YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[mfb]

~1$/Wh means you need ~10000 cycles to get down to 10cents/kWh (still above the market price). Most batteries don't even come close to that value (okay, "10 times the cycle life of traditional batteries"), and with 1 cycle per day this would need 30 years just to return the investment. A nice toy, but not something we'll see on a large scale unless the price goes down at least one order of magnitude.

 

[mheslep]

Here's a company claim of $0.16/Wh, just for the battery, no inverter, etc. Who knows how many deep cycles.

The reigning king of storage is pumped hydro, at something like $0.04/Wh for a big project like Bath County, and it should be coming up on 10000 cycles soon with the end of life still far in the future.

 

[Devils]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

 

[Devils]

In the US, some nuclear plants would be forced to reduce power in order to accommodate wind generation on their grid.

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

 

[OmCheeto]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

That sounds a bit like:

Geothermal Heat Pumps
...
The geothermal heat pump, also known as the ground source heat pump, is a highly efficient renewable energy technology that is gaining wide acceptance for both residential and commercial buildings. Geothermal heat pumps are used for space heating and cooling, as well as water heating. The benefit of ground source heat pumps is they concentrate naturally existing heat, rather than by producing heat through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Is this what you are talking about?

I like the fact that people are more conscious of waste than they used to be:

In addition to space conditioning, geothermal heat pumps can be used to provide domestic hot water when the system is operating. Many residential systems are now equipped with desuperheaters that transfer excess heat from the geothermal heat pump's compressor to the house's hot water tank.

One of these days, I'm going to get around to utilizing my refrigerator to keep my bathroom warm in the winter. So many projects.

 

[mfb]

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

They get cheaper, but for most locations they are still significantly above the costs of nuclear power - even without the costs for energy storage. You cannot simply predict "it gets cheaper, so it has to get cheaper than X". That logic does not work.

By the way, there are solar power plants that use steam turbines.

 

[Straw_Cat]

On El Hierro Island, the westernmost of the Canary Islands, there's a project to harvest renewable energy from wind and solar, etc. The surplus power from those will be used to pump water uphill and store it in a storage pit that was at one time a volcanic crater (!) so that the water can be then used to power a hydro project. Once all this is set up this will be among the first 100% renewably-powered places on the planet (there are a few others already...). Here's a write-up about the El Hierro project, from a couple years ago, showing the progress at that time.

http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/print/volume-20/issue-5/articles/pumped-storage/creating-a-hybrid-hydro-wind-system-on.html

 

[anorlunda]

I'm afraid that most of the posts in this thread ignore the reality of how power generation decisions are made in the USA. Government has a big influence, but it does not get to decide where the money is invested. It is private investments that finance power facilities. Even public utilities raise most of their money by private sales of bonds. So when many of you say "we" have to decide, "we"have to spend the money,"we" have a political problem, you have the wrong we. It is not the public, but the investors who made investment decisions.

Few people realize how much money it takes. My data may be a bit dated, but not long ago the electric power infrastructure required 25% of all capital investment in the USA. That's a huge fraction. For utilities, it makes finance almost more important that producing power. Investors must be convinced to put their money into power plants, or wind, or transmission, instead of Apple stocks, or Google, or agriculture, or bio science, or whatever. That is an extremely hard sell. How much of your 401K is invested in the electric power industry?

Traditionally, the selling point for utility investments was safety and guaranteed returns. That's no longer true. In many states, power generation has been split from the monopoly utilities. Power plant owners have no guaranteed returns. Many of them have lost their shirts in recent years. In the 1980s, Washington Public Power System even defaulted on its bonds. Every time something like that happens the whole power industry becomes less attractive for future investors.

The thing that scares investors more than anything is uncertainty. Therefore a gas turbine plant that can earn the investment back in 6 years is much more certain than a nuclear plant that may need 40 years to reach thst mark. The rules that govern plants can change dramatically in 40 years, undermining the financial assumption. Politicians making speeches about energy policy and threatening to change the game do far more harm than good by seeding uncertainty among investors. The investors respond either by refusing to invest in electric power at all or by demanding much higher rates of return. The public looses.

So please give me a break and stop this endless and pointless debate on energy assuming that it is a matter of public policy. Unless you are the fat cat investor, your voice in the subject has little influence.

Thanks for giving me a chance to vent.

