nuclear, future generations will likely follow that same path.

That is absolutely not certain. But then, nuclear DOES have a path that gives an eternal solution to the (electricity) energy problem: we have current thermal fission, which is up and running since decades, which has an extremely good record of performance, which doesn't have any serious ecological problems, etc... so which is a mature technology. We have fast breeder fission, which has shown technologically workable, and which needs to be prototyped a bit further but which can come online massively in, say 2 decades, and which solves the "uranium fuel provision" for centuries if not millennia, using what was the "waste" of the thermal reactors as new fuel out of which still a hunderdfold more energy can be extracted than was already extracted. This buys us several centuries/millennia to finally put fusion to work. Although I have my doubts in the coming 50 years of the economic and technological feasibility of fusion as a power source, there is absolutely no doubt that one day, it will work. If I give you a millennium, that should be sufficient time to solve the issue. Once fusion is working, we have definitely solved the electricity energy problem, for good. So the nuclear path is not a dead alley at all, on the contrary.

That doesn't mean that there cannot be other paths, and even better paths, but at least, this is an entirely possible way, with a short-term solution based on robust, existing technology, a mid-term (centuries) solution with demonstrated prototypes, but not yet commercially available, and a long term solution of which the principles are known, but no technical demonstration has yet been provided, which has the potential to solve the issues at eternam.

So it is not just what about is available then, but also based on decissions now.
Renewables can be as easy and cheap as nuclear and has advantages that nuclear doesn't have (i.e. could be used on really small scales, the size of a household), if we decide to go that way, and invest money in tackling the technical issues and make it more economic feasible. Neither economically nor technically are there any real obstacles. Building a reliable nuclear fussion reactor would seem to me far more complex and challenging.

If a competing technology is easy, can be done on small scale, is economically more performant etc... then that technology WILL be developed by market forces alone. There's no reason to plan it, there's no reason to subvention it, apart from basic research. It will manifest itself without any problem.

In a market economy, the outcomes are not always what is best, but is mostly based on who can profit the most and who has the most domination. Large scale technologies are easier to exploit and dominate as small scale technologies.

This is absolutely not true. In a free market economy, small scale finds its way much easier than large scale. That is BTW the main disadvantage of nuclear: it cannot scale down, it is huge capital investment. Really, if a genuinely performant small scale solution comes along, in a free market, there's not the slightest bit of doubt that it will rise.

I.e. nuclear would be in the interest of large enterprises. The interest of the consumer are not what counts unfortunately.
Renewables have a far wider range of alternatives, and offer consumer wise a more diverse market. So it's not either coal or nuclear, but available choises are photovoltaic, solar roof, bio-gas, extra thermal isolation, sometimes even windturbine, and for cars, electric, biofuel for small scale use, and an even broader range of alternatives on large scale use. And for each technique a whole range of suppliers to choose from, which is to say that most likely no market domination of just one or small amount of suppliers.

But that is market-wise already possible. It doesn't happen, simply because these technologies, no matter the propaganda around it, are not genuine solutions. One needs huge, unfair subventions to incite people to put a PV panel on their roofs, which then results in more difficulties of regulation for the utilities. Utilities are forced to buy electricity at high prices from these unreliable sources, when they don't need it, and have to provide those same customers with reliable electricity when there's no sunshine. That's a scheme that is absolutely not expandable to large scale.

There won't be much choice when using nuclear to choose between, and which will create dependence some way or the other, which will in turn set back other viable alternatives.

I don't think so. If you have a really cheap and reliable way to provide electricity to your neighborhood, much cheaper than the main utility, then you can set up your utility company, and you will become rich in no time, because you will be able to sell electricity way under the main utility's price and still make a lot of profit. Only, you will have to ensure reliability. If ever such a small scale technology develops, and the market remains free, it will find its way, trust me.

The disadvantages of nuclear are of a different kind, which I already explained.
This at least would mean avoiding that nuclear would become the "only best" alternative. Since it isn't.
There is a hidden price tag there (need some kind of a totalitarian control structure). I am skeptical about the proponents of nuclear energy for shifting forward a different kind of agenda on humanity.

