Wind turbines

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I guess you really don't know anything about wells.

Seems like you might be guessing.
I'll await you to actually saying something.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/grid..._authority/PNM
With out natural gas wind and solar would be impossible.
You can see the huge swings in wind power output in just a few hours and natural gas power plants compensating.
Coal power plants also cut in and out depending on demand but they operate in an on/off manor.

Discussions on the max that Wind and solar can contribute has been ongoing for a few years now. Original estimates were in the 5% range before the grid went unstable.

As more Wind and Solar come online, it turns out that the grid control has figured out how to make it work. I expect that a *LOT* of time and effort was required to make more than 5% solar and wind work for the grid .. but it got done.

Grid level batteries (chemical, gravity, et al) are one way of getting rid of SOME of the natural gas turbines that take up the slack when renewables are not generating, and when Peak demand hits.

I'm generalizing .. but EXCESS solar and wind (which I have read requires that they get to somewhere around 2X and 3X the peak power that is required on the grid at any one time) .. needs to be stored in something and made available when required.

More generation - nukes, solar, wind, wave, unicorn farts, clean coal?, hydrogen? - is obviously needed to get rid of coal. It would be nice if that new generation was not as intermittent as solar and wind. And if it is solar and wind, a solution like the 'grid level batteries' needs to be some portion of the new generation.

I don't see natural gas turbines being decommissioned until SOMETHING takes over the slack between renewables - or maybe the EXCESS solar and wind can be used to recycle a stream of emissions into synthetic fuel, which is then used to fill in the gaps for renewables. Unfortunately there are efficiency issues with synthetic fuel (20% - 25% round-trip efficiency is one)

To summarize: .. IMHO .. More renewables will get us closer. Excess renewables can be leveraged to be stored as .. something .. synthetic fuel, hydrogen (which is sort of synthetic fuel), compressed air, gravity batteries ... and progress toward less Coal and less fossil fuel natural gas.

.. getting off my soap box now ..

[freebeard]

.. getting off my soap box now ..

Hey! A vacant soap box!

As more Wind and Solar come online, it turns out that the grid control has figured out how to make it work. I expect that a *LOT* of time and effort was required to make more than 5% solar and wind work for the grid .. but it got done.

Software defined power.

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com › archives › 2013 › 05 › 30 › software-defined-power-the-path-to-ultimate-reliability
Software-Defined Power: The Path to Ultimate Reliability
Software-Defined Power, like the broader Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), is about creating a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to continuously match resources with changing needs. For SDDC, the resources are the servers, storage and networking equipment, and the need is application service levels.

https://spectrum.ieee.org › the-softwaredefined-power-grid-is-here
The Software-Defined Power Grid Is Here - IEEE Spectrum
The power systems that most people are connected to were designed more than a century ago. They rely on large, centralized generation plants to deliver electricity through transmission and distribution networks that feed into cities, towns, homes, schools, factories, stores, office buildings, and more.

Tesla's utility level brokering of PowerWall capacity is an example.

What needs doing is to push the problem to the edges -- i. e., individual homes.

Homes that use wind for ventilation and solar for space and water heating, without electricity. But with an intelligent microgrid that can take the big grid or leave it. Order of magnitude more efficient. Mass produced at scale. Every house needs replacement ASAP.

Next soap-boxer?

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Seems like you might be guessing.
I'll await you to actually saying something.

Just pointing out the obvious.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by thingstodo

Grid level batteries (chemical, gravity, et al) are one way of getting rid of SOME of the natural gas turbines that take up the slack when renewables are not generating, and when Peak demand hits.

I'm generalizing .. but EXCESS solar and wind (which I have read requires that they get to somewhere around 2X and 3X the peak power that is required on the grid at any one time.

I'm generally against government subsidy and regulation, but if there was a worthy area of study or regulation, there's a good chance that would be vehicle to grid (V2G0 interconnection and strategies to buffer energy to cover demand scenarios in which there is either insufficient generation capacity, or that peak capacity is very expensive.

Since cars sit idle 95% of the time, their utilization rates are abysmal. Might as well put that super expensive battery to a 2nd task and reward people for participating in grid stabilization. win(utility benefits), win(V2G participant), win(utility consumer), win(natural environment) scenario.

