Will Solar Power Outshine Oil in the Near Future?

[OmCheeto]

Lopping the top off such a mountain in CA would yield 10 hrs or so of power at a couple GW. Intermittent power needs 10 days of storage, with power sufficient to run the CA load that's not covered by hydro.
...

I thought I posted something that refutes that?
hmmm...
I think I have several conversations going on in my head at the moment.

Anyways, my analysis of "Otay" gave me a number that says it could supply all of Zoobytown for 2+ weeks.
Of course, my numbers might be wrong.
And it assumes all 'Diegans consume at a Zoob rate.
Which might be difficult, as even I can't do that.
(pats Zoob on the back)

 

[mheslep]

Bath County PHS is the world's largest by power, with 45 million m^3 upper reservoir. At max flow, empties in 14 hrs. Even in Zoob land the municipal water pumps, the hospitals, the grocery stores, the farms and factories and street lights and police stations and movie theaters all use more than a few dozen kWh per month.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station

 

[OmCheeto]

Bath County PHS is the world's largest by power, with 45 million m^3 upper reservoir. At max flow, empties in 14 hrs. Even in Zoob land the municipal water pumps, the hospitals, the grocery stores, the farms and factories and street lights and police stations and movie theaters all use more than a few dozen kWh per month.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station

Sounds like some hospitals, grocery stores, et al, had better get up to green-speed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

MOX reactor fuel and reprocessing of spent reactor fuel are two different things. MOX requires plutonium as a source, which can come from various sources, retired military nuclear weapons, overseas recovered plutonium. At one point a majority of US reactors were burning, in part, the plutonium from Soviet weapons. For years.

Thanks. That clears it up.

 

[mheslep]

Why? Those are the things that allow a civilization to make people relatively healthy, safe, prosperous and, well, not Haiti. Pumped water is not private jet travel, and requires a certain amount of energy.

There's always a shack in the woods for those compelled to go 18th century peasant.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Utility scale energy storage is not like warehouse space that one can simply run out and rent when the basement gets full. The technology for the scale of economicly suitable storage required must be invented first; it does not exist. There is cause for solar and wind advocates to waive away this problem, since if the technology of large scale storage became available, it's cost is almost certain to be large relative to the existing cost of power, and that cost would become prominent. Then comes an end to throw away lines about the low cost of solar, as the high cost of solar plus storage becomes new starting point.

Exactly.

But, it should be pointed out that some few utilities have already incurred that "high cost" in pumped storage (pumped hydro) for the purpose of simply not wasting the fossil energy they have to make at the "wrong" time. The mismatch between time of generation and time of demand already exists in the fossil grid, and solutions have been 'pioneered,' at least, but probably better than pioneered. I think 'invention from scratch' is not quite the situation. No one has ever piped hydrogen around the country, but we have piped oil and gas and water. Some meaningful percentage of that know-how will carry over into solving the new problem.

Solar and wind people have to start thinking of large scale storage in terms of much longer periods of time. 24 hours of storage is a joke. You have to start thinking about months. Smaller storage units have to feed into a strategy of larger storage, rather than end up interfering with it later.

As it is, solar and wind seem to the best thing going for fossil fuel power, as where there is someof the former there is a lot of the latter, and for a long time. An alternative scenario of 80% nuclear would demolish fossil fuel power, as it did in France, Sweden, Switzerland, putting real fear in our fossil fuel interests.

This site:https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics says 11% of the world's electricity is now generated by nuclear. A figure given in various places for how many years we have left of nuclear fuel at current rate of usage is 230 years. So, if electricity were now 22% nuclear, we'd have 115 years of fuel left, If it were 44%, then 57.5 years left, if it were 88%, 28.75 years left. The more nuclear plants you add, obviously, the faster you consume your remaining fuel. That's just electricity, not all energy needs. And that's today's electricity needs: I assume we'll be consuming more and more per annum as time goes by, rather than less. No breeder reactors = no nuclear utopia. The longer you go without breeder reactors, the faster you use up the best fuel.