 

[OmCheeto]

I saw an article the other week:

Plug-In Vehicles up 82 Percent Over 2012

The dual powered vehicles saw an 83% jump over their 2012 total of 52,835 units.

I did the math and determined that if that rate were to hold up, it would take only 12 years to replace all the vehicles in the USA. It made me smile.

And with solar prices dropping through the floor, it looks to me like the US Energy Crisis might be fixed ahead of schedule.

Solar power installation costs fall through the floor
Solar power in the U.S. this year produced as much power as 10 nuclear power plants
December 16, 2013 04:00 PM ET

The cost of installing photovoltaic solar arrays has dropped to $3 per watt of electricity they produce - about the same as coal-powered plants cost to build - creating a watershed moment in the development of clean energy, experts say.

The average price of a solar panel has declined by 60% since the beginning of 2011, according to GTM Research. And, according to CleanTechnica, a website dedicated to renewable energy news, the price of solar power has fallen rom $76.67 per watt in 1977 to 74 cents today.

 

[stevedunklee]

help the poor

A cash for cklunkers grant to poor families could remove millions of unsafe gas guzzeling mechanically unsafe vehicles from our highways and have the benefit of making our roads safer. Also most poor people get no benefit from tax incentives to go green. Energy sipping lights and weather imrovements should be subsidised to lower cost to the poor.
When they were starting to build the John W Turk coal fired plant in Arkansas I asked one of the execs why they were spending 5 billion to make it when they could produce the same amount of power installing one million 50 watt wind alternators one per power pole for less than 250 million. . A bicycle generator, two fiberglass poles and some nylon cloth for the pinwheel could be mass produced for less than $25 each
Cheers
Steve

 

[mfb]

The dual powered vehicles saw an 83% jump over their 2012 total of 52,835 units.

I did the math and determined that if that rate were to hold up, it would take only 12 years to replace all the vehicles in the USA. It made me smile.

A colleague increased his family size by 50% this month. If the rate holds up, it would take only 4.5 years to replace the worldwide population with his family .

Solar energy can help, but that alone will not fix anything. The sun does not shine at night, or when it is cloudy.

 

[OmCheeto]

A colleague increased his family size by 50% this month. If the rate holds up, it would take only 4.5 years to replace the worldwide population with his family .

Solar energy can help, but that alone will not fix anything. The sun does not shine at night, or when it is cloudy.

According to what I've read, Feynman's dad said the entire world is powered by solar energy.

And the sun does shine at night.

And the sun does shine when it's cloudy.

x 2

--------------------------
My eternal thanks to Moonbear, who taught me how to win an argument. :)

 

[mfb]

According to what I've read, Feynman's dad said the entire world is powered by solar energy.

Sure, but burning the stored energy (as oil, gas and coal) is problematic.
Oh, and nuclear energy does not come from the sun.

And the sun does shine at night.

To be more precise, the sun does not shine on photovoltaic cells at night (local night for the photovoltaics). At least not in any relevant amount. And clouds give a similar problem.

 

[gmax137]

.. I asked one of the execs why they were spending 5 billion to make it when they could produce the same amount of power installing one million 50 watt wind alternators one per power pole for less than 250 million...

Electric power is almost worthless unless you can turn it on and off at will.

 

[OmCheeto]

Electric power is almost worthless unless you can turn it on and off at will.

This is true. I once traded one of my 50 watt solar panels for a friend's surplus air conditioner. Although I've been using the air conditioner for 3 years, I've yet to deliver the solar panel. I told them it would be useless unless they purchased a deep cycle battery, as the panel would just be a silly wall ornament without one.

Sure, but burning the stored energy (as oil, gas and coal) is problematic.

Agreed.

Oh, and nuclear energy does not come from the sun.

Maybe not from our sun, but it's common knowledge where Uranium came from.

The Earth's uranium was produced in one or more supernovae over 6 billion years ago.

To my knowledge, you can't have a supernovae without a sun.
Without a supernovae, there would be no Uranium.
With no Uranium(et al), there would be no nuclear power.
Hence, nuclear energy is also, ultimately, solar in origin.

To be more precise, the sun does not shine on photovoltaic cells at night (local night for the photovoltaics). At least not in any relevant amount. And clouds give a similar problem.

Hence the deep cycle battery sitting in my living room.

ps. It's really only there to keep the crack heads from stealing it out of my boat. I cycle it lightly through the winter month by powering my xmas lights.

