Climate change - the POLITICAL debate. Vol 2
Discussion
s2art said:
TransverseTight said:
LongQ said:
Two observations TT.
Look at the volatility of the forecasts of wind output vs actual metered production and see just how difficult it is to predict anything like accurately much of the time. Then check the frequency variations in the system which, as I understand it, are averaged across the monitored grid so local variations could be dealing with much greater spikes.
Pretty much any 'renewable' in the existing mix that can be persuaded to produce any useful amount of output is subject to such fluctuations in or part of the world. Less so in other places - like Arizona or some desert regions.
Secondly the economics you describe seem to be based largely on the 'now' market costs and sales pricing based on today's demands and imbalances of supply. To project the benefits into the future with your proposed extended use of electric power replacing fossil fuels for transport looks rather like you have to ignore the considerable changes to the market that altered consumption patterns will induce.
Existing policy, such as it is, seems intent on managing demand on the one hand and changing the balance of production on the other with some attempt to smooth out utilisation in the middle. All this to be achieved against a background the will still require significant investment in new plant and to refresh existing capacity.
Having established that we the taxpayers can be robbed to pay well over the going rate for heavily subsidised facilities of pretty much all types the investors are in a strong position to blackmail future governments to hand over huge amounts of dosh to build facilities AND guarantee a premium price for whatever they manage to produce. Better yet they can negotiate clauses that require them to be paid for not generating anything due to the need to have capacity and to be somewhat available to deliver it for a few months of each year over the winter period.
The government could make that absurd situation look better by smoothing demand over th esummer period as well. Perhaps they should mandate the required use of aircon in all buildings for H&S reasons thus creating demand for more energy during the summer months.
Either way the current demand and supply model with the claimed options to store energy when it's cheap and sell it back when it is expensive is not likely to be sustainable if government objective for uptake are achieved. The predicted "cheap" energy available at certain times due to low demand will just not exist once demand is smoothed and, most likely, before that should people buy in to the concept.
With wind produced electricity costing far more than almost any other source, even ignoring the need for investment and maintenance of alternative back up sources, the only thing guaranteed is that energy will become ever more expensive and even the plug in car "winners" will lose in the longer term.
More practically I really struggle to see how certain locations, even with enough wealth to buy in to the early period of, say, Tesla market growth (Tesla technology representing something worth considering where many of the others, by comparison, do not) would be able to deploy the infrastructure required.
Streets full of terraced houses and parking wherever you can are not obvious locations for electric car charging success stories to appear. Likewise families with multiple vehicles might be challenged to get them all charged - or discharged even if tariffs are favourable.
To make these things work in a mass market mass uptake sense may require far more effort with infrastructure development than anyone cares to admit. If the market does not spread the wider objective (irrespective of its validity) will fail and at best those at the poor end of society will become poorer whilst the ability of wealthier people to milk the system of supporting tariffs is likely to creep to lower levels of the social pyramid but not that much lower than the current opportunities for land owners to take advantage of Government largesse. (One might also think of it as a legalised tax avoidance scheme with bonuses attached.)
So I don't think your proposed model works on a fiscal or a social basis for future projections. Moreover the potential for drastic re-distribution of energy production around the world (not just the provision of fuel for energy production deployment where needed) could fundamentally change the socio economic world model that we currently have. Many think that may in fact be the driving force behind most of the decisions the the "lawmakers" come up with. If that comes to pass our discussion about the minutiae of ways and means to 'manage' the electricity grid in the UK will look pretty pointless in hindsight.
The demand will always fluctuate, always has done always will. The only way to change this is if you can get more people working over night and staying up to do the cooking between midnight and 6am.Look at the volatility of the forecasts of wind output vs actual metered production and see just how difficult it is to predict anything like accurately much of the time. Then check the frequency variations in the system which, as I understand it, are averaged across the monitored grid so local variations could be dealing with much greater spikes.
