Chronicles in Pacific Socialism - Hawaii Bans Fossil Fuels to Make Electricity.

[untermensche]

A sane nation would use Hawaii as an experiment to transition from liquid fossil energy.

It would massively fund such an experiment.

 

[arkirk]

I agree with dismal, history shows that electricity was 100% reliable throughout history. Even in the beginning.

This is not a question of whether or not there is electricity. That is going to be a given. Actually most forms of alternative energy are electricity. FUKUSHIMA was a huge electric facility that is today 100% broken. Coal, oil, and LNG are all subject to their own liabilities. You simply are saying that power from a diversified grid is dependable. Your assumption of 100% reliability from any given source is not accurate. We are going to have to adjust our energy usage patterns. So what. That is a small price to pay to minimize the global warming phenomenon. Actually Solar and Wind are quite reliable as well. It is just a different set of parameters that govern when it is reliable.

 

[bilby]

I agree with dismal, history shows that electricity was 100% reliable throughout history. Even in the beginning.

This is not a question of whether or not there is electricity. That is going to be a given. Actually most forms of alternative energy are electricity. FUKUSHIMA was a huge electric facility that is today 100% broken. Coal, oil, and LNG are all subject to their own liabilities. You simply are saying that power from a diversified grid is dependable. Your assumption of 100% reliability from any given source is not accurate. We are going to have to adjust our energy usage patterns. So what. That is a small price to pay to minimize the global warming phenomenon. Actually Solar and Wind are quite reliable as well. It is just a different set of parameters that govern when it is reliable.

There are two nuclear plants at Fukushima. Fukushima Dai-Ichi (number one) was a first generation plant, that would have been closed long ago if there was not so much opposition to building new plants that it was kept running.

Next door is the Fukushima Dai-Ni (number two) plant, a second generation plant with more built in safety features. This plant suffered identical earthquake and tsunami damage to its sister plant, but maintained containment, despite the tsunami being twice the design height for the plant. It has been shutdown permanently as it is a very old site, and not considered worth repairing.

If the anti-nuclear lobby had not been successful in blocking construction of a Generation three plant to replace Fukushima Dai-Ichi, then almost nobody outside Japan would have heard of Fukushima.

Hawaii might be a suitable location for a nuclear plant, but it seems to me that it would be much better to develop geothermal for base-load, with solar to top it up, and to take the opportunity to use HI as a test site for geothermal, large-scale solar power and power storage solutions.

As the area to be served is small, a central high-power solar farm might well be an excellent solution for the islands.

 

[ZiprHead]

As the area to be served is small, a central high-power solar farm might well be an excellent solution for the islands.

I'm not a big fan of centralized solar farms. Line losses transmitting the electricity to the end user eats up large amounts of juice. Every home should be covered with solar panels on their roofs.

 

[bilby]

As the area to be served is small, a central high-power solar farm might well be an excellent solution for the islands.

I'm not a big fan of centralized solar farms. Line losses transmitting the electricity to the end user eats up large amounts of juice. Every home should be covered with solar panels on their roofs.

True, but in this case the savings in infrastructure (not having to replace those transformers Loren was talking about), coupled with the small area to be served, make central solar generation a better fit in HI than it would be elsewhere.

 

[arkirk]

I'm not a big fan of centralized solar farms. Line losses transmitting the electricity to the end user eats up large amounts of juice. Every home should be covered with solar panels on their roofs.

True, but in this case the savings in infrastructure (not having to replace those transformers Loren was talking about), coupled with the small area to be served, make central solar generation a better fit in HI than it would be elsewhere.

With modern technology you can have both diffuse collections systems and central ones in the same system. These systems are more reliable in a grid. It is really a matter of standardizing the outputs of alternative energy sources so they can be accessed efficiently by the same kind of demands. This is really not a difficult engineering problem.

 

[maxparrish]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/28/3696207/hawaii-isnt-big-on-gas/

Hawaiian Gov. David Ige said this week he opposes plans to use liquefied natural gas as a “transitional fuel” for the island state as it moves to 100 percent renewable electricity. Ige said investment in infrastructure for LNG — or any fossil fuel — was misplaced, and he expressed doubt that there would be any monetary benefits to LNG proposals.

What more freedoms will they destroy in the name of unworkable energy sustainability? What's next floating gulags?

When I first spied your thread title I laughed heartily - nice touch. But alas, the requirement that all of Hawaii’s electricity to be produced from renewable energy sources by the year 2045 is a reminder of the irrational green-socialist eco-obessions. What can be more fun - demanding vast technological directives to a world some 30 years hence?

Que up a Prius Harmony commercial and 1976's "Let the Love Flow", as background music to "The New Directives" and we shall sashay to a "clean" utiopia!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9LqWd3kkkM[/url

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/28/3696207/hawaii-isnt-big-on-gas/

Hawaiian Gov. David Ige said this week he opposes plans to use liquefied natural gas as a “transitional fuel” for the island state as it moves to 100 percent renewable electricity. Ige said investment in infrastructure for LNG — or any fossil fuel — was misplaced, and he expressed doubt that there would be any monetary benefits to LNG proposals.

What more freedoms will they destroy in the name of unworkable energy sustainability? What's next floating gulags?

Yes, this is surely a new Holocaust of far grander porportions anyone can ever imagine. Useless hyperbole.

 

[Angry Floof]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

They do understand, but the thought of improvement of conditions in the world for anyone is likely going to conflict with traditional ideas of how things should be. Liberals want to move forward and improve life for everyone. Conservatives want to move backward to a non-existent time in the past when they imagine all was perfect in the world under their traditions. Even realistic improvements must be distorted in order that they don't look as good as the conservative fantasy.

