YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[russ_watters]

are you suggesting that the population of the Earth will simply level out?

Yes, that is the expectation.

Regarding the US, the internal propulation growth is already flat: The US gains population mostly because of immigration.

 

[azmio]

hey guys,

One thing that i have been noticing is that US and China worry so much about securing energy sources. Contrary to that, Germany and Japan focus more on getting more work output from lesser energy inputs. I don't recall hearing any country that synergizes both.

As energy consumption soars and natural resources deplete, the best way forward is in synergizing both the energy production and consumption. I believe that not many have tried this even though the synergy is a key to future energy sustainability.

 

[Char. Limit]

So, the derivative of population is negative? Or the second derivative is negative...

Well, I think we've already passed that point. The Earth was not meant to feed 12 billion people, as it will have to in the next fifty years...

Eventually, there will be hunger riots. THC said so.

 

[mheslep]

So, the derivative of population is negative? Or the second derivative is negative...

2nd is negative, i.e. the growth of population is slowing down; has been for some decades.

 

[mheslep]

Again I spoke to rates of growth, not to growth. The rate of world population growth has clearly decreased over the last 60 years, an indisputable fact. In some developed countries, the rate is actually negative.

Wiki will do for now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population


Regarding developed and developing countries, here's China, with a clearly decreasing rate:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...=-315619200000&tunit=Y&tlen=48&hl=en_US&dl=en

Japan's population peaked in 2005
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...d+population#met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:JPN

Similar for Germany:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...d+population#met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:DEU
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...=-315619200000&tunit=Y&tlen=48&hl=en_US&dl=en

 

[mheslep]

James Woolsey, former CIA Director and now an energy advocate of the off-foreign-oil type, has an op-ed in today's paper. I link it here because as it happens I agreed with Woolsey's approach to the energy problem, and in this article I agree with him point by point and with the same priorities. To my mind the article is accurate in its premises and claims, and avoids any of the silly impractical distractions that often in appear in op-eds.

Woolsey Premise:
Upon petroleum reaching $125/bbl again, half the world's wealth will be controlled by OPEC nations (i.e. Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc)

Prescription:
1. Apply the latest electronic technologies to internal combustion engines to improve mileage.
2. Switch the trucking and bus fleet to natural gas, ala T. Boone Pickens.
3. Force petro products to compete with other fuels made from waste or algae. For instance, force all new gas-using vehicles to be flex fuel capable. Note that methanol can be made from natural gas at ~$1.20 a gallon.
4. Electrify automotive transportation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168130469848598.html?KEYWORDS=woolsey#"

 

[Topher925]

Another step towards the realization of a hydrogen economy.

http://mobile.technologyreview.com/energy/25244/

 

[Abraham]

I'm actually tempted towards switching to nuclear engineering, or at least grad school in it. I think that the future of energy will depend on our ability to harness nuclear fusion.

 

[Topher925]

I'm actually tempted towards switching to nuclear engineering, or at least grad school in it. I think that the future of energy will depend on our ability to harness nuclear fusion.

Unless we want to live in the dark or destroy the planet, the majority of the supply of energy in the near future will almost undoubtedly come from nuclear energy.

 

[Redbelly98]

Unless we want to live in the dark or destroy the planet, the majority of the supply of energy in the near future will almost undoubtedly come from nuclear energy.

But surely you mean fission, whereas the previous post was referring to fusion.

 

[Topher925]

But surely you mean fission, whereas the previous post was referring to fusion.

Yes, I did. Totally missed the part about fusion.

 

[Feliks]

Unless we want to live in the dark or destroy the planet, the majority of the supply of energy in the near future will almost undoubtedly come from nuclear energy.

"Salt water extraction"

http://www.new4stroke.com/pompa.pdf"

And sallt water Tank:

1 m^3 / sec if H = 100 m give ~~ 1 MW ( 1000 KW) electric energy


Detail about salt water generator:

http://www.new4stroke.com/salt%20water%20pumped%20storage.pdf"


Regards Andrew

 

[mheslep]

"Salt water extraction"

That refers to pump storage, i.e. an energy storage scheme, not a primary energy production technology like nuclear.

 

[OmCheeto]

That refers to pump storage, i.e. an energy storage scheme, not a primary energy production technology like nuclear.

Disagree.

Energy is extracted from ocean waves and then stored for either immediate or future use.

It may not look like much, but getting away from "one trick pony" types of energy solutions is very important, IMHO.

 

[mheslep]

Disagree.

