Quote (BW1)

An interesting irony and dirty unmentionable of renewable discussion stateside is that the political half constantly demonizing reliable/cheap fossil fuels as evil vs unreliable/costly solar & wind renewables have spent ~70 years pushing for the end of reliable/cheap hydroelectric, and in many areas have succeeded. The rural electric co-op that powers my folks' is up against them now. A local paper mill provided cheap power to the town from ~3 MW of hydro-generators from the 1930s until ~Y2k when it was forced to close and the town bought the site. Now the same outsiders who cost the townspeople half their jobs are demanding the town remove the hydros and buy off the larger grid which would increase prices from $0.025/kWh to $0.12/kWh, and require folks to convert homes from the common electric to fossil fuel heating. Apparently in an area legendary for sportfishing, nature, and green living, the fish are suffering a terrible tragedy that modern dam regulation cannot prevent.

The EU has also deemed water power / hydro-generator as not fully green since it destroys large nature values, which I agree with to some extent.
I would not like to see all water systems dammed up for water power, but the ones that are in place should remain the damage is already done.
Things built in the 30 where made to be robust and long-lived, effectiveness was maybe not the first priority.
Today I am shore that if same one would to have the guts and some long planning there is much do be done to make efficiency higher in such a power plant, more effective turbine wheels, low friction bearings , better generators etc. utilizing the water flow better.
It is some times since I saw any actual numbers on this but I am shore they can be found looking around for it.

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Since for instans Texas and Australia have there high peak in the summer I guess it because of the air-conditioning systems, there would be a large market or opportunity for solarpanel driven air-conditioning units.
Lot of sun, lot of heat, lots of cool air ?
Or this..
https://observers.france24.com/en/20160602-banglad...
https://www.munters.com/en/areas-of-expertise/evap...

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

How do we do ANYTHING without failures and disasters?
Any time we do something, we have some level of technology available to us - and then we make decisions based on immediate cost and so forth.
The advantages and drawbacks of any approach have to be made with what is actually available. Of course, if a technology has changes approaching, then the magnitude of those changes should be considered, as to whether the project should wait for those changes, allow the possibility of later upgrading, or simply going with existing tech.
We can hardly criticize the the technology of hydro dams build 50+ years ago except relative to the tech available at that time. If the system still performs as expected THEN, then that sounds like a success to me!
We humans are fallible, and are certainly not prescient.
Evap cooling is appropriate in some installations and wildly useless in conditions of high humidity. Much of the US gets hot and humid, so evaporative cooling isn't the first choice. Better than nothing, for folks who don't have much money of course.
Of course, hydro changes things behind a dam - but we change things every time we build.

Jay Maechtlen
http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm

Quote (JayMaechtlen)

We can hardly criticize the the technology of hydro dams build 50+ years ago except relative to the tech available at that time. If the system still performs as expected THEN, then that sounds like a success to me!

Well I wasn’t critiquing the old technology, I myself work with 45 year old machines and they are much better than the new ones.

What I was trying to say is, that if you are going to change electrical production from hydropower to fossil fuels, there are other options that could be used to promote keeping it instead of just shutting it down.

And if someone would decide that a year from now, no AC units contactable to the grid where allowed to be sold or installed, do you not think that the market or the manufacturers would not be able solve that eventual problem?

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

On some level I am nit-picking terminology, and also I don't think you are campaigning for removal of hydro plants.
Effectiveness, efficiency - how much more efficiency could be gained by new turbine wheels in existing hydro plants?
To refit when new wheels and high efficiency generators - how much improvement would you get, and how many years to pay back the investment?
Slightly off-topic, I know of someone on a team that repairs or refurbishes generation equipment - all big stuff, so it is all done on-site.
And chasing the last bit of efficiency - that can sure bite you in the ass - ask the operators of San Onofre, where a new heat exchanger should have given them a bit more performance, but instead failed and lead to retirement of that last reactor.

Jay Maechtlen
http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm

Quote (JayMaechtlen)

On some level I am nit-picking terminology

Well I answered that at 20 Feb 21 21:33 in Taxas power issues. Windfarms getting iced up. thread. So you can find your answer there.

Effectiveness, efficiency - how much more efficiency could be gained by new turbine wheels in existing hydro plants?

I will try to find out for you.

how much improvement would you get, and how many years to pay back the investment?

Well at the factory where I work we go to great length to minimize electric consumption.
Of course we save by not having to pay for it.
For the ones producing the power it is different, but producing green energi is also something that sales better then non green if it is avalibul.
Since the goal is to be CO2 neutral in 25 years i guess that longer payback times might be necessary to reach that goal for some installation.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Most engineering failures have nothing to do with "Green" which is itself an ill defined term when used in the context of environmentally friendly. I suppose it is an eye of the beholder thing.
Wikipedia's Category:Engineering failures is not a comprehensive list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Engineering...
Brady Heywood a forensic engineer has published on the subject of Engineering Failure. His work is worth reading (https://www.bradyheywood.com.au/publications/).

In regards to the Texas Power Debacle, if the marked does not create incentives for the needed reliability in off design conditions, then reliability in off design periods will be poor. In Texas the windmills cold weather performance was about as good as the more conventional plants. In the final analysis it is likely that the noise about "Green Power" being the cause of the problem will be found to be nonsense.

Texas needs to fund a Texas sized battery like the one in Bath County, Va. https://www.dominionenergy.com/projects-and-facili..., https://youtu.be/ppPlUdBdvhU

We have a constant push at work to install "energy efficient lighting". We found the economics favor leaving the lighting as is until something else drives the replacement such as a renovation, group relamping, or age related ballast replacement. Similar logic likely applies to hydro turbines, as they do have a service life driven by impeller erosion and other factors.

The fabled "search for the optimum design considering all variables" will seldom if ever include extremes of any of the variables considered, yet the operating conditions inevitably will.
I.E. "Failure by design".

Thanks for the Wikipedia link - I should know of those articles, but hadn't thought of them.
Consideration of/planning for extremes - yeah...
Defining the requirement including unusual events and counting the cost of failure - these should be the very basics.
And preparation for extremes increases cost and may reduce performance/efficiency during ordinary operation.
It takes a real convincing presentation to sell features only needed in 100 year events.


Jay Maechtlen
http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm

I will return to your opening statement "I think it is sad that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and at least one hundred years of exponential technical development and we stil can’t utilize what we know."

Can't we?
Being human, we will not be perfectly consistent. There being lots of competing priorities, what we implement may not be the best - due to financial political, or other factors.
But you can still get in a car and drive it, and it is a complete wonder compared to anything humans had 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. We had residential electricity 100 years ago - in places.
You can live in the forest if you wish, with an axe and build a log cabin. And an outhouse. And use 1000 year old technology.
But I am really glad of what we have and what we do use.
We ain't doing all that bad!

Jay Maechtlen
http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm

Quote (FacEngrPE)

Most engineering failures have nothing to do with "Green" which is itself an ill defined term when used in the context of environmentally friendly.

Well maybe I could have come up with a better headline, and explained better what my thinking was.

Which was if one is to be rude, that everybody is just complaining that it is not possible to have only wind power and solar cells and it will not work, and everything is lost if we can't burn coal and oil and natural gas and everything seems to a problem.

And then I thought stop whining! And shape up! You are engineers! So solve the problem!

But as a Swede, you can't say things like that, we are almost born to be negotiator and the word arrogant does not exist in the Swedish dictionary and then one should always be "lagom" not too much not too little.
So that was me being "lagom".

So give me a good suggestion, and I can change the headline.

And no hard feelings from me.

(Edit) JayMaechtlen We ain't doing all that bad!
No we are not! I was being ironic

Best regards A

Is it even possible!
We are trying to replace 100's of millions of years of stored solar energy. The energy sources with that kind of energy density seem to be just nuclear (not that I think nuclear is anywhere sufficiently developed to actually replace hydrocarbons).

For every improvement there seems to be some unseen side effect that takes years to become publicly accepted (or legally proven). The wide spread uptake of efficient LED lighting has been suggested as contributing to the global decline in insect population (20 years ago at night I couldn't see the lights from any towns / city's from my house, now its 4 towns and city). Wind turbines kill birds, Submarine current Turbines kill fish, geothermal power releases heavy metals / cause earthquakes, no technology is without impact.

Reducing resource consumption, may have far worse side effects. A certain level of resource surplus is required to maintain technology, reduce that resource surplus and technology will be lost, which may lead to father loss of the resource surplus. There are plenty of examples of this from human history, the loss of ability of building ocean going boats by island bound natives (Tasmania, Easter Island, New Zealand, etc etc), multiply introductions of the Cross Bow into Europe from China, there were places in the USA that were so isolated they couldn't maintain the knowledge to keep weaving Looms functioning.

Quote (RedSnake)

Since for instans Texas and Australia have there high peak in the summer I guess it because of the air-conditioning systems, there would be a large market or opportunity for solarpanel driven air-conditioning units.
Lot of sun, lot of heat, lots of cool air ?
Or this..

There's no free ride unfortunately.
From an economic point of view it used to make sense to install things like solar hot water, but now with the comparative cost of installing solar electric and an electric hot water heater versus single function solar hot water, its now better to do solar electricity and keep the electric hot water.
I would expect the same for air conditioning, its probably better to keep the existing air conditioning and use solar generated electricity, although that does allow use of the air conditioner without the renewable aspect. Also, for at least some of the areas in Australia with high solar resource, evaporative doesn't work as its already too humid to be effective. Some of the locations where evaporative is effective have water resource issues (e.g. Alice Springs).

EDMS Australia

No free ride even with large-scale solar. Recent studies have shown that using desert areas for massive solar farms can result in global climate change. This is due to heating differences in the albedo of solar cells and desert sand. Solar cells have a peak efficiency of about 15%. Sunlight not converted to electricity or reflected becomes heat.
https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-in-sahara...
And solar panels suffer from degradation over time. The reasons for degradation in the cells themselves is still not fully understood by semiconductor physicists.