 

[acidmatic]

when one resource runs out, another will takes its place. solar maybe, power densities per area are increasing (aka efficiency). surface area for solar are a key constraint.

a skyscraper that powers itself?? but only until the sun goes down, then the whole building becomes dark and cold :(

the flip side, oil hoarders love solar, why? because solar can offset the massive use of oil thus slowing down the pumping of oil, so instead of $20 billion a month for the next 150 yrs, they have $5billion a month for the next ~400yrs.

oil will be around for a long time even with the introduction of newer/better technologies in large salt water batteries, solar, wind, nuke, coal, plant fuels, etc.

Completely agree... It's similar to the current situation with cars... Hybrids. Most of them run on electricity + petrol. Technology is developing gradually just like anything else in our Universe.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
There's always a shack in the woods for those compelled to go 18th century peasant.

I call those people "worm eaters".

Can't cut down trees. Can't eat meat. Can't do this. Can't do that.

I always think to myself;
"Where do tree huggers live, and what do they eat?
Ah ha! They live in their parent's crawl spaces, and eat worms."

As far as your laundry list of "other" users goes:

municipal water pumps
hospitals
grocery stores
farms
factories
street lights
police stations
movie theaters​

Umm... As I've said before; "I ain't god, and I ain't got time to micro-analyze and come up with a solution to every stinkin' little problem."

ps. I believe Russ said "street lights" were a prime candidate for solar. I'm pretty sure the solar panels I inherited from my dad were from oceanic bouys. Kind of the same thing. Still pumping out plenty of trons, even after 20+ years.

 

[zoobyshoe]

And it assumes all 'Diegans consume at a Zoob rate.
Which might be difficult, as even I can't do that.
(pats Zoob on the back)

Thanks!
But for humans you should figure in AC in the summer and an all-electric household, the goal being to replace our dual gas/electric system entirely.

I have to tell you that most people I know in San Diego do not even bother turning on any heat in the winter! 60 ºF feels pleasantly cool to them, so they might throw on a sweater at most. I start shivering and my teeth chatter at 72 ºF. On the other hand, I find AC has an unpleasant clammy quality that gives me a headache if I sit in it for over 30 minutes, so I cool with fans in the summer. Desert heat is dry heat, and feels 20 degrees cooler than eastern humid heat.

 

[mfb]

A figure given in various places for how many years we have left of nuclear fuel at current rate of usage is 230 years.

At the current price and current way to use it. Breeding would increase that number massively. Thorium would increase it again.
The current uranium reserves with the current way to use it don't last long simply because there is no need to save uranium. The reactors can use the uranium that is the most readily availabe, in the most wasteful way - because there is no shortage of uranium.
This has been mentioned multiple times already.

The mismatch between time of generation and time of demand already exists in the fossil grid

At a much smaller scale, and you can plan ahead to reduce the mismatch.
Hydro can be a nice storage method, but the number of places where it is cheap is very limited. You can't store a significant fraction of the daily or weekly electricity consumption there in most countries.

 

[OmCheeto]

Thanks!
But for humans you should figure in AC in the summer and an all-electric household, the goal being to replace our dual gas/electric system entirely.

I have to tell you that most people I know in San Diego do not even bother turning on any heat in the winter! 60 ºF feels pleasantly cool to them, so they might throw on a sweater at most. I start shivering and my teeth chatter at 72 ºF. On the other hand, I find AC has an unpleasant clammy quality that gives me a headache if I sit in it for over 30 minutes, so I cool with fans in the summer. Desert heat is dry heat, and feels 20 degrees cooler than eastern humid heat.

Although Wolram started the thread out with "spray on" solar "PV" technology, my experiments in solar "thermal" indicate that you could probably heat your dwelling very inexpensively with such a unit. As you may have seen, my San Diego sister talked me into building one a couple of years ago. I told her it was just an idea, and I hadn't worked out all the details, but she insisted; "Stop thinking about it, and build one!". So I did. Fortunately, it was only $100 for all of the components, and would probably have generated quite a lot of energy. Unfortunately, solar energy in the winter here is a bit scarce so I've never used it. I haven't even bothered testing it, as I haven't even bothered finishing it. From Oct 1st of last year through May 1st of this year, it rained an average of 4 out of 5 days. (I'm guessing this is why we have lower electrical rates. It acts as an anti-depressant for all this flirpin' cloudy weather...)

