Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#301

Post by DennisP » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #190

bpodgursky wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar. Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.

Or I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?

Let your factory sit partly idle sometimes and you increase the capital cost per unit of production.

If wind/solar depends on this sort of thing, then basically it's imposing an externality on factories, and we should account for that as part of their cost.

I'm all for preventing global warming, I just want to do it in the way that's most cost-effective for society as a whole, and that probably means including nuclear as part of the solution so we don't have to shut down factories when the wind doesn't blow at night.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by ars » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #243

bpodgursky wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Pumped-storage hydro is pumping water behind a dam. You can TRY to hollow out the top of a mountain and put the water there (yeah, that's also suuuuuuper environmentally friendly), but it's incredibly difficult to do it at reasonable scale, and when it fails it wipes out towns. You'll find the only reasonable way to store enough water to make a difference it is to put it in a valley, where the terrain helps you.…

You don't necessarily need water: http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/

If you run the numbers on that - cost, amount of energy stored, how much stuff you need, you'll quickly realize you do in fact need water.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #296

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misanthropy is dangerous .

I wasn't advocating it.

Understood.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:38 PM UTC

grb423 wrote: post #172

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.

Alex Epstien, who is widely despised, has written, in The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels that to withhold cheap abundant energy, and the technology it enables, from the world's emerging populations is immoral and fundamentally anti-human. Supported by people who think this Earth would be a much better place if Man never set his filthy foot upon it.

Epstein is an idiot and coal shill.

If you'd like a more nuanced version of that argument, I'd suggest Vaclav Smil, who's written at length on the topic of humans' interactions with the environment. I'm wrapping up his Energy and World History right now, which makes a similar case that fossil fuels have tremendously improved quality of life ... for a small fraction of humans currently alive. The impacts for others range from markedly less to net negative. The larger problem is that the situation isn't long-term tenable -- it will last so long as those fossil-fuel sources are cheap and abundant, and the sinks for their and associated effluvia are capable of absorbing insult without returning injury. Neither condition can be reasonably argued. (Yes, Epstein argues for both, he's not reasonable, and incapable of credible reasoned thought.)

The ultimate problem with Epstein's argument is that, in the face of limits to growth, the lives made possible through increased fossil fuels will only add to the deaths and suffering removal of that energy subsidy will result in.

Yes, overpopulation and overconsumption are problems. Systemic dynamics make addressing this exceptionally challenging.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #100

unprepare wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

theres also religious folks who believe the earth was created specifically for humans, and so everything here is for us and us alone. I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology. To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism

Consider: earth may well be the only habitable planet in our galaxy. In that case its nearer the truth to consider it a gift just for us.

I find the awareness that the Earth is the only place on which humans, let alone modern civilisation, is likely to be able to exist and thrive, to well within the likely timeframe in which we might well eliminate some or all of that capability (say, the next 10, 100, or 1,000 years) makes for far more nuanced consideration.

What humans do to this world in the immediate now will have profound implications to what humans will be able to do anywhere, in any possible future.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #294

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. "Didn't know they wanted." There has been a protracted and concerted propaganda effort to change consciousness about this subject. What makes a Theodore Roosevelt exceptional is that he listened to John Muir decades before that kind of thinking was commonplace. I think there was a long span of time where you could set rivers on fire, cut the air in cities with a knife and become sickened or killed by drinking wat…

From my comment: "… pre-industrial … most people …" etc. There's been probably as much or more protracted and concerted propaganda from industrialists (who have more wealth and power to spread their messages) as the environmental sort. You're just fantasizing if you think there have been large populations of people who lived next to rivers on fire and horribly polluted air and water and litter and yet "didn't know th…

The fact that people lived close enough to observe rivers on fire might imply that they were willing to put up with it, for "progress" or "jobs." I don't think anybody lived right next to them.

Zappa lays claim[1] to the first use of the word "pollution" in any popular ( meaning non-academic ) media, by virtue of a song title, "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution." That's from 1969.

[1] no doubt erroneously - he just meant in his personal light cone.

I am actually saying - people can get used to anything, including living in trash. People went for centuries without bathing. My ( born around 1900 ) grandparents were once-a-week bathers. You're projecting the mores of the present on people who lived in the past - presentism, IMO.

