The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Renewable Energy: safe, clean, unlimited energy for our future on Reddit

India seeks to woo renewable energy firms shifting from China, plans manufacturing hubs at ports - india news - Hindustan Times - "The new and renewable energy ministry said on Saturday that at “a time when many companies are planning to shift their manufacturing base from China, it is [the] opportune time for India to bring policy changes for facilitating and catalysing manufacturing in India”."

That would be welcome - India is a much more open society than China.

Wind power is now America’s largest renewable energy provider | REVE News of the wind sector in Spain and in the world

Wind power emerged from 2019 as America’s top choice for new power after building 9.1 gigawatts (GW), representing 39 percent of new utility-scale power additions. With these additions, operating wind power capacity in the U.S. now stands at over 105 GW, enough to power 32 million American homes. In addition, wind energy is now the largest provider of renewable energy in the country, supplying over 7 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2019. The newly released Wind Powers America Annual Report 2019 reveals that U.S. wind energy supports a record 120,000 American jobs, 530 domestic factories, and $1.6 billion a year in revenue for states and communities that host wind farms.

Covid-19 to wreck economics of new solar, wind projects – pv magazine International - "While the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the renewable energy market is still not clear, Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy says that new solar and wind projects will grind to a halt in 2020, creating a ripple effect in the years to come, as currencies throughout the world continue to slide against the US dollar"

Renewable Energy Accounts for Majority of New Capacity in 2019 - Solar Industry

The renewable energy sector added 176 GW of generating capacity globally in 2019, slightly lower than the 179 GW added in 2018. However, new renewable power accounted for 72% of all power expansion last year, according to new data released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

IRENA’s annual Renewable Capacity Statistics 2020 shows that renewables expanded by 7.6% last year, with Asia dominating growth and accounting for 54% of total additions. While the expansion of renewables slowed last year, total renewable power growth outpaced fossil fuel growth by a factor of 2.6, continuing the dominance of renewables in power expansion first established in 2012. Solar and wind contributed 90% of total renewable capacity added in 2019.

That's welcome, but we should be doing more.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Renewable energy cheaper than 60% of operating coal plants, report finds

The financial think tank Carbon Tracker, in a recent report, has found that over 60% of global coal power plants are generating electricity at a higher cost than renewables. It concludes that by 2030, at the latest, it will be cheaper to build new wind or solar capacity than continue operating coal in all markets.

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Right now, the report estimates that about 70% of operating coal capacity in China costs more than renewables. In India and the US, this figure drops to 50%. But, by 2030, that number is set to double (assuming market forces remain constant rather than intensify—which they are likely to do).

That is very welcome, renewable energy competing on economics. So one should not have to choose between clean energy and cheap energy - one can have clean, cheap energy.

Oil Companies Are Collapsing Due to Coronavirus, but Wind and Solar Energy Keep Growing - The New York Times

The renewable-energy business is expected to keep growing, though more slowly, in contrast to fossil fuel companies, which have been hammered by low oil and gas prices.

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Even the decline in electricity use in recent weeks as businesses halted operations could help renewables, according to analysts at Raymond James & Associates. That’s because utilities, as revenue suffers, will try to get more electricity from wind and solar farms, which cost little to operate, and less from power plants fueled by fossil fuels.

“Renewables are on a growth trajectory today that I think isn’t going to be set back long term,” said Dan Reicher, the founding executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University and an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration. “This will be a bump in the road.”

Of course, the economic slowdown caused by the fight against the coronavirus is taking a toll on parts of the renewable energy industry just as it is on the rest of the economy. Businesses that until recently were adding workers are laying people off and putting off investments. Among the hardest hit are smaller companies that sell solar panels for rooftops. Their orders have dropped steeply as customers put off installations to avoid possible contact with the virus.

So a slowdown in installations, while an increased fraction for already-operational systems.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Britain hits ‘significant milestone’ as renewables become main power source | Current News

Renewables hit a new milestone, generating 35.4TWh between January and March, more than fossil fuels combined. This also represents a significant increase from Q1 2019, when they produced 27.2TWh.

During this period 44.6% of total generation was produced by renewables, with the rest generated by gas-fired plants (29.1%), nuclear plants (15.3%), power imports (7.3%) and coal plants (3.7%).

This surge in renewable generation was largely due to weather conditions, as there was consistently high winds throughout the period. Output from wind farms was more than 10GW for 63% of the quarter, and more than 5GW for 85% of it.

