Wind energy

[farmerben]

25 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Aside from legislators being heavily invested in fossil fuels I don't understand why there hasn't been a drive toward equilibrium.

There are always going to be situations where combustion engines are optimal. 

We have an EV for our commutes and city driving with a fuel efficient gas drinker for cross country / off road scenarios.

Why hasn't there been more progress toward a blended infrastructure.

It went from "let's decrease our reliance on fossil fuels" to "we have to be green by tomorrow!"

I read something the other day about using diamond lattice around carbon to create a low grade RTG power source...or low density organic batteries that are supposed to me ideal for affordable housing type solutions.

that stuff should have come out 20 years ago.

 

I think oil is essential for long range aircraft and ships.  40% of that oil is gasoline.  So cheap gasoline is not going anywhere.  To produce all the other petroleum products we need we will produce a massive amount of gasoline in the process.  

You could stuff gasoline into home heating oil, or burn it directly in a furnace identical to the coal power plants.  But that seems pretty wasteful.  I could see a future where semi-trucks run on gasoline instead of diesel.  Not because its better, but because they can.  Whereas diesel is far superior to gasoline in shipping.  And jet fuel is likewise superior to gasoline.  So if most of the cars went electric, I could see a lot of the land based diesel equipment switching to gasoline because its cheaper.  

I think we are going to use all the fossil fuels this planet has to offer, even if we build nuclear tomorrow.  The only question is how long will the fossil fuels last?  

[GluttonyReaper]

7 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

And breached pressure vessels tend to fire through solid walls like torpedos.

So those are fun little extras to stick on vehicles.

All I'm hearing is that is would be trivial to install hydrolox rocket boosters on our cars...

[Nuke]

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Just Teslas alone have had 232 confirmed fires in the last 10 years. Sure you can say that there have been more ICE fires in that time, but we are trying to get away from fossil fuel powered cars.

https://www.tesla-fire.com/

Of course they are volatile, if they weren't then you couldn't use them, but only if released suddenly together with an ignition source. Tank technology used in storing Cryogenic fuels for rockets has come a long way and can be used in the auto industry. Both Carbon wrapped metal and newer types that also addressess @darthgently's concerns.

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Future_space_transportation/Tough_tests_no_problem_for_carbon-fibre_cryo_fuel_tanks

This is more expensive and more difficult then you might realise.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2024/ph241/cranmer2/

I ruled out fuel cells in my post.

No. Just upgrading of the seals of gas pipelines that already exist.

They have been pumping LPG into cars since 1940. It is actually safer than pumping petrol because you screw the delivery system to your input seal and the system won't pressurise the tank until this is secure. Cars would have a standardised input system with inbuilt safety that won't allow for gas to escape between car and pump.

I understand the concern on this, but with a regulated system that makes sure that the hydrogen is bonded with oxygen to make water vapour before reaching the atmosphere it is unlikely to be a factor.

Hydrogen is present in our air and has been since the planet formed. Natural reactions in the atmosphere generally bond it to something faster than it can end up bonding with Methane. Otherwise it would have made our kind of life impossible, billions of years ago.

Of course. Never said it was. I don't believe in free energy machines or perpetual motion engines.

As with all systems of creating electricity.

The table below shows a breakdown of costs to build a nuclear power plant*: 

Factors	Estimated Costs
Licensing and permits	$700 million - $1.5 billion
Land	$28 million - $60 million
Engineering	$2.34 billion - $5.00 billion
Construction	$1.48 billion - $3.18 billion
Reactor equipment	$2.93 billion - $6.27 billion
Turbine equipment	$2.45 billion - $5.25 billion
Structure and improvements	$2.31 billion - $4.95 billion
Electric equipment	$854 million - $1.83 billion
Heat rejection system	$420 million - $900 million
Miscellaneous equipment	$294 million - $630 million
Other costs	$196 million - $420 million

*Costs in the table are calculated based on power plant capital investment cost estimates published by the Department of Energy and considering the reported costs of building new nuclear reactors by the Vogtle power plant in Georgia. Vogtle is the first and only nuclear power plant approved to be built in the US since the 1970s. The estimates above don’t include financial costs, such as interest or return rates on investments and loans. 

Be wary of those who push nuclear without giving you a well researched cost breakdown at the same time.