Quote (Verymad)

We are trying to replace 100's of millions of years of stored solar energy.

I worry about this one.

Despite all the talk of renewables taking over, fossil fuels still supply 80%+ of the worlds total power, same as it was 50 years ago. In absolute terms we’re using more fossil fuels than we ever have. This can’t last more than another few centuries, right?

It seems that we’re in the middle of a wild centuries-long party. Throwing our energy savings on the bonfire like there’s no tomorrow. When that nest egg saved up over millions of years starts to runs out, I suspect we’ll be facing a nasty hangover. That’ll be the real emergency.

My thought is, if global warming is such an imminent issue, like we're at a tipping point, how does spending massive resources to retool our entire world to save resources in the future improve the situation? Climate change is an industry of lies.

Quote (TugboatEng)

I'd global warming is such an imminent issue, like we're at a tipping point, how does spending massive resources to retool our entire world to save resources in the future improve the situation?

It is possible to revers the CO₂ contributing to global warming and and then balans it.
You can bind CO₂in for example in trees and in earth (biomaterial) like planting more trees building more in wood, less in cement which is very energy consuming, not destroying the earth with bad farming.
If one can managed that it's more a question of balancing the "system".

I am not suggesting that we stop using everything that is not renewable, maybe just to be smarter about it and use it less and when it is absolutely necessary.

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

The scale of the problem is, we are looking for 136,761 Terawatt Hours of energy per year to replace the fossil fuels (out of 173 340 Terawatt Hours consumed). The problem with replacing that energy is it doesn't count the additional energy require to manufacture the new energy sources. Say if we achieve an average efficiently improvement in consumption & generation of 20% we are still looking at a 70% reduction in energy availability.

I can see generation possibilities that aren't being considered such as submarine sails, but all the sources being used are the most cost efficient otherwise the engineers with have gone with something else. All in all unless some bright spark can rewrite the laws of Physics so engineers can easily turn boring old rocks into energy, this starts to feel like an unsolvable problem (well at-least with in given constraints, include Biological warfare and its easy) or one of those engineering programs that fail because the critical piece of tech wasn't sufficiently developed.

in addition to going GREEN, future energy needs to become a person level. that is one needs to have the ability / device to be self substainable. I still see the use of micro grids that would allow the sharing to levelize. Now for energy density of that futuristic device, to me, even fossil fuel would not be sufficeint. So a magical source is needed, possible fission reactors.

In the short term, something that would have helped in a situation like frozen Texas would have been automotive vehicles equiped with electrical generation and battery storage. ie a hybrid, but with more generation than required just for transpertation. they should even be outfitted to interconnect. then the next step would be include an inverter that could use anothers excessive electrical into the fuel source. short term could be H2 / O2. Ultimately an isotope.

comment. sci-fiction to help steer the futue, I never had any problem accepting the possibility of faster than light travel, teleportation and instant stellar distance communications. But what I never can believe being possible is the battery pack used by a phasar!

I see the best working systems tend to be regional.
Like here, we have run of the pipe hydro electric. The high altitude lakes originally had no fish, until the fish and game people used the lakes for fish breading. so the pipes that run from those lakes would develop such high pressures of up to 1200 PSI, and the pressure had to be broken anyway. The use of a pelton wheel worked well for that, and generated electric.
But it is not enough to power the whole area.

That can't be replicated in other places. I am also told that there is not enough wind here, but at times we can see wind speeds of 100 MPH (likely I could find pictures of trucks being blown off the roads).

Solar works for almost 300 days a year, but only until about 5PM.

Using water for cooling the air in summer would work, if we had enough water.

Underground homes would work to reduce heating and cooling needs, if the lots were greater than a third of an acre (the new standard for city lots). And if people would accept them.

But people want to see a little green grass between the houses, and want air cooling and heating on demand, and a two to three car driveway. We get this from some other region, which is not very functional here.

It's hard to address this issue when you consider the general unsustainability of the human population.
ThisLink includes future trends to indicate a slowing of population growth that is in conflict of the general trend of increasing growth. Based on historical rates I tend to believe these projections are probably wrong. The world population has more than doubled in my lifetime (60 years). There are lots of others to indicate the same so you can use your own judgement whether you want to believe it or not.
We humans are consumers as we should all notice by the amounts of things we purchase and dispose of. Whether that's fuel for your car or home heating, electricity, water, cardboard, food, shoes, toilet paper or whatever. Imagine if you could see the pile of waste that you have personally generated during your lifetime.
Being 'green' is many faceted. As some others have noted, I do not consider hydroelectric power to be particularly green. Nuclear power can be considered green in some aspects and exactly as the opposite in others depending on your particular view. Most others are nascent technologies with all of the pitfalls and shortcomings usually associated with new things. Biofuels, wood, and refuse power sources are all generators of CO2 so they do not address the issue of climate change, which is one of the major social issues of the day.
If I buy something online, it usually comes in a box-in-a-box with other packaging material stuffed in. Some of this is recycled and some is not. Even recycling has a net power input.
I don't see anything that comes close to a panacea to address our energy needs that will not have adverse effect on the world in some big way.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

I would outline this with several points:

Geothermal heating
A heat pump is a unit designed to heat residential and industrial premises. The energy-efficient system is an environmentally friendly alternative to a wood or gas boiler that generates heat.
https://www.flocon.co.nz/5-ways-more-eco-friendly-....
Solar collector
It is the most environmentally friendly type of heating that uses solar energy most efficiently. With the help of the collector, you can both heat the building and heat the water.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10973-0...
Natural cooling
It is better to use natural cooling methods such as swamp coolers to protect our ecology from old and harmful air conditioners.
https://evapolar.com/blog/cool-small-room-without-...

That's sort of my take, as nothing is perfect. I use wood for heat, because if I did not I would be using propane, and dead trees are a problem that causes fires. So by fixing the problem of fires, I am heating my home with a renewable source.
Two problems solve themselves.
Yes, burning wood makes CO2, but that would happen anyway. Either as a forest fire, or decomposing in the forest. I'm sort of becoming part of the cycle.

If there was a way to solve my other energy and waste problems as neatly, I would like to know.

one way to curb the population growth would be going green with agruculture.

Ie the invent of fertilizer being the blame.

reducing the power for equipment would then go with the drastic reduction in harvest

Quote (thebard3)

indicate at slowing of population growth

I was waiting for that one
There where actually on the news today that the population increase in Sweden have not been so low in 30 years, and that includes immigration.
All industrial countrys sees this a bad thing, why?
For earth as whole it's a good thing, if we want to avoid catastrophe.
We only have a limited amount off resources.

People who do not have food on the table, they want food on the table.
When they have food they want a roof over there head and clothes.
When they have that they want things that makes life easier.
When they have that they want things they don't really need just for fun,
When they have that they wont it bigger.
When they have them bigger they wont it more often.
But a day only have 24 hours, so somewhere it has to bee a limit.
Is it when we buy a new mobil every day or ones a hour, or what?

I do not mean that people have to go back and live in caves, but if we want to have everything and more.
We need to do it smarter or with less people on earth to find a balance.

We have a saying here in Sweden -You can't see the forest for all the trees.

The problem gets so big, it gets overwhelming, we do not seems to know where to begin.
Or more accurately we try to solv the whole problem at ones and when we cant, so we "give up" before we even have begun.
But as with everything else one needs to brake it down to be able start somewhere.
A do not think it will be done in a blink or that it will be easy, but I know that everything that is needed, is there if we just get the right tools to do it.

You talk about what we call wellpapp, I would assume recycling is +-0.
You need to have a machine cut the tree down, you drive it with a truck to the sawmill, you saw the timber.
The rest you drive to the papermill and you get wellpapp, from here the chain is the same.
You recycle the wellpapp the consumer drives it to the recycling, then it is driven to the papermill and then it starts over.
If you replant the trees the trees bind the CO₂ as well as the wellpapp and the timber from the tree if you build something with it, that will last for a hundred years.
This is a small thing in the big picture I know but it's a start.

There is three mayor consumers of energi.
Households, office buildings and producers(factory's).
I do not think changing the energi production will do the job if the consumption of energi does not decreases as well, to meet somewhere in the middle.

I can say which is a small thing too, I know.
That I do not have one light fixture at home where I can not put a LED light, no need for changing any fixtures.
So why would I not do that?
I do not to need to change the light bulbs several times a year and I get to pay less on my electrical bill.
It reduces the electrical consumption for light with 90%, if you do mot install more of them.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

As mentioned, engineering without failures/disasters isn't realistic because reality happens and there's tradeoffs to everything. More often than not, fixing one issue causes others and we must be cognizant of the impact our changes have upon the world around us. As engineers I believe the bulk of what we can do is simply to remain ethical, open-minded, and follow the requisite process to evaluate everything we do. Far too many folks today get polarized into believing that there is only one true solution and that others' opinions are misguided, uninformed, or self-serving, and that leads us down these politically motivated rabbitholes into bad decisions.

JMO but I have a strong affinity for hydropower. While I agree that we need to strongly consider the various downsides to altering waterways, I dont believe we have begun to harness readily available locations for small-scale hydro installations. As I mentioned in the other thread, in the NE US (where the highest demand is) we have removed many smaller (hundreds of kW to several MW) hydro plants that provided clean, cheap energy for decades. We did so in the name of nature, yet haven't really impacted nature. In many cases the lakes and mill ponds were never drained, we simply removed the turbines which became lawn ornaments or museum displays nearby. Most everything I have seen done stateside in the name of environmental protection has been similarly bass-ackwards in implementation resulting in little/no impact, yet heaven forbid anyone should admit that. Folks see bluer skies and cleaner water and ass-u-me that its bc of govt interdiction, not technology and others' environmental ethics which is more commonly the root of improvement.

Quote:

I think it is sad that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and at least one hundred years of exponential technical development and we stil can’t utilize what we know.