Coronavirus is pushing the price of residential solar power down in the US

What’s happening now though, with our current coronavirus challenges, is that the evolution of the residential solar marketplace is accelerating. The changes include greater acceptance of remote sales, slowing demand creating better deals, U.S. currency strength, and regulators grudgingly accepting “no touch” permitting.

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We’re now finding a new magic: Our ability to use the tools like Helioscope to design from afar has given us the ability to create proper proposals. Social distancing has now made home owners very inclined to support our design needs with key tasks, for instance: taking pictures of their home from the outside at various angles, their electrical panel, their meter, and their electrical pole number.

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Lastly, we’re now starting to see local zoning and permit departments start to allow “no touch permitting” and online zoning meetings. What this means is that documents regarding solar power installations – like engineering documents, building and electrical permits, can be permitted online instead of in person in order to increase social distancing. This saves massive amounts of time.

Avoiding in-person visits and making any necessary ones distant -- it's good that they've adapted their business to the challenge of living with the COVID-19 virus.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Solar has record-breaking week in Germany, provides 23% of generation | RenewEconomy

Solar generation in Germany experienced its best week yet, accounting for 23 per cent of the country’s net electricity generation for the week starting April 6, helping renewable power generation reach a similarly impressive 55.4 per cent share.

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Solar’s 23 per cent of electricity generation helped keep German renewable generation above 50% for the fifth week in a row. Wind energy provided the second largest share of electricity generation last week, accounting for 16.9 per cent of the total, followed by nuclear power with 16.2 per cent. Coal-fired power, on the other hand, only provided just over 18 per cent (made up of brown coal, 14.4%, and hard coal, 3.9%).

Germany's and Spain's numbers are likely due to a slowdown from responses to the coronavirus. Renewable sources, unlike fossil-fuel ones, have essentially free "fuel".

Renewable energies under threat in 2020 from coronavirus, oil price slump

Despite a historic deal between major producers to prop up oil prices, cheap fossil fuels and the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus risk are hampering a shift to renewable energies in 2020.

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Installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roofs of businesses and homes, expected to help drive future growth, were hard hit by the economic slowdown. They often require workers to be physically close together to install panels, which is difficult with rules on social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Workers on other projects, such as installing huge wind turbines or building hydropower dams, can typically be further apart.

Seems like rooftop-solar installations would be a good sort of economic stimulus. It would be environmentally friendly and it would put a lot of people to work.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Titled link from earlier post: Wind energy is now Iowa's largest source of electricity, report says

CO2 valorization through direct methanation of flue gas and renewable hydrogen: A technical and economic assessment - ScienceDirect

It's water electrolysis combined with combining the resulting hydrogen with carbon dioxide to make methane. It uses the

Sabatier reaction:

CO2 + 4H2O -> CH4 + 2H2O

It requires a temperature of 300 - 400 C, pressure, and a nickel catalyst.

New renewable energy capacity hit record levels in 2019 | Environment | The Guardian - "Most new electricity globally was green and coronavirus bailouts must boost this further, says agency"

Almost three-quarters of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 uses renewable energy, representing an all-time record. New data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) shows solar, wind and other green technologies now provide more than one-third of the world’s power, marking another record.

Fossil fuel power plants are in decline in Europe and the US, with more decommissioned than built in 2019. But the number of coal and gas plants grew in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In the Middle East, which owns half the world’s oil reserves, just 26% of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 was renewable.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Blue Energy __ Electricity from water - Rakoza.com - "Stanford researchers develop technology to harness energy from mixing of freshwater and seawater"

The inverse process, desalination, requires energy, so it is not surprising that it releases energy.

Every cubic meter of freshwater that mixes with seawater produces about .65 kilowatt-hours of energy – enough to power the average American house for about 30 minutes. Globally, the theoretically recoverable energy from coastal wastewater treatment plants is about 18 gigawatts – enough to power more than 1,700 homes for a year.

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The Stanford group’s battery isn’t the first technology to succeed in capturing blue energy, but it’s the first to use battery electrochemistry instead of pressure or membranes. If it works at scale, the technology would offer a more simple, robust and cost-effective solution.

I searched Reddit's renewable energy subreddit - r/RenewableEnergy - Renewable Energy: safe, clean, unlimited energy for our future for mentions of nuclear energy. I found several posts.

