YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[Astronuc]

It's time for wind power to stand or fall on its own
After two decades of generosity, wind power subsidies should be allowed to expire at the end of the year

http://theweek.com/article/index/254155/its-time-for-wind-power-to-stand-or-fall-on-its-own

Federal subsidies for wind are so lavish, that generators in places like west Texas (where wind is plentiful) have been known to bid electricity onto the grid at negative prices, just so it can collect the larger subsidy amount and pocket the difference. Negative pricing is a great deal for whoever owns the generator, but can play havoc with electrical reliability, by undercutting other power sources and discouraging investment in new capacity.

Negative pricing supported by federal subsidy seems rather unfair and counter productive to a viable market.

The big problem is not so much cost as reliability. Wind power is intermittent; it has a nasty habit of stopping, sometimes on a moment's notice. And since there is no commercially viable means of storing electricity, use of wind power requires the existence of back-up power plants (typically natural gas) that can be ramped up or down depending on which way the wind blows. . . . .

So utilities which invest in reliable baseload to assure on-demand power are penalized.

 

[Straw_Cat]

We can make a level playing ground by switching form subsidies to the Depletion Allowances other industries have enjoyed for 100 years.
It's still corporate welfare, but gussied up by rebranding.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/01/1654501/oil-subsidies-century/

Quote:
"The percentage depletion deduction generally cannot be more than 50% (100% for oil and gas property) of your taxable income from the property figured without the depletion deduction and the domestic production activities deduction."
From this IRS page:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch09.html
And:
"There is a taxable income limit for oil and gas royalty owners. Your annual deduction for percentage depletion is limited to the smaller of the following:

100% of your taxable income from the property figured without the deduction for depletion
65% of your taxable income from all sources, figured without the depletion allowance."
Quote from:
http://www.mineralweb.com/owners-guide/leased-and-producing/royalty-taxes/depletion-allowance/

There are also subsidies for coal and nuclear power. Worldwide, fossil fuel subsidies totaled $523 Billions, while renewable energies received $88 Billion.

As for storing the surplus energy, people are working on ways to do that, such as molten salt heat storage, or recently improved types of iron-based batteries.
Surplus power could also be used to produce hydrogen, which can in turn be mixed in with natural gas and transported to not-so-windy places, or stored.
Or used to fuel the hydrogen cars coming on the market in 2014 (from Hyundai ).

What is really necessary are new efforts to humanize the economy.

 

[johnbbahm]

We've actually gone over that. I'm sorry this is such a long thread. It's all Russ's fault.

Do you have a link? Storing energy is a big problem of mine.


Agreed.

Sorry about the long response.
Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

 

[OmCheeto]

Sorry about the long response.

I'm in no rush.

Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

SWEET!

How it Works: CO2 + H2 = Jet Fuel

NRL has developed a two-step process in the laboratory to convert the CO2 and H2 gathered from the seawater to liquid hydrocarbons. In the first step, an iron-based catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO2 conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease unwanted methane production from 97 percent to 25 percent in favor of longer-chain unsaturated hydrocarbons (olefins). In the second step these olefins can be oligomerized (a chemical process that converts monomers, molecules of low molecular weight, to a compound of higher molecular weight by a finite degree of polymerization) into a liquid containing hydrocarbon molecules in the carbon C9-C16 range, suitable for conversion to jet fuel by a nickel-supported catalyst reaction.

I've been looking for a method to do this for quite some time.

 

[Straw_Cat]

Windpower Engineering magazine has this article about some storage batteries the Chinese are buying to store renewable energy.

http://www.windpowerengineering.com/featured/business-news-projects/corvus-signs-12-5-million-10-mwh-energy-storage-contract/

http://www.corvus-energy.com/

 

[mfb]

~1$/Wh means you need ~10000 cycles to get down to 10cents/kWh (still above the market price). Most batteries don't even come close to that value (okay, "10 times the cycle life of traditional batteries"), and with 1 cycle per day this would need 30 years just to return the investment. A nice toy, but not something we'll see on a large scale unless the price goes down at least one order of magnitude.