But anyways, from my somewhat simple equations, my sister could heat her house with two of my units.
She used 941 kwh worth of natural gas therms for heating in February of this year, and one of my units has a theoretical output of 600 kwh per average month. In San Diego of course.
Theoretical output in Portland is zero!

Total DIY cost: ≈$300.
Cost of her heating and hot water (1345 kwh of natural gas) from SDG&E: $20.28 (again, Feb 2017)
Good grief! ≈1.5¢/kwh natural gas

It's no wonder I'm broke, and everyone says I'm stoopid...

ps. It looks as though she would require a third unit to heat her water in February.

pps. Obligatory graph:

 

[OmCheeto]

Of course, if my heating costs had only been 10% of their historical values, I'd never have calculated that $4000 worth of insulation would have saved me $700 per year. (Payback time: ≈6 years)
(I thought I was going to be a "house flipper" 28 years ago, and opted just to only install the minimum.)

And scratching my head about why Zoob's e-bill is so comparatively low, prompted me to google, and find out that buying a brandy new refrigerator, rather than keeping my 2nd hand refrigerator, would have a payback time of 3.4 years.

current Omic fridge: 1350 kwh/yr
$400 new fridge: 300 kwh/yr [ref]

@ PDX rates, of course.

ps. @wolram , thank you for this thread.

 

[zoobyshoe]

one of my units has a theoretical output of 600 kwh per average month. In San Diego of course.

I don't recall this project. Link me, please.

$4000 worth of insulation would have saved me $700 per year. (Payback time: ≈6 years)

When I lived in Minnesota, I observed this to be a common problem: people did not have adequate insulation on their (decades old) homes. And that caused unnecessarily high heating bills.

current Omic fridge: 1350 kwh/yr
$400 new fridge: 300 kwh/yr

Yes, my fridge is only about 4 years old. It replaced an older energy hog. A kWh saved is a kWh earned.

Which brings me to the question of why it ends up being easier to engineer and build a pumped hydro plant in Michigan (or anywhere they've built one) than it seems to be to engineer and build an electricity generation system that you can 'turn down' when demand is low. What are the obstacles to that?

 

[OmCheeto]

I don't recall this project. Link me, please.

No wonder. It's a bit old.

Is now a good time to invest in solar? [ref: PF]

Om
Aug 25, 2010, 08:09 AM
...

I did an experiment last summer using 1/2 inch 100' long black irrigation hose and a $22 bilge pump. The system collected ~2.3 kwh of thermal energy in about 3.5 hours.
...
Some numbers:
flow: 1.6 gpm (~ 24 watts pump)
area of hose: 0.27 m^2
system fluid capacity: 32 gallons
max delta T / hr: 11 'F
To = 61.7'F
Tf = 90.9'F

Eek! Late for work. BBL.​

Basically, it just proved that you get ≈1 kilowatt of "thermal" power from 1 square meter of black stuff.

When I lived in Minnesota, I observed this to be a common problem: people did not have adequate insulation on their (decades old) homes. And that caused unnecessarily high heating bills.

Yes, my fridge is only about 4 years old. It replaced an older energy hog. A kWh saved is a kWh earned.

Which brings me to the question of why it ends up being easier to engineer and build a pumped hydro plant in Michigan (or anywhere they've built one) than it seems to be to engineer and build an electricity generation system that you can 'turn down' when demand is low. What are the obstacles to that?

I would answer, but I have not a clue.

 

[mfb]

Which brings me to the question of why it ends up being easier to engineer and build a pumped hydro plant in Michigan (or anywhere they've built one) than it seems to be to engineer and build an electricity generation system that you can 'turn down' when demand is low. What are the obstacles to that?

Thermal cycles are bad for the materials in big power plants.
Even if you can build a power plant that doesn't have that issue, it is still wasteful. Plant construction and fixed operation cost is the dominant cost of nuclear power and still the largest part for coal. The marginal cost of running the plants is small.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Thermal cycles are bad for the materials in big power plants.