One of them is Destined for decline? Examining nuclear energy from a technological innovation systems perspective - ScienceDirect with this abstract:

Technology decline is a central element of sustainability transitions. However, transition scholars have only just begun to analyze decline. This paper uses the technological innovation systems (TIS) perspective to study decline. Our case is nuclear energy, which is at a crossroads. Some view nuclear as a key technology to address climate change, while others see an industry in decline. We examine a broad range of empirical indicators at the global scale to assess whether or not nuclear energy is in decline. We find that an eroding actor base, shrinking opportunities in liberalized electricity markets, the break-up of existing networks, loss of legitimacy, increasing cost and time overruns, and abandoned projects are clear indications of decline. Also, increasingly fierce competition from natural gas, solar PV, wind, and energy-storage technologies speaks against nuclear in the electricity sector. We conclude that, while there might be a future for nuclear in state-controlled ‘niches’ such as Russia or China, new nuclear power plants do not seem likely to become a core element in the struggle against climate change. Our conceptual contribution is twofold. First, we show how the TIS framework can be mobilized to study technology decline. Second, we explore a range of indicators to cover the multiple dimensions of decline, including actors, institutions, technology, and context.

Concluding that nuclear energy is declining, and that it will continue to decline, unless rescued by large-scale political support. That seems unlikely to happen.

lpetrich · Apr 18, 2020

Giant Wind Park Starting Up Is Another Blow to Nuclear Industry: A surge in renewable energy output in the Nordic region has sent power prices below the level where some nuclear plants are profitable. : RenewableEnergy - referring to a paywalled Bloomberg article.

This is from last September: Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report - Reuters

Nuclear power is losing ground to renewables in terms of both cost and capacity as its reactors are increasingly seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions, an industry report said.

In mid-2019, new wind and solar generators competed efficiently against even existing nuclear power plants in cost terms, and grew generating capacity faster than any other power type, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) showed.

Nuclear reactors take a long time to build.

The report estimates that since 2009 the average construction time for reactors worldwide was just under 10 years, well above the estimate given by industry body the World Nuclear Association (WNA) of between 5 and 8.5 years.

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It said that reactor construction times can be as short as four years when several reactors are built in sequence.

Wind turbines and solar panels can be much quicker.

bilby · Apr 18, 2020

lpetrich said:
Giant Wind Park Starting Up Is Another Blow to Nuclear Industry: A surge in renewable energy output in the Nordic region has sent power prices below the level where some nuclear plants are profitable. : RenewableEnergy - referring to a paywalled Bloomberg article.

This is from last September: Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report - Reuters

Nuclear power is losing ground to renewables in terms of both cost and capacity as its reactors are increasingly seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions, an industry report said.

In mid-2019, new wind and solar generators competed efficiently against even existing nuclear power plants in cost terms, and grew generating capacity faster than any other power type, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) showed.

Click to expand...

Nuclear reactors take a long time to build.

The report estimates that since 2009 the average construction time for reactors worldwide was just under 10 years, well above the estimate given by industry body the World Nuclear Association (WNA) of between 5 and 8.5 years.

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It said that reactor construction times can be as short as four years when several reactors are built in sequence.

Click to expand...

Wind turbines and solar panels can be much quicker.

But not the storage to make them viable without fossil fuel backup.

The missing link in all of these articles is information on how much fossil fuel use has fallen - coal use is down, but gas is booming. Overall fossil fuel use is pretty much unchanged, and equivalent emissions may even be up when we include the effect of fugitive methane.

This green washing is just distracting from the real problem - reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Only places with nuclear and hydropower have done that. The rest are just pulling the propaganda wool over our eyes.

fromderinside · Apr 18, 2020

Nastygram from westernmost.

Uh, oh wow.

A for my point of view quote

In the Northwest, hydropower is an even bigger part of each person’s daily life. Up to 80% of the electricity in the Northwest is produced by hydropower each year. That’s enough electricity to meet the needs of 13.6 million homes. And because hydropower is one of the lowest cost forms of energy, most Northwest residents have a significantly lower electric bill than residents in other parts of the country.

I wonder what would happen if 100% rather than 3% of dams produced hydroelectric power. No I don't expecta 33 time increase in hydroelectric output but a five time boost with little investment would help.

As for the slamon find another way for them to produce offspring.

Here's the document Overview of Hydropower in the Northwest https://fwee.org/education/the-nature-of-water-power/overview-of-hydropower-in-the-northwest/

Shoot away.

ca-ching Poor us.

PS how'd that project salmon fishing in 'stalia go? Oh wait ..... maybe tidal?

As for all that natural enriched soil that is lost behind the dams, suck it out, truck it to where it can be usefully applied by self driving electric trucks.

