Paris agreement

[Shpaget]

You don't understand it because you are overlooking the part about buying and sellng energy when you feel like it. The grid can't operate solely on solar because it would need to be massively oversized to support those periods when you want to buy, making most of that  expensive installation useless at times when you want to sell.

Check your units and redo your math.

[AngelLestat]

19 hours ago, Robotengineer said:

The main issue with renewables is that there is no way to store that energy cheaply and efficiently yet. Once we have a battery that can store a large amount of energy for a long period of time without deterioration, the transition to renewables will be quick and easy. Here is a link to a good news story on the battery issue, link.

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

You don't understand it because you are overlooking the part about buying and sellng energy when you feel like it. The grid can't operate solely on solar because it would need to be massively oversized to support those periods when you want to buy, making most of that  expensive installation useless at times when you want to sell.

Check your units and redo your math.

That link talks about batteries, and is true on batteries. But you can storage all you want using hydrogen.
Here is the thing, Hydrogen will be always better than batteries when you talk about "range" or "hours of backup".
 

Even that this graph not show, you can also use hydrogen to storage energy by very short amounts of time (miliseconds).
Here is much better explained why is so convenient to storage energy using hydrogen

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/11/14/bibendum-2014-itm-power-make-free-hydrogen/

Read the whole article.

 

20 hours ago, Elthy said:

Sadly electrolysing hydrogen from water isnt viable yet, to expensive or inefficient. I hope it will become better in the next ~10 years, there is lots of research into that topic. For now there are other ways to buffer renewable energy. One is small batterys, ranging from 1KWh (often included in the DC-AC-converter of solar panels for houses) to larger ones that can provide power for days like Teslas powerwall. If we get intelligent electric meters and more flexible powerprices those will become way more attracitve, e.g. loading them over night with unused (and thus cheap) wind power...

Normal industrial alkaline electrolysis reach 73% efficiency, but if you remplace that with PEM electrolysis you can reach 80% or more, if you use waste heat (for example 150c from other process) your efficiency rises to 95%. Now PEM electrolyzers cost was highly reduce, you may have numbers and prices from 2005. There is a wiki page that only use data from 1995 to 2006, so in these kind of technologies try to get data from the last year.

These last times hydrogen technologies receive a lot of attention and investments, because now is needed, not before.
Now they learn how to reduce the amount of platinum used using vapor deposition on copper or other nano tech techniques which does not reduce the efficiency (against pure platinum). There is also many technologies searching how to remplace the platinum with cheaper alternatives, there is one that already reach 80% efficiency with higher working time without decrease in the efficiency and a lot cheaper. It needs extra testing but is very promising.

 

18 hours ago, Shpaget said:

How come no one considers the environmental impact of wind and solar? They are not as green as some would like you to think. I'd even argue that nuclear is far better for the environment than wind turbines.

Ok tell me, what is the environmental impact of wind and solar?  I want info from this year or at least 2014.  

Edited December 18, 2015 by AngelLestat

[Bill Phil]

23 hours ago, Elthy said:

Im not sure which one you mean. Its a complicated topic, just look at the wikipedia article which lists the cost for different countrys:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

It depends on lots of local factors, age of the powerplants, which costs you add to the price and much more. Just the numbers without circumstances are worthless.

It's the average of the USA, I think. 

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

That link talks about batteries, and is true on batteries. But you can storage all you want using hydrogen.
Here is the thing, Hydrogen will be always better than batteries when you talk about "range" or "hours of backup".
 

Even that this graph not show, you can also use hydrogen to storage energy by very short amounts of time (miliseconds).
Here is much better explained why is so convenient to storage energy using hydrogen

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/11/14/bibendum-2014-itm-power-make-free-hydrogen/

Read the whole article.

 

Normal industrial alkaline electrolysis reach 73% efficiency, but if you remplace that with PEM electrolysis you can reach 80% or more, if you use waste heat (for example 150c from other process) your efficiency rises to 95%. Now PEM electrolyzers cost was highly reduce, you may have numbers and prices from 2005. There is a wiki page that only use data from 1995 to 2006, so in these kind of technologies try to get data from the last year.