 

[mheslep]

Here's a company claim of $0.16/Wh, just for the battery, no inverter, etc. Who knows how many deep cycles.

The reigning king of storage is pumped hydro, at something like $0.04/Wh for a big project like Bath County, and it should be coming up on 10000 cycles soon with the end of life still far in the future.

 

[Devils]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

 

[Devils]

In the US, some nuclear plants would be forced to reduce power in order to accommodate wind generation on their grid.

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

 

[OmCheeto]

I've heard of using heat exchangers under concrete buildings, using the constant temperature 15m underground, constructing a basement as part of a heat pump for air conditioning the whole building. Of course this has to be part of the building design.

Is anybody doing this?

That sounds a bit like:

Geothermal Heat Pumps
...
The geothermal heat pump, also known as the ground source heat pump, is a highly efficient renewable energy technology that is gaining wide acceptance for both residential and commercial buildings. Geothermal heat pumps are used for space heating and cooling, as well as water heating. The benefit of ground source heat pumps is they concentrate naturally existing heat, rather than by producing heat through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Is this what you are talking about?

I like the fact that people are more conscious of waste than they used to be:

In addition to space conditioning, geothermal heat pumps can be used to provide domestic hot water when the system is operating. Many residential systems are now equipped with desuperheaters that transfer excess heat from the geothermal heat pump's compressor to the house's hot water tank.

One of these days, I'm going to get around to utilizing my refrigerator to keep my bathroom warm in the winter. So many projects.

 

[mfb]

Wind & solar just get cheaper, so any technology that uses steam turbines (gas, coal, nuclear) becomes uncompetitive.

I think ALL forms of nuclear will not be cost effective against wind/solar. Nuclear power is a fading industry.

They get cheaper, but for most locations they are still significantly above the costs of nuclear power - even without the costs for energy storage. You cannot simply predict "it gets cheaper, so it has to get cheaper than X". That logic does not work.

By the way, there are solar power plants that use steam turbines.

 

[Straw_Cat]

On El Hierro Island, the westernmost of the Canary Islands, there's a project to harvest renewable energy from wind and solar, etc. The surplus power from those will be used to pump water uphill and store it in a storage pit that was at one time a volcanic crater (!) so that the water can be then used to power a hydro project. Once all this is set up this will be among the first 100% renewably-powered places on the planet (there are a few others already...). Here's a write-up about the El Hierro project, from a couple years ago, showing the progress at that time.

http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/print/volume-20/issue-5/articles/pumped-storage/creating-a-hybrid-hydro-wind-system-on.html

 

[anorlunda]

I'm afraid that most of the posts in this thread ignore the reality of how power generation decisions are made in the USA. Government has a big influence, but it does not get to decide where the money is invested. It is private investments that finance power facilities. Even public utilities raise most of their money by private sales of bonds. So when many of you say "we" have to decide, "we"have to spend the money,"we" have a political problem, you have the wrong we. It is not the public, but the investors who made investment decisions.

Few people realize how much money it takes. My data may be a bit dated, but not long ago the electric power infrastructure required 25% of all capital investment in the USA. That's a huge fraction. For utilities, it makes finance almost more important that producing power. Investors must be convinced to put their money into power plants, or wind, or transmission, instead of Apple stocks, or Google, or agriculture, or bio science, or whatever. That is an extremely hard sell. How much of your 401K is invested in the electric power industry?

Traditionally, the selling point for utility investments was safety and guaranteed returns. That's no longer true. In many states, power generation has been split from the monopoly utilities. Power plant owners have no guaranteed returns. Many of them have lost their shirts in recent years. In the 1980s, Washington Public Power System even defaulted on its bonds. Every time something like that happens the whole power industry becomes less attractive for future investors.

The thing that scares investors more than anything is uncertainty. Therefore a gas turbine plant that can earn the investment back in 6 years is much more certain than a nuclear plant that may need 40 years to reach thst mark. The rules that govern plants can change dramatically in 40 years, undermining the financial assumption. Politicians making speeches about energy policy and threatening to change the game do far more harm than good by seeding uncertainty among investors. The investors respond either by refusing to invest in electric power at all or by demanding much higher rates of return. The public looses.