This is something that would never have occurred to me. Why worse for materials in big power plants, as opposed to, say, the common car engine?

Even if you can build a power plant that doesn't have that issue, it is still wasteful. Plant construction and fixed operation cost is the dominant cost of nuclear power and still the largest part for coal. The marginal cost of running the plants is small.

What about natural gas? I found out that the "peaker" plants that serve my local utility are natural gas and use gas turbines. I googled gas turbines and it said:

Another significant advantage is their ability to be turned on and off within minutes, supplying power during peak, or unscheduled, demand. Since single cycle (gas turbine only) power plants are less efficient than combined cycle plants, they are usually used as peaking power plants, which operate anywhere from several hours per day to a few dozen hours per year—depending on the electricity demand and the generating capacity of the region. In areas with a shortage of base-load andload following power plant capacity or with low fuel costs, a gas turbine powerplant may regularly operate most hours of the day. A large single-cycle gas turbine typically produces 100 to 400 megawatts of electric power and has 35–40% thermal efficiency.[36]

So, our "peaker" plants can only be turned off and on because they are single cycle gas turbines: Hence, only 35-40% efficient because they don't recover the waste heat.

So, this makes me wonder what other ways of recovering the waste heat could be developed that also can be turned on and off quickly. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is a stirling engine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

The claim is made in that article: "Stirling engines have a high efficiency compared to steam engines,[4] being able to reach 50% efficiency." The heat recovery steam generator mentioned in the article achieved a 62.22% efficiency rate, so the Stirling is not miserably far behind.

Which sounds good enough to start mentally exploring scenarios. A combined cycle gas turbine/stirling engine would have that quick on-off capability. The cost of the fuel wasted may be small, but there is its finite nature to consider.

 

[mfb]

This is something that would never have occurred to me. Why worse for materials in big power plants, as opposed to, say, the common car engine?

In a car engine you cannot avoid it, you make it more robust and tolerate a lower efficiency and a higher price (compared to a car that would break down after a month).

Gas turbines are more expensive to operate and have a lower efficiency. They are a bit like cars in that aspect.

The cost of the fuel wasted may be small, but there is its finite nature to consider.

And the CO2 emissions. Both are relevant for fossil fuels only. As discussed, there is more than enough uranium.

Stirling engines are difficult to scale up to gigawatts of power.

 

[mheslep]

The mismatch between time of generation and time of demand already exists in the fossil grid, and solutions have been 'pioneered,

Yes, dispatchable power, i.e. [power with an on/off switch that works any time, night/day, winter/summer. Intermittent power like solar is so named because it has no such switch.

 

[rootone]

Depending on how 'green' you want your power supply infrastructure to be,
I'm sure that a large diverse nation as the US could set up a reliable 2O% or so from a variety of solar,wind, hydro, and tidal.

 

[mheslep]

Depending on how 'green' you want your power supply infrastructure to be,
I'm sure that a large diverse nation as the US could set up a reliable 2O% or so from a variety of solar,wind, hydro, and tidal.

Solar and wind could hit 20% in the US, at substantial cost, because it means for the most part leaving the fossil fleet in place and running it a bit less, but not replacing it. And to what end? Cutting *global* GHG emissions means adopting an affordable clean energy plan that can ~80% of emissions, and one that the developing world can use, in India, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. There's only one technology available that can make it happen, close fossil fuel plants. Its not solar/
&wind.

 

[rootone]

If you mean fusion, well yes, I am an optimist.

 

[mfb]

Fission.

Maybe fusion in a few decades, although I don't think that will be quickly adopted in developing countries.

 

[rootone]

It can be surprising though.
Flat screens and touch devices are now everyday technology, that was sci fi only 20 years ago.
If ITER does demonstrate that fusion is a real prospect, I think we will see China/India/Russia doing their own fusion thing.
https://www.iter.org/

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, dispatchable power, i.e. [power with an on/off switch that works any time, night/day, winter/summer.

