The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[bilby]

View attachment 24019

Of course, the meme makes the common error of taking a Reserve and calling it the entire world supply - actually it's just the stuff that's been thoroughly assayed and surveyed. The total resource is far larger - but nevertheless, these figures demonstrate the huge scale of environmentally disastrous mining required to make even a tiny fraction of the storage demanded by 100% renewables - and that's just for the OECD nations.

The fact that the wind turbines and solar panels to feed this impossible volume of storage would also require insane amounts of materials and land is further illustrative of the insanity of attempting this pointless, polluting, and dangerous non-alternative to clean, reliable and safe nuclear power plants.

Anything to be able to cling to the illusion of economic growth to infinity. And we can always keep dumping the uranium tailings upon the indigenous and unsubstantial people of our internal colonies. The entitled predator class must concentrate and redistribute more wealth.

All mining creates toxic wastes. If minimising those is what floats your boat, you should be a big fan of nuclear power - particularly thorium power. Uranium and thorium are very energy dense, so you get less waste per unit of electricity generation. And thorium is a byproduct of mining for metals like tungsten, rare earths, and other metals used in batteries, magnets, alloys and technology - so burning thorium in fast reactors would actually reduce the world wide volume of radioactive mine tailings.

Economic growth is constrained by natural numbers, and they actually are infinite.

Growth in material consumption is constrained by the size of the lithosphere, and we are using a minuscule fraction of it. And we are not using it up - other than actinides burned in nuclear plants, helium lost to space, and a tiny amount of material used in space probes, everything we mine stays on Earth, ready for reuse. The only constraint on recycling is energy - the more energy we have, and the lower the price, the easier it is to recycle everything.

Sufficient cheap nuclear power even allows the recycling of burned fuel oil - we can collect the carbon dioxide, and turn it into new gasoline or other hydrocarbons and alcohols.

I think it's pretty offensive to talk of indigenous people as "unsubstantial". I certainly don't support measures that ignore the rights of anyone - that's why I lobby for clean, safe, high density nuclear fuel use, and against the polluting, dangerous, and massively resource intensive, intermittent 'renewables' industries.

I strongly suspect from your tone that you have been comprehensively lied to about nuclear power - as have most people in the last six decades. I recommend finding out the facts, from actual scientific and engineering data, not from whoever you think you should or shouldn't trust (including me).

Nullius in Verba, as they say at the Royal Society.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I strongly suspect from your tone that you have been comprehensively lied to about nuclear power - as have most people in the last six decades. I recommend finding out the facts, from actual scientific and engineering data, not from whoever you think you should or shouldn't trust (including me).

Why would you think so? Most ideologies/religions are for the most part passed on by sincere believers, even if there are some liars too.

 

[bilby]

I strongly suspect from your tone that you have been comprehensively lied to about nuclear power - as have most people in the last six decades. I recommend finding out the facts, from actual scientific and engineering data, not from whoever you think you should or shouldn't trust (including me).

Why would you think so? Most ideologies/religions are for the most part passed on by sincere believers, even if there are some liars too.

Most ideologies/religions are much older than opposition to nuclear power, which was (obviously) impossible before the 1950s, and didn't really become a widespread and powerful movement until the 1970s. Many of the people most prominent in anti-nuclear activism are well aware that they are lying.

But I am not using the narrow definition of "lied to" here. If someone who was lied to passes on what is to him a sincere belief, his audience are still being lied to in the sense I am using the phrase. You are welcome to prefer a different way to describe that situation, but I don't think it's unreasonable or misleading for me to phrase it that way. My focus is the effect on the listener, not the intent of the speaker.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Most ideologies/religions are much older than opposition to nuclear power, which was (obviously) impossible before the 1950s, and didn't really become a widespread and powerful movement until the 1970s.

I would say that even most of the recent ideologies/religions, from Mormonism to mainstream variants of present-day leftism in Western countries to more quaint ones like UFO crackpottery, are passed on by convinced believers more often than they are passed on by liars, even if there are of course also liars.

Many of the people most prominent in anti-nuclear activism are well aware that they are lying.

"Many" is a relative term. Are you talking like 50%, 20%, 1%? I'd be very surprised if it were over 1%. At least, whenever I read a "clean energy" website, it seems clear that the nuclear detractors are sincere, genuinely outraged by what they perceive as a serious offense that damages the climate - and in most cases, they will not be persuaded otherwise by reason.

