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Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

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Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#171

Post by Retric »

slang800 wrote: post #167
Retric wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually much cheaper to ship the solar / wind production than it is to send the LNG energy equivalent making this all a moot point. However, we could cheaply ship electrons to Russia, after that it's just a question of displacement. Aka, does energy from powerplant X get sent east or west. Net result you can send elections from US to EU for vastly less than you might think. Granted, there is no such undersea ca…

> the undersea distance is not actually that far relative to other undersea projects. Undersea HVDC lines are nothing like the undersea fiber optic cables. The problem isn't whether or not we can create a cable like that, it's the transmission losses that long-distance power lines have. Even for HVDC you're dealing with ~3.5% loss per 1000km. Shipping electrons over the oceans is only going to be a "question of displ…

It's 51 miles from US to Russia.

On both sides there are people who use power. Now if 100,000 houses in Russia get power from the US and zero changes Russia could then supply ~100,000 houses with power outside of Russia. Now sure, you need the right substation setup to get this to work out, but a modern grid can quickly route power in response to both changing demand and internment supply.

US already sends and receives power from both Mexico and Canida, and Russia and EU have similar relationships. We don't do this with Russia because there is so little demand in those areas. But, the artic is rapidly warming so that may change fairly soon.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#172

Post by adrianmonk »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #161
_delirium wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas is easy to transport, but only really by pipeline. LNG is a lot more expensive and capital-intensive. And there is only one place with rising demand where it's easy to transport U.S. natural gas: Mexico. Pipeline gas exports to Mexico did nearly triple between 2011 and 2016 [1]. Exports to Canada over the same period fell, however. Anywhere besides Canada and Mexico requires liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals,…

I wonder if it's feasible to put a pipeline under the ocean between North America and Europe. It seems crazy, but a lot of crazy stuff has happened.

They put a telegraph cable under the ocean in 1858. With all the technology (including materials) we have today, I bet it's very feasible from a technological point of view.

An economic point of view is a different question, though.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#173

Post by cat199 »

worlddeployer wrote: post #125
cwal37 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason people have this idea that LNG tankers are a big bomb waiting to go up, but that's not really true. Vapor cloud detonation has never been considered particularly likely, and never documented as far as I know. Mostly it seems the vapors that hit the right mix of oxygen and such would burn pretty rapidly, while the warmer gas began to rise. It would certainly be a large fire for a while, but shouldn't h…

> never documented as far as I know It happened in Brenham, Texas, in the 90s. http://www.theeagle.com/blogs/fajitas_for_one/salt-dome-expl...

That was a salt dome holding area, and not a tanker, to be fair.. but yes, it exploded. People in houston (~45m-1h drive away) felt the rumble and thought it was an earthquake..

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#174

Post by bigiain »

caf wrote: post #162
bigiain wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming an accidental leak. I wonder what the risks of "bad guys" with, say, shoulder fired rockets taking the top of the tanks off look like?

If you suddenly removed the top of a large container of LNG, it wouldn't all instantly vaporise. It would start to boil, rapidly cooling its surroundings due to the latent heat of vaporisation. Large amounts of ice would form on the outside of the container, and pretty soon the boiling rate would drop off substantially as the rate of heat transfer from the now frigid surroundings reduced. If the vaporising gas was ig…

I _so_ want to get MythBusters onto this - we'll need three or four full LNG transport ships, and a _big_ patch of empty ocean...

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#175

Post by adrianmonk »

mcv wrote: post #79
fencepost wrote: post #29

Very amusing that the article ends with “It’s pretty slim pickings right now,” Ferguson said. “God is not manufacturing more coastal property.” Part of the concern for renewable energy folks is that you could argue that God is arranging for more coastal property, though not perhaps in ways useful to wind farmers on the Texas coast.

It's going to be great for wind farmers on the Oklahoma coast, however.

I have my doubts that sea level will rise 88 meters.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#176

Post by mtdewcmu »

adrianmonk wrote: post #172
mtdewcmu wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's feasible to put a pipeline under the ocean between North America and Europe. It seems crazy, but a lot of crazy stuff has happened.

They put a telegraph cable under the ocean in 1858. With all the technology (including materials) we have today, I bet it's very feasible from a technological point of view. An economic point of view is a different question, though.

It's interesting to speculate on how it could be done. Maybe it could be soft, like a fire hose, and kept open by internal pressure. That way it could be unfurled from a ship. Rigid pipe seems pretty difficult.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#177

Post by cheaprentalyeti »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #36
rpedela wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the economics specifically but coal, gas, oil are all subsidized too.

Some fraction of the US military expense should be attributed to obtaining energy, both explicitly (eg, patrolling shipping lanes) and implicitly (as a superpower, we can get considerations other countries don't). I don't know enough about it to hazard a guess, but I'm hoping someone, somewhere, has done an analysis.

I dislike this line of thought because it seems to imply that oil producers in the United States need to be taxed to pay for the military defense of all the overseas producers trying to put them out of business.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#178

Post by phil248 »

ams6110 wrote: post #141
davidf18 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. Still, incandescents consume a lot of power, and LEDs little.

It's too bad that the light "quality" from incandescent bulbs is vastly better than either LED or CFL.

LED can produce just about any kind of light you want. Don't confuse them with the terrible CFL bulbs that were forced upon us. LED is likely the end game for lighting in our lifetime.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#179

Post by slang800 »

bigiain wrote: post #152
slang800 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mini-nuke" isn't a very accurate comparison. In the event of a leak, the liquid fuel would need to flow out of the tank and turn into vapor before it could catch fire and burn. As a liquid or highly concentrated vapor it's not flammable. It needs to mix with air first. The result would be a cloud of gas that burns violently for several minutes, depending upon wind and the speed of the leak. Not the instantaneous, cr…

That's assuming an accidental leak. I wonder what the risks of "bad guys" with, say, shoulder fired rockets taking the top of the tanks off look like?

Well, the double hulls of these ships are inch-thick steel, but I think the dome is less protected. An attack that blew the dome off could open up a large hole and ignite the escaping gas, but it would still take minutes for all of it to boil off, probably freezing as it does.

I guess a big enough rocket could blow the liquid out of the tank, or rupture a large hole in the hull of the ship causing the LNG to dump into the (relatively) warm water and boil off faster. But at some point the real question is: How did the bad guys fire rockets into a secured unloading station?

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#180

Post by adrianmonk »

davidf18 wrote: post #94
jostmey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to tell me that they won't build more windmills if that's what people are paying for?

> "Are you trying to tell me that they won't build more windmills..." The tilting at windmills joke comes to mind :-) Honestly, first off the article says that it seems that gas is less competitive than renewable, so there are already market incentives in Texas to build windmills. A lot of the money for windmill power simply ends up in General Electric's (the major US vendor for windmills) pockets. Also, I think ones…

> A lot of the money for windmill power simply ends up in General Electric's (the major US vendor for windmills) pockets.

I actively prefer it if GE (etc.) makes money building windmills.

To switch to renewables, you have to build new infrastructure. That means the people who manufacture the equipment are going to make money. And they should make money! That's their reward for being part of the solution.

Not to mention, it encourages them do more R&D because of the potential for better profits. And it encourages competitors to join in, which is even better.

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