I think that this is not true for anything that's new, just as nearly the same thousands of years of accumulated knowledge was of no help in the nascent nuclear age. We had numerous catastrophes with reactors; which were, only in hindsight, preventable. Likewise, even when we know where the pitfalls are, such as in the case of facial recognition, we've failed several times to recognize how insidious systemic racism is and how woefully inadequate our safeguards are.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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About geothermal heat pumps which are quite common here in Sweden, there has been some research done on improving the thermal conductivity of the plastic pipes.

https://www.hb.se/en/about-ub/current/news-archive...



Seems to remember someone who used the swimming pole as an accumulator in a systems like this.

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Back in the early 80's when I worked for McDonnell Douglas, the real estate division was building a new office building for our software group and since we were going to have a large data center (remember this still back in the days of large central computers with disk farms) and so cooling was going to be critical. Now we weren't going to occupy the entire building the real estate division had designed the building on spec so that they could rent out the extra space to make a little on the side (our division still had to pay, but for tax purposes they had to provide our space at something less than cost. They couldn't make a profit off of a sister division). Anyway, to make it commercially viable, it was determined that they needed to built a five story building, which just came under the zoning restrictions because we were under the approach to a Naval Reserve Air Station and there was a height limit. In fact, when the plans went for approval the said they couldn't put conventional cooling heat exchangers on the roof as that made the building too tall and the real estate company needed the full five floors so they had to come-up with a different plan. So for the air exchange system for building ventilation, but not for heating a cooling, they just gave-up some floor space on the fifth floors and created a duct area on the side of the building, but for the actual heating and cooling system, before they put in the parking lot, they dug a large underground vault which they filled with some combination of rock and water that was used as the 'heat sink' for a heat pump system.

At the GM Tech Center in Warren, MI, they did basically that same thing only there is was a large pond running almost half the full length of the campus, that people thought was there because it looked nice and picturesque. The only problem was that ducks and geese used use this 'pond' a way point when they were migrating and while it looked cool seeing all those ducks and Canadian geese, they made a mess, particularly those geese. During the migration season they had to hire special clean-up crews to keep the sidewalks around the pond safe to walk on. And keep the smell under control.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Are you saying that they didn't think that a nice warm bath in the outside air would not attract geese???

Don't feed them bread.

The solution is taking away the grass

We have Canadian geese here too.
Some one hade them in parks, for show and now they are everywhere.
They are migrating north and south together with the other geese every year.
Here they sleep on the river during the night and in the morning they fly over the factory to the fields to eat and inte evening they fly back to river.
They probably would not stay if there wasn't something to eat.
But on the fields they don't make much damage, they come before the planting in the spring and when they come back in the autumn the fields are already harvested.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

And you can eat them and the fish too. Its really an additional benefit... creating wetlands and all. Plant some trees. The Chiswick Office Park in London wasn't bad at all.

I think in many places, rock gardens are underrated.
Or maybe some nice other than grass plants.

Well the Japanese are are good at rock and moss gardens

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I think it is sad that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and at least one hundred years of exponential technical development and we stil can’t utilize what we know.

I know, I was a bit "provocative" writing that.
What I meant, and that someone also wrote, was that some skills have got lost over time, not necessary because they where bad.
But just forgotten or there was easier ways of achieving the same thing in a time when people thought there was no limits.

I would like to ask some question so I can clarify what I was aiming for.
There is 3 kinds of underfloor heating systems water, air, and electric.

How many of you have some kind of underfloor heating ?
How many of you know someone that has some kind of underfloor heating ?
And if you do not know anyone that has underfloor heating, why is that ?

Best Regards Anna

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I have an atmospheric heat pump with electric coil backup. I wish I had gone for geothermal heat pump, but we just did not have the money to excavate at the time. That being said, I love the heat pump. Even with the coils kicking on regularly during the coldest months, it is far more efficient than the previous system and much cheaper to operate and maintain.

Andrew H.
www.MotoTribology.com

Quote (Tomfh)

...Despite all the talk of renewables taking over, fossil fuels still supply 80%+ of the worlds total power, same as it was 50 years ago. In absolute terms we’re using more fossil fuels than we ever have. This can’t last more than another few centuries, right?

Not sure. Circa 1991, I was a CE student in a geology class of 200 students and the professor told us with a straight face that there would be zero (literally zero) oil available by 2010.

Considering how these discussion usually turn political, with one side trying to figure out how to limit the freedom of others, a person might be a little skeptical.

Oil will probably never go away. It will just get so expensive that nobody will be able to afford to burn it.

Quote (1503)

Not sure. Circa 1991, I was a CE student in a geology class of 200 students and the professor told us with a straight face that there would be zero (literally zero) oil available by 2010.

And now, in 2020, we’re heading to net zero by 2030..

The more things change the more they stay the same. I dont think people have the slightest idea how deeply wedded our civilisation is to fossil fuels. This idea we can just swap them out in a decade or two - it’s really weird that people believe it.

That's the key word, "...nobody will be able to afford to burn it."

There are other sources of energy, but oil and coal is a big part of other industries which needs these 'fuels', not for the trapped BTU's but rather the elements and molecules that they're made up of.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Quote (271828)

with one side trying to figure out how to limit the freedom of others

And is the the freedom of others to burn oil, coal and nature gas?
Or is it something else?

Quote (Tomfh)

This idea we can just swap them out in a decade or two - it’s really weird that people believe it.

In the beginnings of 60's almost all houses in Sweden was heated by crude oil, today I do not even think that you can buy it.
Yesterday our electrical and heating production contained of 8,3% unspecified energy sources, which means that it can be anything from oil, natural gas, coal, wood, mostly consisting of unsortable waste.
We are a small country, if we can managed that it is for me weird that for example a land like US can not manage the same with all it resources.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

The idea of "Peak Oil" is well over a century old.

Quote (July 19, 1909 Titusville Herald, Titusville, PA)

"Petroleum has been used for less than 50 years, and it is estimated that the supply will last about 25 or 30 years longer. If production is curtailed and waste stopped it may last till the end of the century. The most important effects of its disappearance will be in the lack of illuminants. Animal and vegetable oils will not begin to supply its place. This being the case, the reckless exploitation of oil fields and the consumption of oil for fuel should be checked."

About every 20 years another oil-doom prediction is made.

Is this really a question of waiting until it runs out ?
Are all your solutions based on the easy way out, just because you can?
I have nothing against freedom of choice.
But when your "freedom of choice" limits other peoples freedom of choice, which it does, then it is not okay any more.

Best regard A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

The relatively continuous supply of fossil fuel over the years in the face of production decline curves has been made possible with advances in discovery and production technology, mostly associated with price increases, but eventually leading to oversupply and cheap oil until demand rises and kicks the price up again. So far the advances in technology have managed to keep the system running, however there are signs appearing again that indicate the cycle may collapse. Once again we are seeing its limitations and they appear to be increasingly more severe. The pace of discovery has slowed. The easy fruit has been picked and reached or has passed max producion. Declines appear eminent. New significant discoveries are fewer and fewer and increasing production costs in ever more severe environments look incapable of supporting our economy's ever rising demands. The current decline in production forecasts intersect rising demand forecasts in 10 years or so, assuming present known technology prevails. At present the system does not appear to be sustainable on many fronts. These factors have recently been discussed at length here,
https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=475925

"The relatively continuous supply of fossil fuel over the years in the face of production decline curves has been made possible with advances in discovery and production technology" One would wonder if it was possible to direct advances in the direction of something that works with existing machines, like the otto cycle engine. Not that electric cars are bad, but require a big reworking of many things. Where something like a liquid fuel that would work in existing cars. Maybe the issue is people want a different reality and not a change.
One thing I have noticed is that the new cars have a lot of things I don't like. Like computers, with non-since displays. A manual transmission, and the sound of the engine and road provides most of that.

Right now Natural gas can be made from renewable sources, but the push is to phase out natural gas, and not seek renewable gas. This does feel political, and an insult to our freedoms.

On another topic: I do have under floor heating in my house, which circulates water from a boiler, that burns propane. Being it is a 95+% model, it used plastic pipe for the stack.
I also have underfloor electric heating in one of the bathrooms, with wifi control. Now if I knew how to use the wifi it would be nice.
We wanted underfloor heating in the second bath, but they delivered the wrong size, and we skipped it as the project was taking longer than we wanted. That's a problem with underfloor electric, is it is size specific, and can't be cut.

Rather than make natural gas, making hydrogen using renewable power sources seems to fit your suggestion.

Gasoline, oil, and natural gas all share one important property, >40 MJ/kg. A Tesla battery is more like 1 MJ/kg, rechargeable, to be sure, but lots of mass and bulk to deal with.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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How can we make oil go away, when we also use it for other things? Do they need grease for electric cars?, are plastics used for electric cars?

I think those wanting oil to go away, don't have the whole story.

Natural gas the same way. It will seep out of coal seams if not collected. Ammonia is produced with natural gas, and is a very large part of farming needs (if you like to eat).

My question about the future is what exactly are we wanting it to look like, and has anyone really looked at all the other interactions?

Example, at one time octaine was disposed of because it was not as good a fuel as lamp oil.

For me it's mostly about balancing CO₂ so using oil for grease is something else, then burning it for heat, of course it will at sometime become CO₂.
But exchanging natural gas for bio gas is ok.

My assumption is that the natural gas would not sip out of the ground in the same extent if we where not trying to extract oil or oil sand.

I would actually not wont a electrical car either mostly because a hybrid with a motor that could be driven on some or all types of bio fule would not restrict me.

I like stirlingmotors they have high efficiency, I am not shore how common they are but I think they can be put to good use in many places.

I found this site, I have not checked the facts and someone is obviously trying to sell something.
But if what is sade here is somewhat near the truth it might give some insight to what needs to be done in the energy production field.