 

[maxparrish]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

No, its because many conservatives and libertarians listen to liberal messages and expressions of value. Who do you think the mass media Prius ad was directed to...sober engineers? Conservatives? Anti-utopians?. Look at it again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9LqWd3kkkM

A hybrid "clean" car traipsing over a fairy-tale landscape of singing plants, smurfs, and rainbows. You'd almost think the commercial was a satire - but nope, it was serious.

 

[maxparrish]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

They do understand, but the thought of improvement of conditions in the world for anyone is likely going to conflict with traditional ideas of how things should be. Liberals want to move forward and improve life for everyone. Conservatives want to move backward to a non-existent time in the past when they imagine all was perfect in the world under their traditions. Even realistic improvements must be distorted in order that they don't look as good as the conservative fantasy.

And liberals think that their intentions (wants) are more than sufficient to justify any collectively ordered transformation, regardless of its actual impact on human well being or individual rights.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

Because all too often they're asking for a best of both worlds type solution, ignoring the downside of what they propose.

 

[Derec]

No one says you can't have 100% renewable energy if you are willing to tolerate the expense and unreliability of it.

Intermittency doesn't have to result in unreliability because you can use energy storage with batteries and things like pumped-storage hydroelectric.
Cost actually makes renewables a pretty good bet in Hawaii. Fossil fuels are more expensive than elsewhere because they have to be shipped in while it is a very good location for solar (4.5-5.5 kWh/m²/day) and also has good potential for wind and sea based energy (waves, tidal). Given the volcanic nature of the islands, geothermal is also a good possibility, although it is not mentioned in the article.

Note that the plan is a pretty long term one - by 2045 which is 30 years into the future. That's definitely doable.

Those sound like intermittent and/or impractical sources of energy.

Intermittent yes for many of those, impractical no.

How much wave/tidal energy generation actually exists in the world?

A few 10s of GW I would say based on list of plants and individual capacities (200MW-1GW for most of them).

BTW I looked up current generation stats for HI and in 2013 it was 70% oil, 14% coal, 5% wind, 0.2% solar, 2.7% geothermal, 0.8% hydro, 3.2% biomass and no tidal specifically identified though there is a little bit of "other".

Yes, Hawaii is very heavily petroleum based right now. In fact, it stands in stark contrast to how little oil is actually being used to make electricity in US as a whole (<1%). Obviously they want to get off oil and coal. The question is, is natural gas a sensible "transition fuel"? In the lower 48, natural gas makes perfect sense as it is plentiful and cheap because it can be moved easily by pipeline. In Hawaii, it would have to be liquefied and shipped, necessitating investment in LNG terminals. Skipping the transition fuel might be a good bet for them.
Note that solar has experienced a literally exponential growth in Hawaii in only a few years. Your 0.2% actually only refers to electricity industry and does not include decentralized rooftop solar. If you add that up solar in Hawaii is probably 2-3% which is quite a bit more than 0.2%. Note that rooftop solar capacity increased by a factor of 7.6 between 2010 and 2013, nearly doubling every year. That means that by 2015 it has probably increased in a similar fashion, so that we are looking at close to 10% for 2015.

 

[Derec]

Yeah, ya gotta start by convincing the public to pay more for less reliable energy.

I do not see how they would have to pay more because electricity is already very expensive on the islands. With proper system design I do not see it being less reliable either.

And the answer to "why build LNG" is that it will pollute less than the oil and coal you are burning today and will still be burning decades from now.

I agree they should move away from coal and oil. I disagree that moving to LNG is necessarily the best option.

 

[Derec]

Hawaii is probably the best place for such a thing but it's not going to work even there.

We shall see one way or another I guess.

There's also the technical problem that they have to pretty much replace their substations in order to support more rooftop solar. Current substations worldwide are designed to step power down from the high voltage lines to the neighborhood and won't work the other way around--the safety systems assume the power is coming from upstream and the cooling systems are engineered for this, also. You'll burn out the transformers if you push too much power the other way.

Well there is a long time horizon for the transition so there is plenty of time to retrofit or replace the substations. There is also possibility of substation level storage, for example in flow batteries. What is better? Invest in bidirectional substations and storage or in LNG terminals and gas fired plants?

 

[Derec]

I'm not a big fan of centralized solar farms. Line losses transmitting the electricity to the end user eats up large amounts of juice. Every home should be covered with solar panels on their roofs.

True, but in this case the savings in infrastructure (not having to replace those transformers Loren was talking about), coupled with the small area to be served, make central solar generation a better fit in HI than it would be elsewhere.

According to the EIA link dismal provided, the decentralized solar produces maybe 15x as much as electric power industry solar (presumably those would be more central plants) does, although both have increased exponentially in the few years before 2013.

 

[bilby]

Intermittency doesn't have to result in unreliability because you can use energy storage with batteries and things like pumped-storage hydroelectric.

Batteries are still too expensive, even at Hawaiian electricity prices.

Pumped storage is a good option, but there are no suitable sites within 2,000km of Honolulu. Pumped storage requires two lakes that are fairly close together laterally, but with a large difference in elevation. In Hawaii, you are lucky to find two lakes on the same island.

Perhaps if room temperature superconductors are developed the Hawaiians could take advantage of sites in the Rocky Mountains?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Why do conservatives so often claim that liberals want a utopia? I think it's because they don't actually understand what liberals want so they resort to straw man tactics.

Because all too often they're asking for a best of both worlds type solution, ignoring the downside of what they propose.

Regardless, "best of both worlds" does not equal "utopia". Do you seriously think liberals believe we will achieve a utopia, when they acknowledge that global warming is becoming increasingly dangerous?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Intermittency doesn't have to result in unreliability because you can use energy storage with batteries and things like pumped-storage hydroelectric.

Pumped storage works if you have a suitable location--but note you lose a lot of power.

There simply is no suitable battery at present.