We also have a heck of a lot more trash than people used to. They'd use fire barrels and dig middens to dispose of trash of they could. Trash trucks are also relatively recent. Obviously, those in concrete cities could not do that necessarily.

This I also know from direct observation.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by clock_tower » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #208

hguant wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the core principle underlying all that is that human happiness is a good in and of itself, and a virtuous and stable society is good only in that it allows for the greatest potential growth of human happiness.

If your grandkids are less happy because you destroyed the environment in order to increase your happiness is that a negative or a positive in this philosophical framework?

A negative. Just ask G.K. Chesterton!

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by trhway » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #16

masklinn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wildlife does thrive in the exclusion zone, but again that's not because wildlife is somehow immune to radiations[0] it's because radiation-induced morbidity is lower than humanity-induced morbidity. [0] they're not, though r-strategist will tend to be pretty resilient

Well, no, I agree, and I don't think I suggested that at all. In fact, though you said it much more intelligently with terminology I was unaware of, I was more suggesting that nature is more resilient in the face of nuclear waste/damage than one might expect, and I think that's what the parent is suggesting as well. No more, no less. We should still be very cautious because there is undoubtedly a limit (perhaps even…

>I was more suggesting that nature is more resilient in the face of nuclear waste/damage than one might expect

you're talking about the whole nature instead of the individuals. Place a bunch of humans near Chernobyl for several generations (30 years for wolves would be like 200 years for humans) and enforce the rule of quickly killing off any ill individual - natural thing in nature - and 200 years later you'll have a thriving human population there, and some alien would naturally conclude that humans "is more resilient in the face of nuclear waste/damage than one might expect".

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:56 PM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #274

ctdonath wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covering up large areas of a desert with solar panels may be more harmful than you realize. I've heard & use the term solar strip-mining . Solar power maxes out at no better than 1kW/m^2 (sun at zenith, clear day, practically 100% efficient conversion), we're talking an absolute minimum of 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant ... and likely 100 times larger for real-world scenarios (10% efficiency, night/cloud…

Why do you assume 10% efficiency? That seems awfully low? I agree with regards to rooftop being an important part, though. It makes sense to use land that is already occupied to a large degree.

If you start looking at effective achieved energy delivery from solar, 10% is exceptional. Consider that plants are lucky to return 1-10%. Algae, under exceptional conditions, may also reach 10%, but that takes some doing.

Insolation: 1 kW/m^2

Panel efficiency: 10-20%, nominally 17%. Maximum for a single-layer cell is 37% for quantum physics reasons, with an "infinite" layer panel, 87%.

Capacity factor is the amount of time a panel actually recieves sunlightlight. Typically 20-30%, with 30% as a peak.

Spacing factor. PV doesn't work if shaded -- the entire circuit cuts out. So you have to angle and space your panels. On net, this reduces availble area by about 50%. Less near the equator, more at high latitudes.

Degredation. For numerous reasons, solar panels degrade with time, mostly due to physical wearing (broken cells, wiring, hazing of panels, stone and hail damage, etc.) When nominal output falls to about 85% new, panels are deemed due for replacement. This is about 20 years based on multiple studies. So you're replacing 5% of your stock every year, and losing a few percent of output.

Inverter losses. Converting panel (DC) to transmission (AC) power costs about 10%.

Transmission losses. Another 6% or so for high-voltage transmission.

Multiply all that out, and your 1 kW/m^2 * 0.17 * 0.50 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.25 leaves you with 17 watts of 24/7/365 capacity per square meter. Or about 1.7% net efficiency.

This doesn't account for storage which can cut into that some more.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#310

Post by honkhonkpants » Fri, Sep 09, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #289

honkhonkpants wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant Does that sound like a lot to you? A single airport runway is much larger than 1 sq km.

Uh, no. Chicago Midway happens to fit very nicely inside 1 mi² = 2.56 km². Its main runways (5 of them) with feeder ramps collectively take up at best ½ the space, so a single runway itself is not 1 km² but more like .2-.3 km².

Midway is an airport for ants. 10/28 at SFO is 2 sq km, and there are two of them, and 1/19 are 1.5 sq km, and there are two of them. Then you also have OAK and SJC.

Point: a square kilometer to generate 1GW peak of electricity would be an obviously excellent trade off, well within the cost parameters that humans are willing to spend on far less useful endeavors like runways and parking lots.