I really don't see what's totalitarian to a very severe regulator agency. These are again those silly ideas of the military industrial complex, and all the green political propaganda, while one doesn't see the green propaganda working towards its own agenda itself: the pseudo-ecological tyranny where only the pseudo-ecological green political correct is allowed, and where one gets intrusions in one's very private sphere, of how one lives, how one travels, what are one's favorite passtimes, how one eats etc..., a far worse form of totalitarianism. The former Belgian green party was "AGALEV" ("anders gaan leven", going to live differently). It was a clear agenda to change the way people had to live, not to protect the environment. Forcing you to change your way of life was the main agenda, and ecology was only the enforcing argument.

And I am not against nuclear. Absolutely not! The sun is all nuclear, but within a safe distance range and with proven reliability of over 4 billion years. We should go for that, no competition there, really!

Exactly: fusion: sun on earth!

This is not a struggle between different species, we are all the same species!

This is off-topic, but struggle for the fittest is exactly intra-species: the fittest get to the next generation

 

[vanesch]

Continuation:

To have alternative energies the most dominant energy source (which is > 50%) within approx. 40-50 years would seem to me a large and difficult enough task, and doable if we really go for that.

As I said, I really don't see why we HAVE TO. There's another path, the nuclear path. I don't STOP you, it might work out. But there's no obvious reason that this is the right path. In fact, for all we see right now, it is NOT the right path in the short term (10-20 years).

China?
India?

Yes, those are the big growing poles, which will probably level off too once they get to our life style, or a similar one. They would be the primary useful users of nuclear, and that's no problem, as both are already nuclear arms states, so there's no proliferation issue. In the same way that there is no proliferation issue in the USA, or in Europe, as there, most countries are or already nuclear weapon states, or really don't have the intention to become one.

To raise the standard of living of all human beings would be my primary goal too, given if possible based on the natural resources we have. But when one needs to decide between either food for the poor or being able to use biofuels for cars, what should be decided?? At least, such decissions involve ethics.

Biofuels shouldn't compete with food, I agree. That's why I didn't like it either, until I saw the stuff on sea-grown algae. But again, in what way does using nuclear power in the West stop people in, say, subsaharian Africa to eat ?

I would think anyone deserves the 'luxory' of having a daily meal, fresh water, healthcare etc. . But not anybody needs to - say - go on holidays in a different continent twice a year.
If the production of luxory items would not hurt anything or anybody, this would not be an issue, but unfortunately that happens to be the case. Which is why we have a science about scarcity, called economics.
Not being able to fly to your favourite vacation spot at the other side of the globe is not going to hurt (it can be replaced with other vacation destinations, with the same amount of fun), but not having access to food does hurt. So, the most economical decission would be to decide what hurts the least.

That's not how economics in a free market works. Economics works in this way: if I produce enough stuff, through my labor or my capital, so that I can afford the means to go twice on a holiday, then I go twice on a holiday. I didn't steal anything that way. I gave stuff, people paid me for it, and I did with that what I wanted. If you don't produce enough to be able to afford to buy food, then you don't buy food. If I would have to give you food, that would mean that you take something you didn't earn, and I didn't get something I earned. This might make me desire less to produce more, and it wouldn't incite you to do much more. It's more important that I produce, as at least I produce a lot of value (otherwise I wouldn't have that money to go on a holiday). I produce value because I want to go on a holiday. If I have to produce stuff, so that YOU can eat, I'm not interested, and overall production goes back. Overall living standard goes behind. In the end, we will both not produce enough to eat, but that's no issue, we'll find a third person from which to take what he earned... and that was then the end of the Soviet Union.
Of course, there needs to be some solidarity. I don't mind that one takes *a little bit* from my stuff to help a *little bit* others. But I don't want them to take away a major part. I earned it. It's mine. I'm only prepared to bear the solidarity that one day I might need myself - see it as a kind of welfare insurance. We're not one big organism. We're individuals, in constant struggle for a better life. Some win, some lose.

I doubt if (blind) market capitalism takes into account such bare facts, and if not, prob. some intervention from governments might be needed.
And I am not being an totalitarian utiliarianist which would want to set the incomes of all people exactly equal, if you work hard, you can earn more money, but there is a sensible bandwith in which income stimulation are reasonable and bandwiths which far exceed that and become pervertish.