Modern GASOLINE ENGINE GENERATORS average efficiency of about 18% to 20%. about 80% is ejected as heat from the exhaust,
DIESEL GENERATORS efficiency of about 40%
COAL POWER PLANTS: 37% (37 units are converted to useable electricity and 63 units are wasted.)
NATURAL GAS POWER PLANTS: 50% (50 units are converted to useable electricity and 50 units are wasted.)
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: 33% (33 units are converted to useable electricity and 67 units are wasted.)
HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS: 93% (93 units are converted to useable electricity and 7 units are wasted)
GAS TURBINES: approximately 50% efficient. (50 units are converted to useable electricity and 50 units are wasted.)
A typical FUEL CELL has an efficiency of about 50%, (50 units are converted to useable electricity and 50 units are wasted.)
The worlds most efficient rooftop SOLAR PANEL has an efficiency of about 22% (22 units are converted to useable electricity and 78 units are wasted.)

http://ienergycorp.us/Efficiency.html

We have heating plants in Sweden where we burn waste and get electricity but we also get hot water to heat houses and also cooling it is for the hospital.
It have a 99% efficiency, because we take care of the hot air too.

Best regards A





“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Quote:

How can we make oil go away, when we also use it for other things? Do they need grease for electric cars?, are plastics used for electric cars?

Humans are absurdly stubborn, when faced with existentially challenging situations. When I first started working, the semiconductor industry was rapidly approaching the 1 um feature size limit for UV photolithography, and there was great trepidation about using e-beam or x-ray lithography to go to sub-micrometer feature sizes. Fast forward to today, we are STILL using UV lithography, albeit, it's a much, much, shorter wavelength, and people have to go through hoops to create features in the 5 nm regime, using exposure wavelengths 20x larger than that; in the mean time, all those companies that started up in anticipation of supporting e-beam direct-write-on-wafer and x-ray lithography ALL went bankrupt and fell by the wayside.

The moral of the story is to not be surprised, 40 yrs from now, to still see fossil fuels being used.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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Even if a 40 MJ/kg battery is possible, would it be safe to use, since its value is in powering moving objects and current generation cells are proving difficult to manage safely (car are easy, aircraft are a bit more problematic) At least a fuel fire is limited by Oxygen availability, the current typical battery cell is, in many aspects, more like a poorly designed explosive (it is packaged with its oxidizer).

Quote:

But when your "freedom of choice" limits other peoples freedom of choice, which it does, then it is not okay any more.

That logic assumes the entire world is a single homogeneous system which it isnt. Urban areas (where most pushing that fallacy live) are naturally filthy with pollution simply due to the population density overwhelming the rest of the environment's natural filtration of our emissions. There's no way around that problem, hence the irony of city folks claiming to be concerned about the environment. Realistically, there have always been clean and filthy places to live and its up to the individual to choose their home, the world being as far from homogenous as the US is. Others' freedom of choice does not limit yours.

Unfortunately, the agenda that rhetoric pushes is based on historic lies that have become somewhat popular. Ask folks about how govt has protected the environment and many will mention legislation limiting automotive emissions - absurd to be polite. Its much like the misconceptions surrounding the previously mentioned radiant floors, many folks mistake them for efficient.

A very large part of the problem is simply to define "green". We're not there yet...

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

If most of the energy in operating a car is in the manufacturer of the steel, then disposing of a car, to get a more efficient car seems a little pointless the way I see it.

The engine can be changed, or the carboration, or the fuel tank, so the type of fuel can be changed, within some limits.

Granted that something like CNG would not have the range I do now, but since I normally don't use the bottom of the tank because of impurities, if I had a cleaner fuel, I could use the whole tank.

Then again, I wonder if some of the things going on are just jobs programs. Like we need things for people to do so they can have jobs. Farming requires so few people, that farming does not produce the jobs like in the past. That is except some of the fruit picking, even some of that is gone. What comes to mind is the net they put around a nut tree, then shake the tree to release the ripe nuts.

So what solutions do we have for off road power? Electric tractors?

Quote:

Right now Natural gas can be made from renewable sources, but the push is to phase out natural gas, and not seek renewable gas.

Curious, where do you see a push to phase out NG? For a few decades the EPA has pushed its use for everything from a transportation fuel to power gen, going so far as to advocate for tax incentives and writing regulation to allow an excessive amount of hydrocarbon emission, despite methane being one of the most (if not worst) of the "greenhouse" gases and its primary constituent.

There are locations that are trying to require electric heating for new buildings.
The reasoning is to reduce CO2.

Sort of why I believe the de-carbon thing is only political. When it goes too far and options are being cast aside, in sure appears to be a controlling effort, and not a problem solving effort.

Quote (CWB1)

That logic assumes the entire world is a single homogeneous system which it isnt.

So you really think that your CO₂ emissions stays in American airspace ?

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Banning NG is apparently a thing in CA. Wonder where the electricity is going to come from?

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Well about steel production.
We are building a fossil free steel factory.

The company H2 Green Steel is a new producer of green steel, based on a fossil-free manufacturing process that includes one of Europe's largest green hydrogen factories. They plan to build a fully integrated industrial park in Boden-Luleå with production starting in 2024. By 2030, H2 Green Steel expects to have an annual production capacity of 5 million tonnes of steel.

A link, quite long press conference, if someone is interested.

https://tv.streamfabriken.com/press-conference-feb...

Best Regards

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I dont see natgas out yet. With CO2 capture it fits the green power scheme.

Here's my attempt to put the Fukushima disaster in perspective:

It is a sad story but I think the perception is worse than the reality.
I'm not sure people realize that the natural disaster at Fukushima killed far more than the man made disaster.
The impact of the natural disaster on human life was at least 15,000 souls lost.
The impact of the manmade/nuclear disaster on human life is estimated at 2,129 in Fukushima.... the vast majority of which (~90%) are from trauma caused by evacuations and displacement in response to the nuclear disaster. There are a number of other estimates, the worldwide cancer estimate outside of Fukushima is 130 deaths. So I think you could say 2500 deaths and be in the ballpark.

There were and are detectable radioisotopes from the event far and wide. But it’s important to understand that even minute quantities of radioactive isotopes are extremely easy to detect and characterize through spectrometry based on the frequency of the gamma radiation emitted during decay (sometimes samples are put inside a shielded container and monitored for hours to attain ridiculously low threshhold of detection). So "detectable" sounds scary on a beach in the US or a fish near Hawaii, but it often isn’t the case (but it always makes a really good news story).

Another aspect of the manmade disaster to me is the economic consequences… around $1T cleanup by this reference. Actually I thought it would be higher.. they have bizarre expensive approaches like maintaining the ground frozen to prevent leakage. And it’s an ongoing requirement that I don’t think has any resolution in sight. Of course if you try to compare $1T cost to let’s say 2500 lives lost, they would be equal only if we assigned value of human life $400k. I’d never assign a value to a human life, but if I did it’d be a lot higher. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the economic cost, although huge, is small in comparison to the human cost. (I drew inspiration from Josh's comments about weighing the cost of human lives vs the cost of shutdowns during the pandemic).

For nuclear power in general, there is also that pesky spent fuel problem. US had a great plan with Yucca mountain. I hate to say it but the Obama administration (who did a lot of great things otherwise, imo) really screwed that one up royally. I haven't followed the news on the latest plan for spent fuel disposal but no doubt we are decades behind where we were in 2011 just before the monumentally-stupid decision to cancel Yucca was made.

Other sources of energy have disasters that are not always as visible. There may be slow motion disasters unfolding from fossil fuels.

Hydro seems benign to me in comparison as long as you’re not building 3 Gorges. Wind and solar seem relatively low impact. I think I heard someone complain about electronic waste from production or disposal of solar panels but I don’t remember those details.


=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

Environmental cost of solar panels should be comparable to that of semiconductor manufacturing: acids, solvents, organics, toxins, in both liquid and gaseous forms. We used to use phosphine for dopant ion implantation into chips, but now, I think they use the much safer gases based on arsenic

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Quote (electricpete)

Wind and solar seem relatively low impact.

Perhaps aside from the land area needed. Wind can share with some other uses, solar not so much.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Well we still measure cesium in wild boar meat, reindeer meat since 1986, when the nuclear accident occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Especially the the Sami who have pretty much all their income from reindeer husbandry and fishing have had a hard time after that, a lot of support feeding to keep cesium levels down.
Now they also have a very hard time finding winter pasture for the reindeer as it is cold and then warm in periods during the whole winter, there are no real winters here anymore.
The reindeer cannot dig down through the ice crusts and if it has rained and frozen closest to the ground, they will not be able to graze.

I think we have broken every weather record we had, this last years, warmest, coldest for every month and the most rain, since we started measuring in 1756.
It rained over 200 mm in one month here in October last year 55 mm in 2 days it was what was left of hurricane Sally after it left Alabama.

It rained so much that my septic tank in the summer house has come up from the ground
And 3 large fir-trees fell down luckily not on the house.
Haven't fixed it yet, then came the snow.



Best Regards A

The Fukushima plant I believe was built by the same US company that created PCB's for the electric industry, before it made loads of money getting rid of PCB's.

And still my wife does not understand why I will not buy a toaster from them.

Wind farms do kill large numbers of birds, and bats. That is documented. With the blade tip speeds of greater that 200 MPH, the birds can't see the blades in time to get out of the way. Also the flash factor on humans and animals is well documented. And the amount of energy to create the tower steel is huge. That said, I don't see a problem with small units.

Solar is great for heating hot water and your home, but for large scale electric it sure takes up a lot of space. And with a life of 15 to 20 years, what will happen in the end?

So how much of this strange weather has to do with the shifting of the magnetic poles?

Flash factor ??

I am not shore I heard of that what is it?
We wouldn't be allowed to put up wind generators in areas with bats or other animals that are protected or red-listed, there is a lot environmental studies done before something can be built or set up here.

Are there any district heating plants producing hot water for house heating in US ?