 

[stevedunklee]

Most forms of energy production have problems. My older brother has been off the grid for almost 30 years. Small power sources must have a disconect in case of storms or accidents . Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming? I see the time comming where it is legislated corp must provide housing within walking distance for workers, so everyone ends up living in town. We are already more than half way there. Cut the daily comute downfrom an hours drive to walking and oil use drops to a trickle.

 

[mfb]

Maybe not from our sun, but it's common knowledge where Uranium came from.

From supernovae of other stars. I see "sun" as the star in our solar system.

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

No. You would have to cover a significant fraction of the surface of Earth with very dark materials to see any influence.

 

[AlephZero]

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

It might have the opposite effect, if there is less black soot in the atmosphere falling on the arctic and antarctic ice sheets.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

From what I understand roads do contribute to local warming in some areas (a.k.a. the "heat island effect") but do not provide enough of AA difference in terms of net global albedo change to affect global climate.

Solar panels may at some point be efficient enough to have a net cooling effect, if they are able to convert more power to electricity than would have been heat without them there.

I see the time comming where it is legislated corp must provide housing within walking distance for workers, so everyone ends up living in town.

Forget it, this doesn't need to (and shouldn't) be legislated. Its up to the employee to decide where they want to live with the salary they are paid.

 

[Astronuc]

Out in the Mojave Desert, California, a "Huge thermal plant opens as solar industry grows"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-thermal-plant-opens-solar-industry-grows-052553628--finance.html

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opens Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.

The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy, can produce nearly 400 megawatts — enough power for 140,000 homes. It began making electricity last year.

. . . .

http://ivanpah.nrgenergy.com/

Update:

NIPTON, Calif. — The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind.

It could also be the last.

Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new projects have been coming online in recent months — many in the last quarter of 2013 — experts say fewer are beginning construction and not all of those under development will be completed.
. . . .

A Huge Solar Plant Opens, Facing Doubts About Its Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/b...ant-opens-facing-doubts-about-its-future.html

 

[mheslep]

Out in the Mojave Desert, California, a "Huge thermal plant opens as solar industry grows"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-thermal-plant-opens-solar-industry-grows-052553628--finance.html

Yes, though they are now in some trouble for bird kills of all things. Would be ironic if they had to nix the solar and burn gas to run turbine for environmental reasons.

 

[johnbbahm]

Sorry about the long response.
Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

I had a followup to the technology.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/det...ower-to-gas-facility_100011859/#axzz2tEyPMOG8
Audi, has their plant open now.
I could envision an energy credit system, where a homeowner earns energy credit
for their excess generated power (whatever the source). The credit could be used
to buy gasoline, heating oil, pay the electric bill ect..
The real elegance of storing surplus power as hydrocarbons, is the shelve life,
and the fact the we already have a world wide distribution infrastructure.
Based on the Navy's description, it sounds like a modern olefin refinery could convert
over to man made fuels without much effort.
( Perhaps some PE here could correct me if I am wrong.)
The first reports from fraunhofer, I read, They were talking about a conversion unit that would
sit outside peoples houses, and make natural gas, to put back into the gas grid.
I am think the efficiencies of scale, would win out.

 

[OmCheeto]

Yes, though they are now in some trouble for bird kills of all things. Would be ironic if they had to nix the solar and burn gas to run turbine for environmental reasons.

I think Danger covered wind turbine generator bird kills some years back. To expand on his idea, just replace KFC^[1] with STS^[2].

--------------------------
1. Kentucky Fried Chicken
2. Solar Toasted Sparrows

 

[OmCheeto]

I think Danger covered wind turbine generator bird kills some years back. To expand on his idea, just replace KFC^[1] with STS^[2].

...

Speaking of bird kill, I think Facebook is broken. One of my left wing political feeds has been posting sciency type stuff lately.
(One of the first comments was; "and hopefully less deadly to migrating birds including Bald Eagles?")

40 minutes long, but well worth my time.

Why VAWTs may be 10 times better than HAWTs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyOmwfH5GxA

Professor Dabiri is my kind of scientist.

VAWT: Vertical axis wind turbine
HAWT: Horizontal axis wind turbine

 

[Jewish_Vulcan]

A nulcear scientist should invent a micro nuclear reactor that does not release radioactive material and that is not powerfull enough to blow up a city block and is safe. If such a device was ever invented the amount of new revolutionary inventions would grow exponentially in my oppinion. Most problems when it comes to science projects are a small enough power source to power a device that needs a lot of energy.(i.e.) star wars program. The primary reason we are not having laser rifles and science fiction space vehicles coming true is because congress does not allow scientist to expirement with such useful technology.