Energy is extracted from ocean waves and then stored for either immediate or future use.

Yes I'm wrong, missed that part of it - the pump.

 

[Topher925]

Very nifty. Gets around the entire baseload problem.

 

[russ_watters]

Must be some pump...color me skeptical.

 

[RonL]

Looks good to me, one large pump would not react as well to the wave energy, but a multiple of smaller units might, a little like keys on a piano board.

 

[Topher925]

I'm sure there would be many pumps involved in order to capture as much energy as practically possible.

 

[diamondscape]

I suggest FIRE the people we have in congress and start over. That would fix more than just the US Energy Crisis.

 

[mheslep]

Very nifty. Gets around the entire baseload problem.

Nifty yes but an 'entire' problem solver might be stretching things a little. If pumped storage was tasked with backing an entire US theoretical electrical grid that ran only off an intermittent source like, say, solar power and existing hydro, then the US would need some 800 GW(e) of pumped salt water storage running at night worst case, and would require transmission to the middle US from the coasts. At the moment, the US has http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/stimulus/excel/aeostimtab_9.xls" (2.6% ) of pumped storage, including the largest single facility in the world. Also, the existing pumped storage facilities are designed with a run capacity on the order of a dozen hours or so, not the couple, three days that might be required in the event of a major winter snow storm.

 

[Feliks]

Looks good to me, one large pump would not react as well to the wave energy, but a multiple of smaller units might, a little like keys on a piano board.

Yes, you right

One large wave...

Regars Andrew

 

[RonL]

Yes, you right

One large wave...

Regars Andrew

I stand corrected, that would work one very large pump.

 

[russ_watters]

Looks good to me, one large pump would not react as well to the wave energy, but a multiple of smaller units might, a little like keys on a piano board.

I'm sure there would be many pumps involved in order to capture as much energy as practically possible.

An idea with no numbers attached to it has no identifiable feasibility. Here's the wiki on wave power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

People have been trying to harness wave power for hundreds of years and as of yet have made little headway toward making it practical for large scale power generation. Here's a link to the website of the first project on the list on the wiki: http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/reedsport.htm

OPT is developing the first commercial wave park on the West Coast of the United States located 2.5 miles offshore near Reedsport, Oregon. The wave park will consist of ten (10) PB150 PowerBuoys, an undersea substation to collect the power, and a submarine cable to deliver the renewable power to the Pacific Northwest electric grid. Each PB150 PowerBuoy® has a maximum sustained generating capacity of 150 kiloWatts.

The estimated amount of electricity this project will deliver to the grid is approximately 4,140 MegaWatt-hours/year based on the wave resource at this location, or enough for up to 375 homes.

To put those numbers in perspective:

-Many buildings have generators bigger than the total capacity of that plant on their roofs.
-It takes about 20 of these buoys to match the [peak] capacity of one large wind turbine.
-With a load factor of 30%, it will actually generate an average of 470kW altogether.
-Power plant sizes vary, but a typical coal plant might be 500 MW and a typical nuclear plant 2,000 MW, both running at pretty high load factor. It would take 3,300 of these devices to match the [peak] power of a single typical coal plant and 13,000 to match a single nuclear plant. To match the consumption, multiply those by 3.
-The company claims it can match the max cost per kWh of wind, about $.15/kWh. That's more than double what is typical for nuclear and closer to triple what coal is. And that's an estimate by the company that is trying to sell them. No doubt, their pilot plant is much more expensive.
-The company's cost projection is based on being able to sell 400 of these buoys a year. If they meet their production goal, in 33 years, they will have installed enough capacity to match a single nuclear plant's kW capacity - and in 100 years, they'll be able to match a nuclear plant's kWh capacity.

Bottom line: people have been looking into wave power for centuries and even today they have not been proven to be viable, even as a high-priced niche product.

 

[russ_watters]

Regarding cost and technical feasiblity, here's an article about the world's first true commercial wave power plant: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/24/wave.pelamis/index.html

The first phase went online in 2008, generating 2.25 MW at a cost of about $11.2 million. If they last 20 years and require negligible maintenance while delivering a load factor of 30%, the power they deliver will end up costing about $.08 to produce.

However, the plant only operated for 4 months before bearings failed. They are currently planning on replacing the units with upgrades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter

More: http://www.ecogeek.org/tidal-and-wave-power/2635
A plant in Ecuador was intended to produce 750kW and never produced more than 200. It is now also ofline due to technical problems and the company (same company) appears to be in financial company. Keep in mind, this is probably the most successful wave power company ever and so far, they have little to show in the way of real commercial accomplishment.