These last times hydrogen technologies receive a lot of attention and investments, because now is needed, not before.
Now they learn how to reduce the amount of platinum used using vapor deposition on copper or other nano tech techniques which does not reduce the efficiency (against pure platinum). There is also many technologies searching how to remplace the platinum with cheaper alternatives, there is one that already reach 80% efficiency with higher working time without decrease in the efficiency and a lot cheaper. It needs extra testing but is very promising.

 

Ok tell me, what is the environmental impact of wind and solar?  I want info from this year or at least 2014.  

Except you lose energy quickly with hydrogen. Storing it in hydrogen isn't a smart thing to do. You'll only get 25% of the energy you used to make it back.

Batteries aren't amazing now, but they've had a few centuries of development. They're superior in discharge time and will become even more so. 

Artificial natural gas is better, even on your chart.

The best way to get hydrogen industrially is gasification, which is a very endothermic process.

[Elthy]

Isnt one step to artificial natural gas the production of hydrogen? How can it be more efficient? I know it has other advantages...

And where your 25% efficiency for hydrogen does come from? If the initial hydrogen production can have more than 70% i dont know why it would have such a big loss...

[AngelLestat]

48 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

It's the average of the USA, I think. 

Except you lose energy quickly with hydrogen. Storing it in hydrogen isn't a smart thing to do. You'll only get 25% of the energy you used to make it back.

Batteries aren't amazing now, but they've had a few centuries of development. They're superior in discharge time and will become even more so. 

Artificial natural gas is better, even on your chart.

The best way to get hydrogen industrially is gasification, which is a very endothermic process.

Is not the way you are imagine.. You dont convert hydrogen to electricity again. You need to see the big picture.
The co2 problem with energy is not just about electricity, is all the energy sectors.  This graph will give you an idea, but is kinda oldand just for USA.

So from this graphic, you can see that even if you solve the co2 emissions from the electric power sector, you still need to solve all other sectors that are using fossil fuels. 
You can not solve the transport issue with just batteries, first the trucks class 7-8 have the biggest fuel consumption, like 75% vs 25% of trucks class 1-6 + cars.  And batteries only work with low range cars, forget about utilities cars where you can not wait 20m or hours to recharge the battery.

Then airplanes or ships will not work with batteries either..  Is a problem of cost that comes with the range and weight of vehicles.

So..  all those sectors needs chemical energy, and if you can not use fossil fuels because the co2, then why not you dont produce all the energy (from all sectors) with wind and solar and you storage all excess of the grid in hydrogen that can be used in transportation and for heat.

You mention 25%, I guess you get that number from this image which is very biased.

But this image is not accurate because is very old, those are not current values in fuel cells or electrolysis.
Normal electrolysis efficiency with a cheap PEM is 80%, you can use the same PEM to internal compress the hydrogen, in this case the power lose is just 3% in compression, this will give us a overall efficiency of 78%, then today fuel cell efficiency in comercial cars is 55% which give us a grid to motor efficiency of 43%.

But the efficiencies does not matter in energy production and consumption in case are clean, only the overall cost matters.

Any grid needs energy storage, base load as nuclear or fossil thermal plants does not work, because they need from 48 hours to 12 hours to shutdown and restart. That is why many times you have moments where the cost of the energy is negative.. The energy owners will pay you to consume that energy, because is more cheap for them than shutdown and restart plants.
To not lose all that energy, the most cost efficiency method is power to gas, if you want to storage 1 or 2 hours of power with batteries, well... you can do that..  but if you want to storage 4 or 6 hours, then the cost triples, not with hydrogen, in that case you just need a bigger tank, and surface (material cost)  increase at ^2 and volume at ^3. 

I will explain the natural gas in the next quote.

 

31 minutes ago, Elthy said:

Isnt one step to artificial natural gas the production of hydrogen? How can it be more efficient? I know it has other advantages...

Because if you capture co2 from the atmosphere or other process and you inject that to hydrogen, you get methane... but that co2 added increase the energy in the combustion and is easier to storage for longer periods (months or years).

In this way you are not producing extra co2.

[Bill Phil]

You can use electrical power in nearly every sector. Batteries are the solution for that. Really good batteries. Powered by a variety of renewable energy sources and some non renewable.