But I am not using the narrow definition of "lied to" here. If someone who was lied to passes on what is to him a sincere belief, his audience are still being lied to in the sense I am using the phrase. You are welcome to prefer a different way to describe that situation, but I don't think it's unreasonable or misleading for me to phrase it that way. My focus is the effect on the listener, not the intent of the speaker.

I think it tends to give the wrong impression, but that clarifies it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

View attachment 24019

Of course, the meme makes the common error of taking a Reserve and calling it the entire world supply - actually it's just the stuff that's been thoroughly assayed and surveyed. The total resource is far larger - but nevertheless, these figures demonstrate the huge scale of environmentally disastrous mining required to make even a tiny fraction of the storage demanded by 100% renewables - and that's just for the OECD nations.

The fact that the wind turbines and solar panels to feed this impossible volume of storage would also require insane amounts of materials and land is further illustrative of the insanity of attempting this pointless, polluting, and dangerous non-alternative to clean, reliable and safe nuclear power plants.

Mining is based on current demand, not total available.

 

[bilby]

View attachment 24019

Of course, the meme makes the common error of taking a Reserve and calling it the entire world supply - actually it's just the stuff that's been thoroughly assayed and surveyed. The total resource is far larger - but nevertheless, these figures demonstrate the huge scale of environmentally disastrous mining required to make even a tiny fraction of the storage demanded by 100% renewables - and that's just for the OECD nations.

The fact that the wind turbines and solar panels to feed this impossible volume of storage would also require insane amounts of materials and land is further illustrative of the insanity of attempting this pointless, polluting, and dangerous non-alternative to clean, reliable and safe nuclear power plants.

Mining is based on current demand, not total available.

Gosh, I wish I had addressed that in my first sentence.

Oh, wait...

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html

London (CNN Business)The world's largest offshore wind farm is taking shape off the east coast of Britain, a landmark project that demonstrates one way to combat climate change at scale.Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020.

The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to see than any other wind farm.It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines that are each 100 meters tall. The blades have a circumference of 75 meters, and cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn.

Just a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for an entire day, according to Stefan Hoonings, senior project manager at Orsted (DOGEF), the Danish energy company that built the farm.

The project will take the United Kingdom closer to hitting its target of deriving a third of the country's electricity from offshore wind by 2030.

Whup it on 'em!

 

[bilby]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html

London (CNN Business)The world's largest offshore wind farm is taking shape off the east coast of Britain, a landmark project that demonstrates one way to combat climate change at scale.Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020.

The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to see than any other wind farm.It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines that are each 100 meters tall. The blades have a circumference of 75 meters, and cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn.

Just a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for an entire day, according to Stefan Hoonings, senior project manager at Orsted (DOGEF), the Danish energy company that built the farm.

The project will take the United Kingdom closer to hitting its target of deriving a third of the country's electricity from offshore wind by 2030.

Whup it on 'em!

I am prepared to bet that no developed nation will ever generate 33.3% of its electricity from wind power, over any reasonably long timeframe (say a year). Generating large percentages for a few hours once in a while is possible, but extremely expensive and futile - when it's not windy at Hornsea, the UK will need to burn gas to me up the shortfall. And when it is ideally windy at Hornsea, it will be at almost every windfarm in the UK - and a huge amount of electricity will be generated that nobody can ever use.

Electricity isn't a commodity. It's a service - it must be generated at the time of need, not at the times that are convenient to the suppliers.

I'm sure that the gas companies are very happy indeed to see huge sums of money and vast resources spent despoiling the environment with these devices, which make gas turbine power plants everso profitable to build and run.

It's just a shame that it will cause harm to the public, who will end up paying too much for unreliable electricity that still generates significant carbon dioxide (and fugitive methane) emissions.

The guaranteed supply price of £140/MWh means that consumers will pay about £5bn for Hornsea 1 alone - at a capacity factor of 30%, that's about £13.8bn per GWe delivered, for intermittent power, which will further require expensive gas turbines or non-existent but vastly expensive electricity storage facilities in order to be useful.

That's about twice the cost per GWe of the "far too expensive to even contemplate" Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, which will not require gas backup or storage to be viable.

And Hinkley Point C has a life of around sixty to eighty years. Hornsea 1 will be lucky to last twenty.