Pretty much any 'renewable' in the existing mix that can be persuaded to produce any useful amount of output is subject to such fluctuations in or part of the world. Less so in other places - like Arizona or some desert regions.
Secondly the economics you describe seem to be based largely on the 'now' market costs and sales pricing based on today's demands and imbalances of supply. To project the benefits into the future with your proposed extended use of electric power replacing fossil fuels for transport looks rather like you have to ignore the considerable changes to the market that altered consumption patterns will induce.
Existing policy, such as it is, seems intent on managing demand on the one hand and changing the balance of production on the other with some attempt to smooth out utilisation in the middle. All this to be achieved against a background the will still require significant investment in new plant and to refresh existing capacity.
Having established that we the taxpayers can be robbed to pay well over the going rate for heavily subsidised facilities of pretty much all types the investors are in a strong position to blackmail future governments to hand over huge amounts of dosh to build facilities AND guarantee a premium price for whatever they manage to produce. Better yet they can negotiate clauses that require them to be paid for not generating anything due to the need to have capacity and to be somewhat available to deliver it for a few months of each year over the winter period.
The government could make that absurd situation look better by smoothing demand over th esummer period as well. Perhaps they should mandate the required use of aircon in all buildings for H&S reasons thus creating demand for more energy during the summer months.
Either way the current demand and supply model with the claimed options to store energy when it's cheap and sell it back when it is expensive is not likely to be sustainable if government objective for uptake are achieved. The predicted "cheap" energy available at certain times due to low demand will just not exist once demand is smoothed and, most likely, before that should people buy in to the concept.
With wind produced electricity costing far more than almost any other source, even ignoring the need for investment and maintenance of alternative back up sources, the only thing guaranteed is that energy will become ever more expensive and even the plug in car "winners" will lose in the longer term.
More practically I really struggle to see how certain locations, even with enough wealth to buy in to the early period of, say, Tesla market growth (Tesla technology representing something worth considering where many of the others, by comparison, do not) would be able to deploy the infrastructure required.
Streets full of terraced houses and parking wherever you can are not obvious locations for electric car charging success stories to appear. Likewise families with multiple vehicles might be challenged to get them all charged - or discharged even if tariffs are favourable.
To make these things work in a mass market mass uptake sense may require far more effort with infrastructure development than anyone cares to admit. If the market does not spread the wider objective (irrespective of its validity) will fail and at best those at the poor end of society will become poorer whilst the ability of wealthier people to milk the system of supporting tariffs is likely to creep to lower levels of the social pyramid but not that much lower than the current opportunities for land owners to take advantage of Government largesse. (One might also think of it as a legalised tax avoidance scheme with bonuses attached.)
So I don't think your proposed model works on a fiscal or a social basis for future projections. Moreover the potential for drastic re-distribution of energy production around the world (not just the provision of fuel for energy production deployment where needed) could fundamentally change the socio economic world model that we currently have. Many think that may in fact be the driving force behind most of the decisions the the "lawmakers" come up with. If that comes to pass our discussion about the minutiae of ways and means to 'manage' the electricity grid in the UK will look pretty pointless in hindsight.
There is one way you could utilise the spare overnight capacity - making current power stations more efficient, as they don't need to keep starting up and shutting down which wastes fuel and increases maintenance requirements. That would be to load them up charging EV batteries. I've previously worked out that for the average daily mileage, there's enough spare grid capacity at night to charge the whole UK car fleet if they were EVs. That's assuming something like 40 miles a day and 0.3kWh/mile. There's over 20GW spare between midnight and 6am. Even if you used coal to charge the EVs there would be a decrease in emissions from "well to wheel".
You correct not all houses have off street parking. Lets just assume half do. About 11 million. If we get them done first we can worry about the off street parking later. You do have the right currently to ask for an on street charging stop to be fitted. Though that kind of assumed you have a reserved space. So that model works best for apartments.