 

[OmCheeto]

A nulcear scientist should invent a micro nuclear reactor that does not release radioactive material and that is not powerfull enough to blow up a city block and is safe. If such a device was ever invented the amount of new revolutionary inventions would grow exponentially in my oppinion. Most problems when it comes to science projects are a small enough power source to power a device that needs a lot of energy.(i.e.) star wars program. The primary reason we are not having laser rifles and science fiction space vehicles coming true is because congress does not allow scientist to expirement with such useful technology.

As an American, I can only say, that I feel really sorry for you, wherever it is you live. I do such experiments daily. Well, ok, not daily, but almost every weekend. Well, ok, maybe not almost every weekend, but sometimes.

Today I built an electrical generator out of magnets, a cd, a drill, and an old speaker coil.

It did not work at all.

But that's besides the point.

If your congress is not allowing you, and/or your scientists, to do experiments, then you need to elect a new congress.

 

[mheslep]

Peter Thiel gave a talk not long ago suggesting government, that is government regulation, was exactly the reason advances in physical technology, i.e. hardware if you like, have stagnated. One of the few areas left almost completely unregulated so far has been software and the internet, so it continues to progress. I largely agree.

So yes you are free to experiment in your basement OmC but should you actually try to bring something to market other than a phone app you risk a great deal.

 

[mfb]

Peter Thiel gave a talk not long ago suggesting government, that is government regulation, was exactly the reason advances in physical technology, i.e. hardware if you like, have stagnated. One of the few areas left almost completely unregulated so far has been software and the internet, so it continues to progress. I largely agree.

There is a clear causal relationship in the other direction.
Areas that progress quickly are usually less regulated, as the governments are not quick enough to keep up.

Therefore, correlation alone is not an argument.

 

[mheslep]

There is a clear causal relationship in the other direction.

What do you mean by in the other direction? That there's a casual relationship between regulation and the fielding of technology?

 

[Travis_King]

What do you mean by in the other direction? That there's a casual relationship between regulation and the fielding of technology?

I believe mfb's point was that while it may appear a compelling argument that government regulation causes stagnation in technological progress, that is not a sound conclusion as correlation does not imply causation. It may very well be, as mfb suggested, that technologies that progress rapidly, do so because they are ahead of the slow-moving government, and so progress faster than regulations can keep up with.

In one instance, government implements regulations, which hinder technological progress.

In the other, technological progress happens quickly, when it finally stagnates, government regulations can catch up. So you see stagnated technologies with lots of regulation and may think that the regulation is what's keeping it back, but that's not necessarily true.

 

[mheslep]

Thiel 2013

 

[mheslep]

I believe mfb's point was that while it may appear a compelling argument that government regulation causes stagnation in technological progress, that is not a sound conclusion as correlation does not imply causation...

I agree there that correlation is not causation, never proof, but depending on the fact set it can be persuasive. We have not only a strong positive correlation between regulation and new hardware (e.g. transportation, biotech, energy), but also a strong negative correlation between regulation and computers/the internet.

 

[mfb]

What do you mean by in the other direction?

See the following sentence in the post you quoted.

I agree there that correlation is not causation, never proof, but depending on the fact set it can be persuasive. We have not only a strong positive correlation between regulation and new hardware (e.g. transportation, biotech, energy), but also a strong negative correlation between regulation and computers/the internet.

This is still the same correlation. "Some technology branch is developing fast => the government does not catch up with regulations" is a well-known reason for this correlation. If you suggest that the other direction is important (so technological development depends on regulations in some way), you need evidence independent of the correlation.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
The reigning king of storage is pumped hydro, at something like $0.04/Wh for a big project like Bath County, and it should be coming up on 10000 cycles soon with the end of life still far in the future.

It looks like Germany may be doing this.

Germany's Key to Clean Energy Is…This Coal Mine?

The numbers look a bit odd. I was discussing digging a geothermal heat sink at work a while back after I saw your post and wondered how many thousands of gallons it would take to cover all my electrical needs for a day with a 600 foot well. It came out to about 7 gallons.

So when the above article states:

...
fill the place up with water—up to 35 million cubic feet of it...