I am not saying that creating the infrastructure I speak of is cheap, but in the long run, properly managed it will be. You were talking of needing to adjust power output up or down as conditions require. This does that. The power input is where they are while producing, so maintenance and turning things off and on is easier and will not impact on the general public. And if something horrible like Tsurnami hits, you won't end up with the nuclear nightmare they got in Japan.

air travel is the model you want to emulate. every plane crash is used as an opportunity to make future planes safer. so every reactor malfunction to will point you in the right direction. lessons learned from fukashima, 3 mile island, and chernobyl to name a few are used in more current reactor generations. i dont think were quite out of here be dragons territory anymore, but you wont get there sitting on your hands. if nuclear reactors were aircraft, were still in the interwar period (viable fusion would be about the moon landing, and aneutronic would be mars colony).

[farmerben]

8 minutes ago, Nuke said:

. if nuclear reactors were aircraft, were still in the interwar period (viable fusion would be about the moon landing, and aneutronic would be mars colony).

In that case breeder reactors are jets.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

42 minutes ago, farmerben said:

I think oil is essential for long range aircraft and ships.  40% of that oil is gasoline.  So cheap gasoline is not going anywhere.  To produce all the other petroleum products we need we will produce a massive amount of gasoline in the process.  

You could stuff gasoline into home heating oil, or burn it directly in a furnace identical to the coal power plants.  But that seems pretty wasteful.  I could see a future where semi-trucks run on gasoline instead of diesel.  Not because its better, but because they can.  Whereas diesel is far superior to gasoline in shipping.  And jet fuel is likewise superior to gasoline.  So if most of the cars went electric, I could see a lot of the land based diesel equipment switching to gasoline because its cheaper.  

I think we are going to use all the fossil fuels this planet has to offer, even if we build nuclear tomorrow.  The only question is how long will the fossil fuels last?  

There are many provisions in place where I live that prevent more of what I meant.

Solar is subsidized but still required to be piped back into the grid in most places.

Wind is very much behind on policy on what is allowed. A few people locally have tried to install some highly efficient wind generators.. but policy in place is to regulate people slapping up windmills with large blades.

It's illegal to reclaim rain water in nearly every state I've been in.

Cheap is a word that can have vastly different implications depending in the policies in place. 

I was contracted do to some work in Tennessee where someone was wanting to build a home completely "off grid" .. no plumbing connections. Very low carbon imprint.

It was crazy what was allowed and what was not. 

 

[Nuke]

1 minute ago, farmerben said:

In that case breeder reactors are jets.

were presently afraid they will hit the ground harder and so we dont build them as much as we should.

1 minute ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

There are many provisions in place where I live that prevent more of what I meant.

Solar is subsidized but still required to be piped back into the grid in most places.

Wind is very much behind on policy on what is allowed. A few people locally have tried to install some highly efficient wind generators.. but policy in place is to regulate people slapping up windmills with large blades.

It's illegal to reclaim rain water in nearly every state I've been in.

Cheap is a word that can have vastly different implications depending in the policies in place. 

I was contracted do to some work in Tennessee where someone was wanting to build a home completely "off grid" .. no plumbing connections. Very low carbon imprint.

It was crazy what was allowed and what was not. 

 

my sister had a house like that when she was still married. had its own well, its own septic tank. the only power it got was through a deisel generator which only ran for a few hours every day. main house power was through a pair of forklift batteries. heat was provided by a wood stove. she did do rain water collection sometimes, but they also had access to spring water, which is what they used for drinking.

[StrandedonEarth]

Hydrogen for energy or for storage has been thoroughly debunked. Airlines have given up on it. Michael Barnard has several articles on it, here’s one…

One possible exception is a large reserve of “white hydrogen “ or fossil hydrogen, found in France. Fossil hydrogen is common, but usually heavily diluted with methane and other gases. The French find is unusually pure. But then, all the problems of handling it still apply. 

[Nuke]

only way hydrogen works is when we have reliable solid state hydrogen storage. im not sure where thats at on the trl scale.

[RCgothic]

Somewhere around the same level as a functional warp drive.

[Nuke]

3 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Somewhere around the same level as a functional warp drive.

well one is some chemistry legwork and the other is "maybe physics will let us do this thing".

[farmerben]

 

In boats, diesel is the only good option.  Direct shaft drive is more efficient than hybrid electric when you run continuously rather than in impulses.  The same applies to aircraft.  If we run out of liquid fuel we will probably need to find a way to synthesize it.  

Edited yesterday at 10:55 AM by farmerben

[RCgothic]

Add you say, we may not have a good way to replace carbon fuels in transport applications.