[AngelLestat]

Really?  Ok, just one example give me,   "class 8 trucks".  how do you power them with batteries?  

Range 1000km and you can not lose much time recharging. 
My estimation.. you can not even have an utility city truck with 150km of range at the same cost of a hydrogen truck with 1000km range, plus other issues that I am sure you will ignore.

If you can not with that example, not sure what it would be your solution for airplanes or ships.
 

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

13 hours ago, Shpaget said:

You don't understand it because you are overlooking the part about buying and sellng energy when you feel like it. The grid can't operate solely on solar because it would need to be massively oversized to support those periods when you want to buy, making most of that  expensive installation useless at times when you want to sell.

Check your units and redo your math.

True.  I don't have a solution for that.  Maybe underground pressurized air storage?  Use excess power to pressurize air, then use the pressure to generate power when there's not enough.  If the solar grid is large enough to support the world's energy use, then a efficient storage network can distribute when it's needed? 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 12/18/2015 at 10:15 PM, Shpaget said:

You don't understand it because you are overlooking the part about buying and sellng energy when you feel like it. The grid can't operate solely on solar because it would need to be massively oversized to support those periods when you want to buy, making most of that  expensive installation useless at times when you want to sell.

Check your units and redo your math.

Oh, and you're right about the units.  I was thinking about my math and realized that I wasn't paying attention when I got my figures for per capita energy use.  It's a thing which happens to me when I'm doing math.  I just do the math, and forget to check if the numbers are reasonable.

[Bill Phil]

On December 18, 2015 at 0:12 PM, AngelLestat said:

Really?  Ok, just one example give me,   "class 8 trucks".  how do you power them with batteries?  

Range 1000km and you can not lose much time recharging. 
My estimation.. you can not even have an utility city truck with 150km of range at the same cost of a hydrogen truck with 1000km range, plus other issues that I am sure you will ignore.

If you can not with that example, not sure what it would be your solution for airplanes or ships.
 

 

Umm... Ever hear of LNG? LPG? They're great too. You can power something with those fuels.

Oh, and how much energy is required for that truck over 1000km? How many liters of hydrogen? How many liters of hydrocarbons?

You are ignoring more issues than I am, but that's not the point. I'm attacking your argument. Look up the hydrogen economy, and why it won't work. Losing 25% of input energy is not a good quality.

A battery can power quite a lot of things, and with further developments it can even power that truck. After many decades of development, sure. 

Hydrogen is not MacGuffinite. It's not the savior fuel. It's useful in rockets and chemical processes, but not in volume sensitive vehicles. 

And aircraft can be powered by LPG and LNG. So can ships. Hydrogen is not necessary.

[AngelLestat]

6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Umm... Ever hear of LNG? LPG? They're great too. You can power something with those fuels.

You read me when I said in the Energy Storage topic that in Argentina 1/5 of the vehicles use CNG?
But what you achieve with that?  You are still releasing a lot of co2 to the air, unless you produce that CNG or LNG from hydrogen and capturing co2 from the air.
Also in LNG, you lose some efficiency in the change of state gas-liquid the same as hydrogen.

 

Quote

Oh, and how much energy is required for that truck over 1000km? How many liters of hydrogen? How many liters of hydrocarbons?

easy, if you want to know the tank volume you will need from a gasoline or diesel engine vs a fuel cell with hydrogen, you just multiply the volume by 3, but you also need to discount the volume of the engine system, because fuel cell + electric engine takes less volume than a OTTO or CI engine.   

I also explain you this in detail in the energy storage topic comparing normal cars with the fuel cell honda clarity.
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/126804-energy-storage/&do=findComment&comment=2310548

Trucks usually consume 3,5 km by liter, this mean they need a tank of 285 liter to achieve a range of 1000km, so if you have a fuel cell truck it would need a 850 liters tank.  In comparison this mean a sphere of 40cm radius for 285 liters, or a sphere of  58cm radius for 850 liters. You really think that little extra space matters in a truck?

There are already a fleet of these fuel cell trucks but with only 400km range (because the company does not need more) called tyrano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibLa654H9-E

Fleets of fuel cell vehicles for companies are the first step for fuel cell vehicles, this is already happening in many places, because the same company makes the hydrogen to refill their vehicles.