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Question, how many birds are killed when hit by cars or trucks on the highway? Or for that matter, from flying into large expanses of glass on the side of a building? My parent's house had two rather large 'picture' windows and birds were always being killed flying into them.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Lots of things kill large numbers of birds and bats. Lots of things kill large numbers of lots of things. This is how life and death works in the natural world and especially when the natural and 'human-made world' interact.

Bird and bat deaths from wind turbines isn't even within the horizon when compared to a number of other causes of bird and bat deaths. It is something to be improved upon, not something to be used for disqualification.

Andrew H.
www.MotoTribology.com

I never said bird deaths are a disqualification, I'm not a purest, so I accept some problems exist. In fact cats seem to be a bigger figure in bird deaths.

I also don't see any of these as the solution for all the carbon issues.

I just feel that everything in moderation is a better answer.

How many people want to supersize all there food orders? Where does that lead? So why not go for a bigger mix of energy sources?

I don't know of any district heating in the western US. I think we are just to short minded for that.

A good missed option.

Then again, we should be critical of everything in some way, because if we don't we can't see how to improve them.

Sorry cranky108, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I do see that argument made a lot though. Anti's pointing out that it kills birds/bats and saying environmentalists should be totally against wind turbines for that reason alone.

House cats are far and above, nothing else is even remotely close, the number one bird (particularly songbirds) killer out there.

I agree with all of your other points.

Andrew H.
www.MotoTribology.com

Quote (cranky108)

I don't know of any district heating in the western US. I think we are just to short minded for that.

I kind of think we are also too spread out for it. Works better if each part is right on top of the other parts.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Quote (SnTMan)

I kind of think we are also too spread out for it. Works better if each part is right on top of the other parts.

What's your definition of spread out?
And what do you mean whit each part is right on top of the other parts. .. ?

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

If you look at the physical size of many US cities (not the population), it would be difficult for district heating for the whole city.
That said, the downtown area of many US cities would be good for district heating.
However, few people are likely to accept that idea. Just look at where people expect power plants to be placed (somewhere else).
One cities water district may be in the hundreds of square miles in size, so I would assume a full heating district would be the same size.

District heating does exist on several universities, as well as district cooling in the summer. But I assume that is a cost saving effort by the university board.

No problem putting words in my mouth. It sure beats having my foot in my mouth.
As far as detractors for any technology, it is better to hear what they have to say, as there is some truth in it.
That said, since most people are able to make up their minds with having no facts at all. It is easy to see why people would want to ban dihydro-oxide. Let alone wind, solar, hydroelectric, or anything else.

RedSnake, I am talking about the typical layouts of "civilization" in the US, particularly flyover country. Lots of single family homes or low-ish density multifamily. Typical city growth patterns don't really tend to make it practical.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

System name City State Startup year Number of customers Capacity, MWt Annual energy generated, GWh System remperature, °F System temperature, °C
Warm Springs Water District Boise ID 1892 275 3.6 8.8 175 79
Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls OR 1964 1 6.2 13.7 192 89
Midland Midland SD 1969 12 0.09 0.2 152 67
College of Southern Idaho Twin Falls ID 1980 1 6.34 14 100 38
Philip Philip SD 1980 7 2.5 5.2 151 66
Pagosa Springs Pagosa Springs CO 1982 22 5.1 4.8 146 63
Idaho Capital Mall Boise ID 1982 1 3.3 18.7 150 66
Elko Elko NV 1982 18 3.8 6.5 176 80
Boise City Boise ID 1983 58 31.2 19.4 170 77
Warren Estates Reno NV 1983 60 1.1 2.3 204 96
San Bernardino San Bernardino CA 1984 77 12.8 22 128 53
City of Klamath Falls Klamath Falls OR 1984 20 4.7 10.3 210 99
Manzanita Estates Reno NV 1986 102 3.6 21.2 204 95
Elko County School District Elko NV 1986 4 4.3 4.6 190 88
Gila Hot Springs Glenwood NM 1987 15 0.3 0.9 140 60
Fort Boise Veteran's Hospital Boise Boise ID 1988 1 1.8 3.5 161 72
Kanaka Rapids Ranch Buhl ID 1989 42 1.1 2.4 98 37
In Search Of Truth Community Canby CA 2003 1 0.5 1.2 185 85
Bluffdale Bluffdale UT 2003 1 1.98 4.3 175 79
Lakeview Lakeview OR 2005 1 2.44 3.8 206 97

My apartment is heated with district heating.
Of course this town isn't big compared to American citys and we don't have it all over either.
In total 440 km tubing and the longest distans between the plant and costumer is maybe 50 km.
But the plant itself isn't very big.

Dåva CHP plant is one of the world's most energy efficient and environmentally friendly plants with waste as the main fuel.
Here, district heating and electricity are produced from sorted waste and residues from the forest industry.
In addition, the heat is recovered from the flue gases that are created.

The heat produced here can heat about 18,000 normal villas for an entire year.
The gross production of electricity is sufficient to supply about 6,500 villas with household electricity.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

1503-44, I didn't say never :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Quote:

So you really think that your CO2 emissions stays in American airspace ?

Whether they do or not is irrelevant. In a free society, if your area is filthy then you are free to move to a cleaner one. As evidenced by history many times over, the issue is that you're advocating against a free society by supporting tyranny of the masses, which inevitably leads to dictatorial rule.

I believe most every military installation and larger university campus stateside is heated by a co-gen plant. I also am suspicious of any study asserting a large number of bird deaths due to wind turbine bc my brother actually studied it for a large provider and found the exact opposite, but who knows. Turbines do have an amazing effect on local wind, temperature, and thereby weather patterns tho, and also need a ton of maintenance and oil. Solar rejects a ton of heat. Both the later two have fairly short lifespans compared to hydro, which can run decades with little/no maintenance. A friend actually rehabilitates old, small hydro sites, rebuilding century-old turbines and connecting to modern generators/controls. My understanding is that more often than not municipalities are eager to demolish old sites and won't even consider permitting rehabilitation. I would absolutely love to buy/build a home on a river with a small turbine. In any case, nothing is perfect simply bc humans aren't, nor are we the same or of unified beliefs - that's humanity.

Quote (CWB1)

Whether they do or not is irrelevant. In a free society, if your area is filthy then you are free to move to a cleaner one.

Okay let me see if I understod you right.
If I were to start dumping my household waste on your property or in your apartment, which ever is the case.
That would be totally okay for you?
I am mean I am just exercising my freedom of choice.
I mean you can always take advantage of your freedom and move, if it does not suit you.
Since it doesn't seems that your freedom includes the personal choice to stay where you are, this would not be a problem for you.
And since you have the financial mens for moving and can get another job elsewhere, this is not a problem for you.
You probably will get well paid for the poverty as well, there are certainly many who are willing to pay a good price for a dump.
And wen you have moved I can keep exercising my freedom and dumping my household waste on your former property.

Quote (CWB1)

the issue is that you're advocating against a free society by supporting tyranny of the masses

You do not know the first thing about what I am advocating.
So do not put words in my mouth and do not try to read things between the lines that are not there.

Best Regard A

RedSnake,
Well said.
Not to worry.
He's getting his from China.
He just does not know it.

I believe there is climate change occurring that is the result of man but I am much less sure how much of a problem that is. People want to point to every rare weather event as evidence of something but that is so damn flimsy. Who's life is thrown into a whirl during an El Nino sunspot weather pattern? Is my or most people's lives going to be turned upside down if the planet warms a degree? It is such a low priority issue that that is why you never hear about solutions to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth even though those would be the most cost effective solutions. You have a large desert forming in Australia and slowly rising oceans but for most people it isn't something that is impactful. I though welcome renewables for the reasons that it leads to less air pollution and is to the point that for most people it is the most or near the most cost efficient form of power available. It is ridiculous that the cheapness of renewables is never pushed when that would be the best argument for it.

Reportedly a good amount of illegal immigration from Central America to the US is actually being driven by climate change, second only to unequal wealth distribution of land ownership.

CHEAP Renewables? My impression is that, on a $ kW basis, wind power is about equal to to mechanical, solar is still twice that, but is a little more paletable if you can net-payback into the grid, since you don't need batteries for storage. The biggest advantage to utility scale construction I see from renewable sources is ease of permitting and quicker construction times.


I get the impression you are not Australian. So, desertification of Australia is the only climate change scenario that you are aware of? Wikipedia "desertification" says about 2 Billion people are affected. See the map of where. National Geographic says it is occurring in 100 countries.

Quote (Fischstabchen)

People want to point to every rare weather event as evidence of something but that is so damn flimsy.
Who's life is thrown into a whirl during an El Nino sunspot weather pattern?
Is my or most people's lives going to be turned upside down if the planet warms a degree?

There has always been natural disasters.
In areas that always have hade hurricanes, forest fires, snow storms, landslides, drought as a recurrent phenomena they are use to handle it.
Now natural disasters gets stronger and more persistent than before and in the future they will occur more often if nothing is done.
But they also start occurring and influens the weather in other places to, and in the wrong time of the year.
Who gets affected is probably more up to chance.
For people who lives in areas with good support, when things happen, it might be a minor problem loosing there homes and livelihood, as whit Katarina and New Orleans or now in Texas.

War and conflict has two mayor causes religion and lack of resources.
Religion is probably often used as an excuse when it really is about taking over resources such as clean water, arable land, hunting and fishing rights etc.
These things will disappear in some areas but increase in others.
But where the resources will grow the people who live there may not be so willing to let the ones who have been left without get in.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I think the point that human mismanagement of resources, like forests, is being lumped in with global warming. And the solutions for global warming, don't fix the mismanagement problems.

Yes, mismanagement of forests is big problem. And fire size and results can reduced with proper management. And cutting carbon emissions will not replace proper management.