But if so we should be synthesising it. Unfortunately that's a lot more expensive currently. We need energy to get cheaper, and it's not going to whilst wind power is pushing prices up.

Edited yesterday at 12:04 PM by RCgothic

[farmerben]

Biodiesel and ethanol are already a viable products, only slightly inferior to the real stuff.  But the economics of land use is terrible.  Wood is the only good biofuel IMHO, because the externalities on the growing side are not as negative.

And I don't worry about carbon in and of itself that much, I just worry about losing arctic ice and sea level rise.  If wind energy were actually cheap, we could deploy it in Antarctica to create ice, but that's pretty low on the list of things that actually work.  

 

I looked into throttleable natural gas plants.  These are all reciprocating ICE engines.  A great deal more expensive, high maintenance, and less efficient than the ideal combustion chamber.

Edited yesterday at 01:27 PM by farmerben

[Fizzlebop Smith]

17 hours ago, Nuke said:

were presently afraid they will hit the ground harder and so we dont build them as much as we should.

my sister had a house like that when she was still married. had its own well, its own septic tank. the only power it got was through a deisel generator which only ran for a few hours every day. main house power was through a pair of forklift batteries. heat was provided by a wood stove. she did do rain water collection sometimes, but they also had access to spring water, which is what they used for drinking.

I think this should be a more sustainable approach and depending on where you live, it can be pretty difficult.  there are a ton of cool designs with collection tanks that use radiant energies to heat the water. This  causes pressure difference allows the water to heat the floors. Used it for gardens as a kid.

I am amazed when i see homes that are so very expensive but do not really offer any sustained worth beyond that of status symbol.
The area where i grew up. We had plywood floors (no carpet) for years as a child and the house had very low monetary value, but the natural gas company gave us free gas for using the land to run a line. We had a generator and all appliances run on gas. The generator was only for hurricane season. We had septic and windmill. We used rain reclamation systems and a well.

Its so weird, i think so much of it is on purpose here. Building US cities around the Idea of the automobile was terrible. Few American cities have stellar public transportation part of the consumerism mentality? 

There was a king of the hill episode where all the businesses had to switch to low flow toilets. Come to find out the local congressman owned the low flow toilet company. 

Edited yesterday at 01:57 PM by Fizzlebop Smith

[darthgently]

12 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Its so weird, i think so much of it is on purpose here. Building US cities around the Idea of the automobile was terrible. Few American cities have stellar public transportation part of the consumerism mentality? 

This is a common argument against personal transportation but it has a huge blind spot.  The U.S. is a huge country and people go where the jobs are which spread extended families across the nation.  The automobile allowed families to get together for the holidays, to visit other parts off the USA and putting trucks into the mix allowed an extremely fine grained distribution network.  Public transportation faces the same issues of base load and transient load that our energy generation does.  No public transportation system could replace the efficiency the private automobile for dealing with holiday traffic, for example, as if its base capacity could do that it would be overbuilt the rest of the time.  Same as with energy.

[Linkageless]

I think behind all is this is how simple it is to harness whatever energy it is vs how much benefit we get.

It's not at all simple to harness energy from fossil fuels to do anything but produce heat; most of our systems to do more than heat stuff involve complex moving parts and/or multiple conversions of power, but we persisted in solving and improving these because the perceived benefit was great.

Wind provides us an easy and energetic solution to propelling ships, grinding up cereals, pumping water, etc, so long as we're willing to put up with it's sporadic nature.  Producing a more distributable power supply like electricity is more of a challenge, but obviously achievable.  The downside continues to be it's sporadic nature, and that seems to devalue it's perceived benefit.  Solar tends to be more reliable as a power source not just because it is slightly simpler to implement and maintain (no moving parts!) but it also is more likely to be at least doing something once a day, every day (at least where I live).  It also tolerates environmental extremes a lot more elegantly.  All this results in better predictability of supply, so it's no wonder that around here there's now so many homes with solar and fields crammed with the things.  Meanwhile we actually have a lot of wind, and actually build turbine blades locally, yet there's not a single turbine to be seen.

From my limited experience, it seems that small-scale wind generation simply isn't cost effective, even with VAWT which can improve on many of the shortcomings of horizontal designs.  In my understand VAWT just won't scale up nicely, which explains why we don't have them on every hilltop.

What's the answer?  Combine a little large scale wind, a lot of solar, and other sustainable but simple power sources to try to provide an evenly spread supply.  Vary demand to meet the availability of that supply.   Finally,  find a way to store the excess energy so it can be released when it's most needed for demands that can't be varied.