This whole project is a massive waste of time, effort and resources on a non-solution to carbon emissions. Spending the same money on nuclear power plants would actually achieve emissions reductions; and would generate six times as much electricity over the next sixty years - on demand, rather than when the wind blows whether there's demand or not.

The grid instability due to Hornsea 1 has already caused a hugely disruptive blackout. It's just the first of many to come.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-could-more-power-wind-182700887.html

• A new report predicts that wind energy will supply more power to Texas than coal in 2020.
• Texas already generates the most wind energy of any US state.
• Wind power is becoming more affordable than fossil fuels, even though a renewable-energy tax credit will come to an end in 2019.

Texas' wind turbines are expected to produce more power than the state's coal plants next year for the first time ever.


In 2020, wind farms are expected to generate 87 terawatt-hours of electricity in Texas, according to a report by energy-consulting firm Rystad Energy. That would mean that almost 8 million homes could be powered solely by wind in the state (the average home uses about 10,000 kilowatt-hours per year).
...

Whup it on 'em even more!

 

[bilby]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-could-more-power-wind-182700887.html

• A new report predicts that wind energy will supply more power to Texas than coal in 2020.
• Texas already generates the most wind energy of any US state.
• Wind power is becoming more affordable than fossil fuels, even though a renewable-energy tax credit will come to an end in 2019.

Texas' wind turbines are expected to produce more power than the state's coal plants next year for the first time ever.


In 2020, wind farms are expected to generate 87 terawatt-hours of electricity in Texas, according to a report by energy-consulting firm Rystad Energy. That would mean that almost 8 million homes could be powered solely by wind in the state (the average home uses about 10,000 kilowatt-hours per year).
...

Whup it on 'em even more!

Wind power still is less than 20% of Texan electricity generation. Coal is declining rapidly, but it's being replaced mostly by gas - gas power is the best buddy of wind and solar, and is now pushing half of all Texan power generation.

Replacing coal with gas is probably not a terrible idea; But when you consider the effects of fugitive methane, it's not particularly helpful in combating climate change either.

Texas is - like many European nations - pushing the limit of what percentage of electricity can be from wind power. Those nations that claim higher wind power contributions than about 20% can only do so by ignoring the non-wind derived component of imported power from neighbouring grids (eg Denmark, which imports coal, gas and nuclear power from Germany, and hydro and nuclear power from Sweden).

Electricity is not a commodity. If you generate 100TWh/year and use 100TWh/year, that doesn't necessarily imply that you are self sufficient. Denmark exports wind power at negative wholesale prices, then buys back non-wind power at very high prices when the wind drops. That's not sensible, nor is it something that can be emulated by their neighbours without everyone's grids collapsing.

Net imports of electricity to Denmark may be around (or even below) zero, measured in TWh/year; But they are millions of euros. Money, not megawatts, is the unit of measure of value. Claims of self sufficiency are a mere accounting trick.

 

[lpetrich]

What's Up With The Micro Wind Turbines? They're Up!
In the US, small wind turbines (1 to 100 kW) are not doing very well, but the high end and the low end are both doing well.

Another factor to consider is the increasing demand for larger wind turbines for distributed usage. That could reflect a surge in interest among large commercial and industrial users, where facility managers are attracted by long term price stability and greater control over their energy profile.

This is something that deserves to get more attention. It may also explain why big businesses moving into renewable electricity supply is more than virtue signaling or farsightedness.

Though wind and solar energy are very notably intermittent, they are much more predictable than fuel markets, and that makes it much easier to do long-term projections of costs.

Much of the demand for micro wind turbines is in the area of remote power, and Ms. Orrell explained (by email to CleanTechnica) that demand for remote power does not respond to market conditions in the way that other applications do.

“These less than 1-kW turbines (often packaged with solar PV panels) go to a variety of customers – off-grid cabins, oil & gas platforms, sailboats, fracking sites, and military sites,” she wrote. “If you need power for your remote site, you need it now – you probably won’t wait for an incentive to become available to make your decision.”

Wind energy can complement solar energy - one can deploy both of them.

One is the increased popularity of wind-solar hybrid systems. In a hybrid system, the low cost of solar can cushion higher costs for small wind. The result could be a cost-effective system for 24/7 renewable energy production that also reduces the need for energy storage.

Wind-solar hybrid power plants are already emerging as a competitive alternative to natural gas on the utility scale level, so there’s that.

