The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Sure, but the point remains.



That doesn't solve the problem of the intermittency of renewables. You might be able to build the system to cope with normal fluctuations due to day / night, but a couple unexpected weeks of overcast creates an energy deficit. The nuke output still has to be sized to supply 100% of the demand 100% of the time, and if it cannot be throttled, then there is no benefit to renewables.

If the nuke can handle the total load,and there's a provision to handle the down-times for scheduled turbine maintenance or fuel replacement (?),then there's be no need for any other provider?

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Well I was thinking PV and wind, the 2 most commonly thought of when discussing renewables. Most of best hydro sources have already been exploited.

The idea that some part of the country that is sunny can not only provide its own electrical needs, but supplement some shaded part of the country seems unlikely to me.

Storing excess generating capacity via pumped hydro or other some such potential kinetic energy sounds reasonable to me.

I'm still not seeing how renewables factor in when sufficient and non-adjustable output nuclear power is available.

Yeah,if investors will direct capital towards nuclear in the current market structure,then it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it would carry the day,when scaled to today's,and future load.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Somewhere along my twisted journey,some messenger commented that our oxygen actually comes from phytoplankton.The health of the oceans were the premise of the commentary.

"[R]ainforests are responsible for roughly one-third (28%) of the Earth’s oxygen, but most (70%) of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants." https://www.nationalgeographic.org/a...reathe-freely/

They say that warming oceans reduce nutrients coming from the depths, so marine plants produce less oxygen. I keep thinking that if we just create a shade then places (maybe just Phoenix places--forget those not named for things on fire) will cool down, but maybe shading the oceans would be less helpful if ocean plants then produced less oxygen.

This just means I will visualize UV film instead of mylar.

[RedDevil]

We'll be using all kinds of energy sources for the coming decades.
Instead of fighting each other these should cooperate to maximize efficiency.

Dutch research firm TNO proposes doing just that by linking offshore wind farms up with oil and gas platforms in their vicinity:
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2018/05...ind-gas-combo/

Offshore production platforms consume some of the gas produced to supply the power used on the platform. If the top 10 gas-consuming platforms were to be connected to the offshore electricity grid, this could deliver a net saving of roughly 500,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year.

TNO proposes changing the law which demands that all current produced by offshore wind farms should be transferred to land so grid operator TenneT can start supplying offshore installations.

But that's not all.
Once hooked up these platforms can play a different role in the whole energy structure. They could obviously bear wind turbines, adding to the grid. But they can also be used as energy stores by storing hydrogen generated when supply exceeds demand:
https://www.tennet.eu/news/detail/ga...ub-consortium/

If you like to read a lot: https://www.tno.nl/media/8512/system...tno_r11234.pdf

Green technology and fossil fuel giants collaborating for a better future... I gotta make a flower chain necklace

[sendler]

The fact that we are even considering electolytic Hydrogen with it's 30% round trip efficiency as a means of energy storage demonstates what we are up against when it comes to trying to maintain a baseload grid from intermittent sources. The author's contention is that batteries are so resource intensive and embody so much energy in their refining and manufacturing that their superior efficiency of 83% is swamped.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by sendler

The fact that we are even considering electolytic Hydrogen with it's 30% round trip efficiency as a means of energy storage demonstates what we are up against when it comes to trying to maintain a baseload grid from intermittent sources. The author's contention is that batteries are so resource intensive and embody so much energy in their refining and manufacturing that their superior efficiency of 83% is swamped.

The point is that the gas platforms already have the storage capacity (the gas field) while the batteries would first have to be built. Also there's no immediate limit to how much gas could be stored; one gas well easily has more storage capacity than all the worlds batteries combined.
You don't want bulk battery storage on a rig...
Just always directly supplying the grid might be best efficiency wise, but the grid already fails to accept peak wind production levels.

Hydrogen generation would be relatively cheap to set up.
Then the poor conversion efficiency is a pity, but as a way of using excess supply it is just poor gain instead of big loss.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Sure, but the point remains.



That doesn't solve the problem of the intermittency of renewables. You might be able to build the system to cope with normal fluctuations due to day / night, but a couple unexpected weeks of overcast creates an energy deficit. The nuke output still has to be sized to supply 100% of the demand 100% of the time, and if it cannot be throttled, then there is no benefit to renewables.

Lomberg spoke of distributing the load.With all renewable sources tied to the same grid,there'd be a likelihood that renewable power would be available from somewhere at all times.

[sendler]

It still takes an unrealistic quantity of rebuildables to replace all primary energy even if you could eliminate the need for storage with a world wide, ocean and continent spanning high voltage grid. 1.5TW is required just for the current USA consumption.
.
130,000 square miles of area, 1.000.000 2.5MW class wind turbines, and 50,000 SolarStar class grid scale solar farms, and 70,000,000 rooftop solar systems, and a 4% increase in hydro with the new capacity capable to pump store. And an unrealistic quantity of this as split Hydrogen with a new fleet pf long haul transport.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Well I was thinking PV and wind, the 2 most commonly thought of when discussing renewables. Most of best hydro sources have already been exploited.

The idea that some part of the country that is sunny can not only provide its own electrical needs, but supplement some shaded part of the country seems unlikely to me.

Storing excess generating capacity via pumped hydro or other some such potential kinetic energy sounds reasonable to me.

I'm still not seeing how renewables factor in when sufficient and non-adjustable output nuclear power is available.

From Lomberg,
'...potentially unlimited renewable energy resources definitely are within economic reach.'
'... solar energy influx is equivalent to about 7,000 times present global energy consumption.'
'The US Energy Information Agency estimates that solar energy could cover the entire American energy requirement more than 3.5 times over.' page 134
'...secure a larger diversification of production.' page 135
Oil will run out in 2041 page 135
Gas will run out in 2061 ditto
Coal will run out in 2231 ditto
Uranium will run out in 16,001 ditto
India's got a lot of thorium

[sendler]

Solar influx is there but it is not possible to build out that much hardware to capture it at a scale that can replace what are using as I stated above. Even with our current liquid fuel wealth.This is the part of the discussion that green energy advocates never bother to address.
.
25 years from now when liquid fuel pricing is 5X higher, even rich people will have a hard time affording their food. And we will have little surplus fuel for such things as building out rebuildables. Or maintaining the ones we already have in service.