Renewable power would pump some of the water back to the surface, and then gravity would take care of the rest, draining the water back into the mine through an energy-producing turbine. Altogether, the system would have enough storage capacity to power up to 410 typical German homes.
...

It didn't seem like very many homes.

Their image shows the mine at 3300 ft.

Translating to SI units (I'm assuming the original units were SI, as the volume and depth values were suspiciously, um, easy to work with...)
1,000,000 m^3 (volume of water)
1,000,000,000 kg (mass of water)
1,000 m (depth of mine)
9.8 (g)
9,800,000,000,000 joules (pe=mgh)
3,600,000 (joules / kwh)
2,722,222 kwh
410 DE homes
6,640 kwh/DE home

My average electrical usage is about 1,000 kWh/month, so it looks like they can power 410 homes, at my rate, for around 6 months.

or
crunch, crunch, crunch

≈80,000 DE homes for a day

pre-"Submit Reply" edit:

It would appear that German households use significantly less energy that I do, and I appear to be quite the average American: 3500 DE vs 12,000 USA (kWh/yr)

So bump those numbers up to 410 DE homes for a year, and 160,000 DE homes for a day.

ps. I just re-ran the numbers on my 600 ft deep well and came up with 18,701 gallons. It would appear I was off by a factor of 2672, which is a very strange factor to be off by, IMHO.

 

[Straw_Cat]

They do use a lot less power per household. One source, the pdf file linked below, had them using an average of 6,200 kwh per household in 2009, and this one has a figure much lower: 3,512 kwh.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption

Pdf file from 2009.
http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot316.nsf/veritydisplay/5793753d3056bfb4c12578640051183f/$file/germany.pdf

The EU has a standard which has a goal of having new houses and other buildings use 10 kwh/ year per square meter, or less, and 30% of that should come from renewables. A square meter is about 10.764 square feet. That's 1 kwh/year per square foot.
Or less.
A few years back Ontario was thinking about setting a standard like this for new construction in that province, but they tabled the suggestion until later.

 

[mfb]

(I'm assuming the original units were SI, as the volume and depth values were suspiciously, um, easy to work with...)

Sure, it is not a US-project, there is no need to use exotic inconsistent unit systems.

That number of 410 looks very low. Did they divide 160000 home*days by 365? Would fit.
I guess the energy storage would be designed for storage periods of the order of one week, which leads to ~20 000 homes.

 

[OmCheeto]

Sure, it is not a US-project, there is no need to use exotic inconsistent unit systems.

I found the original image on the paper written by Prof. André Niemann, which indeed lists everything in metric units. Though he does not list a volume.

That number of 410 looks very low. Did they divide 160000 home*days by 365? Would fit.
I guess the energy storage would be designed for storage periods of the order of one week, which leads to ~20 000 homes.

The only other numbers he lists in the original paper are:

First valuations show a predicted power rage from 200 to 600 MW.

It also appears that this is old news:

Event
Nutzung von Anlagen des Bergbaus zur Speicherung regenerativer Energie
(Use of facilities of the mining industry for the storage of renewable energy)
Am 30. November 2011
...

Perhaps I should contact my cousins in Germany, and have them go interview him properly. They live about 150 km to the east of Essen.

 

[Wes Tausend]

We always have threads on various pieces of the puzzle, but what I want here is for people to post a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US (and critique what others propose). Some groundrules:

First, though most would agree there are issues, people won't necessarily agree on what they are/what the most important are. So define the problem as you see it before proposing the solution. The usual suspects are: safety, capacity, pollution, cost, future availability of resources, and foreign dependence. Obviously, feel free to modify that list.

Second, I want specific, coherent plans. Don't just say 'reduce CO2 emissions' or 'increase production' - tell me how.

Third, money is important, but not critical (for this thread), so don't let it constrain your ambition. I want solutions that will work - paying for them is another matter. Obviously, any solution will require making tough choices and (in the short term, anyway) spending a lot of money. No need to build a new budget to support it. If you say you want to spend a trillion dollars a year, fine (but the benefit had better be big).

http://www.agmrc.org/markets/info/energyoverview.pdf is a site from another thread with some background info on what we use for what.

I'll go first...

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

I approve of some of the content of your prescribed video, as it looks like a one hour synopsis of what has been discussed in this nearly 10 year old thread. I leave it to Russ, to blast the b.s., as I've better things to do today.

 

[mheslep]

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

See the "tell me how" phrase in Russ's OP? Could you try a couple narrow illustrations, from what you saw in the PBS piece or elsewhere? I don't think "watch this video" gets you off the hook.