Cheerful Charlie · Apr 20, 2020

The weird crash of oil prices today would seem to indicate that oil is not really a good reliable source of profit for large energy corporations. I wonder how this will affect the move to renewables in the near future as these companies look to hedge their bets on their income sources and investments. This is going to bear some careful watching.

lpetrich · Apr 20, 2020

Cheerful Charlie said:
The weird crash of oil prices today would seem to indicate that oil is not really a good reliable source of profit for large energy corporations. I wonder how this will affect the move to renewables in the near future as these companies look to hedge their bets on their income sources and investments. This is going to bear some careful watching.

skepticalbip · Apr 20, 2020

Cheerful Charlie said:
The weird crash of oil prices today would seem to indicate that oil is not really a good reliable source of profit for large energy corporations. I wonder how this will affect the move to renewables in the near future as these companies look to hedge their bets on their income sources and investments. This is going to bear some careful watching.

The great drop in oil prices isn't at all weird. Hundreds of millions if not billions of people have not been driving to work or to the restaurant or to the beaches or anywhere for more than a month now. Demand for gas so demand for oil has plummeted. Drop in demand means a drop in price. It may be a good opportunity to invest in oil futures because in six months or less the demand for oil will likely be back to the levels of last January. OTOH if demand does not return then the low price for oil will make renewable energy much less competitive.

fromderinside · Apr 20, 2020

Yes consumption is down. But production has been overwhelming consumption for more than a year now. One big reason is OPEC has rebellious members like Russia who are pushing production to keep from going broke paying for about everything they touch.

Saudis got pissed and began ramping up their production as well. Got in to a production war where the US, the largest net producer recently plays a part.

Result a prolonged period of increasing production, reduced storage capacity, and more pressure to produce even more. Now storage capacity is nil. Even with a 10 million barrel month reduction agreement stocks are still accelerating. Sellers have to pay for buyers to take the stuff so the buyers can store it.

Of course Corvid-19 adds to the problem. Saudi Arabia can produce about 30% of it's output capacity at 5 to 10 dollars a barrel if necessary and they have a fairly large cash reserve. So Russia ininthegunsights of nationalbankruptsy because their base production costs are about 50 dollars a barrel higher than Saudi Arabia.

Now it's beginning to look like Russia hasn't taken enough measures to contain Corvid-19 either.

Can you say bye bye Russia?

lpetrich · Apr 27, 2020

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore recently released an attack on renewable energy: "Planet of the Humans"

I've seen some very negative reviews of it:
Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths : RenewableEnergy

Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths – Ketan Joshi
It starts out with director Jeff Gibbs driving on a road in a fossil-fueled vehicle with lots of other fossil-fueled vehicles.

This is not a documentary about the environmental damage that had to occur for Gibbs to go on his drive – it is not mentioned. Nor is it about the harm from fossil fuels.

It is about why renewable energy is bad. I used to work in the renewable energy industry – first, with wind farms and later in research, government agencies and advocacy groups. So it was hard to resist both watching and reviewing this one, considering it launched on ‘Earth Day’, and it has been widely promoted.

Gibbs has been working on this documentary for a long, long time.

“He is currently working on a film about the state of the planet and the fate of humanity”, read his bio, in 2012. It is clear, digging into these early posts, that he very passionately loathes the burning of trees to generate energy – a wildly controversial and genuinely problematic thing, for sure.

But as early as 2010, Gibbs was posting HuffPost blogs extending that into wind and solar, too.

Like claiming that wind and solar are too intermittent to supply a big fraction of electrical energy.

The extreme oldness of this documentary stands out. In one instance, he tours a solar farm in Lansing, Michigan, in which a bemused official states that a large farm can only power ten homes in a year.

It was built back in 2008, and it has 150 panels and 824 kW of capacity. That looks hopelessly antique by present-day standards.

Later, they visit the Solar Energy Generating System (SEGS) solar farm, only to feign sadness and shock when they discover it’s been removed, leaving a dusty field of sand. In the desert. “Then Ozzie and I discovered that the giant solar arrays had been razed to the ground”, he moans. “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at. A solar dead zone”.

That's one in California, and that video was shot some time ago. The most recent satellite video reveals lots of solar panels.

The documentary takes a similar approach to wind turbines, showing some old, rusty ones that are now removed.