 

[mheslep]

An idea with no numbers attached to it has no identifiable feasibility.

Ding, ding, ding. That's got sig, or an engineering forum guideline addition written all over it.

 

[Topher925]

Nifty yes but an 'entire' problem solver might be stretching things a little.

I don't think anyone here ever stated that this was an amazing fix all solution. But it is an interesting idea based on already proven concepts. Just because an idea doesn't have all the numbers immediately attached to it doesn't mean you should just completely throw it out.

Also, Oceanlinx as far as I know has so far been successful. Although they are still very new and have only very recently connected one of their generators to the grid.
http://www.oceanlinx.com/
http://www.oceanlinx.com/images/FactSheets/oceanlinx_technical_facts_sheet_v3_eng.pdf

 

[mheslep]

I don't think anyone here ever stated that this was an amazing fix all solution. But it is an interesting idea based on already proven concepts. Just because an idea doesn't have all the numbers immediately attached to it doesn't mean you should just completely throw it out.

<shrug> I didn't suggest completely throwing it out.

 

[OmCheeto]

Looks good to me, one large pump would not react as well to the wave energy, but a multiple of smaller units might, a little like keys on a piano board.

That's how I see it.
Don't know why people don't like the idea.
Of course it'll take tweaking to get it right.

Who'd have thought, a hundred years ago, that if you collected a certain type of rock, threw them in a special box, you'd get free energy out of that box for decades.

ps. your keys on a piano board sounds like my wave powered rowboat.(a linear array of ratcheted arms with floats on the ends powering a single shaft) I don't think I'll ever build it of course, but the same idea can be used to pump water. A very handy device on a sandy beach when it's 100'F outside. Some of this stuff doesn't necessarily have to save the world. It just needs to make me more comfortable.

 

[russ_watters]

Ding, ding, ding. That's got sig, or new engineering forum guideline addition written all over it.

Thanks, we can work out a licensing agreement offline

 

[russ_watters]

I don't think anyone here ever stated that this was an amazing fix all solution.

Well, the person who first brought it up made some pretty bold implicit claims. First, the post was in response to a statement you said about the "vast majority of the supply of energy", implying this could provide something substantial. Besides which, just by being brought up in this thread, it should be considered a technology with the potential to make a real impact.

Then, there's the addition of the comment about the pumped-storage, which is largely unrelated and includes a completely context-less capacity statement that has nothing whatsoever to do with the capacity of the pumping device.

That's an awful lot of nothing on which to base some lofty insinuations.

But it is an interesting idea based on already proven concepts.

Interesting idea, yes, but the concepts are clearly not proven. As far as I can tell, none of these devices has yet been attached to the grid long enough to even test its actual capacity, much less make a real contribtution, much less prove technical viability, much less prove economic viability! It's basically still drawing-board level speculation based on failed prototypes.

Just because an idea doesn't have all the numbers immediately attached to it doesn't mean you should just completely throw it out.

No one has suggested that. But in a thread looking for real solutions, implying real potential exists in an invention that hasn't successfully left the drawing-board is wrong.

Also, Oceanlinx as far as I know has so far been successful.

Define "successful". Because:

Although they are still very new and have only very recently connected one of their generators to the grid.

So they've "successfully" proven you can generate power from waves. That's old news and not really worth writing home about. Heck, *I* could do that in a month with a $10,000 budget! (But I'll take $5 million in venture capital funding, if you're offering). What they haven't done is demonstrate that you can run one of these for an extended period of time, generate a meaningful amount of power, or do it for a cost worth doing it for. These are the basic questions that separate a gee-that's-cool idea from a real commercial product and after decades of serious development, none of these generators has come anywhere close to moving from that stage to the "viable commercial product" stage. These are all just drawing board/developmental prototypes.

Also note that while the company's website says:

The Mk3PC was installed at Port Kembla on 26 February 2010, about 100 metres off the eastern breakwater of Port Kembla Harbour. It was connected to the grid and has been providing electricity since 19 March 2010 to customers of local retailer, Integral Energy.

...what they don't tell you is:

[May 17th]The landmark Oceanlinx wave energy system, the Mk3PC, sits underwater at the bottom of Port Kembla's eastern break wall after heavy seas ripped the unit from its moorings.
The 170-tonne structure, which was located 150m offshore, broke free of its pylons on Friday afternoon.