 

[mheslep]

Some aspects of the Richard Alley PBS piece:

15.7 TW total energy consumption. Asks the question if renewables can meet that load, all of it. Gives silly platitudes, draws "0.01%" in the sand, mumbles something about transmission and storage without detail. Useless.
[STRIKE]
No mention of nuclear. [/STRIKE] New 4th gen nuclear mentioned in passing at the end.

Some hand waiving about geothermal - thousands of years. I like to count *possible* jewels too, but there's a difference between that and actually building geothermal plants with a sufficient *water supply* to produce something.

More mumbles about how hydro will cover wind and solar outages without detail. Mumbles about offshore wind, though the current amount in the US is zero.

"Some estimates say ..." conservation and efficiency could cut consumption by %23.

Alley might be a fine geologist but I gather he's just hand waiving happy thoughts here.

 

[edward]

Perhaps we need to take a closer look at the little things we may be missing. I spent three days in the same motel recently. This was unusual because I am usually arriving after dark and leaving early in the morning.

It was a typical mid priced motel. The A/C units were the typical through the wall heat pumps mounted under the window. I sat in a chair reading a magazine in the early afternoon and noticed that the A/C would run about three minutes then go off for about two minutes.

I immediately spotted the reason, the blasted air was blowing up behind the window curtains, then dropping back down and into the return. The curtains came down to the top of the A/C. I pushed the curtains back and set a book in front of them.

Now the unit ran for fifteen minutes straight and shut down for 18 minutes.

The units also need better insulation between the condenser (outdoor) section and the (interior) evaporator section. I say this because in the morning when the sun hit the east facing condensers the units would kick on for short runs. I walked around to the west side of the building in the afternoon and the same thing was happening.

The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream. This wouldn't need a rocket science fix. The 50 room motel is only two years old.

 

[russ_watters]

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

As a global warming documentary it's pretty good (a heckuva lot better than "An Inconvenient Truth"!), but I do also find it a little hand-wavey and naive/idealistic on the solutions.

-I agree that the lack of discussion of nuclear power is particularly glaring, since they target it at increasing from 5% to 20% of our power needs. That would make it the biggest or second biggest of our energy sources in their proposed mix (they don't break-out the different forms of alternate energy -- wind might end up bigger in their mix). Based on that, it should get at least as much treatment as solar and wind did...though the unstated subtext of the Navy fossil fuel reduction piece is probably an increase in nuclear power for large ships.

-They say hydro can go from 6% to 12% while also backing-up solar power (note: most if not all of their numbers are given in power, not energy). That doesn't compute. When one form is backing-up another, you can have one or the other, but you can't add both together. What hydro does is give you some storage capacity: so you add enough capacity to generate 24% of our power, while only running it at an average of 12%. Essentially, you double-up on all of the generators in the dams. That's a viable way to do it (the alternative is building a natural gas power plant next to every solar plant), but it was a misleading way to present the capacity.

-They gave geothermal power a couple of minutes of discussion, while saying we can triple it's current capacity. Wow, triple? That's...triple almost nothing is still almost nothing. Including a source of basically nothing is particularly glaring considering the absence of any discussion of nuclear power.

One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

 

[Wes Tausend]

As a global warming documentary it's pretty good (a heckuva lot better than "An Inconvenient Truth"!), but I do also find it a little hand-wavey and naive/idealistic on the solutions.

-I agree that the lack of discussion of nuclear power is particularly glaring, since they target it at increasing from 5% to 20% of our power needs. That would make it the biggest or second biggest of our energy sources in their proposed mix (they don't break-out the different forms of alternate energy -- wind might end up bigger in their mix). Based on that, it should get at least as much treatment as solar and wind did...though the unstated subtext of the Navy fossil fuel reduction piece is probably an increase in nuclear power for large ships.

-They say hydro can go from 6% to 12% while also backing-up solar power (note: most if not all of their numbers are given in power, not energy). That doesn't compute. When one form is backing-up another, you can have one or the other, but you can't add both together. What hydro does is give you some storage capacity: so you add enough capacity to generate 24% of our power, while only running it at an average of 12%. Essentially, you double-up on all of the generators in the dams. That's a viable way to do it (the alternative is building a natural gas power plant next to every solar plant), but it was a misleading way to present the capacity.