There is another option for wind which I haven't discussed - and that to make them deal with the fluctuationA. Instead of using pooled EV batteries, make it a requirement that they can only offer up wind to the grid once they have a quantified capacity to sell. Rather than forcing the grid to purchase from them as a priority , I think we are nearing the point where you could force wind operators to buffer their supply locally and only release during the peak. Rather than being part of the problem, they then become part of the solution. They get paid much more for selling in the peak and hopefully won't need subsidies. There's several test sites, but I don't have real world cost figures for the stationary storage. But assuming it's not that much difference to a Telsa battery or about £280 / kWh. Expensisve - but it raises the price of electric sold from 4p to 50p kWh.
Scuffers said:
in your dreams...
ignoring the charger/inverter/etc looses, just at the battery level, your never going to get down to 10-20% cycle looses with current battery tech.
Can you provide a more realistice figure then? That's a number floating around my head from "something I read somewhere once". ignoring the charger/inverter/etc looses, just at the battery level, your never going to get down to 10-20% cycle looses with current battery tech.
The key thing - even if it's 25% you still make money. And provide a means of balancing supply and demand.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-...
"How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"
SOURCE: email 1255550975 with my added emphases.
TransverseTight said:
Yes, if you happen to have a hydrogen fuelling station in your garage.
If you want to enter into a discussion you are going to have to stop with your ridiculously long stream of consciousness indigestible posts.Anyway, obviously the infrastructure will develop just like petrol stations and charging points. Your argument is silly. Any serious scientists recognises that battery cars are not a usable produce and never will be unless the laws of physics can be rewritten. Even more blatant, hydrogen is many levels of efficiency better than some of the nutty convoluted schemes proposed so far!
Scrap Unilateral Emissions Targets, UK Climate Rebels Demand
It is now 6 years to the day since the House of Commons voted for the Climate Change Bill at Third Reading, by a majority of 465 to 5. The five of us have seen nothing in the intervening 6 years to change our view that the Climate Change Act was a profound mistake. It is time to bring to an end the pointless damage being inflicted on British households, British industry and the British economy by the unilateral commitment to unnecessarily expensive energy, and to suspend the Climate Change Act's unilateral targets until such time as a binding global agreement has been secured.
Christopher Chope MP, Phillip Davies MP, Peter Lilley MP, Andrew Tyrie MP, Ann Widdecombe (MP 1987 - 2010), 28 October 2014
Laws forcing Britain to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 must be revoked to protect householders and businesses from rising energy costs, say the five MPs who defied an overwhelming majority to oppose the legislation.
Only five Conservative MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill in 2008 even though it required Britain to meet the world’s toughest emissions targets. Since then, only Finland and Mexico have adopted similar targets.
In a statement, Christopher Chope, Philip Davies, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe, said: “The five of us have seen nothing in the intervening six years to change our view that the Climate Change Act was a profound mistake. The Act was intended as an example to the world which would lead to a binding global agreement. Despite a succession of conferences devoted to this objective, no such global agreement has proved possible."
“The UK accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions. It is time to bring to an end the pointless damage being inflicted on British households, British industry and the British economy by the unilateral commitment to unnecessarily expensive energy, and to suspend the Climate Change Act’s unilateral targets until such time as a binding global agreement has been secured. A full reconsideration of the deeply flawed economic methodology to support the Act is also now urgently needed. This served as the justification for so many regulatory and other measures that has forced up energy prices for millions of householders, without any clear long term benefit.”
Ben Webster, The Times, 29 October 2014
It is now 6 years to the day since the House of Commons voted for the Climate Change Bill at Third Reading, by a majority of 465 to 5. The five of us have seen nothing in the intervening 6 years to change our view that the Climate Change Act was a profound mistake. It is time to bring to an end the pointless damage being inflicted on British households, British industry and the British economy by the unilateral commitment to unnecessarily expensive energy, and to suspend the Climate Change Act's unilateral targets until such time as a binding global agreement has been secured.