I was just talking about that with mfb, about how peaker plants, the ones with the on/off switches, that are only 35-40% efficient due to their on/off ability, could be made more efficient.

Adding power during peak times doesn't solve the problem that the main plants have a limit below which they can't go. Hence: pumped hydro, to simply prevent them from wasting the energy from fossil they have to make at the wrong time. Dispatchable power doesn't solve that. They can't use gas turbines, which power the dispatchable plants, and still have the 67% efficiency of a combined cycle.

 

[mfb]

I don't know the situation in the US: In most parts of Europe, pumped hydro is used nearly everywhere where it is reasonable. You cannot simply build a new hydro power plant at arbitrary places, you need a suitable topography, water, and not too many people living there.

If ITER does demonstrate that fusion is a real prospect, I think we will see China/India/Russia doing their own fusion thing.

Let's be optimistic and say ITER DT fusion does start 2035 as projected. That is the earliest point where you can reasonably start working on a follow-up project. Even if you throw unlimited money on it, that gives a single DEMO-like device not before 2040, where the conditions relevant for a power plant can be explored. In 2045 you can have enough experience to construct several actual power plants, which don't start running before 2050.

Fusion can be interesting in the future, but it won't become a relevant power source within the lifetime of current power plants. We need at least one generation in between.

 

[Ken Fabos]

Forget the idealised Transition scenarios where nuclear is the main low emissions thrust or where solar, wind and storage are introduced into the mix only in an orderly, controlled, planned manner. Nuclear is not the main thrust and more wind and solar are coming into existing grids - or intermittently reducing demand, which is effectively the same thing - and that's going to accelerate, ready or not.

Take away the looming likelihood that solar and wind will strain networks and work on storage would slow and stall. Make storage a prerequisite for solar and wind and all three would stall. If that happens then there is no Transition; there is good no reason to think nuclear will step into that breach. The nuclear option would take extraordinary forethought, planning and government interventions. Why should we expect such far-sighted forethought and planning now? We haven't had that so far.

Yet it's not really that disorderly - it's just a tipping point that we've seen coming. It's a bit sooner than expected but it's not a surprise. It isn't a crisis of failed technologies - batteries and other options are quite real and available right now at the scales we need right now - it's a shift in their relative economic viability not their existence that's at issue and it only becomes a system reliability crisis where we have industry and regulators fighting it or otherwise responding inappropriately and inadequately. Cost evaluations are still being done in vacuums that don't include climate or other externalities.

I think we will see a face off between rapid despatch fossil fuels - gas - and the first Big Batteries in the emerging managing intermittency space and those batteries will be expensive. But so is fast, on-demand gas expensive and the cost differential has been getting smaller, and even non-existent if gas is correctly seen as the too high emissions option it truly is and at risk of being left as stranded assets when foresight is properly applied, so batteries will get a start. It looks to me that is happening right at the time and in the places we should expect to see them - so there has been some foresight and planning going on after all. We will see if they will achieve their promise or not.

I find it most curious that some of the most staunch doubters of the potential for storage technologies to achieve significant advances appear to be so optimistic about the potential for remarkable technological advancement in other areas. Sure, we don't know and can't know how taking this path will turn out but waiting and delaying until we have certainty looks like a more serious mistake than pushing ahead on the path that is unexpectedly opening before us.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't know the situation in the US: In most parts of Europe, pumped hydro is used nearly everywhere where it is reasonable. You cannot simply build a new hydro power plant at arbitrary places, you need a suitable topography, water, and not too many people living there.

I can see how Europe could be maxed out in terms of reasonable places to put pumped hydro: western civilization has been entrenched there centuries longer than here, so I'd expect any available resource has long been portioned out to serve more people than here, and there's much less room for growth.

It seems to me, though, there may be creative options that are also reasonable. Pumped hydro needs a head, and the Michigan plant I found demonstrates a head as small as 400 feet, (122m) is viable. You already perform surface mining in Germany, so, presumably there are already holes that have been dug that are 122m deep, or could be made to be. It seems to me holes like this could be the basis of pumped hydro plants. Not just in Germany, but wherever they exist.