Well, I guess you understood I'm only willing so much to share. I do think that I shouldn't take away the food of a poor guy in Somalia. But I don't think I owe him a meal, either. I don't mind some solidarity. But not my two holidays a year!

See it this way: if now, some people can go on two holidays a year, and others don't have food, should we: have all people eat enough, but nobody go on a holiday anymore ? Or should we try to create more wealth, such that in the future, some people can go 5 times on a holiday, more people than today can go two times on a holiday, and, well, some will still not have enough to eat ? I definitely go for the second option. Because the first won't lead anybody, anymore to go on a holiday, ever. It isn't even guaranteed that we will have food for everybody in the long term, either. Because nobody will be motivated at all to create more wealth.

Not all countries are like Sweden or France.

Nuclear installation in N Korea and Iran already invoke much resistence.
Would you welcome N Korea and Iran to built more nuclear installations?

No. I agree that nuclear power is only a solution in several countries, which, BTW, are exactly those that consume most. I think nuclear is a very good option for the US, for Europe, for Russia, for China, for India. Those places which are problematic can use other means, like coal, oil, whatever. There will be more than enough if they remain the only users, until the political problem is solved.

BTW, it would be entirely possible to have nuclear power in Iran without even any proliferation issue, if the fuel were to be provided and taken back by a more reliable nation, or an international group. That was BTW one of the propositions done to Iran.

Summary of the points I want to defend:
- nuclear is a good option for electricity production. It might not be the only one in the future, or even the best, but only the future will tell. At least there's an entirely feasible path from short term / middle term / long term for energy provision through nuclear, so at least this is not a dead alley.
- electricity should be provided in large, cheap, reliable quantities, without any restriction on use. People should be able to use cheap energy in every way they like. One shouldn't force them into any form of ecolo-tyranny.
- if small scale, cheap, reliable energy provision becomes possible in one or other way, the market will act in such a way that this will be used.
- the last kind of techniques might come from renewables, and maybe not. There is no a priori reason why we should go to renewables, but if they devellop efficiently under market forces, then that's fine.
- for the moment, oil consumption and electricity production are separated.
- it is only in the case of CO2 worries that we have a problem with fossil fuels such as coal, because there's no scarcity of it for the moment. Oil is a different matter. In any case, there's no problem of scarcity with nuclear.

 

[mheslep]

...It's a pretty dangerous fuel, you know.

So is gasoline.

 

[vanesch]

So is gasoline.

I thought, I can be wrong, but that hydrogen is much more detonation-prone than gasoline.

 

[russ_watters]

So is gasoline.

Gasoline is nowhere close to hydrogen in terms of danger level.

 

[sketchtrack]

Only because hydrogen is so bad ***. Shouldn't we be upgrading our future energy to something more powerful rather than downgrading to weak electric cars that can't even come close to performing near as good as what we already have?

 

[mheslep]

I thought, I can be wrong, but that hydrogen is much more detonation-prone than gasoline.

Gasoline is nowhere close to hydrogen in terms of danger level.

There's a good argument that H is safer than gas though the risks are different.
Gas/H fuel leak comparison
Swain: "Fuel Leak Simulation"
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/30535be.pdf
Skip to the pics at the end.

Yes H2 has a comparitively low energy of detonation (14x less than natural gass), however, it is difficult to concentrate H2 at levels high enough to detonate. H2 ignition requires 4x higher concentration than gasoline vapor, otherwise H2 won't explode at all.
Also:
H 14x lighter than air, natural gas only 1.7x lighter
H 4x more diffusive than natural gas, 12x more than gasoline fumes
Thus leaking H disperses rapidly up and away from its source.
H2 emiits 1/10 radiant heat of an HC fire and burns 7% cooler than gasoline.
H2 emits no CO2 or smoke.
Explosive power 22x weaker per unit volume, H2 vs gasoline fumes

 

[B. Elliott]

IMO, I don't believe the vehicle test they conducted was a good comparison. The Hydrogen vehicle on the left obviously didn't catch fire due to the 'leaking line' being aimed directly up and away from the vehicle. The vehicle with the gasoline leak was obviously intended to catch fire due to where the people that were conducting the test, chose to spring the leak.