Hydrogen can be used also in normal diesel trucks, just a little extra hydrogen improves the efficiency of the diesel combustion.
A lot of trucks use this trick:

This same concept was used for the germans with their zeppelins.

 

Quote

You are ignoring more issues than I am, but that's not the point. I'm attacking your argument. Look up the hydrogen economy, and why it won't work. Losing 25% of input energy is not a good quality.

I told you in the last post, that 25% is wrong, that was real 10 years back.. the real value for today is close to 45% (given by 78% for electrolysis and 55% for fuel cells), and that is not even close to the theoretical limit.
Fuel cells has a teoric limit of 88% and electrolysis almost 100% because it uses the ambient temperature to increase the efficiency.
One more thing, efficiencies does not matter, the only thing that matter in energy is power/energy/cost.
You can have a weird tech that it gives you 10% efficiency in the power generation and 10% efficiency in the consumption, but it may be still cheaper than other technologies, so it does not matter how much energy you waste meanwhile is clean and cheap (the world does not warm up by waste heat, just by co2). 

 

Quote

A battery can power quite a lot of things, and with further developments it can even power that truck. After many decades of development, sure. 

You mean the air battery?  Yeah that might be decades away, I can also mention that a pure graphene layer under an electrical voltage can split the water vapor from the air to produce hydrogen, it was already proven in laboratory, it would increase the range of a vehicle by a lot.  But that is still a dream that it does not worth even being mentioned.

Quote

 

Hydrogen is not MacGuffinite. It's not the savior fuel. It's useful in rockets and chemical processes, but not in volume sensitive vehicles. 

And aircraft can be powered by LPG and LNG. So can ships. Hydrogen is not necessary.

 

What vehicle is more power/weight/efficiency sensitive than a rocket?
I already mention how a jet plane can work with hydrogen reducing the fuel consumption by more than half. And not sure why you keep mentioning fuels that release Co2 as a solution. 

Sorry.. but you are in the wrong side of this debate, Using hydrogen to solve the problem of renewable intermittency at the same time you solve the co2 problem from the transport sector is a win-win that can not be denied.

That is why you see all car companies making their own h2 car and why countries are promoting all kind of h2 tech and financing fuel stations or other commercial applications.  

Edited December 21, 2015 by AngelLestat

[Spaceception]

I'm sure all of you guys know all of this, but please share on your social media

Edited April 6, 2016 by Spaceception

[JedTech]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

I'm sure all of you guys know all of this, but please share on your social media

I like his ending points. It seems that so many people believe we need to stop global warming to save the world. That couldn't be more wrong. The only reason to stop global warming is to protect real estate and property near sea level. Humans who don't own property near sea level only stand to benefit from global warming. The amount of life and biodiversity on earth will increase as a result of global warming.

Case in point: People need to stop thinking they're saving the world. they're not. they're just trying to save some wealthy persons beach property.

Edited April 6, 2016 by JedTech

[Atlas2342]

On 12/14/2015 at 8:56 AM, Just Jim said:

There is so much energy pumping out of that giant flaming ball of gas, we should be able to harness it better.

Show some love for plasma! Plasma is a state of matter too, ya know....

[FancyMouse]

I don't trust anything other than fusion to fulfill future energy needs.

[Spaceception]

Just now, FancyMouse said:

I don't trust anything other than fusion to fulfill future energy needs.

What about space based solar?

[FancyMouse]

8 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

What about space based solar?

I'm not optimistic about that. It requires much more infrastructure change than a fusion reactor. And I also doubt how we can assemble stuff in space that can generate power at GW magnitude (IMO this is the minimum for being considered as a major source of energy). I'm not against the idea itself, and technology for that might develop to some point, but I don't believe human beings will have more than 1% of our power need relying on it anytime in the future.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 4/6/2016 at 3:07 PM, JedTech said:

I like his ending points. It seems that so many people believe we need to stop global warming to save the world. That couldn't be more wrong. The only reason to stop global warming is to protect real estate and property near sea level. Humans who don't own property near sea level only stand to benefit from global warming. The amount of life and biodiversity on earth will increase as a result of global warming.