Christopher Chope MP, Phillip Davies MP, Peter Lilley MP, Andrew Tyrie MP, Ann Widdecombe (MP 1987 - 2010), 28 October 2014
Laws forcing Britain to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 must be revoked to protect householders and businesses from rising energy costs, say the five MPs who defied an overwhelming majority to oppose the legislation.
Only five Conservative MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill in 2008 even though it required Britain to meet the world’s toughest emissions targets. Since then, only Finland and Mexico have adopted similar targets.
In a statement, Christopher Chope, Philip Davies, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe, said: “The five of us have seen nothing in the intervening six years to change our view that the Climate Change Act was a profound mistake. The Act was intended as an example to the world which would lead to a binding global agreement. Despite a succession of conferences devoted to this objective, no such global agreement has proved possible."
“The UK accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions. It is time to bring to an end the pointless damage being inflicted on British households, British industry and the British economy by the unilateral commitment to unnecessarily expensive energy, and to suspend the Climate Change Act’s unilateral targets until such time as a binding global agreement has been secured. A full reconsideration of the deeply flawed economic methodology to support the Act is also now urgently needed. This served as the justification for so many regulatory and other measures that has forced up energy prices for millions of householders, without any clear long term benefit.”
Ben Webster, The Times, 29 October 2014
Mr GrimNasty said:
TransverseTight said:
Yes, if you happen to have a hydrogen fuelling station in your garage.
If you want to enter into a discussion you are going to have to stop with your ridiculously long stream of consciousness indigestible posts.Anyway, obviously the infrastructure will develop just like petrol stations and charging points. Your argument is silly. Any serious scientists recognises that battery cars are not a usable produce and never will be unless the laws of physics can be rewritten. Even more blatant, hydrogen is many levels of efficiency better than some of the nutty convoluted schemes proposed so far!
I'm not saying don't do hydrogen. I think we should keep trying. But at the moment the costs don't add up and the long post was the explanation on why. You can't just say it will be ok in future, without saying how to get the cost of hydrogen production down, how to reduce the cost of hydrogen transportation and storage, and how to reduce the cost of the fuel cell stack.
Likewise stating hydrogen is more efficient, doesn't make it true. Take a look at well to wheel studies on competing technologies.
I provided some numbers to show that battery electric vehicles are continuing development rapidly and will soon leave hydrogen behind if the costs can't be reduced.
(Stop reading there if you want the short version)
This summary of the EU JEC reports has some useful info...
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/03/20140327-j...
Shows that for a FCEV on the EU energy mix is about 250-350 MJ/100km
For a BEV its 120MJ/100km
IF you use wind power to crack the hydrogen its about 100MJ/100km
But then a BEV can get 40MJ/100km on wind.
Just those figures tell you what problem hydrogen has VS BEV as energy has a cost.
That's before we get to pricing of the ready to consume post transport "fuel" product. OR how convenient it is to fill up (home vs public H2 station).
My own calcs show the mid 2020s is the point where if most people sit down and do the maths, they'll work out the increased purchase cost of an EV is outweighed by the lower running cost on a battery than can get 300 miles range for not too much up front. Plus they can probably get a 300+hp motor and AWD thrown in for good measure, something they can't afford to run in an ICE. What is needed by then is something like Telsa's supercharger network so on longer journeys away from home you can pull in an charge up with minimal delay. The CCS standard now rolling out covers up to 1000V 400AMP DC. Or 400kW charging. That's 20-26 miles range per minute of charging. OR 80% of your 300 miles in about 10 minutes. The last 20% takes a lot longer as the internal resistance and heat goes up.
Its seeing what is production ready and rolling out in the real world with BEVs VS what is "just around the corner" for hydrogen, that makes me think H2 MIGHT end up an also ran.
PRTVR said:
TT what you are saying is wind turbines don't work, but if you spend a fortune we may get them to work, why not just accept renewables do not work and move on.?