What if the hydrogen powered vehicle had a leak in the exact same spot as the gasoline powered vehicle? Since hydrogen burns upward, it would have also caused the vehicle to burn to the ground.

 

[tmc]

The hydrogen leak was put in the single most dangerous spot, as said in the article. The effect you see (hydrogen leaking such that it leaves the vehicle, whereas fuel stays under the middle of the vehicle) seems to simply be due to good design in building a hydrogen car.

 

[sketchtrack]

Natural gas is a fossil fuel. If the exercise is to get away from fossil fuels, then that's not acceptable, is it ? If the exercise is not to get away from fossil fuels, then what's the problem with coal ? Now, of course, if you'd only need natural gas for say, 5% or 10% of the time, I wouldn't mind. If you need natural gas 50% of the time, then there is a problem: you have designed a system that relies for a serious part on fossil fuels. You only diminished its consumption, but you didn't solve the issue.

As to making hydrogen and using it in gas turbines, you will then see that this lowers seriously the overall efficiency of the alternatives (so that you have to install more of it), increases also the cost (you have to have your hydrogen factory, and your turbines).

I don't think we already have a lot of cars that can run on hydrogen. It's a pretty dangerous fuel, you know.

Natural Gas Turbines are much much cleaner than coal, and they are the most efficient way to convert fossil fuel into energy. Add to that the fact that we have here in the U.S. much much more natural gas than oil, and it seams to me that Natural Gas is going to be the stuff until we get our hydrogen technology advanced enough.

 

[sketchtrack]

As to making hydrogen and using it in gas turbines, you will then see that this lowers seriously the overall efficiency of the alternatives (so that you have to install more of it), increases also the cost (you have to have your hydrogen factory, and your turbines).

Their is so much wind in the mid west, that a very large amount of hydrogen could be generated just out of waste energy. Since there is so much wind energy, more than the mid west needs, why not use the extra to generate hydrogen, then with the massive stores, gas turbines could run on it just to stabilize the flow through the grid.

 

[mheslep]

Natural gas is a fossil fuel. If the exercise is to get away from fossil fuels, then that's not acceptable, is it ? If the exercise is not to get away from fossil fuels, then what's the problem with coal ? Now, of course, if you'd only need natural gas for say, 5% or 10% of the time, I wouldn't mind. If you need natural gas 50% of the time, then there is a problem: you have designed a system that relies for a serious part on fossil fuels. You only diminished its consumption, but you didn't solve the issue...

I think the exercise is to a) lessen energy dependence on bad actors and b) keep some reasonable lid on the pollutants from fossil fuels until technology provides something better. Neither of these goals requires the elimination of fossil fuel use in the near future. In the meantime, per unit of energy natural gas used in CCGT is much more efficient that coal, releases much less carbon, and is much cleaner (mercury, radioactivity, etc).

 

[vanesch]

I think the exercise is to a) lessen energy dependence on bad actors and b) keep some reasonable lid on the pollutants from fossil fuels until technology provides something better. Neither of these goals requires the elimination of fossil fuel use in the near future. In the meantime, per unit of energy natural gas used in CCGT is much more efficient that coal, releases much less carbon, and is much cleaner (mercury, radioactivity, etc).

It is true that natural gas is not polluting. On the contrary, the CO2 exhaust per KWh is about half of the CO2 exhaust per KWh for coal.

Problem in Europe: the gas comes from Russia, and it is sometimes used as a political lever. Gasprom is not immediately your most attractive business partner.

 

[WarPhalange]

Can't you just do what we did and invade Russia? I mean, in their case, they really have WMD!

 

[mheslep]

Just getting back to this ...

My numbers of total capacity and average consumption were off, but they were just there to illustrate the point. The point is that intermittent sources are sometimes at 0%. I'm not talking about peak demand by these sources, I'm saying that peak demand can coincide with them delivering 0%. So you have to be able to cope with peak demand exactly at the moment when your renewables are at 0%, in other words, you have to have a fully operational grid that can work without the renewables, concerning capacity. If you have in your grid enough buffer capacity to take over peak demand with 0% from renewables, then that means that that network can work entirely without renewables. It can maybe accept input from these renewables, but it can work without.