So please give me a break and stop this endless and pointless debate on energy assuming that it is a matter of public policy. Unless you are the fat cat investor, your voice in the subject has little influence.

Thanks for giving me a chance to vent.

 

[OmCheeto]

I saw an article the other week:

Plug-In Vehicles up 82 Percent Over 2012

The dual powered vehicles saw an 83% jump over their 2012 total of 52,835 units.

I did the math and determined that if that rate were to hold up, it would take only 12 years to replace all the vehicles in the USA. It made me smile.

And with solar prices dropping through the floor, it looks to me like the US Energy Crisis might be fixed ahead of schedule.

Solar power installation costs fall through the floor
Solar power in the U.S. this year produced as much power as 10 nuclear power plants
December 16, 2013 04:00 PM ET

The cost of installing photovoltaic solar arrays has dropped to $3 per watt of electricity they produce - about the same as coal-powered plants cost to build - creating a watershed moment in the development of clean energy, experts say.

The average price of a solar panel has declined by 60% since the beginning of 2011, according to GTM Research. And, according to CleanTechnica, a website dedicated to renewable energy news, the price of solar power has fallen rom $76.67 per watt in 1977 to 74 cents today.

 

[stevedunklee]

help the poor

A cash for cklunkers grant to poor families could remove millions of unsafe gas guzzeling mechanically unsafe vehicles from our highways and have the benefit of making our roads safer. Also most poor people get no benefit from tax incentives to go green. Energy sipping lights and weather imrovements should be subsidised to lower cost to the poor.
When they were starting to build the John W Turk coal fired plant in Arkansas I asked one of the execs why they were spending 5 billion to make it when they could produce the same amount of power installing one million 50 watt wind alternators one per power pole for less than 250 million. . A bicycle generator, two fiberglass poles and some nylon cloth for the pinwheel could be mass produced for less than $25 each
Cheers
Steve

 

[mfb]

The dual powered vehicles saw an 83% jump over their 2012 total of 52,835 units.

I did the math and determined that if that rate were to hold up, it would take only 12 years to replace all the vehicles in the USA. It made me smile.

A colleague increased his family size by 50% this month. If the rate holds up, it would take only 4.5 years to replace the worldwide population with his family .

Solar energy can help, but that alone will not fix anything. The sun does not shine at night, or when it is cloudy.

 

[OmCheeto]

A colleague increased his family size by 50% this month. If the rate holds up, it would take only 4.5 years to replace the worldwide population with his family .

Solar energy can help, but that alone will not fix anything. The sun does not shine at night, or when it is cloudy.

According to what I've read, Feynman's dad said the entire world is powered by solar energy.

And the sun does shine at night.

And the sun does shine when it's cloudy.

x 2

--------------------------
My eternal thanks to Moonbear, who taught me how to win an argument. :)

 

[mfb]

According to what I've read, Feynman's dad said the entire world is powered by solar energy.

Sure, but burning the stored energy (as oil, gas and coal) is problematic.
Oh, and nuclear energy does not come from the sun.

And the sun does shine at night.

To be more precise, the sun does not shine on photovoltaic cells at night (local night for the photovoltaics). At least not in any relevant amount. And clouds give a similar problem.

 

[gmax137]

.. I asked one of the execs why they were spending 5 billion to make it when they could produce the same amount of power installing one million 50 watt wind alternators one per power pole for less than 250 million...

Electric power is almost worthless unless you can turn it on and off at will.

 

[OmCheeto]

Electric power is almost worthless unless you can turn it on and off at will.

This is true. I once traded one of my 50 watt solar panels for a friend's surplus air conditioner. Although I've been using the air conditioner for 3 years, I've yet to deliver the solar panel. I told them it would be useless unless they purchased a deep cycle battery, as the panel would just be a silly wall ornament without one.

Sure, but burning the stored energy (as oil, gas and coal) is problematic.

Agreed.

Oh, and nuclear energy does not come from the sun.