The holes would be the bottom of the head. The elevation above could be formed into a reservoir by constructing a "moat" up there, around the circumference of the hole. There would be two walls, inner and outer, constructed primarily of rock and rammed Earth taken from the hole. The walls could be made to be as massive as needed.

Now, since this all is supposed to be aimed at cutting back on fossil emissions, it would be ironic and counter-productive to construct all this with fossil fueled machinery. Therefore, you'd install temporary windmills and solar farms to make hydrogen to power the internal combustion engines involved and electricity to power electric motors. This is a situation where both become viable, in principle, because all the vehicles are going to be confined to traveling within a few miles radius: the need for frequent refueling won't be such a liability.

A project like this is what I'd consider to be an essentially ancient type of project, mostly consisting of time consuming gruntwork: moving Earth from one place to another, and ramming it. It's not high tech: the Romans, Egyptians, or Aztecs could have done it. You could do this from scratch anywhere, even on a flat plain with no pre-existing hole. But, surface mines represent places where 1.) the land has already been 'damaged,' meaning you shouldn't get any resistance from geenpeace types, and the hole has already been roughed out for you.

Individual power plants in the local utility here in San Diego range from 94MW up to 964MW. Personally, I think about this in terms of replacing individual power plants one at a time rather than trying to replace whole utilities in one shot. If you could recycle a strip mine into a replacement for one fossil power plant, then that's one less fossil power plant.

 

[nikkkom]

Now, since this all is supposed to be aimed at cutting back on fossil emissions, it would be ironic and counter-productive to construct all this with fossil fueled machinery. Therefore, you'd install temporary windmills and solar farms to make hydrogen to power the internal combustion engines involved and electricity to power electric motors. This is a situation where both become viable, in principle, because all the vehicles are going to be confined to traveling within a few miles radius: the need for frequent refueling won't be such a liability.

Why would you "CO2-optimize" only energy construction projects? What is the difference between CO2 emitted while building a dam or an apartment block?

 

[mfb]

100 m of height difference and 30 m of water level gives you 30 MJ/m² or 8 GWh per square kilometer, two square kilometers for upper and lower lake.
If you can cycle that reservoir daily and get 2 cent/kWh every time, you get €50 million per year, or €25/m². Cheaper than the land you have to buy, but you still have the construction cost, and a full cycle per day at 2 cent/kWh price difference is probably quite optimistic, and I didn't even take the efficiency into account.

Now, since this all is supposed to be aimed at cutting back on fossil emissions, it would be ironic and counter-productive to construct all this with fossil fueled machinery. Therefore, you'd install temporary windmills and solar farms to make hydrogen to power the internal combustion engines involved and electricity to power electric motors. This is a situation where both become viable, in principle, because all the vehicles are going to be confined to traveling within a few miles radius: the need for frequent refueling won't be such a liability.

Sorry zoobyshoe, but your proposals are just unrealistic. The defining factor of everything is the price. "I invest $1 billion to make $100 per year" simply does not work, no matter how CO2-efficient it is, but you keep proposing concepts of that type.

 

[zoobyshoe]

100 m of height difference and 30 m of water level gives you 30 MJ/m² or 8 GWh per square kilometer, two square kilometers for upper and lower lake.
If you can cycle that reservoir daily and get 2 cent/kWh every time, you get €50 million per year, or €25/m². Cheaper than the land you have to buy, but you still have the construction cost, and a full cycle per day at 2 cent/kWh price difference is probably quite optimistic, and I didn't even take the efficiency into account.
Sorry zoobyshoe, but your proposals are just unrealistic. The defining factor of everything is the price. "I invest $1 billion to make $100 per year" simply does not work, no matter how CO2-efficient it is, but you keep proposing concepts of that type.

There's no reason it has to compete with the cheapest alternative available in charge per kWh. In fact, being "Green" you could certainly charge the same as the most costly CO2 emitter and no one would blink.

I have ideas about the construction cost, but first, do you think the idea is viable as a mere pumped storage? The main problem I wanted to look at was your complaint there is no where to put such a thing anymore in Europe.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Why would you "CO2-optimize" only energy construction projects? What is the difference between CO2 emitted while building a dam or an apartment block?