-They gave geothermal power a couple of minutes of discussion, while saying we can triple it's current capacity. Wow, triple? That's...triple almost nothing is still almost nothing. Including a source of basically nothing is particularly glaring considering the absence of any discussion of nuclear power.

One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

Thanks for replying, Russ. And a hand to the other gentlemen for replying too.

I don't have many friends or family that are willing to watch such documentaries, besides discuss their merits, so I have an appreciation for threads like yours. Thank you. The Richard Alley video is on my DVR and I can see I need to watch it again with the comments mentioned here in mind. I thought the video to be a good, comprehensive rough draft, my favorite, the "napkin" drawn version of a possible future blueprint.

I did think it was a bit vague, but assumed that was a consequence of squeezing the vast array of info into a one hour segment that would appeal to general PBS type audiences. Considering this, I kind of wonder if Dr. Alley didn't somewhat avoid nuclear power to appease some of the paranoid fringe element. He may be much more amenable to it than he initially let's on. He has a couple of books out that would make an interesting, and possibly more complete, read. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081095/?tag=pfamazon01-20 and http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6916.html

I consider myself to be a politically independent, but I very much agree with John McCain on stepping up the use of nuclear power. He is very comfortable with it, ostensibly because he lived in harmony with nuclear power aboard Navy vessels. I can't remember exactly where I ran across the mention, but someone once suggested that nuclear fission power would be well suited to smaller, remote/automated regional plants that were to be constructed in sealed, mass produced "shipping container" size module dimensions and buried underground. The security element was that any pilferers would have substancial digging to steal components. The safety element was supposed to be that cooling water would be gravity fed and not depend upon "iffy" pump operation. That our Navy can already use such condensed power-pak sizes is a major plus... i.e. sounded good to me.

I live in a major energy producing state, North Dakota. The huge Bakken oil reservoir is only the latest segment offering and does finally reduce our dependence on OPEC with the possible compromise of fracking damage to groundwaters. The southwest area of ND has significant uranium deposits. We have abundant coal here, unfortunately very dirty coal, as if there is such a thing as clean coal. We also have the fifth largest earthern hydroelectric dam here, Garrison Dam, and we are the second windiest state in the union, right behind Texas.

I'm not sure how the ND vs Corps of Engineers hydroelectric back-up policy works, but I believe the dam is restricted when power can be met by coal fired plants. If so, we already have an excess hydroelectric capacity that we decline to use, also a concern of yours, I believe. I suppose part of the reasoning would be that "free" government power cannot be allowed to compete with private enterprise. I think all the powerplants are owned by stockholders, cooperative or not. The other quite legitimate reasoning to restrict hydroelectric, is that coal fired plants do not do well cycling between cooling and reheating to vary power output, while hydroelectric can.

I worked for a railroad and we hauled slightly cleaner Wyoming Powder River coal, to mix with sulphurous ND coal, to just barely squeak by on the past latest emissions. Being downwind in the city of Bismarck, I once noted a Tribune article by a group of several local respiratory medical professionals pointing out the high incidence of respiratory issues now in the area. Biting the hand that once fed me, so much for asthmatic Teddy Roosevelt's ancestors ever coming here for the clean air again.

At a recent banquet, I ran into an old friend and high school classmate who worked in management for MDU (Montana-Dakota Utilities), our regional natural gas and electric supplier. After someone else broached the subject, I mentioned that we needed to find a way to seclude coal powerplant CO² as coal-synthesizer plant Dakota Gasification has learned to do, that is by selling it to oil companies to bury or just plain burying it. As I said, North Dakota has some of the dirtiest coal imaginable, and we have a lot of it. He protested that it would cost too much, and I retorted that it didn't matter considering the likely alternative. In exasperation, he said, "Well you can just sit in the dark then". Rather than further fuel an unhealthy argument I said nothing more. But I was thinking better me suffer now than my, and his, greatgrandchildren go without acceptable energy when the next bitter cold ice age arrives, possibly because we invited it. It's already cold enough here.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

I do believe, I've dug myself a new hole.

I told someone the other day, that I would not debate opinion, after the first jab.
And you can't argue facts.
So what on Earth have I to discuss?^[1]

...The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream.
...

How on Earth do you know that?

google google google

I spent three days in the same motel recently.
...

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

:thumbs:

--------------------------
[1] Speculation.

 

[edward]

I do believe, I've dug myself a new hole.

Do you still have the shovel?

