191–200 of 227 posts
There are other ways of course, but this is only for storage and recycling uses a lot of energy.
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If we're using renewables, we need seasonal shifting, so cycle life doesn't matter at one cycle per year. You could build nuclear to supply your winter power, but then you're overbuilt for summer and don't need any renewable. Or you could store heat directly in the ground like that Alberta pilot project, heat collectors on the roofs all summer drive the heat underground, pump it back out all winter. Or our current pl…
We don't need seasonal storage. The sun still shines in the winter, unless you're in the Arctic circle. We can use over building, production diversity, interconnection and short term storage instead. Or just use natgas peakers for the last 1% and call a 99% solution good enough. If we had reasonably priced seasonal storage we'd use it, but we don't need it.
Sadly, no. Given how long the CO2 stays in the air, anything less than 99.9% over all emissions from all nations — and that also includes cement and iron chemistry leading directly to CO2, cattle biochemistry leading directly to methane, etc. — then we're not pushing hard enough.
Natural gas is great as a way to buy time, but we can't let it be more than a rounding error in the ultimate ensemble… well, not unless there's corresponding CO2 capture.
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But isn’t that the point of transmission lines - match supply and demand? Given a large enough region, there is going to be a place where renewable electricity can be produced. Case in point being offshore wind turbines where there are almost always strong winds to spin these. Moving this electricity to where it is consumed is a huge issue though. Existing power grids were created with centralised power stations in m…
Yes, but transmission lines can only go so far, and you still lack the ability to arbitrage over time instead of just spatially. E.g. from a solar power POV, it's night everywhere in a given region at the same time.
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In winter cloudy conditions solar PV produces 10-15% power. Assuming some hydro storage, that's 4x overbuild. Not cost effective. Europe all gets winter at the same time. If you've got a cold snap for three weeks with low wind, the only plan is reliance on massive fossil fuel backup. The cost of keeping that capacity for only using a week a year isn't priced into solar either. The CO2-intensity of electricity generat…
> In winter cloudy conditions solar PV produces 10-15% power Depends on the latitude and these numbers seem to be for very high ones close to the polar circles. > Not cost effective. Are we pricing in the societal collapse due to climate change? I’d suspect a 4x overbuild would be quite cheap against that. OTOH, keeping some natgas capacity for when a freakish cold snap with no wind hits seems kind of OK.
No, those values are far from polar circle. I'm guessing closer to central Europe, since for example in Finland the PV produces 0% during the winter months.
10-15% would be insane to get here, but there simply isn't any energy in the sun (and closer to the polar circle you get - there's no sun at all during winter) and the panels are often covered in snow in any case. And I'm not even talking about cloudy days now, but "sunny" ones.
March/October are already approaching those 10-15% levels. Nov-Feb is closer to 0% in most of the Finland.
If I remember correctly, the process of recycling iron oxide into iron involves carbon monoxide and results in carbon dioxide, so, I’m not sure this would be as carbon neutral as they claim. There are other ways of course, but this is only for storage and recycling uses a lot of energy.
At that rate, there should be an encyclopedia dedicated to all projects that can be described as greenwashing. I think it's a new strategy to "drown the fish", by flooding the media with "green" technologies just to pretend to say "we heard you, we are going to change the world with green new things" only to save more time until everybody realize each of those new projects are just not viable. The air travel sector s…
1 ton vehicles would actually be an improvement on the status quo, at least in the U.S. where a "small" car is usually more like 3,000 to 4,000 pounds. Also, if self driving becomes wide-spread and successful, we're going to start seeing a lot of zero-occupant cars on the road, most likely bringing the average vehicle occupancy below 1.
That would quite hilarious and horrific at the same time
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You are clearly misrepresenting my point. Your authority is not really an authority for a bunch of reasons. One of which is how he is basically a retired petroleum engineer with very little understanding of the modern state of hydrogen. And yes, this usually implies an old person, something Arthur C. Clarke noticed in one of his writings about elderly scientists. And while your link is from this year, he's been sayin…
> So the point is that you are simply wrong about your understanding of the issue. The intellectual community fully accepts the possibility of hydrogen as a widespread fuel and a way to solve climate change. That is terribly naive and wishful thinking, I’m afraid. For even the smallest-scale industrial applications, hydrogen is almost invariably produced on-site, near or within the manufacturing cell consuming it. Ev…
On the other hand, real engineers with real experience in the area are saying the exact opposite: https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2022/09/01/bmw-bosch-anno...
In reality, you are just repeating the claims of some random armchair expert. These days, those seem to be usually battery car fanatics. Though you still see the occasional pro-biofuel or pro-fossil fuel guy. Either way, it is coming from a totally unqualified person.
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Pipelines of liquid or gaseous fuels is pretty much always going to be the cheapest solution for energy transmission. This fact will inevitably lead to people investing in some kind of green chemical. If not hydrogen, then likely something made from hydrogen like ammonia or methanol. It's not actually clear if transmission lines are cheaper. Ships and trains can carry a lot of mass. For an energy dense fuel, this can…
How many posts about hydrogen being the best and only hope have you made here? I can’t recall it all now, but my understanding was that if you take the entire chain from production to storage to consumption of hydrogen, it’s pretty much an unworkable engineering problem. “The closest thing to a vacuum, other than a vacuum” was one memorable quote. Happy to be shown to be wrong.
Hydrogen itself is more likely to be used to store energy in salt caverns, which is a proven technology for decades now. Aside from storage for the above use cases, it's a workable fuel for gas turbines for backup power.
This seems like the most likely outcome in my opinion.
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> or rather, it’s not good enough for grid-scale requirements I disagree with this point. LFP batteries are cheap, high density, and have huge cycle life. The big drawback of LFPs is manufacturing is just starting to ramp up on them. That is, they aren’t available. LFPs just came out of patent protection last year and you are already starting to see them everywhere. The biggest problem with LFPs today is demand is ou…
Assuming LFP means Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4)? Not sure how to reconcile "they aren't available" with "starting to see them everywhere". They're great batteries (especially compared to lead acid) and at least in small quantities, they have been widely available for years.
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To a first approximation, Earth is a big ball of iron, so losing 50% of the iron in 333 cycles doesn't seem like that big a deal. Getting more iron is an energy issue rather than an availability issue. I'm also somewhat concerned about the nanoparticle's effect on living things. It is likely that it is only a question of local exposure, as in general once they get out they should still rust in some relatively short p…
>Earth is a big ball of iron. No it's not. Inside the crust both Si and Al are more common. There is plenty of Fe, which is all in oxide form. Mining and processing required.
Iron is abundant on Earth, including within the crust, where it's the fourth most abundant element (after Oxygen, silicon, and aluminium), roughly 5% by mass. And yes, considerably more prevalent in the core. Iron and oxygen account for roughly 32% of Earth's total mass, each, the largest proportion of any element.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass>
Sure, not as abundant as silicates. But nowhere near as rare as gold, platinum, and rhodium. Or even copper, silver, or lead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...>
There's even a fair bit of it flowing though your veins and arteries right now.
And yes, the major ore deposits are old. Most are BIFs (banded iron formations), and date to 1 bya or 3.5 bya, laid down by early oceanic algae for the most part.
Sometimes it's more than fine to allow a slight exaggeration to pass without litigating it to death.