At the large network scale were discussing here it never goes to zero. Denmark's wind never goes to zero. Denmark's wind w/ Scandanavian hydro (both renewables) never goes anywhere near. The larger the network and the more diverse (different renewables) the less variable is the entire system.

Moreover, even with renewables, it WILL still take over the majority production.

Thats counter to the trends. Small, diverse renewable is growing faster than big centralized anything else.

So my question is now, why would we then annoy ourselves with these renewables ? If we have a clean way (say, with biofuel) to have an entire grid functioning without it - and as we have seen, that's necessary - why don't we simply stop there ? Why go bother with intermittent things ? The only thing they will contribute is a lowering of the average load factor of the rest of the network, and a lowering of the consumption of biofuel, but it will still be a minority contribution. So why go through the investment, and the pain of regulating, those renewables in that case ?

Because its cheaper. The cost of firming up a renewable like wind by contracting with other suppliers like hydro or idle gas turbine is known, it adds 10-20% to the overall cost of wind per kWhr. The firmed up wind is still cheaper than fossil + carbon tax, and in the US in 2008 its a lot cheaper than nuclear if one has the wind:

In October, Moody's Investor Service estimated total overnight costs of a new nuclear plant, including interest, would be between $5,000 and $6,000 per kilowatt

from here
http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/ebi_detail.cfm?id=525
and many other places quote the Moody's report.

These nuclear costs may indeed be needlessly inflated by US regulation. If someone can show a viable political path for getting the cost of US nuclear competitive, I'm all for at least some percentage increase in nuclear capacity. For now, the costs are what they are and dismissing them is hand waving.

 

[OmCheeto]

Funny how Mr. Pickens has stolen my (et al) idea.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19786522466

Does this mean that it is now OK for economists, investors, and other Pickens type billionaires now to come on board to this idea?

 

[vanesch]

Just getting back to this ...
At the large network scale were discussing here it never goes to zero. Denmark's wind never goes to zero. Denmark's wind w/ Scandanavian hydro (both renewables) never goes anywhere near. The larger the network and the more diverse (different renewables) the less variable is the entire system.

Ok, but if we now take Denmark + Sweden as a single "grid entity" which we should, then the wind fraction drops down to less than 10% in the grid (I didn't take the pain to look up relative contributions). Also Sweden is exceptional (a bit like Canada) with a geography extremely favorable to hydro, and Denmark is exceptional for wind (it's one of the best places in the world for that). So the Denmark-Sweden couple is about the utmost top quality you can find.

And it's not running smoothly:
http://www.saveoursomerset.com/windturbinefacts.htm (ok, this is an anti-wind activist cite, I just found it by googling a bit) and
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html

In fact, the Danes now plan to have electric cars on wind:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23832749/

where they plan to use the excess electricity to charge cars. On windless days, it will be on coal.

Not that there ARE days without wind power in Denmark.

Thats counter to the trends. Small, diverse renewable is growing faster than big centralized anything else.
Because its cheaper.

I wonder whether it is REALLY cheaper, or that there are just so many regulations (like the utility having to buy your wind power back at 2 am when they already have a surplus at a high price, and installation subventions etc...).

The cost of firming up a renewable like wind by contracting with other suppliers like hydro or idle gas turbine is known, it adds 10-20% to the overall cost of wind per kWhr. The firmed up wind is still cheaper than fossil + carbon tax, and in the US in 2008 its a lot cheaper than nuclear if one has the wind:

Well, that Belgian offshore project already came to 8000 Euro per KW (it was 800 million Euro for 300 MW installed / 100 MW hoped for effective) and that didn't include any buffering. So adding ~20% and we're almost at the double of that expensive nuclear.

And let us see how much a series of EPR reactors will cost.

 

[mheslep]

Ok, but if we now take Denmark + Sweden as a single "grid entity" which we should, then the wind fraction drops down to less than 10% in the grid (I didn't take the pain to look up relative contributions). Also Sweden is exceptional (a bit like Canada) with a geography extremely favorable to hydro, and Denmark is exceptional for wind (it's one of the best places in the world for that). So the Denmark-Sweden couple is about the utmost top quality you can find.

