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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
The 10% transmission losses are for high voltage DC transmission lines -- which are excellent and the best we have at the moment. This is how we need to do all long distance transmission, and it would help for linking renewable energy sources with distant users.
Typical transmission losses however are a lot worse under heavy load conditions: 30% (or more).
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No you are wrong it is 10% for a typical grid and I challange you to produce concrete sources to the contrary. See Page 70 of the report, not the page 70 of the PDF.
http://www.saskpower.com/aboutus/cor...07FULLBOOK.pdf
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Electricity generation efficiency is around 33% -- so 2/3 of the energy of the fuel used, is lost at the very beginning. And that doesn't even count the energy we invest in getting the carbon fuel in the first place (mining/drilling/transport). Exploration is yet more energy invested.
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This is really irrelevant to the argument. Thermal efficiency is a red herring, output/carbon footprint is the measure that matters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
So, if you then add the inefficiencies for the user, the overall efficiency from the original fuel source to the "work" produced for the user -- it is somewhere under 10%, and it may be under 5%.
All fuel based energy sources require to invest in exploration, fuel gathering, transportation to the plant that you have built -- and you to pay for fuel over the life of the generation system; plus they all involve maintenance. What will the cost of the fuel be in the future?!
Renewable energy systems require you to built the systems and to maintain them. There will be no increases in fuel cost; because there is no fuel involved.
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Neil it pretty clear to me that you are cherry picking your statistics. When a life cycle analysis is done the carbon footprint of resource extraction and the footprint of generation equipment is included. That is why nuclear comes out ahead of wind and PV solar, you have to count their construction costs too.
I took this from another person on another site but it is really good.
Not all megawatts are electric, though. You’re correct that I don’t think electricity generation capacity should go down in the future as we phase out fossil power. That is because I’d like to supplant fossil powered transportation and heating with cleanly generated electric power. If we go the route of Denmark, paying over 20c/kWh for the more fashionable forms of GHG-free energy, then we will severly impact the adaption of electric vehicles and heat exchangers.
As for noneconomic factors, talk of nuclear power’s big footprint baffles engineers. The energy released when you convert mass to energy (famously E=MC2 where C is the speed of light) is over a million times more than the energy released from chemically burning the same amount of resources. That again can release millions of times more energy than converting a unit of a resource’s motion into usefull power. This means is that a very small amount of both fuel and building materials is required for nuclear power and a massive amount of material is required for disperse alternatives like wind power. It would take about 10,000 giant windmills (1.5 MW rated producing about 600KW average) to replace the Bruce Generating Station. Typically these are spaced to about 4 per square km, so this is a 2,500 km2 farm. It would require about 7,500km (one Transcanada Highway) of access roads capable of sustaining 30+ ton truck loads to service the generator units, to which service people have to climb 20 stories in the air. Disregarding the roads, power lines, and even the bases for the towers, these windmills would use about 50 times more building material than Bruce. I think the powerline grids required by typical fauxe-green alternative power projects get forgotten. The regular defoliation they require is very expensive unless chemicals are used. Talk about footprint END OF QUOTE
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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Nuclear has yet to have a solution for waste storage -- how much money have we invested to date?
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Again the costs of spent fuel storage and plant decommissioning are included in the operating cost per kWh generated and Nuclear is still cheaper than wind and solar.
When are you going to address the limitations of renewables other than to say diversify? What mix will you convert my province of Saskatchewan to, to ensure a reliable supply of electricity (hint the pdf above is a good place to start research).