The fires in California could have been reduced in size and results, if proper forest management had been completed through the years. The same with slash and burn land use in central America.
And it is concerning that we have such other mismanagement also going on in the west with wild horses over consuming so much of the few grasses that exist there.

The issue is much more complex than what the politics project. And carbon credits or more taxes won't fix the problem.

I think we need to work on both does things, both the mismanagement of resources and the emissions of CO₂ and other things.
It will not be enough to just solve one and not the other.
But also because it is easier to do a little in many areas which is better than doing nothing at all.
Waiting for someone else to solve the whole problem and thinking that is not possible and that nothing can be changed.

The same with slash and burn land use in central America.
And it is concerning that we have such other mismanagement also going on in the west with wild horses over consuming so much of the few grasses that exist there.

I am not shore I follow you here, you need to explain.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Those were capital costs. Including run costs, wind and solar can get cheaper than conventional meathods when natgas prices increased like they did in TX last weeks.

It is well known that in the US, most farmers manage the land, and work at developing the soil so they can grow larger crops. But in central America, a farmer will cut down the trees, and burn the native plants to clear the land for farming. In several years the land will not support the crops. Instead of correcting the land the farmer will walk off and start over with a new place.
The old farm will usually waste away with no plants to cover the bare ground, and become deeply rutted from the rain. This is called slash and burn farming.

In the western US it is very dry,and few plants grow. But over the years as horses had escaped, there numbers grew, and now the land can not support the number of horses, and many starve. But because the ASPCA will not allow the government to reduce the number of horses except through sales to people, and there is not very much demand, the number of horses keeps growing.
The shame is the effects on the land and the few plants there.
Yes I call this mismanagement.

So if solar is cheaper, why can't we remove the federal tax breaks? Or why can't we build so we can have power during power shortages? Solar is only cheaper because of the tax breaks, and China. And solar despite being cheaper only works when the sun is out.

Solar is not cheaper only because of tax breaks. It is very close to equalling conventional power cost, but still a few cents per kWh higher in too many regions. In some regions with high cost of conventional power it is actually cheaper. In other cases, where "net payback" is allowed, solar can be cheaper, because you can do away with batteries and use the grid's power at night. If you had to buy a lot of batteries to do that, it can push your solar costs higher than grid juice. In my case, a solar system will roughly deliver kWh at the same price as my grid meter, without batteries and having net payback, but only because I would not have to pay sales tax on any solar power that I generated and used myself. I have to pay sales tax on the juice coming through the grid meter.

Do not forget that tax breaks making solar and other renewable sources cheaper do help foster more investment and use on an ever increasing scale. It reduces our dependence on fossil fuel. That is super important to many people and countries for a number of reasons. #1 being that you don't have to spend your local currency, or expensive foreign reserves changing it into US dollars and keep buying expensive oil to import into your own country every month. #2 you don't have to pump out tons of CO2 and NOX. #3 you can get as far away from anybody doing that as you possibly can and live in a far more healthy local environment. #4 you can be more self reliant and independent. #5 you can control your own power bill. Nobody tells you they will raise your rates. # Need more reasons, or are those enough?

Solar + batteries! I'm not electrical, so in my mind I think it is a lot like the gas tank in my car. I can drive it where there are no gas stations.

Round here there would be no problem with dealing with an over supply of horses. They would be eaten pretty quick..

On a side note a new law has come in this side of the pond which requires items to be fixable for at least 10 years including parts support and not requiring special tooling to get into things to fix them.

Quote (Alistair)

Round here there would be no problem with dealing with an over supply of horses. They would be eaten pretty quick..

I guess you mean by humans and not by wolfs and lynx's

Quote (Alistair)

On a side note a new law has come in this side of the pond which requires items to be fixable for at least 10 years including parts support and not requiring special tooling to get into things to fix them.

Well that has been the case for industrial products in Europe for as long as I can remember.

You hade batteries to your solarcells if I remember correctly, are they only for short term storages like from day to night?
It seems there is some different philosophies here.
Either without batteries selling/buying from the grid, with batteri short term storage, trying to save until winter seams not be recommended for single households.

Best Regards A



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Yes short term. We have long used solar/w batteries to provide power to controls and instrument telemetry at pipeline valve stations in extremely remote locations. Generally 3 days storage capacity is sufficient, unless you are above the Arctic Circle. That's a problem that I'm sure you can appreciate. Northern Lights just don't get bright enough for that.

I use mine to cover consumption during the night from March through to Nov. But as soon as the heat pump is running they won't cover it.

Most of winter it goes into a sleep mode where it gets itself to about 15% and then sits at that until it gets a few days of above a certain amount of production.

To be honest most of the savings using it are the avoidance of grid charges, energy tax and sales tax.

I put 1250 kWh through it last year with 2050 directly from the PV and 3340 kWh from the grid giving @6600 total consumption.

We produced 9300 kWh total from the solar.

I have another inverter going in on the barn when I eventually build it. Which will allow me to cover the whole of the winter usage with summer feed in credit.

There is a load of UK spec and documented panels trapped in Europe after Jan the 1st and its too expensive to ship them to the UK now. The Polish seem to have decided its ok to sell them to a British expat without the EU relevant documentation so i can get 40 panels at less than 1/3rd of the normal price. Only problem is crossing 6 borders with all the covid restrictions to get my hands on them and back to where I want them. Its 800kg worth so I could do it in a transit van.

In "remote locations" it is easy to pay for solar - just by eliminating the cost of the utility drop. So the return on investment can completely ignore the cost of energy. Our local highway department uses a significant amount of solar on traffic control signs. https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/conventio...
The sign cost listed in the link ($1,860) is often less than the cost of hooking up a typical service drop.

Fred

They are doing the same here. They have a dual solar and vertical wind generator thing on them with a battery pack.

UK pioneered being able to see the roads. years ago with cats eyes.

It one of the few things I actually miss from the UK.

Oh! My Indian, Syrian and Iranian restaurants.

Quote (Alistair)

Only problem is crossing 6 borders with all the covid restrictions to get my hands on them and back to where I want them.
Its 800kg worth so I could do it in a transit van.

??
But Alistair there are something called aeroplans then in teori, you just have to leave one country and land in another.
I guess UK is closed now?
Or how is it?
You can get in, but not out ?

Quote (1503-44)

That's a problem that I'm sure you can appreciate. Northern Lights just don't get bright enough for that.

Depends in summer it's light 24 hours a day.
So what we lack in brightness we make up in time, winter is a whole other business though.

Quote (1503-44)

Oh! My Indian, Syrian and Iranian restaurants.

Right now I miss everything that isn't home cooked.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I live in the Baltics and have been for over 10 years. I only go to UK for visits and work for 45 mins turning round. Anyway just now its a banned country so no direct transport links.

Bah airplanes, PIA. Paying a couple of locals a couple of bottles of Belarus vodka each and hiring a transit van to drive sounds more of a plan to me.

I was getting 32W off the moon last night!!!

What all the pizza shops in sweden are now shut? I reckon you have more per head than Italy.

What all the pizza shops in sweden are now shut? I reckon you have more per head than Italy.

I think you are right we probably have.
I have one less then 50 meters from where I live.
Nowadays even with Corona it might not be more then a pizza, ones a month, I do a better pizza myself

You can go out here, but yesterday it was one person per table, even if it is a family.

Belarus vodka each and hiring a transit van ... hmm
I wonder if that was what happened when some one stole some Shetlandsponnys here a couple of years ago, two horses in two different places the same week.
The rumor was that some one stole them for food.

Here most energi provider companies offers packages for solarcells with installation, you can even rent them if you want to.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

All these packages you pay through the nose for. My next installation costs half the price that the first one does without the energy company involved.

They get the coin out of you somehow.

O well hopefully they will get the finger out with vaccinations. All the locals round here are rebelling saying they don't want it. And As for the oxford vaccine its a swear word.

Alistair .. knows my buttons?

Having had a stepdaughter die of covid just last month on 11 Jan, two months now actually, I think I will be forgiven for saying this. She was 39 years old, Hispanic and lived in Houston. But hey, you know there may be more than 1 advantage for those that DO get this vaccination; Darwinism. Survival of the fittest and all... It won't end well for those that can't adapt to their current environment.

I didn't understand what the reluctance to the vaccines was all about and now even less. I've had jabs of all kinds, polio every year in the late 50s, polio boosters, small pox, TB, tetanus a dozen times or more, measles, chicken pox, flu. My tropical disease injection and immunization book is full up. No more blank lines. I'm getting a bit impatient in the delays of this vaccine distribution; I'm in the "next group", but they say I will get it very soon and I will.

So any of you that don't want the jab, what's the deal? Scared of a needle? Really? Gov infringing on your personal rights and liberties? That's a new experience for you? Not macho enough for you cowboys; cowgirls? Waiting for enough of us sheep to get vaccinated so you don't have to? Nice. Thanks. Fine, dig your own grave, but stay away from the rest of us until you need it. In the meantime, I'm happy to take your place in line. I wish my stepdaughter had that option.

Galicia has proposed a € 600,000 fine for those refusing to get vaccinated. The fine is too low, but I hope it passes anyway. You see where this is going? What's your vaccination card going to say,"Not allowed entry", "Not allowed exit", "Confined to Texas"? You don't have a vaccination card? No worries. You will.

Seriously. Wear the mask and get the first jab you can.

mate the conspiracy stuff that i have to live with does my head in.

All my life I have had a full yellow card of vaccinations and had to present it in various poo holes round the world like you. Even had Rabies vax once.

They are all getting upset because its looking extremely likely that by opting out of vaccination it will mean that certain jobs will be restricted and travel. Which they see as discriminating against them. Where as I see it as, its your personal choice live with it. So the solution is to try and prevent a vaccine passport.

They have loads of Oxford vaccines sitting in storage and even the ones that are willing to be vaccinated are refusing them... I sent an email saying just tell me where and when and you can fire it into me.... no reply. I think I had it last year in Jan anyway.