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/...mbla-wave-generator-on-sea-floor/1831275.aspx

Oops. So it operated for less than 2 months before catastrophic failure. I'm really not that impressed by that. And this by a technology that is rated one of the top 10 renewable energy investments by the UN. That doesn't give much confidence for renewable energy!

 

[russ_watters]

Don't know why people don't like the idea.

1. Too materials intensive.
2. Too intriniscly expensive because of #1.
3. Very difficult to make robust enough to reliably withstand the forces of the ocean.
4. Power density far too low (related to #1).

 

[turbo]

My wife and I use as little energy as possible. Our small house is un-insulated with log walls, but it is really easy to heat with a small stove. We need a bit more refrigeration capacity for hot spells like this, but not a lot. Addressing broad energy needs needn't involve top-down regulations or enforced rationing. Education and cooperation can get us there.

 

[OmCheeto]

1. Too materials intensive.
2. Too intriniscly expensive because of #1.
3. Very difficult to make robust enough to reliably withstand the forces of the ocean.
4. Power density far too low (related to #1).

And that's why my design was made out of empty 2 liter pop bottles, sticks, a long tube, discarded bicycle gear parts, and of course, duct tape.

I have to agree with you about pie in the sky ideas and the money that is being thrown at it.

I had an argument with someone at another forum. His idea was obviously perpetual motion, but I played along, feigning that I didn't understand his science. It was an oceanic device that worked off of differential pressure and different sized pipes. I told him that if it would work in the ocean, then it should work just as well in my 20 gallon fish tank. He said something to the effect that; it would only work if it were really big, and went really deep into the ocean. hmm.. and I bet he wanted investors too... unsubscribe...

But I wouldn't discount ocean wave energy based on a few failed attempts. We do after all, extract energy from other types of waves. We just need a simple method of harnessing this new one.

 

[Topher925]

First, the post was in response to a statement you said about the "vast majority of the supply of energy", implying this could provide something substantial. Besides which, just by being brought up in this thread, it should be considered a technology with the potential to make a real impact.

Uh, no.? I never said anything remotely about the "vast majority of the supply of energy". What basis do you have that this kind of technology can't make a significant impact? Thermodynamics says that it can.

Then, there's the addition of the comment about the pumped-storage, which is largely unrelated and includes a completely context-less capacity statement that has nothing whatsoever to do with the capacity of the pumping device.

I think its obvious that the quantity and capabilities of any pumping devices used is dependent upon the height and capacity of the reservoir and even more so location.

That's an awful lot of nothing on which to base some lofty insinuations. Interesting idea, yes, but the concepts are clearly not proven. As far as I can tell, none of these devices has yet been attached to the grid long enough to even test its actual capacity, much less make a real contribtution, much less prove technical viability, much less prove economic viability!

I disagree. Pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants are very common, reliable, and rather economical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations

It's basically still drawing-board level speculation based on failed prototypes.

The way I see it, only half of it. The water storage and power generation thing has been figured out. The only real issue I see is using waves to get the water into the reservoir. However, this isn't something that needs some major technological breakthrough, but rather just the right minded people to figure it out at a relatively low cost.

No one has suggested that. But in a thread looking for real solutions, implying real potential exists in an invention that hasn't successfully left the drawing-board is wrong.

I don't think it is. If the world was full of successful solutions that made it well passed the drawing-board phase, then this thread wouldn't exist. Also, I never said this was something can and should be done, I just simply stated that it was "nifty".

What they haven't done is demonstrate that you can run one of these for an extended period of time, generate a meaningful amount of power, or do it for a cost worth doing it for. These are the basic questions that separate a gee-that's-cool idea from a real commercial product and after decades of serious development, none of these generators has come anywhere close to moving from that stage to the "viable commercial product" stage. These are all just drawing board/developmental prototypes.

So you're saying that we should just abandon the whole idea based on a few failures? Do you think we should have abandoned nuclear power after Chernobyl?

Also note that while the company's website says: ...what they don't tell you is: http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/...mbla-wave-generator-on-sea-floor/1831275.aspx
Oops. So it operated for less than 2 months before catastrophic failure. I'm really not that impressed by that. And this by a technology that is rated one of the top 10 renewable energy investments by the UN. That doesn't give much confidence for renewable energy!

That is a little disheartening and I believe somewhat unethical on Oceanlinx part. However, I don't think you should can the idea just because someone couldn't properly design a foundation. I also think that generalizing your opinion of renewable energy based on the leadership of the UN is a bit haughty.