If they didn't work there would be none, but there are, so they do work, hence your claim is fantasy world.All power generation has pros and cons
Gandahar said:
Been in Pembroke the last week and it's not stopped blowing, no wonder they have a few turbines splattered about. Very good place to have them, why are there not more around Freshwater West??
No chance for solar though, seen 10 mins of sun in 4 days !
Too windy perhaps? they have to manage the loads caused by the winds and also ensure they aren't spun too fast. They do have a brake system to maintain speed but I suspect this is why some have then caught fire.No chance for solar though, seen 10 mins of sun in 4 days !
Really though, they just aren't very good. They have to consume energy when its not windy so that they can be on barring, or rotating to even the loads out and when its too windy, they're at risk of severe damage.
Then you only get leccy when the wind is blowing in the right range and if its not, a diesel genny chimes in to make up for it.
Its a shame you can't tell mother nature how strong a wind to blow isn't it.
The solution to wind powers shortcomings, or part solution, is of course to store the energy when it is made. i.e. blowing nicely at 3AM when no one needs it, store it for later. But we're back to the same old problem of energy storage...something only nature can do well.
But, if that was cracked then why not apply that to large powerstations? Part of the reason cooling towers exist is because they need somewhere to dump energy when the country doesn't need it (assuming its not sent elsewhere like over to ireland or back to france). So just dump it in the store for later.
Whoever cracks high density energy storage and commercialises it will probably become the worlds first trillionaire.
bodhi said:
Gandahar said:
If they weren't heavily subsidised there would be none, but there are, so they are subsidised, hence your claim is fantasy world.
All power generation has pros and cons
FTFY.All power generation has pros and cons
Otispunkmeyer said:
Gandahar said:
Been in Pembroke the last week and it's not stopped blowing, no wonder they have a few turbines splattered about. Very good place to have them, why are there not more around Freshwater West??
No chance for solar though, seen 10 mins of sun in 4 days !
Too windy perhaps? they have to manage the loads caused by the winds and also ensure they aren't spun too fast. They do have a brake system to maintain speed but I suspect this is why some have then caught fire.No chance for solar though, seen 10 mins of sun in 4 days !
Gandahar said:
Getting into an argument about subsidies on power generation is a very slippery slope indeed. Also it might be more productive to put your own viewpoint in your own words than change mine to something I did not say
My viewpoint was inferred, however if the subtle hint didn't work, I think they are ugly eyesores, ruining many areas of outstanding natural beauty, and from the outputs I've seen unless there is the right sort of wind, bloody useless for power generation. rovermorris999 said:
And the fact remains that without subsidies there would be no wind turbines or solar panels. They are a waste of money. If they are so good then let them stand on their own merits.
this ^^^^what's worse is they are then loading up the conventional 'real' generators with carbon tax's
s2art said:
That's interesting, I've looked at EROEI when reading up on Peak Oil scenarios... it supports my view we are running out of time to get off oil and onto something else. The EROEI on tar sands is about 2:1 IIRC. Meaning we are using more energy to get it to market than is actually provides to the benefit of the market. Effectively coal, nuclear, gas, hydro and a bit of wind energy is being sucked in to make liquid fuels. It's better just to use the input energy directly and cut out all the middle stuff. It's why an EV cost 1p a mile to run (With no tax) and an ICE costs about 4p ( if we had no fuel duty ).What I've yet to understand is why in the report the solar EROEI is so low. From numbers I've seen before, Solar PV nets out it's energy cost in its first year. And as it's guaranteed for 20 years and will actually work for 40 I'd expect PV to be 20:1 or more. 1kW peak of PV in the UK produces around 900kWh per year. Just under a megawatt hour. It passes the sanity test on does that sound a likely amount of energy used to manufacture it.. round it up to 1000kWh. That's like 1 Megawatt of power for 1h, 100kW for 10 hours, 10kW for 100 hours, or 1kW for 1000 hours. All of which seem a feasible number for manufacturing and shipping about 4 PV Panels. (250W Peak per panel). Further googling required to confirm.