Case in point: People need to stop thinking they're saving the world. they're not. they're just trying to save some wealthy persons beach property.

I'll take a risk of being political, and say that while I agree with you in some respects, that is not entirely true.  The effects of global warming are much farther-reaching than just sea level rise.

I'm living in the midst of a massive drought, which affects everyone.  Every lake nearby is dry or much lower than it should be.   Elsewhere, increasingly drastic weather patterns are causing huge huge snowstorms.  The melting arctic ice sheet and changing temperatures will decrease already minimal habitat for animals.  Heightened sea ocean temperatures are bleaching coral, and killing huge numbers of fish.  Most mangrove forests will be affected by rising sea levels.

Finally, here's two maps:

Make especial note of much of the Gulf of Mexico area.

[lajoswinkler]

If the question is "What should be the main power source for Earth?", then "a balanced mix of both" is out of the question for obvious reasons.

 

The proper answer is, of course, nuclear. At this moment fission and, hopefully in the future, fusion.

Renewables are for buoys, calculators, sheds and space satellites.

[Elthy]

Im sorry for my rude comment i made here yesterday, no idea what got in my head there...

Anyway, its still my point that you cant say "of cource nuclear", im not sure if i have to list the points again, but both variants (100% nuclear or renewable) are technicaly feasible, the question is which one is cheaper (or has other benefits). There is no scientific answer to that, there are just to many things to be considered, so it boils down to what someone "feels" is better.

[lajoswinkler]

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

Im sorry for my rude comment i made here yesterday, no idea what got in my head there...

Anyway, its still my point that you cant say "of cource nuclear", im not sure if i have to list the points again, but both variants (100% nuclear or renewable) are technicaly feasible, the question is which one is cheaper (or has other benefits). There is no scientific answer to that, there are just to many things to be considered, so it boils down to what someone "feels" is better.

No, it's not a matter of feeling. It's a matter of hard technological facts. We already use sunlight, and we use it a lot. We use it to make food.

Enormous fields that take up space for all those kilowatthours, fragments of which are bonded in the biomass we use for all kinds of things.

Plants do it extremely well. They do what we can't - total synthesis of highly complex organic molecules.

 

We also use Sun's energy for heating our homes, drying our wet stuff, etc. We use it for stuff that doesn't really matter this power source's density is freakishly low and it's available for way less than 0.5 days/year on average.

 

There's a reason why energy management is something that can't be done by people whose only experience with it are games where all the sources are equal and you just have to pile up enough of the weak ones to do the same thing.

And no, what I'm writing isn't negative for the sake of being opposite to mainstream hippy-dippy "green" stuff. It is factual. Renewables are not in the same category as baseload sources and will never be unless you are willing to live in a shed by a babbling brook with your dog and use PV cells and batteries that were made in a town somewhere in China, town that was horribly polluted to make those, just to make you feel "one with the nature".

 

Baseload is baseload. We can play with the upper part of the graph using wind turbines (that need their gas burning plants backups), but the base needs stability.

[Elthy]

First thing: Photovoltaics isnt the main renewable energy source. Its propably the least usefull energy source for large scale grids, good for small island nets. Other sources are better to provide stable power:

Wind power is cheap and strong and you can find good places for it anywhere on the world (while solar power gets weaker closer to the poles). Of course its still not working all the time, but thats why you build a higher capacity than you would need on full load. Somewhere there is allways wind.

Waterpower has the issue of doing great harm to the enviroment once you build a dam, but now most good spots are allready taken (any damage is allready done) and its close to its limit. Depending on the river you can have a very stable base power (with predictable power production for weeks) or a emercency power plant thats only running when there is need (water turbines react very fast).

Biogas can be made from lots of organic waste (sometimes its made from plants grown for this purpose, but thats a waste of farmland). It can be used very flexible since its similar to natural gas, so it can dampen the variations of other renewable sources.

This is all without adding extra energy storage capability. Storage can be added depending on how much overcapacity you have, finding the cheapest balance is probaly best done in an open market.

Dont forget that nuclear power cant supply power as needed, too. They are very good for baseloads, but cant varry their poweroutput quickly so you would also need energy-storage or overcapacity.