There's too much win potential here. You're gonna get tired of so much winning.

[aerohead]

For the conditions and numbers given by those 'talking' about the orphaned oil wells in the USA, I came up with these back-of-the-envelope values:
* 33,931,935,020- linear feet of buried steel
* 6,426,502-miles
* 26 trips from Earth to the Moon
* 705,805,145-cubic-feet
* 213,762,762-short tons
* Equivalent to a solid cube of steel, two NFL football fields on a side, and two football fields tall..
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By oilpan4's numbers ( Alice Friedemann ? ), this amount of steel would provide enough rebar for 4,750,283, 2-MW wind turbines.
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I only calculated for underground steel. Prime movers, gear reducers, pumping units, counter weights, flow line, storage tanks, water separators, etc., while present at some wells, are not included; nor conductor casing, surface casing, or intermediate casing.

[aerohead]

While investigating my orphaned-well math porno research, I ran across another item of interest, with respect to the oil industry and wind power.
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As of 1990, 30% of all oil wells drilled in the USA were dry holes.
There were 2,242 of them that year.
At a cost of $ 896,097,550.
Had that been the situation for each annual drilling cycle, by 2022, we'd be looking at a national loss of $29,571,219,150.
Not adjusting for inflation, this amount of money would have paid for 8,448, 2-MW wind turbines.
16.897- GW of installed capacity ( greater than all present, 2022 national wind capacity ).
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And unaware to Alice Friedemann, as these turbines reached the end of the 20-year life, the towers could have remained, and the 'guts' 'Repowered', with up-graded hardware and more efficient blades, which are known to triple the output of the original turbines.
That would be 50.69-GW, just by changing the ornaments on the Christmas tree.
And no ' dry towers .'

[oil pan 4]

In 1990 they weren't fracing every well.
In 90 if you drilled a dry hole, oh well pack all the stuff up and go home, call the well service to plug the hole.
Now in west Texas they drill a dry hole they stimulate it.
We need oil more than we need wind power as oil powers about 1/3 of US energy needs.
If the so called, self-proclaimed "environments" who are nothing but frauds and liars didn't take money from the coal lobby to promote nuclear energy as dangerous then sell coal as the "safer alternative" we wouldn't need wind power because 60 to 70% of our electricity could be coming from nuclear.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

In 1990 they weren't fracing every well.
In 90 if you drilled a dry hole, oh well pack all the stuff up and go home, call the well service to plug the hole.
Now in west Texas they drill a dry hole they stimulate it.
We need oil more than we need wind power as oil powers about 1/3 of US energy needs.
If the so called, self-proclaimed "environments" who are nothing but frauds and liars didn't take money from the coal lobby to promote nuclear energy as dangerous then sell coal as the "safer alternative" we would need wind power because 60 to 70% of our electricity could be coming from nuclear.

I know, from the source, that 'fracing' was a tool available to all petroleum engineers in 1973.
After the borehole was drilled, engineers had about two-dozen types of well logs, plus all the seismic data, from which to determine whether or not to 'complete' the well, or write it off.
In 1990, a 'frac' job averaged $ 200,000 per well, for a 5,790-foot well ( the average depth ).
It would be a terrific responsibility to be the one making the call.
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We actually only need about 28.5% of 'oil', considering that internal combustion, from wellhead, to the tire's traction interface is only 25% efficient.
This is something the Post Carbon Institute, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere ( MAHB ), energyskeptic.com, etc., don't appear to
comprehend.
There WAS a time when we didn't have options about internal combustion.
Today, I don't have to settle for 32-mpg, when I can get the 'same' car, with 112-mpg. Over the service life of the vehicle, at present, they're the same price.
It's game-changer.
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I looked into the 'cubic-mile of oil' / year argument.
In and electrified world, if we got 820.9-barrels / day, from each of the world's 25,000 oil fields, it would handle all our needs.

[freebeard]

While investigating my orphaned[-well math] porno research....

Each dry bore hole is an opportunity to use :

https://patents.google.com › patent › US8393410B2 › en
US8393410B2 - Millimeter-wave drilling system - Google Patents
A gyrotron injects millimeter-wave radiation energy into the borehole and pressurization apparatus is provided for pressurizing the borehole whereby a thermal melt front at the end of the...