PV output could be up to 6 times higher if you don't live in the UK. Something he shows in Germany vs Desert CSP. (Parabolic reflectors making steam to run turbines). A reason why I think the gov's current PV policy is wrong. They'd be nbetter sticking all the PV in the North African deserts and shipping the lecccy over HV DC Lines. Despite the 10-20% losses that would be incurred, you'd still end up with 4-5 times more electricity and less seasonal variation. Although that isn't exactly increasing energy security if Al-Shishkebabitis get their hands on them. Still 7000MW DC line would probably fry their tiny little brains, as being DC they wouldn't be able to let go.
The other thing I need to get to the original report for, is that he's saying to end up with 1/4 of the final energy is you use storage. Again this doesn't add up. At least at first glance. It doesn't pass a sanity test. Say you make 100kWh of batteries. And they can cycle 3000 times. Over their life they can store 300,000kWh of energy. That's got a market price of about £30,000 at 10p a unit. Which would put them on roughly break even in energy costs VS battery cost. They don't reduce the value of the electricity to £7500 which is what a 4:1 reduction implies.
Anyway - its given me something to look at in detail tonight. As well as getting proper figures for the losses in AC > DC charge > discharge > AC cycles.
This looks interesting... http://www.udel.edu/V2G/KempTom-V2G-Implementation...
A quick scan shows when you consider a fully EV vehicle fleet in in the US As an example... would have has 30 times the output power of all the power stations combined. So you'd only need 3% of cars pluged into EVSE posts to fully power the country. Never thought of it like that before. Obviously - you still need to get the initial power from somewhere so you can't shut down all the power stations. It just means the concept isn't broken from the start.
This less scientific approach has some fundamental errors...
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&...
Not recognising EVSE already have VTG capabilty, and don't cost $10,000 each its more like $1000, and the cars have inverters built in. Variable frequency ones at that.
Also came across an idea to use cars to work just as load dumps - not returning power. Acting as frequency balancing in the day. Basically varying the charge rate to keep the grid stable. That sounds like a real good idea as you aren't reducing the life of your battery, but taking on a slower charge at time when it's convenient for the grid. Also slower charging prolongs battery life as you aren't pushing the thermal envelope and risking overheating it.
Frequency balancing pays s**tloads. I was working at one of the big 6 recently and read on the intranet how they were converting a few of their CCGTs from base load to frequency balancing plants as the profits are much higher. Wear on the turbines goes up loads from speeding up and slowing down all the time but they were working with the turbine maker to work out best practice ramping profiles. The same company was working on Smart grid standards with the other operators to put the comms in place to do all of this. Few years yet I reckon.
Given we have, I think, only 17,000 EVs in the UK currently - and they can all run a minimum 10kW motor at least (ignore the peak rated motor capacity), there's already a theretical output of 17,000 x 10kw = 170,000kW of 170MW of peak load "generating" capacity available - had they all been built with VTG outputs. Not a lot, about 1 small CCGT gen set. But if it were 1,000,000 cars online or 5% of the national fleet that rises to 10GW. Actually - have to correct that to 7GW... assuming the posts are limited to 7kW each for now.
turbobloke said:
And then this Climategate email from IPCC guru Dr K Trenberth to Dr T Wigley:
"How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"
SOURCE: email 1255550975 with my added emphases.
A lot of the climate gate is b"How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"
SOURCE: email 1255550975 with my added emphases.
ks. Best avoided as someone somewhere is trying to get you to think differently by adding spin and quoting stuff out of context.However - this specific quite is why I'm more focused on access to energy and energy technology that is better than what we have now. Rather than climate change mitigation. So for example - should someone publish a paper tomorrow that says undisputably climate change is caused by the increase of worm farts due to the increased depth of soil.. It doesn't make EVs a bad idea. It doesn't make wind turbines a bad idea. Because we still need various supplies of energy. Once everyone in the world starts catching up with our energy consumption rate, how much do you think a lump of coal will cost? More than it does now for sure.