 

[fromderinside]

Apples and oranges. Intermittency versus long tern cost predictability need to be connected by other dimensions. How about cost to repair intermittency and costs to repair cost predictability. There I believe we can agree that the cost to provide source continuity is less than the cost to achieve carbon based energy predictability. Solar and wind are scalable whilst carbon fuel sources are becoming less scalable as sources decrease over time. Also wind and solar are not disruptive of life supportability while carbon fuels are proving to be so.

 

[steve_bank]

In the news the Coast Guard is looking at a wind farm on the East coast that is causing problems with RADAR.

For a Doppler RADAR the sinning blades may look like a moving object.

 

[fromderinside]

Use a directional algorithm to compensate set to the appropriate angle of incidence an distance. Don't use highway Patrol Doppler ever.

IOW spend a buck to negate the issue rather than wring hands and gnash teeth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the news the Coast Guard is looking at a wind farm on the East coast that is causing problems with RADAR.

For a Doppler RADAR the sinning blades may look like a moving object.

So they're going too fast and the Coast Guard wants to give them a ticket?

 

[lpetrich]

The world's largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete - CNN

Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020.

The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to sea than any other wind farm. It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines, with towers that are each nearly 100 meters tall. The blades cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn.

...
With a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, Hornsea One will generate nearly twice the power of Orsted's Walney Extension — the current largest offshore wind farm in the world, located in the Irish Sea.

Hornsea Two is under construction and has potential to meet the electricity needs of up to 1.6 million homes a year, according to Orsted. Hornsea Three could provide electricity to more than 2 million homes.

A total capacity of around 5 gigawatts. I'm very impressed by that progress.

Panasonic launches new residential solar battery – pv magazine International - "The Japanese electronics manufacturer said the EverVolt storage system is available in the U.S. market in AC and DC-coupled versions, with a storage capacity ranging from 5.7-34.2 kWh, depending on the model chosen."

90% increased biomass under solar panels: Agrivoltaics hold productive promise – pv magazine Australia - "With sun the common component of solar energy production and agriculture, a new company in northern NSW is set to combine the benefits of sowing PV and forage crops in the same soil."

The idea behind agrivoltaics is that solar farming and agricultural land use are synergistically integrated: spacing of panel arrays and elevated construction of panels allow light to penetrate to the ground at a level that supports growth of crops or forage grasses, while helping to retain soil moisture. Elevation of panels also accommodates grazing of sheep or goats.

...
The study, conducted on “unirrigated pasture that often experiences water stress”, at Rabbit Hill agrivoltaic solar farm on Oregon State campus, reported a 328% increase in the water efficiency of soils under partial solar panel shading and wind protection. These more favourable conditions contributed to a 90% increase in biomass grown under those panels.

In addition, the microclimate created by transpiration of the biomass beneath the solar panels also resulted in lower air temperatures around the solar installation, which improved module performance.

Wynn says other relevant benefits of colocating sheep pastures with solar arrays include reduced eagle strike on lambs born in such pastures. Anecdotal evidence from a farmer running sheep at Glen Innes in a paddock that also hosts conventional solar arrays — even without the benefits of improved pasture growth — is for a 140% increase in lambing rates

Can one do that with nuclear energy?

 

[bilby]

The world's largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete - CNN

Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020.

The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to sea than any other wind farm. It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines, with towers that are each nearly 100 meters tall. The blades cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn.

...
With a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, Hornsea One will generate nearly twice the power of Orsted's Walney Extension — the current largest offshore wind farm in the world, located in the Irish Sea.

Hornsea Two is under construction and has potential to meet the electricity needs of up to 1.6 million homes a year, according to Orsted. Hornsea Three could provide electricity to more than 2 million homes.

A total capacity of around 5 gigawatts. I'm very impressed by that progress.

Panasonic launches new residential solar battery – pv magazine International - "The Japanese electronics manufacturer said the EverVolt storage system is available in the U.S. market in AC and DC-coupled versions, with a storage capacity ranging from 5.7-34.2 kWh, depending on the model chosen."

90% increased biomass under solar panels: Agrivoltaics hold productive promise – pv magazine Australia - "With sun the common component of solar energy production and agriculture, a new company in northern NSW is set to combine the benefits of sowing PV and forage crops in the same soil."