Nothing in this is new. With regards to its wind and solar parts, it smacks of 2010s era climate change denial, in which renewables were seen by detractors as expensive, wasteful, low-capacity, heavily corporatised and destined to fail. Things are different in 2020, but the director isn’t. He doesn’t need to be.

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It feels so weird writing about these things again. I feel like I’ve been transported back in time ten years, back to my early days in the renewable energy industry. We’d combat these viral memes every single day.

The industry looks different now. Many wind companies have learnt that insensitive, clumsy development leads to backlash that is harmful for everyone, so they’ve started to clean up their act. Solar developers are figuring out more sustainable pathways than the boom and bust of government subsidies. The human rights issues around mining and materials are becoming more prominent. Renewable companies are taking waste removal seriously.

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It is clear that Gibbs’ starting point was a loathing of biomass, which then turned into a loathing of every single decarbonisation technology (except nuclear power, which isn’t mentioned in the film).

But he ends up at population control – a cruel, evil and racist ideology that you can see coming right from the start of the film.

Among the article's comments was this one:

His info on solar and wind might be outdated – but his critisism of biomass is spot-on! There’s massive clearing of forests around the world to power electricity generation and make biofuels. A double whammy for climate and the environment.

The less of biofuels the better -- they are just plain dirty.

lpetrich · Apr 30, 2020

Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans | Full Documentary | Directed by Jeff Gibbs - YouTube
Its blurb:

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.

Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars?

No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.

Featuring: Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Vinod Khosla, Koch Brothers, Vandana Shiva, General Motors, 350.org, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nature Conservancy, Elon Musk, Tesla.

Music by: Radiohead, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Blank & Jones, If These Trees Could Talk, Valentina Lisitsa, Culprit 1, Patrick O’hearn, The Torquays, Nigel Stanford, and many more.

bilby · Apr 30, 2020

lpetrich said:
Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans | Full Documentary | Directed by Jeff Gibbs - YouTube
Its blurb:

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.

Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us:

Click to expand...

Nuclear power, which doesn't even get a mention?

No, of course not. Not when you can push an anti-human, neo-Malthusian agenda...

getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars?

No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.

Featuring: Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Vinod Khosla, Koch Brothers, Vandana Shiva, General Motors, 350.org, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nature Conservancy, Elon Musk, Tesla.

Music by: Radiohead, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Blank & Jones, If These Trees Could Talk, Valentina Lisitsa, Culprit 1, Patrick O’hearn, The Torquays, Nigel Stanford, and many more.

Click to expand...

lpetrich · May 1, 2020

Michael Moore’s green energy takedown—worse than Netflix’s Goop series? | Ars Technica

The basic formula is this: Gibbs reveals that he once thought renewable sources of energy were fairy-dust perfect, with no environmental impact of any kind, but he learns that there is some impact and so declares that they are as bad as or worse than fossil fuels.

There is an entire field of science dedicated to what is called “Life Cycle Analysis”—estimating the cradle-to-grave impacts of mining for, manufacturing, using, and disposing of things like solar panels or electric vehicles. That science makes exactly zero appearances in Planet of the Humans. Instead, we are treated to a series of “revelations” that most people should be well aware of. Fossil fuels are still used to manufacture and bring us wind turbines! Raw materials are mined to make electric vehicle batteries! Solar panels don’t last forever and are eventually replaced! Although Tesla says its Gigafactory is generating renewable electricity to cover 100 percent of usage, it’s connected to the grid by power lines!

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Demonstrably false claims come fast and furious. It’s said multiple times that fossil fuel plants have to “idle” all day to ramp up when solar or wind dips and that this is worse than simply running the fossil fuel plant all day instead. We’re similarly told that using grid storage batteries to smooth out supply from increased renewables makes things worse rather than better (because of battery manufacturing). And hydrogen? That can only be produced from petroleum, we learn, as if splitting water wasn’t the main argument for expanding hydrogen use.

Someone in that documentary claimed that more of fossil fuel is used to produce renewable-energy facilities than is obtained from those facilities over their operational lifetime. While some of the older photovoltaic cells did indeed have long payback times, many of the newer ones have only a few years payback time -- at most. Likewise, wind turbines typically have payback times of a little less than a year. Low payback time is part of the economic success of renewable-energy systems, giving an EROEI / EROI (energy recovered for energy invested) well over 1.

That’s false. Really, really false. As you’d expect, solar and wind installations produce many times more energy over their lifetimes than was used to produce them, breaking even in a few months to a few years. And that means the lifetime emissions associated with these forms of generations are far, far less than for a gas or coal plant

lpetrich · May 2, 2020

Much of that film is an attack of biomass: cutting down forests for fuel for electricity generation.

