The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by sendler

Way too diffuse by the time it gets here. Takes a desert full of mirrors to do anything. And totally useless 3 months a year where I live.

If 1% of Nevada was covered with solar heat systems, that could power HALF the lower 48 states. We can do long distance high voltage DC transmission lines across the country, and only lose about 8%.

[freebeard]

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

Nation-states are good for preserving culture, custom and tradition, but solar and wind are global phenomena.

Once you break out of the mental prison of the Mercator projection, it's obvious that the Bering Strait intertie is key to rationalizing power distribution (just don't let Kalifornia manage it).

It's also obvious that the Pyramid of Cheops is not at the center of global land mass. More Mercator distortion.

[NeilBlanchard]

We are seeing a worsening trend in the data.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news...ntists-predict

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019...hange-glaciers

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ems-180972317/

Over 1,000 tornadoes this year, in the US.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...ornado-season/

[sendler]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If 1% of Nevada was covered with solar heat systems, that could power HALF the lower 48 states. We can do long distance high voltage DC transmission lines across the country, and only lose about 8%.

How much area? How much annual production? What annual capacity factor?

[sendler]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If 1% of Nevada was covered with solar heat systems, that could power HALF the lower 48 states. We can do long distance high voltage DC transmission lines across the country, and only lose about 8%.

So Right now the USA is using 27,175 TeraWatt hours per year of total primary energy. Your favorite reference (Solution Project) states that if we could electrify everything in the best way possible we would need only half. And you want to supply half of that from Nevada with solar. How much land area to average 7,000 TWh per year. 800 GigaWatts continuous average?
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5,333 of the 500 MW nameplate SolarStar state of the art solar PV farms. Which has crystalline panels on trackers and an automated wash system for a capacity factor of 31% on 5 square miles in a 3,000 foot tropical desert.
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26,666 square miles.
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Nevada = 110,567 square miles. So more like 25% of the land area will need to be covered with panels.
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The current installed price for grid scale pv in the USA is about $3/ Watt.
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$2.4 Trillion. For half of the USA demand if we could spend trillions more to retrofit everything.
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Which makes 3X too much power at noon on a perfect day. And nothing all night every night.

[redpoint5]

Well how could that "science" website be off by 2,500%?

What is their genius solution to some days / weeks / months (and every night) outputting much less than the electrical demand? Phoenix in December gets 35% less solar energy than April.
https://www.solarenergylocal.com/states/arizona/

EDIT: Nevermind, I checked out the website and it's a racist/sexist propaganda cesspool, not a science/facts based group/news outlet.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Half the time I look at the wind turbines in the gorge, they aren't spinning. None of them.

I'll commit the same error as others who say perhaps RE storage will be viable in the future by saying that perhaps in 100 years we won't be storing nuclear "waste", but using it to fuel new generation reactors.

I can't speak for your gorge. Mills in a gorge sounds stupid.
I can only see what's happening here, and that's almost continuous wind - spread it over a larger area, then you can drop 'almost'.

As luck would have it today was a day with low wind and during my evening walk it fell flat. The big wind mills stopped.
Half an hour later the wind had turned and the mills were turning again.

Utah has just committed to a 1000 MWh renewable energy storage buffer.

[sendler]

As long as were on the subject of wind intermittency and capacity factor: Here is a post from the thread at endless-sphere from the guy that has been telling us about the troubles with the South Australia grid since they prematurely shut down most of their coal plants in favor of wind and solar.
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note... the little, jagged, orange and blue noise signal at the very bottom is the charge and discharge of the BigF'nBattery.
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Another day,..another month,..
......and another classic example why wind & solar force UP the cost of electricity supply..
Courtesy of south Australia with their “surplus” , 2+ GW, of wind and solar generation capacity...
. Note the legend..RED is GAS,...purple is IMPORTS !

[sendler]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If 1% of Nevada was covered with solar heat systems,

Ivanpah concentrated solar farm cost $2.18 Billion for a nameplate of 392 MW = $5.56/ Watt. Nameplate.
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The capacity factor is running at 21%. So the actual pricing is more like $25/ Watt.
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But it does supply electricity for a few hours after dark due to the thermal storage.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpa...Power_Facility
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Everybody::: Please speak in truths. Fact check your information. Wishful thinking that is not based on actual data and science is spinning us astray.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Wind on average shuts down several times daily, and if not shut down, operates at diminished capacity for long periods of time. Solar shuts down a minimum of once per day, and too suffers from diminished capacity depending on weather.

A few examples of plants shutting down is not indicative of a systemic problem. If it were a serious problem, we would see nuclear power diminishing rather than growing faster than solar/wind. We would also see lower capacity factors rather than the very steady 80%+ over the past 2 decades.

Wind capacity factor may be improving, but that has more to do with it being very poor to begin with ~30%.

It's silly to imply that what we need to implement today is technology we hope will be developed in the future. We can only implement what is available today while still hoping for improvements in the future. To say that RE storage might be technically feasible and cost effective in the future doesn't give us direction on what to build now.

The United States didn't have it's first wind farm until 1980.Those early turbines were miniscule by comparison to today's state-of-the-art.
Nuclear facilities are rated in the 1,000-MW range?
I don't think anyone's under the illusion that renewables will supplant more 'conventional' power generation in the near-term.
Climate-wise,it needs to happen as fast as it can.
Grid-scale storage is cost-effective today,if referenced to 'reality' pricing.Of course it will struggle competitively,as long as 'conventional' sources continue to use Earth as a sewer.The implication that today's storage was not 'cost effective' would fail upon examination of the facts.
Under a strict legal interpretation,it's technically a violation of the US Constitution to operate any fossil-fuel power-plant today.Those who do it would be defined under US law as 'public enemies'.That goes for any Congressperson,Supreme Court Judge,or President,party to the crime.