How on Earth do you know that?

google google google

I only had to pull out the filter and I could peek in and see the thermostat sensor. I believe in the A/C business they are called a feeler bulb

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

No, no, no, I only do that at Luxury hotels with large central air conditioning systems.

 

[russ_watters]

Perhaps we need to take a closer look at the little things we may be missing. I spent three days in the same motel recently. This was unusual because I am usually arriving after dark and leaving early in the morning.

It was a typical mid priced motel. The A/C units were the typical through the wall heat pumps mounted under the window. I sat in a chair reading a magazine in the early afternoon and noticed that the A/C would run about three minutes then go off for about two minutes.

I immediately spotted the reason, the blasted air was blowing up behind the window curtains, then dropping back down and into the return. The curtains came down to the top of the A/C. I pushed the curtains back and set a book in front of them.

Now the unit ran for fifteen minutes straight and shut down for 18 minutes.

The units also need better insulation between the condenser (outdoor) section and the (interior) evaporator section. I say this because in the morning when the sun hit the east facing condensers the units would kick on for short runs. I walked around to the west side of the building in the afternoon and the same thing was happening.

The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream. This wouldn't need a rocket science fix. The 50 room motel is only two years old.

Ehem:

This is called "retro-commissioning": http://cx.lbl.gov/definition.html

 

[russ_watters]

Quote by edward
"...The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream."

How on Earth do you know that?

Ehem:

Before:

After:

google google google

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

:thumbs:

--------------------------
[1] Speculation.

Can't speak for edward, but I was staying in that hotel room for business and I had some after-hours testing to do at a client's site that was picking-up again in the morning, so I arrived at the hotel at about midnight and wrote the note at quarter after one, to drop off at the front desk when I ckecked-out in the morning.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't have many friends or family that are willing to watch such documentaries...

Good way to kill a boring hour on an exercise bike.

I did think it was a bit vague, but assumed that was a consequence of squeezing the vast array of info into a one hour segment that would appeal to general PBS type audiences. Considering this, I kind of wonder if Dr. Alley didn't somewhat avoid nuclear power to appease some of the paranoid fringe element. He may be much more amenable to it than he initially let's on.

I agree with all of your perception. But I don't like it: if a subject is serious enough to treat seriously, then it should be treated seriously.

I live in a major energy producing state, North Dakota. The huge Bakken oil reservoir is only the latest segment offering and does finally reduce our dependence on OPEC with the possible compromise of fracking damage to groundwaters.

While we're at it, some mention was made of clean coal in the video, but nothing about fracking. Fracking is currently the only thing causing a significant reduction in coal use anywhere in the world. The US didn't even sign the Kyoto protocol and ignored it's carbon emission requirements, yet met them easily due to the sharp drop in coal use as power has switched to natural gas.

Certainly, fracking has the potential to pollute -- any industrial activity does -- and needs to be carefully regulated. But it is an important part of the transition to cleaner energy.

 

[OmCheeto]

Ehem:

Before:

After:

Can't speak for edward, but I was staying in that hotel room for business and I had some after-hours testing to do at a client's site that was picking-up again in the morning, so I arrived at the hotel at about midnight and wrote the note at quarter after one, to drop off at the front desk when I ckecked-out in the morning.

Good job fixing that. And your first image confirmed another suspicion I had, as to why edward's air conditioner was so poorly designed, yet were only two years old. They're made in China. What do they care about how efficient they are for the American market. And the contractors who build the hotels probably don't care either, as long as it's the cheapest thing on the market.

Perhaps you should learn Mandarin, or Cantonese, and do some consulting work.

And I can barely make out the refrigerant type from your image. It looks like R22.

hmmm...

Relief in Every Window, but Global Worry Too
...
Commercial interests foster the stalemate. Though the protocol aggressively reduces the use of HCFC-22 for cooling, it restricts production on a slower, more lenient timetable, and as a result, output has grown more than 60 percent in the past decade. Even in the United States, HCFC-22 is still profitably manufactured for use in older appliances, export and a few other industrial purposes that do not create significant emissions, like making Teflon.
...

You would probably understand the article better than I, but it looks like you can buy an R-22 unit here in the states, as long as it doesn't contain any refrigerant when it crosses the border, and fill it up after the fact.

ps. Greg should get ahold of the Hotel Assn. of America, and get us all a deal on hotel rates. It seems PF'ers are really good at fixing poorly designed/installed air conditioners.