Perhaps wind should go back to moving things about and pumping water.  At least gravitational potential energy is reliable and we know how to harness that in many ways.

[farmerben]

49 minutes ago, Linkageless said:

 

From my limited experience, it seems that small-scale wind generation simply isn't cost effective, even with VAWT which can improve on many of the shortcomings of horizontal designs.  In my understand VAWT just won't scale up nicely, which explains why we don't have them on every hilltop.

 

Vertical axis wind turbines look cool, they just don't match the efficiency of horizontal designs.  Their main advantage that they don't care about wind direction is offset by the inability to operate at all in low wind.

[Terwin]

2 hours ago, Linkageless said:

What's the answer?  Combine a little large scale wind, a lot of solar, and other sustainable but simple power sources to try to provide an evenly spread supply.  Vary demand to meet the availability of that supply.   Finally,  find a way to store the excess energy so it can be released when it's most needed for demands that can't be varied.

Are you willing to shut off your heating for a week or two in the middle of winter in sub-freezing temperatures?

(no wind, minimal solar)

How about turning off your cooling systems in the middle of summer when it is consistently 110+f during the day and 90+f at night for a week or more?

(possibly some wind, too hot for solar)

Would you be be ok eating meat from a freezer that has been shut off an unknown number of times for unknown durations before it even gets to your door?

 

Without very stringent laws and a significant loss of quality of life(and lives in general) you will not get demand varying to meet supply any more than we already get with variable pricing.

Variable power supplies may be a viable supplement when your have an adjustable supply that has a capped annual output(like hydro that no longer gets enough annual in-flow to handle annual demand), but they can never be more than a supplement to support short-falls in the existing base power.

 

Grid-scale energy storage is completely unrealistic for anything beyond power smoothing and allowing for plant ramp-up time, both of which are measured in seconds or minutes, not days and weeks like you would need for covering variable power supplies.

[Linkageless]

23 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Are you willing to shut off your heating for a week or two in the middle of winter in sub-freezing temperatures?

To a certain extent yes.  I'm a bit of a tyrant like that and we subsist with about 2 hours heating per day, aside from wood burning stove.  There's negatives to the wood burning, but the advantage is that it keeps me warm three times. (A standing joke )

26 minutes ago, Terwin said:

How about turning off your cooling systems in the middle of summer when it is consistently 110+f during the day and 90+f at night for a week or more?

(possibly some wind, too hot for solar)

Our cooling systems are windows and shade.  Admittedly we only usually suffer such temperatures for a few weeks a year.  Our solar is usually at peak output at such times, but I do appreciate that monocrystalline silicon still suffers with higher temperatures, I've found that effect negligible in practice

 

30 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Would you be be ok eating meat from a freezer that has been shut off an unknown number of times for unknown durations before it even gets to your door?

Absolutely not, which is exactly why we need energy storage and a mix of supplies.

Please understand that I can't see any immediate future without nuclear and even occasional fossil fuel generated power, but I'm hopeful that we can find a way to store energy and use it in a smarter way than we have.

35 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Grid-scale energy storage is completely unrealistic for anything beyond power smoothing and allowing for plant ramp-up time, both of which are measured in seconds or minutes, not days and weeks like you would need for covering variable power supplies.

Agreed.  Unless there's some huge breakthrough in technology, that's not going to happen on a industrial scale.  On the individual scale, it's conceivable that the cost motive can encourage individual homes/premises to consume smarter and store as necessary, if only we could find ways of bringing the cost of those technologies down.

1 hour ago, farmerben said:

Vertical axis wind turbines look cool, they just don't match the efficiency of horizontal designs.  Their main advantage that they don't care about wind direction is offset by the inability to operate at all in low wind.

This is what makes them better for small scale.  I understand Q-turbines and possibly other recent designs are a lot better for low speed yet tolerant to higher speeds, however it seems they just don't scale up.

[Nuke]

you do realize what happens when an alaskan home goes unheated for even a couple of days in winter? pipes burst, water gets everywhere, it freezes, and then you got a big mess and expensive plumbing repairs to deal with. you need to at least keep the heat tapes powered and you might only maintain 50 degrees in the home when its unoccupied. good thing we are on hydro. arctic solutions get more inventive (the term poopsicle comes to mind, since traditional septic systems dont work).

i dont think the city of phoenix would be there without air conditioning either.  before ac the city may have been a wild west town, after ac its a sprawling metropolis. meanwhile the homeless population frequently contracts heat stroke.

the notion that you could live without in these locations all come from a place that hovers around 80f degrees year round. whatever methods indigenous populations use to cope with harsh climates do not scale well to urban size.