Ok, though the US midwest Texas to the Dakotas corridor is very similar to Denmark w/ average wind speed > 7M/sec (80M)
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20080304/3t_global_wind_540x420.jpg
The US has 70GW (average production) of hydro to Sweden's ~8GW. To use US hydro to firm the wind would require some large investment in transmission, so perhaps compressed air storage or the like would have to help out.

And it's not running smoothly:
http://www.saveoursomerset.com/windturbinefacts.htm (ok, this is an anti-wind activist cite, I just found it by googling a bit) and
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html

I see 'problematic' and 'difficult' used often in connection w/ wind variability. Regards reliability, at the end of the day all that really matters is whether or not the user is experiencing outages or brown outs. If nothing else, one can can on agenda sites to report loudly on a case; I see none reported for Denmark here.

Not[e] that there ARE days without wind power in Denmark.

No I think that was only for the W. Denmark case, not for the entire nation.

I wonder whether it is REALLY cheaper, or that there are just so many regulations (like the utility having to buy your wind power back at 2 am when they already have a surplus at a high price, and installation subventions etc...).

As I say, I am happy to support the politician who can rationally clear away the dead weight, meanwhile I am using the reported costs.

Well, that Belgian offshore project already came to 8000 Euro per KW (it was 800 million Euro for 300 MW installed / 100 MW hoped for effective) and that didn't include any buffering. So adding ~20% and we're almost at the double of that expensive nuclear.

Yes that offshore appears very expensive, if there's not some other economic reason in there sounds like they should have gone another way.

 

[quadraphonics]

The US has 70GW (average production) of hydro to Sweden's ~8GW.

Yes, but US power consumption is roughly 30 times that of Sweden, so we'd need to expand our hydro production by a factor of almost 4 to reach a comparable figure. This is never going to happen, as essentially all of the stuff that should be dammed in the US has already been dammed.

 

[mheslep]

Yes, but US power consumption is roughly 30 times that of Sweden, so we'd need to expand our hydro production by a factor of almost 4 to
reach a comparable figure.
This is never going to happen, as essentially all of the stuff that should be dammed in the US has already been dammed.

Yes I know, but that is not quite the scenario, as we're looking at 3.13 GWe nameplate wind in Denmark backed up elsewhere by hydro and others. In any case in the world-nuclear piece I overlooked Norway and its 27GWe of hydro, even though Denmark imports the most power from Sweden (hydro and nuclear). The five international transmission links total 5.4GWe to export or import as necessary. Perhaps something like 2:1 (hydro backup:wind) is reasonable, accommodating 35GWe wind in the US. For wind under production all other energy sources on the grid can help out, fossil (especially quick on/off gas turbine), nuclear, whatever.
Edit: there's also Compressed air storage to hold excess wind energy in reserve for when its needed. Two of these facilities already exist.
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind-reserve.htm

 

[vanesch]

Perhaps something like 2:1 (hydro backup:wind) is reasonable, accommodating 35GWe wind in the US. For wind under production all other energy sources on the grid can help out, fossil (especially quick on/off gas turbine), nuclear, whatever.

That sounds indeed reasonable, but it would then mean that one would have about 3.5% of wind energy in the US. I even think that you can get more without problems. I'm not saying that one cannot have wind energy, I'm only saying that to go beyond something like 20% of consumption is difficult.

 

[Art]

Yes, but US power consumption is roughly 30 times that of Sweden, so we'd need to expand our hydro production by a factor of almost 4 to reach a comparable figure. This is never going to happen, as essentially all of the stuff that should be dammed in the US has already been dammed.

Some hydro plants get more peak time output by using excess electricity on the grid to pump water back into the dam during the low demand periods. Perhaps the US could increase hydro power this way both by greater utilisation of existing plants and by allowing for hydros to be built in places where the natural supply rate of water wouldn't currently justify it. Or perhaps they already do this??

 

[OmCheeto]

http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2008/07/06/opus/index.html

Did I watch too many x-files?

I believe.

 

[mheslep]

Some hydro plants get more peak time output by using excess electricity on the grid to pump water back into the dam during the low demand periods. Perhaps the US could increase hydro power this way both by greater utilisation of existing plants and by allowing for hydros to be built in places where the natural supply rate of water wouldn't currently justify it. Or perhaps they already do this??