This extends into the film’s third goal: attacking prominent environmental advocates like Al Gore, Bill McKibben, and the Sierra Club for being corrupted by money from Big Biomass. Gibbs asks a number of advocates, on camera, whether they would disavow biomass, presenting their confused or discombobulated answers as damning. This section of the film includes lines like “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete” and “The Nature Conservancy is now The Logging Conservancy.”

Climate Scientists, Environmentalists Call New Film “Planet of the Humans” Misleading & Destructive | Democracy Now!

The author and activist Naomi Klein recently tweeted, “It is truly demoralizing how much damage this film has done at a moment when many are ready for deep change. There are important critiques of an environmentalism that refuses to reckon with unlimited consumption + growth. But this film ain’t it.”

Now for something more pleasant than Michael Moore making a big flub.
Wind Turbines for Homes | Rooftop Wind Power | AEROMine

Twin airfoil blades generate powerful winds in a new rooftop hybrid solar setup.

Powerful wind turbines work great in giant empty fields, but not on your roof.

Wind rushes between the airfoils and powers a smaller, more concentrated turbine below the surface.

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Have you ever been part of or observed a gym class group doing jumping jacks? People start too close together and immediately spread way out so their arms can all clear each other. You'd run into the same problem trying to put wind-power turbines on a roof. How many turbines can do “jumping jacks” on this roof without hitting each other? Even if the turbines were safely spaced, their huge motions cause noise and vibration and require tons of maintenance.

So engineers at Sandia decided to change the paradigm for wind power in order to build something that is compatible with rooftops. To do this, they made pairs of blades that resemble airplane wings and stood them together in such a way that wind flows around and amplifies both airfoils. Air rushes through a narrow channel between the two blades, creating a wind tunnel effect. Below the roof, a short pipe leads to a fully enclosed turbine.

This looks interesting, though I've also seen the more typical kind of wind turbine on rooftops. It's so nice to see that.

lpetrich · May 2, 2020

Why "Planet of the Humans," Michael Moore’s new film about green energy, is so controversial | Salon.com - defends that movie.

Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans gets clean energy and climate activism terribly wrong - Vox - "Planet of the Humans deceives viewers about clean energy and climate activists."

But the film, directed by Jeff Gibbs, a long-time Moore collaborator, is not the climate message we’ve all been waiting for — it’s a nihilistic take, riddled with errors about clean energy and climate activism. With very little evidence, it claims that renewables are disastrous and that environmental groups are corrupt.

What’s more, it has nothing to say about fossil fuel corporations, who have pushed climate denial and blocked progress on climate policy for decades. Given the film’s loose relationship to facts, I’m not even sure it should be classified as a documentary.

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The film’s wind and solar facts are also old. It quotes efficiency for solar PV from more than a decade ago. And it doesn’t mention the fact that solar costs have plummeted since then, and that we’ve learned how to get more wind and solar onto the grid. The film instead acts like this is impossible to do.

The largest share of the movie’s scorn goes to biomass — generally, burning wood — which supplied less than 2 percent of the US electricity mix last year. But the filmmakers obscure that fact, showing graphs that imply biomass is leading to forest destruction across the US.

A film with lots of out-of-date assertions about renewable energy -- I'd like to see how its makers respond to that.

OmniDebate - Green New Deal - Crowdsource compelling facts, bust common myths, and inspire action in others

lpetrich · May 2, 2020

IEA Projects Demand for Renewable Energy to Surge Post-Pandemic While Fossil Fuels Collapse | Common Dreams News - "Only renewables are holding up during the previously unheard-of slump in electricity use."

Likely because their "fuel" is essentially free.

Big turbines push down O&M costs | Windpower Monthly

Even though operation and maintenance (O&M) typically accounts for 20-30% of the cost of energy from a wind farm, the exact nature and composition of these costs are not well defined. ...

There is, however, a consensus that O&M costs are on a downward trend that is likely to continue and will contribute to further lower wind-energy generation costs, both onshore and offshore.

The use of larger machines is one reason for this downward trend — as O&M costs benefit from economies of scale. At the same time, the reliability of wind turbines is improving.

Both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance work is becoming less expensive as a result, with manufacturers offering more attractive guarantees at lower prices and with increasing confidence.

Also lots of use of drones and remote monitoring.

The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

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Fair dinkum thinkum

Mazzie Daius

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Fair dinkum thinkum

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