Maybe not from our sun, but it's common knowledge where Uranium came from.

The Earth's uranium was produced in one or more supernovae over 6 billion years ago.

To my knowledge, you can't have a supernovae without a sun.
Without a supernovae, there would be no Uranium.
With no Uranium(et al), there would be no nuclear power.
Hence, nuclear energy is also, ultimately, solar in origin.

To be more precise, the sun does not shine on photovoltaic cells at night (local night for the photovoltaics). At least not in any relevant amount. And clouds give a similar problem.

Hence the deep cycle battery sitting in my living room.

ps. It's really only there to keep the crack heads from stealing it out of my boat. I cycle it lightly through the winter month by powering my xmas lights.

 

[stevedunklee]

Most forms of energy production have problems. My older brother has been off the grid for almost 30 years. Small power sources must have a disconect in case of storms or accidents . Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming? I see the time comming where it is legislated corp must provide housing within walking distance for workers, so everyone ends up living in town. We are already more than half way there. Cut the daily comute downfrom an hours drive to walking and oil use drops to a trickle.

 

[mfb]

Maybe not from our sun, but it's common knowledge where Uranium came from.

From supernovae of other stars. I see "sun" as the star in our solar system.

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

No. You would have to cover a significant fraction of the surface of Earth with very dark materials to see any influence.

 

[AlephZero]

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

It might have the opposite effect, if there is less black soot in the atmosphere falling on the arctic and antarctic ice sheets.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Will millions of solar panels and dark paved roads contribute to global warming?

From what I understand roads do contribute to local warming in some areas (a.k.a. the "heat island effect") but do not provide enough of AA difference in terms of net global albedo change to affect global climate.

Solar panels may at some point be efficient enough to have a net cooling effect, if they are able to convert more power to electricity than would have been heat without them there.

I see the time comming where it is legislated corp must provide housing within walking distance for workers, so everyone ends up living in town.

Forget it, this doesn't need to (and shouldn't) be legislated. Its up to the employee to decide where they want to live with the salary they are paid.

 

[Astronuc]

Out in the Mojave Desert, California, a "Huge thermal plant opens as solar industry grows"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-thermal-plant-opens-solar-industry-grows-052553628--finance.html

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opens Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.

The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy, can produce nearly 400 megawatts — enough power for 140,000 homes. It began making electricity last year.

. . . .

http://ivanpah.nrgenergy.com/

Update:

NIPTON, Calif. — The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind.

It could also be the last.

Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new projects have been coming online in recent months — many in the last quarter of 2013 — experts say fewer are beginning construction and not all of those under development will be completed.
. . . .

A Huge Solar Plant Opens, Facing Doubts About Its Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/b...ant-opens-facing-doubts-about-its-future.html

 

[mheslep]

Out in the Mojave Desert, California, a "Huge thermal plant opens as solar industry grows"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-thermal-plant-opens-solar-industry-grows-052553628--finance.html

Yes, though they are now in some trouble for bird kills of all things. Would be ironic if they had to nix the solar and burn gas to run turbine for environmental reasons.

 

[johnbbahm]

Sorry about the long response.
Both articles state the efficiency is about 60 %, but if the input power was was surplus,
it had little value anyway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/audi-20130625.html
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/04/green-electricity-storage-gas.html
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

I had a followup to the technology.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/det...ower-to-gas-facility_100011859/#axzz2tEyPMOG8
Audi, has their plant open now.
I could envision an energy credit system, where a homeowner earns energy credit
for their excess generated power (whatever the source). The credit could be used
to buy gasoline, heating oil, pay the electric bill ect..
The real elegance of storing surplus power as hydrocarbons, is the shelve life,
and the fact the we already have a world wide distribution infrastructure.
Based on the Navy's description, it sounds like a modern olefin refinery could convert
over to man made fuels without much effort.
( Perhaps some PE here could correct me if I am wrong.)
The first reports from fraunhofer, I read, They were talking about a conversion unit that would
sit outside peoples houses, and make natural gas, to put back into the gas grid.
I am think the efficiencies of scale, would win out.