Hydro can used to store energy primarily in two ways.
1. Dedicated pump storage projects, a small portion of the over hydro capacity, that use over capacity typically at night to store power to be later released in generation during high day light demand.
2. Traditional hydro generation only projects run at an average of ~50% annual capacity in the US due to variable river flows. Wind and other variable sources combine with hydro by simply allowing wind to service demand during high output, allowing hydro dams to build up water levels, which can then back up wind when it is low. This is main wind backup used by Denmark/Norwary/Sweden, and to some small degree in the US now, principally by North West hydro generation. Bonneville Power Administration (for instance) charge 0.6 cents/kWh to back up wind.

 

[mheslep]

That sounds indeed reasonable, but it would then mean that one would have about 3.5% of wind energy in the US. I even think that you can get more without problems. I'm not saying that one cannot have wind energy, I'm only saying that to go beyond something like 20% of consumption is difficult.

Agreed. 20% is the plan on the table now from US DoE and T Boone Pickens, Esq. I believe one gets the rest by wide geographically diverse turbine location and a good mix of generation sources.

 

[Astronuc]

Energy Independence may be a worthwhile goal.

It seems to be working for Denmark.

Flush With Energy - Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 8/10/2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

. . . .
Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

. . . .
There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

. . . .

 

[mheslep]

Energy Independence may be a worthwhile goal.

It seems to be working for Denmark.

Flush With Energy - Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 8/10/2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

All credit to the Danes for their wind energy, but they are hardly energy independent. They're tightly coupled now to Norway's hydro, Swedish hydro and nuclear, and German coal fired energy during wind lulls, as they've foregone new local fossil and nuclear. Also, unless one has a completely local supply of oil, it is misleading to say the Danes are independent of mideast oil even if not a single drop of middle east oil arrives in Denmark. The oil market and price is global, as Mr The World is Flat should know, and getting oil from the Norway's North sea instead of Saudi Arabia will not insure ample supply or low price.

 

[OmCheeto]

My brother was telling me about a portable nuclear power plant being developed by Toshiba. I read about it about 6 months ago and thought it was just one of those little wish list things that companies advertise. It looks as though it may be economically feasible. $25M for a 200kw plant that lasts for 30 years I think he said.

hmmm... 200kw*24hr*365*30 = 52.6M kwh
$25M / 52.6M kwh = $0.475 / kwh

Well. Maybe not.
But he said they were installing one in a small town in Alaska.
Might be something to watch.

 

[vanesch]

My brother was telling me about a portable nuclear power plant being developed by Toshiba. I read about it about 6 months ago and thought it was just one of those little wish list things that companies advertise. It looks as though it may be economically feasible. $25M for a 200kw plant that lasts for 30 years I think he said.

hmmm... 200kw*24hr*365*30 = 52.6M kwh
$25M / 52.6M kwh = $0.475 / kwh

Well. Maybe not.
But he said they were installing one in a small town in Alaska.
Might be something to watch.

I think that's a hoax.

It's probably this advertisement, no ? http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20071219/toshiba-creates-home-nuclear-power-plant/

Toshiba DID design a "small" nuclear power plant, but of 10 MW or something, with about 30 years of autonomy. It was a small fast breeder reactor, the Galena reactor, the Toshiba 4S: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
I don't think it went beyond the paper stage.

I guess it is from this that the urban legend of "your nuke in your garage" came.

Current (and foreseable) regulations make such a device impossible. It is simply legally impossible to operate a nuclear power reactor without a huge amount of procedures, safety checks, etc... which would render such a project economically totally impossible.

 

[OmCheeto]

I think that's a hoax.

Just because something does not come to fruition, does not make it a hoax.

Current (and foreseable) regulations make such a device impossible. It is simply legally impossible to operate a nuclear power reactor without a huge amount of procedures, safety checks, etc... which would render such a project economically totally impossible.

Have you ever operated a nuclear plant?
Once you tell them what to do, they pretty much run themselves.

The only thing I didn't like about the Galena-Toshiba reactor was the fact that Galena sits along the Yukon river. And they want to sink their liquid sodium cooled reactor into the ground. Ice water flood + kilo degree liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactor = not such a good idea. Perhaps they should put one on the top of the hill in Ruby instead. Maybe the Galenites could move. Ruby is so much more picturesque.