Just a note in the difference in philosophy's between areas and solar.

When I put my battery in last year I noticed that if it was charging it allowed the inverter to get full production off the panels. If it was already full it clipped the panel output to maintain the max output AC of the inverter to 8.5 kW.

Sent the German OEM an emial with the suggestion. Lady on service desk said we can't really help you... I said no problem just forward it to your tech director for consideration. Two days late received an email short and sweet "i like"

New firmware released and it has timed battery control for both charge and discharge (which was something else i mentioned to be able to restrict the use to Peak pricing levels)



So set it to release the battery for charging at 10:30am and it works perfectly no clipping.

Working with Germans can be a PIA but once you know what buttons to press and how its very productive.

Get the jab, problems solved.
They won't take an Oxford because someone in 100,000 test cases died?
They have a greater chance of getting hit by a drink driver.

I also send product improvement ideas to mfgrs. Dont know why. Just disgusted with their miserable design efforts and inferior products. Supposedly good brands too. These days there is a great need for design improvements of just about everything. Many product designers just don't get the simplest things right. Soft bearings, skinny cross sections used in the highest stress locations, wrong plastics, or used where metal is required, rubber pads rotting. I can't get a power tool to work for longer than a year. Coffee makers don't last me a month. Finally found one. 4yrs now, but cost me £350 another £ 120 for the grinder. Now I can't get good beans. Nearest Starbucks is closed. I like their Ethiopian beans. Kenya's not bad.

Your preaching to the converted mate don't worry, as soon as they send me a text saying come and get it I will be out the door even if its 4:30am, don't care which flavour it is.

And reference your power tools issues. I invested in a battery pack welder and fancy battery charger. I use mostly Makita but the others are the same.

They only use one cell to power the logic boards in the battery's at 3.7V be the battery pack 12, 18 or 24V declared. And there is no balancing charging. So that cell drops below 2.7 and the logic board black bricks the power pack.

So if you go in and balance charge that cell then it doesn't black brick until all the cells are dead. But you need the fancy balance charger.

If someone has already black bricked the power pack you can fix it by getting a new logic board off aliexpress and then recharging that first cell or cannibalising another black brick.

I Fixed 10 6 Ah Makita 18V which come in at 100 euro each. Cost of the welder and some zinc strip and fancy charger 300 euro. I suppose you could add in the car battery used to power the welder as well at 60 euro but in my case I used the one off the grasscutter.

We're mostly wood and concrete here. Typically only concrete in new houses, but mine is 100 years old in the newer sections. Roof framing is Canary "tea" wood. Hard as iron SG about 0.98, rock walls a meter thick. Nobody knows how old the old bits are. Used as a small schoolhouse at one time, some ancient mayor, or a judge maybe lived here once, after the goats left I guess...
I can't find battery tools with enough HP for these materials. Wood flately rejects concrete nails.

I've been battling a large, very solid volcanic rock protrusion into the driveway for the last month, but with a large plugin electric hammer. Progress became to slow getting into the lower layers, so the neighbour loaned me his monster concrete saw... also grid powered. Made some good progress with that on Friday and thinking I could finish that job today. Rained yesterday and the power went off for an hour. So I'm going to see how much dust and noise the grid can make today. No joy and I'm switching to Might need to talk to some of your LIP explosives experts. (Local Indigenous Population)

Yep big jobs I go rent something that burns hydrocarbon or I have a grid powered SDS plus hammer drill

Its getting your hands on bang that's the issue. The doing the dems is relatively simple.

You drill a hole in it and fill it full of water then put your explosive charge in ontop in a polythene bag and then cement the hole up. Let it dry. 30 min safety fuse and walk away.

bit of a bang and it will split the rock.

Quote (Alistair)

Sent the German OEM an emial with the suggestion.

Watch out Alistair soon you will be a Electrician/PLC programmer

Working with Germans can be a PIA but once you know what buttons to press and how its very productive.
Yes and one button that always work is.
If you are not competent enough to do the job! Then I will do it myself.

Yes this thing with buying sol panel packages is as you say more expensive then project manage it yourself.
But very few people have the skill for that, as you have and I, if I decided to do it.

Well I have bought a RYOBI they hade the best batteries on the market some years ago, there batteris all goes with all tools, you can buy different sizes and tools separate, The tools may not always be so ergonomic but for someone like me that uses them a couple of times a year it works fine.

You should use snail dynamite, and I am not joking now!
You drill some holes in strategic places and then you fill them with the mixed snail dynamite and then it expands so eventually it cracks.
It seems you might need some drills for the wood with diamond dust as well

Best Regard A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

What is "snail dynamite?"

Its an expansive rock fracture material which you use instead of explosives.

Its basically the old swelling wood techniques on steroids.

You make it moist fire it in the hole and then keep feeding it water and it swells up and splits things.

Snail dynamite is interesting. If I could drill a hole in that rock, I would try it.
I'm in town, so use of dynamite is frowened upon unless its New Year's Eve, or the neighbours dogs are barking too loud.

As i said in the other thread its lava so basically you going to have to work it like granite.

Cut groves down into it and then shear slice of it off. But your going to have to use a petrol disk cutter with diamond blade. And you will more than likely end up looking like the incredible hulk afterwards.

My Notes on Hydrogen Production

Electrolysis of H2 requires 40kWh/kg_H2 produced, with a yield of 142 MJ.
Production using Rotating Electrolyzer has a 65% efficiency reducing the net yield to 92 MJ
With added compression for use by cars, it reduces overall efficiency to 55% with a net yield of 77 MJ

Water Electrolysis needs 55kWh/kg_H2 of electricity (200MJ), so only 79% of the electrical energy used is recovered in the 1kg of H2 produced.
Electrolyzer cost is $1.1M/MW, costs of these are falling towards $0.9M/MW
Cheap electricity is required, or production cost will exceed value of product.
This method will prevail when electrical rates are low.

H2 from Steam Reformed Methane has an efficiency of 65%, but Steam Reformer cost is only $0.8M/MW
Lower equipment cost fosters competition with electrolysis despite its lesser efficiency.
Steam Reform has high maintenance costs.
This method will prevail when electrical rates are high.

Quote (1503-44)

This method will prevail when electrical rates are high.

Or we could just...burn the methane :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

What about the lifting cost of the water? It can be rather dry in places.

"We were so up to our necks with aligators that we forgot to drain the swamp."
Originally we were thinking about this because supposedly we don't want to burn the methane. Remember?

Water's coming from snowmelt of all those glaciers. All downhill.

1503-44, oh yeah, I remember but really, is it a case of:

We must do something
This is something
We must do it

I've got another definition of GREEN:

Don't cause an increase in entropy more than absolutely necessary :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

How many problems would have been solved by minimizing entropy? Minimizing entropy by burning methane maximizes the amount of entropy needed later to correct the results of what you want to burn today. You know. It's like credit cards. You don't make the payments today, the amouont owed only goes up. And they repo your car too.

But forget about entropy and credit cards. Why don't you just say that you don't want to do anything except burn methane. That's easy for all of us to understand. That's the easiest and cheapest way to solve your and our daily needs today. Just that there's some doubt as if that will be the optimum solution tomorrow. If you don't want to do anything else, you don't have to. Just call the gas company and tell them you need to get fixed up. Maybe you are OK with the electric guys as they seem to already be burning enough of it. I'm OK with natgas. I have two butane water heaters and I try to minimize entropy by getting in and out of the shower in a couple of minutes. I figure that that those few minutes of direct burning butane heater at an efficiency of 70% is better than using grid electricity created by burning NGL to create the steam that spins the grid's generators, or burning gas in a gas engine spinning generators that probably continue to run if I'm in the shower or not.

1503-44, hey don't get me wrong I don't have the answers, I just think we need to do things that make sense. Right now that looks to me like addressing the issue piecemeal as we have been doing for years. I know that approach is not drastic enough and fast enough for the zealots. I just don't have a great deal of faith in govt mandates.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

And the only way of getting something sensible is conversations like this brain storming running through options.

Unfortunately the conversations which are generally public and the people who make the decisions are all centred round the next elections. And nobody wants to start doing anything if it means they won't be getting another term in power.

What makes sense to me is that we try advancing the most probable solutions on all promising fronts until we find ones that work. Political solutions are also needed. All will likely involve experimentation, trial and error. Many were or will be initially too costly, too capital intensive, or too risky to be taken on by the private sector alone. We once thought nuclear was the only answer. At least we now have more options and we will find others. Some will involve science, engineering, but also government sponsorship. We would not have been able to do the nuclear experiment without the tech derived from the Manhatten Prohect, the work at the DOE labs and other gov sponsored research. Nor would we have the current wind, PV, solar thermal, geothermal, et al options we have today without having had the benefits of tax incentives that made the large scale adoption of those technologies possible and practical, cost effective, viable solutions. Even the space exploration programs played a role in their development, so politics is inevitable.

We as engineers should use our expertise on all fronts as well. If you don't like government mandates, then help find solutions that will be accepted without the necessity of "government mandates". Mandates don't really seem to be mandates, if people agree with the policies behind them. Many state and local offices, even down to the school board, need advice on energy issues. Should they install solar rooftops, install more insulation, get a more efficient gas heating system, or blindly continue to buy gas that's getting more expensive every year. Many of them do not have engineering advice available to them. Many more don't even know if they need engineering advice, or if they do, they don't know the first thing about writing the contract that will provide it, or managing that contract. If you have issues with gov policy or mandates, write to your reps. If you don't, they will only have the opportunity to listen to the line of lobbiests waiting outside their door, or worse, the non-technically inclined nut cases that write to them twice every week. The senators from TX are wasting time and effort sponsoring sanctions against Russian pipelines while their electrical system at home creaters as soon as the thermometer hits 32°F in Austin, then one runs off to Cancun. They need your opinion, if nothing else. They got mine. They (all gov) hardly get anything right left to their own accord. When they block a Russian pipeline and start exporting all their US NGL gas to Germany, and then the price of gas goes up at home, you might not be so keen on methane. It used to be illegal to export US natgas, but "Somebody" got the idea that it kept the domestic supply too high and that depressed the price, so the law was repealed. What I'm saying is, Help make the policies. Get involved. Dont give them the opportunity to mandate you into a corner, or mess with your methane.