Edited 21 hours ago by Nuke

[Linkageless]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

the notion that you could live without in these locations all come from a place that hovers around 80f degrees year round. whatever methods indigenous populations use to cope with harsh climates do not scale well to urban size.

Does this mean living in urban environments outside of temperate latitudes simply isn't sustainable?  I could see how that would be controversial.

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

you do realize what happens when an alaskan home goes unheated for even a couple of days in winter?

Sounds awful, and I wouldn't advocate it.  In the relatively temperate location I live in, we're fortunate that winter doesn't mean constant sub-zero temperatures.  I suppose we need the right balance of energy provision at not only the right times, but also in the right places.

[RCgothic]

Energy isn't really a commodity. It's a service. It can't be stored on any meaningful scale and needs to be available on demand.

We can't just "vary demand" to align with the vagaries of weather. The weather in many densely populated regions can and will kill the inhabitants without access to reliable energy.

That's not even getting into the effect of inconsistency on industries businesses and incomes.

It *is* possible to attempt dynamic management of supply. But it'll be so unpopular it wouldn't be a policy that lasted very long.

Civilisation simply needs baseload power. The only green options are hydro, geothermal and nuclear. 

And only nuclear is available to deploy anywhere.

Edited 17 hours ago by RCgothic

[Fizzlebop Smith]

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

This is a common argument against personal transportation but it has a huge blind spot.  The U.S. is a huge country and people go where the jobs are which spread extended families across the nation.  The automobile allowed families to get together for the holidays, to visit other parts off the USA and putting trucks into the mix allowed an extremely fine grained distribution network.  Public transportation faces the same issues of base load and transient load that our energy generation does.  No public transportation system could replace the efficiency the private automobile for dealing with holiday traffic, for example, as if its base capacity could do that it would be overbuilt the rest of the time.  Same as with energy.

This might have been true when my grandfather  moved to the steel mills, but my argument is that America was built around the idea of the automobile. The publication Arizona highways came put and still runs today because of the glorified concept that the highway (by extension the automobile) represents... freedom.

That is the heart of the American appeal.. it has purposefully been equated to concepts of freedom. 

The argument you make is often the one that justified the lack of public transportation.. but I claim it is a logical fallacy.  I know plenty of people that rent a vehicle each year for vacation.

11% of America have never ventured beyond their state.

Half of those have visited less than 10 states.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-of-americans-who-never-traveled-beyond-the-state-where-they-were-born-a-surprise/

Its something there aren't whe lot of metrics on, but the majority of American have lived in fewer than 3 states and some crazy high percentage lives within 100 miles of where they were born.

There are some people that drive all over the place and work over the road in some capacity. But my argument is that most people relocate once.. or twice. 

And since this is a topic of public transportation it's more of a discussion regarding urban centers. Now thag Uber is a thing, there a ever more and more people that do not drive (for whatever reason) inside these urban centers.. and there is really no argument (that I can see) outside policy reform for the crappy public transportation infrastructure in most places.

 

1 in 10 do not drive at all

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/14/1-in-10-americans-rarely-or-never-drive-a-car/

i gaurantee this metroc is skewed at least marginally by a number of people that would prefer not to.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, Linkageless said:

Does this mean living in urban environments outside of temperate latitudes simply isn't sustainable?  I could see how that would be controversial.

Sounds awful, and I wouldn't advocate it.  In the relatively temperate location I live in, we're fortunate that winter doesn't mean constant sub-zero temperatures.  I suppose we need the right balance of energy provision at not only the right times, but also in the right places.

point is there are locations that would be considered uninhabitable without the infrastructure. for example they converted us all from a centralized fuel oil furnace to heat pumps for the efficiency, but if the electricity fails for any long period of time there is no backup. the pipes will freeze and the apartment owners will be hit with massive repair bills. now our power has backups, the diesel generator for example, were also tied into wrangell for reduncancy. without that infrastructure we would be 100% dependant on fossil fuel. we could always chop wood i suppose, but not everyone has wood stoves and an urban population would consume wood like crazy. if the electricity just disappeared tomorrow and never came back, people would die.

[farmerben]

 

 

This will keep you alive