I don't think I suggested the idea this would only be done on energy construction projects.

The reason I suggested it here is that another member has been maintaining that solar and wind only exist because of fossil. I think that's a very good point. The strategy, therefore, should include the goal of these alternates powering themselves. Solar cell factories ought to be powered by solar cells, windmill factories by windmills. I googled looking for any such factory, a story to the effect, "Solar Factory Powers Itself With Its Own Products," but didn't find any.

 

[OmCheeto]

I don't think I suggested the idea this would only be done on energy construction projects.

The reason I suggested it here is that another member has been maintaining that solar and wind only exist because of fossil. I think that's a very good point. The strategy, therefore, should include the goal of these alternates powering themselves. Solar cell factories ought to be powered by solar cells, windmill factories by windmills. I googled looking for any such factory, a story to the effect, "Solar Factory Powers Itself With Its Own Products," but didn't find any.

Well that's just silly.
If we tried to run the largest solar cell plant in the USA, here in Portland [ref], it would operate for about 1 week out of the year. Ok, maybe a couple of months.
But it probably gets most of it's energy from hydroelectric and wind farms. Our sole nuclear plant closed down years ago.
Our sole coal plant is scheduled to close in 3 years. It appears that they are thinking of converting it into a biomass burner.
I'm sure we get nuclear and coal energy from neighboring states. Being formerly a nuclear power plant technician, I'm not really afraid of nuclear.
We may also have natural gas plants. hmmm... (google google google):

PGE

26% Purchased
25% Natural Gas
16% Hydro
11% Wind & Solar
22% Coal​

Hydroelectric is probably so low because we're supplying Los Angeles with half of their electrical power.

But I'm still pissed that you kids can't sell us your rooftop solar.
That isn't just goofy, it's downright stupid. I wonder if it's infrastructure, or corporate profits driving that.

I just calculated that the US has to import ≈$200 BILLION worth of crude oil a year for gasoline. A lot of people moan about taxes. I like to moan about trade deficits. Currently at ≈$500 billion total.

ps. While trying to figure out how to eliminate those god awfully expensive batteries, I ended up inventing a new type of refrigerator. I'll cut you and Woolie in on the profits, once I get things patented and to the market. If your electric bill hadn't been so low, I'd have never researched it. So, it's kind of your fault. Thanks!

 

[nikkkom]

I don't think I suggested the idea this would only be done on energy construction projects.

The reason I suggested it here is that another member has been maintaining that solar and wind only exist because of fossil. I think that's a very good point. The strategy, therefore, should include the goal of these alternates powering themselves. Solar cell factories ought to be powered by solar cells, windmill factories by windmills.

And robotics factory ought to be built by robots? :D
Such requirement does not make sense to me.
If we want to move away from using fossil fuels in transport, this is a _separate_ engineering problem to the construction of generation or storage. There is absolutely nothing wrong in using internal combustion engine-based vehicles to build a windmill factory.

 

[gmax137]

... At one point a majority of US reactors were burning, in part, the plutonium from Soviet weapons. For years.

Sorry for the late response to this, just a correction. The "megawatts to megatons" program used Russian weapons uranium (not plutonium) for reactor fuel here in the US:

The Megatons to Megawatts program was initiated in 1993 and successfully completed in December 2013. A total of 500 tonnes of Russian warhead grade HEU (high enriched uranium, equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) were converted in Russia to nearly 15,000 tonnes tons of LEU (low enriched uranium) and sold to the US for use as fuel in American nuclear power plants. During the 20-year Megatons to Megawatts program, as much as 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States was generated by fuel fabricated using LEU from Russian HEU.

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

I don't think that achievement gets enough credit.

 

[gmax137]

... Cutting *global* GHG emissions means adopting an affordable clean energy plan that can ~80% of emissions, and one that the developing world can use, in India, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. ...

I think this is the main point, and missed by nearly this entire thread. "First World problems" and all that. Meanwhile there are billions of other people whose lives could be improved beyond measure by increased energy resources.