Quote (Fischstabchen)

Redsnake,

Try to make a car or more complicated than a spoon or cup without petroleum products. This idea that "we'll just switch to something else" is just a half baked idea that ignores decades research it took to make these products or the added expense that will get passed to the consumer.

I sometimes get this impression that some environmentalist are detached from the reality that most people are living paycheck to paycheck, have near zero net worth, and likely would not prioritize anything that adds to their cost of living. I think that some people think that some groups just don't care about the environment but what it is is the presence of more pressing concerns. This person that just doesn't care is a fiction. There isn't a person alive that ever thought "thank god for smog.". So, in my opinion, when you hear someone denying any human impact on the environment, most of the time what that is is someone saying "I can barely keep my head above water and you want me to give you more of my money." So, with something like moving away from natural gas, aside from the technical problems, you are never going to get buy in on this idea of going 100% renewables when it would likely mean tripling people's electrical bills. Every environmental initiative would sell itself if it helped people keep their head above water. Solar panels are starting to get to that point and that is something that sells itself. You can't expect someone to care about the ice caps when they are behind on their mortgage.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I can take the example with the car, I have a car more than 30 years old. My beloved now deceased CH was always annoyed at it because he thought it was environmental degradation. He himself bought a new car every 4 years. I drive up an average of 30 liters of 95 octane petrol a month. In winter, it may contain 15% ethanol in summer, 5%.
He often drove diesel cars that had maybe a 3rd part in consumption than mine. but I 6 km to and from work he had 70 km.
I have not done any calculations but I dare say that my CO₂ emissions when it comes to the car included manufacturing etc. was much smaller than his.

And sometimes I get this impression that some people finds one problem with CO₂ emissions that "can't" be solved and use that as a free card for not doing anything at all.

I do know that some people has the presence of more pressing concerns, and that most humans have mind sets that is very short-term and now I mean that it is actually in the genes set and not a you choose.
But you can change it with education and understanding of how things work.
It is much easier to do nothing then to do something, and if people are coastally told that there is no point because it's unfixable that wont help.
If I have managed to make someone in this forum buy a juniper wood butter knife instead of a plastic next time, at least I have made a small difference in the world.
Have I solved the CO₂ no , but I have at least done something.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

I saw this reportage on the news about Chinese environmental activists.
My own opinion was which was not said in the reportage that they are actually employed by the state
It is young people in "uniforms" who walk around and inform people about environmental issues.
And they said that they have it as a subject in school as well.

Which made me remember that we actually have it too.
Already in preschool, the children gets to learn about environmental impact and sorting and recycling.
But it is mostly about showing and practicing how cycles work through cultivation, then when they get older by showing how things are made and the process and show the consequences.

It would probably be easier for the future if all children had "environment and environmental impact" as part of the educational plan.
At least giving them a tool, to make wise choices if they want to and can.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

OK Here is a new question, related to the electrification of transportation.

In the US we have weather events that can take out portions of the electric grid. Ice storms, hurricanes, winter storms.

The only really significant one that impacted me was the Dominion outage following Isabel in 2003, which has all of the power off line for most of a week, and was not fully restored for two weeks. One of the reasons the restoration took so long is that the damage to the transmission system was huge, and access was impeded with roadways clogged with downed trees.

Here is a collection of additional reports for several years of events
Emergency Situation Reports 2003 to 2016

During the outage traffic was greatly reduced as most businesses closed however it was possible to pump fuel at a limited number of gasoline and diesel fuel stations that were able to obtain relatively small generators.

Lets move to the "Greener" situation that could develop. If the city police department has 100 patrol cars, that need daily charging, and the utility can not provide power, what provisions need to be made? What about fire trucks, and other emergency responders? This sounds like a big - several MW generating plant. I have not heard any discussion about what measures should be taken to mitigate this conceivable situation, or if the events are sufficiently rare on a local level that mitigation is not cost effective.

The Big Texas Freeze Doesn't Bode Well For EV Infrastructure discusses a similar problem with electric public transportation.

Any opinions if this question should be in a different thread?

Fred

• https://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=eb8e1170-6050-44b2-bdca-3

FacEngrPE.
Your question is okey here at least in my opinion.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Well we have the same problem here in different degrees during winter, worse when it is storming.
It is the transmission providers job to keep enough free space around the powerlines to prevent this from happening.
Of course they never manage to fully uphold this , not even close.
Even if this hade been done properly it would not help for icing, when it is freezing rain around zero degress.
Here they have started taking down the overhead lines and putting down ground cables.

If I understod you right you are asking how to handle if all vehicles are battery powered.
My first assumption is that crimes are fewer during these extrem weather events and that people in general, try to stay indoors as much as possible.
This could help by using peoples preloaded vehicles as backup power.
Here when the extrems hit we have to put in the civil defense to help out.
They of course have vehicles that run ordinarie fuel and have tracked vehicles that can get around in the snow without the roads being open.

I think there must a mix and a plan for these event's, at least here the civil defense always make's planes for a kind of situations, how well they actually works in reality I am not shore.

Best Regards A



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Quote:

If the city police department has 100 patrol cars, that need daily charging, and the utility can not provide power, what...

Increase the use of underground wiring wherever possible. The US is very dependent on above ground wiring for local distribution lines, so exposure to damage from wind, fire, ice and trees is high. Many areas in Spain use UG conduits.

All essential services, including at least some percentage of police, fire and ambulance fleets, will continue to require redundant power sources, if their normal supply is undependable. Today that might be a private gas station, but tomorrow it might be a natgas, LNG, or H2 fired IC generator, or a solar/wind & battery supply with storage sufficient to allow enough time to make repairs to the normal supply.

As for the linked article, not much meat there. Just another typical case of not thinking the problem through. Apparently when the lights stay on for 99.7 percent of the time, it does not occur to many people, including city planners, that there is still a chance that they will go off for 0.3% of time (27 h/yr), or that they thought that nobody would be going to work during such emergencies anyway, or those that need to will find other transport solutions.

Austin would probably not need to plan on powering the entire fleet of electric busses in such an event, because many people would stay home, especially now that we have discovered that a good number of people can work from home, at least if they still have internet. The demand for bus service would likely be greatly reduced and 20MW ? normal demand might fall to 2. Perhaps some portion of the bus service can actually be replaced by a robust, freely available, 5G WiFi.

Speaking of working from home, we have not seen the end to the effects C19 may have on many fronts. There is some thought that demand for both human transportation and office buildings will never recover to previous levels. Things will certainly be different. I have a friend that used to work full time in Dublin, but now she is there only 1 week per month and works from her native Budapest the other 3. Strangely enough, she now flies more than before, but uses public transport far less, only 4 taxi rides per month. I think we will have to make many different kinds of adjustments to our previous ways of planning the future. Maybe a significant amount of city office space will be replaced by 5G. That could have knock-on effects far and wide. Power use inside cities may drop with some demand moving to suburban, or rural areas. Population of cities may decrease. Will we stop building freeways and start building, reinforcing, or replacing rural power distribution, transport, water supply, sewer treatment and telecom networks? London tube use fell to 20% at times. Many trains were taken offline. How many will come back? Will there be more demand for smaller aircraft and more rural airports? Schools? All of this could go a number of different ways and right now I doubt anybody knows which, or how much.

1503-44

It rarely makes sense to bury electrical distribution. It cost around 9 times as much and often doesn't lead to 9 times less unavailability. It is harder to locate faults and repair problems compared to overhead. In the Houston area, underground distribution is something developers pay for for rich neighborhoods. I have seen more underground distribution in parts of Florida to harden it for hurricanes but I suspect that nearly every time a hurricane takes out the distribution the load is gone as well. When Galveston was last hit, the electrical system came back way before people rebuilt. After Hurricane Katrina, there were Entergy substations that were not repaired for years because the load never returned. What is the point of hardening the electrical system when nothing else is hardened?

Maybe you are right that it's 9 times more expensive, I do not know.

Here it is probably more about what is society's norm.

Your norm seems to be that everything should be as cheap for the consumer as possible, but if you then get water damages on your house because of outages and a lot of extra expenses and people die and production is down for a week or several months for a natural disasters or extreme weather event, it's ok.
But is it really cheaper all together?

We as a country can not afford a week's standstill due to power outages and everything that comes with it.
It's not norm here and not acceptable, neither for the consumers, the businesses, the industry or society.
It might cost a bit more, not much every day, but in the long run it is cheaper for everyone.

Burying cables may be more expensive than making overhead lines.
But overhead lines occupies more land that can be used for other things.
And buried cables require less maintenance than overhead lines.
In new densely populated areas, they often put down electric cables together with water, sewage, fiber cable for data and district heating at the same time.
Here, where we have a lot of forest, wide areas for line streets must be made before overhead cables can be set up.
When putting them in the ground it is not required, less ground work is required.
Today, there are measuring instruments that tell you how far out on the cable the fault is if you get a drain or short circuit, so finding the fault is not a big problem.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

Redsnake,

You are conflating the natural gas problems in Texas with a problem with the electrical grid. The grid ,with probably a few downed lines, operated as it should have and wasn't the weak link. There is an incredible amount of redundancy designed into the grid.

It is misleading to call reliable and cost effective electrical distribution as cheap. Using the word cheap, gives the impression that it is unreliable and substandard when it is not that. There are a lot of very large industrial customers that demand extremely reliable service and cost effective services and that is what is provided. The only times I have lost power over the last 15 years in Houston has been this last cold snap, Hurricane Harvey, and Hurricane Ike. The cold snap is the only one that was preventable.