The idea behind agrivoltaics is that solar farming and agricultural land use are synergistically integrated: spacing of panel arrays and elevated construction of panels allow light to penetrate to the ground at a level that supports growth of crops or forage grasses, while helping to retain soil moisture. Elevation of panels also accommodates grazing of sheep or goats.

...
The study, conducted on “unirrigated pasture that often experiences water stress”, at Rabbit Hill agrivoltaic solar farm on Oregon State campus, reported a 328% increase in the water efficiency of soils under partial solar panel shading and wind protection. These more favourable conditions contributed to a 90% increase in biomass grown under those panels.

In addition, the microclimate created by transpiration of the biomass beneath the solar panels also resulted in lower air temperatures around the solar installation, which improved module performance.

Wynn says other relevant benefits of colocating sheep pastures with solar arrays include reduced eagle strike on lambs born in such pastures. Anecdotal evidence from a farmer running sheep at Glen Innes in a paddock that also hosts conventional solar arrays — even without the benefits of improved pasture growth — is for a 140% increase in lambing rates

Can one do that with nuclear energy?

You don't need to. Nuclear energy uses very little land, so it doesn't have this problem to solve in the first place.

Creating a problem and then developing an elegant solution to it is all well and good, but it is far better not to create the problem to begin with.

Renewable energy is ecological vandalism on a massive scale.

Oh, and even though it's not yet complete, the grid stability issues caused by Hornsea have already triggered a major blackout in London. 5GW is fucking useless if it routinely goes away without notice.

 

[fromderinside]

Bilby, bilby, bilby. Light amplification should permit any solar event to be amplified through a multistage system to produce multiples of any input at the first processing unit thereby increasing the gain of incoming light per surface area in a manner to what selected use of materials provides gains in output in nuclear systems.

Here is one paper that discusses that very idea. Optical Amplification: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Optical_amplification

 

[bilby]

Bilby, bilby, bilby. Light amplification should permit any solar event to be amplified through a multistage system to produce multiples of any input at the first processing unit thereby increasing the gain of incoming light per surface area in a manner to what selected use of materials provides gains in output in nuclear systems.

Here is one paper that discusses that very idea. Optical Amplification: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Optical_amplification

Fromder, fromder, fromder, the first law of thermodynamics still applies. Sunlight has a finite power at the Earth's surface, and no amount of amplification can ever produce more than the ~1kW/m² that arrives at the bottom of the atmosphere. The very best theoretically possible solar power plant on Earth requires at least a million square meters (0.38 sq miles ) of area per GW (and you need 3GW plus 2GW of storage to get 24x7 at 1GW of power given ideal weather; which of course doesn't exist. That's over a square mile of solar collectors, plus however much space your storage takes up) - and of course it's impossible to engineer a system this good. Multiply by ten, and you're still asking for exceptional performance from your collection and conversion technology.

Paving over ten square miles of land just to avoid building a safe, clean, and reliable nuclear plant is environmental vandalism - even before you start thinking about the damage done mining ten square miles worth of raw materials for hi-tech collecting equipment, manufacturing, fabrication, shipping to site, installation, and cleaning. And you're going to be doing a LOT of cleaning to keep those collectors from being occluded by dirt and dust.

Oh, and the nuclear plant runs at full power for sixty plus years. The best solar plants have twenty year lifespans - so muliply the environmental damage by three again.

Low power density electricity sources are utterly useless, except in niche applications where grid connections are expensive or impractical. They shouldn't be used as a major contributor to grid power; It's stupid, expensive, environmentally wanton, and causes grid stability issues.

Power density is everything.

Solar power sucks, because at the Earth's surface, it's too diffuse to be useful in powering a modern technological society.

 

[fromderinside]

Who said anything about earth's surface?

Put the panels in space so they don't encroach on earth access to normal solar effects. Design a plug and cable system to bring the energy to earth by traveling wire. Build as many space solar farms using materials harvested from asteroid belt as are needed to support of whatever population you choose to remain on earth. Hell put them on the moon to cut costs of keeping them in orbit.Wallah!!! Running a more or less friction free cable from moon to earth should be child's play. Cables can be built from carbon materials that withstand stretching and heat loads necessary. Just make the top one tenth of one percent of money holders pay two cents on everything they hold over 100 million* and it's paid for many times over.

*^{_{Elisabeth Warren.}}