Likewise - I like the idea of a family car with 691hp that costs me £3.10 to drive 120 miles to work and back instead of £34 and has no lag on waiting for revs to build up. For less than the price of a "normal" car with 691hp, that probably only has 2 seats and no luggage space. Both are unlikely to get above 50 mph average speed on a typical commute, but the petrol powered one will require you stop spend 15-30 minutes a week deviating to petrol stations, whilst the other requires you to plug in every 2nd or 3rd night when you get home.
Mr GrimNasty said:
If you want to enter into a discussion you are going to have to stop with your ridiculously long stream of consciousness indigestible posts.
Anyway, obviously the infrastructure will develop just like petrol stations and charging points. Your argument is silly. Any serious scientists recognises that battery cars are not a usable produce and never will be unless the laws of physics can be rewritten. Even more blatant, hydrogen is many levels of efficiency better than some of the nutty convoluted schemes proposed so far!
There are significant problems with hydrogen as a vehicle fuel; it may be that the net costs of using it as a feedstock to synthesise liquid fuel of some kind, which can be readily distributed via the existing infrastructure, rather than using hydrogen directly. Transitioning from ICE to fuel cells can still be done and there's no need for bulky cryo tanks in cars.Anyway, obviously the infrastructure will develop just like petrol stations and charging points. Your argument is silly. Any serious scientists recognises that battery cars are not a usable produce and never will be unless the laws of physics can be rewritten. Even more blatant, hydrogen is many levels of efficiency better than some of the nutty convoluted schemes proposed so far!
Otispunkmeyer said:
The solution to wind powers shortcomings, or part solution, is of course to store the energy when it is made. i.e. blowing nicely at 3AM when no one needs it, store it for later. But we're back to the same old problem of energy storage...something only nature can do well.
But, if that was cracked then why not apply that to large powerstations? Part of the reason cooling towers exist is because they need somewhere to dump energy when the country doesn't need it (assuming its not sent elsewhere like over to ireland or back to france). So just dump it in the store for later.
Whoever cracks high density energy storage and commercialises it will probably become the worlds first trillionaire.
That's not why cooling towers exist; they are used for dumping low grade waste heat from the tail-end of the rankine cycle, it's of little use for anything and would be very difficult and uneconomic to store. You're right about energy storage though; whoever cracks that will make Bill Gates look skint.But, if that was cracked then why not apply that to large powerstations? Part of the reason cooling towers exist is because they need somewhere to dump energy when the country doesn't need it (assuming its not sent elsewhere like over to ireland or back to france). So just dump it in the store for later.
Whoever cracks high density energy storage and commercialises it will probably become the worlds first trillionaire.
Edited by hidetheelephants on Wednesday 29th October 17:28
TransverseTight said:
turbobloke said:
And then this Climategate email from IPCC guru Dr K Trenberth to Dr T Wigley:
"How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"
SOURCE: email 1255550975 with my added emphases.
A lot of the climate gate is b"How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"
SOURCE: email 1255550975 with my added emphases.
ks. Best avoided as someone somewhere is trying to get you to think differently by adding spin and quoting stuff out of context.
On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close
to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the
planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact
that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes
any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able
to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin
Look! No added spin.
Any inappropriately dismissive response to Climategate emails suggests two things, one that the person doing the dismissing hasn't read (m)any, and that they have a less than totally objective position on climate change, possibly in terms of vested interest(s).
For most of the past 20 years I've been in contact with several of the scientists subjected to personal abuse and peer review abuse as catalogued by the abusers themselves in their Climategate messages.
The Climategate 1 and 2 emails document the suborning of science. There is no 'context' excuse, or any other excuse, available to anyone.
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