 

[OmCheeto]

Yes, though they are now in some trouble for bird kills of all things. Would be ironic if they had to nix the solar and burn gas to run turbine for environmental reasons.

I think Danger covered wind turbine generator bird kills some years back. To expand on his idea, just replace KFC^[1] with STS^[2].

--------------------------
1. Kentucky Fried Chicken
2. Solar Toasted Sparrows

 

[OmCheeto]

I think Danger covered wind turbine generator bird kills some years back. To expand on his idea, just replace KFC^[1] with STS^[2].

...

Speaking of bird kill, I think Facebook is broken. One of my left wing political feeds has been posting sciency type stuff lately.
(One of the first comments was; "and hopefully less deadly to migrating birds including Bald Eagles?")

40 minutes long, but well worth my time.

Why VAWTs may be 10 times better than HAWTs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyOmwfH5GxA

Professor Dabiri is my kind of scientist.

VAWT: Vertical axis wind turbine
HAWT: Horizontal axis wind turbine

 

[Jewish_Vulcan]

A nulcear scientist should invent a micro nuclear reactor that does not release radioactive material and that is not powerfull enough to blow up a city block and is safe. If such a device was ever invented the amount of new revolutionary inventions would grow exponentially in my oppinion. Most problems when it comes to science projects are a small enough power source to power a device that needs a lot of energy.(i.e.) star wars program. The primary reason we are not having laser rifles and science fiction space vehicles coming true is because congress does not allow scientist to expirement with such useful technology.

 

[OmCheeto]

A nulcear scientist should invent a micro nuclear reactor that does not release radioactive material and that is not powerfull enough to blow up a city block and is safe. If such a device was ever invented the amount of new revolutionary inventions would grow exponentially in my oppinion. Most problems when it comes to science projects are a small enough power source to power a device that needs a lot of energy.(i.e.) star wars program. The primary reason we are not having laser rifles and science fiction space vehicles coming true is because congress does not allow scientist to expirement with such useful technology.

As an American, I can only say, that I feel really sorry for you, wherever it is you live. I do such experiments daily. Well, ok, not daily, but almost every weekend. Well, ok, maybe not almost every weekend, but sometimes.

Today I built an electrical generator out of magnets, a cd, a drill, and an old speaker coil.

It did not work at all.

But that's besides the point.

If your congress is not allowing you, and/or your scientists, to do experiments, then you need to elect a new congress.

 

[mheslep]

Peter Thiel gave a talk not long ago suggesting government, that is government regulation, was exactly the reason advances in physical technology, i.e. hardware if you like, have stagnated. One of the few areas left almost completely unregulated so far has been software and the internet, so it continues to progress. I largely agree.

So yes you are free to experiment in your basement OmC but should you actually try to bring something to market other than a phone app you risk a great deal.

 

[mfb]

Peter Thiel gave a talk not long ago suggesting government, that is government regulation, was exactly the reason advances in physical technology, i.e. hardware if you like, have stagnated. One of the few areas left almost completely unregulated so far has been software and the internet, so it continues to progress. I largely agree.

There is a clear causal relationship in the other direction.
Areas that progress quickly are usually less regulated, as the governments are not quick enough to keep up.

Therefore, correlation alone is not an argument.

 

[mheslep]

There is a clear causal relationship in the other direction.

What do you mean by in the other direction? That there's a casual relationship between regulation and the fielding of technology?

 

[Travis_King]

What do you mean by in the other direction? That there's a casual relationship between regulation and the fielding of technology?

I believe mfb's point was that while it may appear a compelling argument that government regulation causes stagnation in technological progress, that is not a sound conclusion as correlation does not imply causation. It may very well be, as mfb suggested, that technologies that progress rapidly, do so because they are ahead of the slow-moving government, and so progress faster than regulations can keep up with.

In one instance, government implements regulations, which hinder technological progress.

In the other, technological progress happens quickly, when it finally stagnates, government regulations can catch up. So you see stagnated technologies with lots of regulation and may think that the regulation is what's keeping it back, but that's not necessarily true.