Author Topic: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.  (Read 36087 times)

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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #150 on: November 20, 2018, 01:46:10 am »
The $100 is delivery fee and all the other fees that get tacked on.  Those are all fixed and not based on usage.  It's not exactly $100 I'm just rounding it, I just know it's up there.  It's at least half the bill.

For UPS I already have a couple hundred ah in lead acids, power does not go out that often here, but it does, so I like to protect my servers.  I eventually want to do a telco style setup though, where everything is always running on inverter, and the batteries are floated.  There's no switch over time that way.  I've been burned a few times by the UPS not switching over fast enough during a brown out. 
 

Offline cdev

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #151 on: November 20, 2018, 02:09:33 am »
Customers are important to buy stuff too, so countries that are planning on losing a lot of employment often hope to make it up on export and often by offshoring, but to do that they feel they need trade agreements to protect their overseas investments. These agreements set up formal statuses that make it so countries have to treat firms from a subset of other countries exactly the same as they do their own, with some exceptions that work in the foreign companies favor. They actually get to have their cake and eat it too in certain areas. Things that domestic companies dont get. (Like the right to sue the government directly in a special court if the government changes any laws that hurt their bottom line after the signing of these agreements. Even things people wouldn't think would be impacted like raising their minimum wages- that is if they apply to the foreign company at all, which seems to still be in some ways, an unresolved question! This is called "ISDS" which stands for "investor-vs-state dispute settlement")

How might ISDS apply to the energy industry? Lots of ways. Energy is actually among the most litigated areas in ISDS. For example, Vattenfall is a (Swedish?) energy company that sued germany for deciding to phase out nuclear power because after Chernobyl, livestock in parts of Germany had radioactive meat, enough so that there is a concern that if they had another nuclear accident, meat produced in Germany would become unsafe to eat. And Germans are big meat eaters. That was culturally unacceptable for them. So Vattenfall sued them in a private arbitral court and everything involved with the case is secret. They settled but the sum and terms are secret. Its expected that if trade agreements similarly encumber the natural gas industry, any country deciding to stop fracking would be sued and almost certainly lose. ISDS is carving in stone an extractive model that people really are uncomfortable with in this context where the environmental costs can be huge, particularly for things like water. What happens if your well water becomes unsafe to drink? People also have found that the water from fracking carries unacceptable amounts of radiation. It makes streams and rivers radioactive. What if ISDS makes it so they cant turn the fracking off.

Some of all this is about jobs.

To get those statuses in those other countries, ("National treatment", "Most favored nation" etc.) they have fallen into a trap of job trading, or they claim they have, some claim they have to agree to give away more jobs. (Whether the US agreed to give away lotsof jobs in the WTO services agreement is actually a subject of great dispute. Some countries (a group of developing countries led by India) claim we did, while US trade experts claim that only if the whole deal is completed, the so called 'single undertaking' would those promises of market access - allowing an unlimited number of intra-corporate transfers, instead of the quotas that limits the numbers to a fraction of its potential. (This "Mode Four" would expressly not be immigration, as its temporary, and only for economic reasons, they feel that with their low wage advantage, they can do the work for much less, pay their workers as much or more as they make at home, or even a national minimum wage in the wealthy countries, and still make a profit.) Plus developed countries could save a lot of money on education, currently they must educate their own people at tremendous cost.

These provisions aren't for just anybody. They apply only to people with special skills, such as computers and related services (CRS) , or construction, or teaching, or nursing, or medicine, or engineering, they may require a degree, and if they become an entitlement, it wont be one enjoyed by individuals, it will be extended to the companies that are transacting the business for their use. Employees will be tied to their employers. They wont be able to switch jobs.

Right now in the US and likely also Canada, energy related jobs pay fairly well, compared to other jobs available to people without an expensive education. But not in the Middle East. There they use the 'kafala' model. Which is more like indentured servitude.

The deals would put into place a model much like the Middle Eastern kafala model in big sections of the economy, allowing dramatic shifts in labor. Public sector jobs especially, jobs that in many communities are the best and sometimes even the only jobs they have, would change towards privatization and subcontracting with international competition for those contracts. Whomever bid the cheapest would win.

The energy industry would become mostly foreign subcontractors (This has been one of the big aims for a long time because it allows the big companies to shed risks like the risks from huge environmental disasters to subcontractor companies which really means pass the costs to the countries and their taxpayers.)

So then the countries wont even get the jobs any more. Just the cleanup costs. But lots of insider investors likely would get huge payoffs on their investments. Despite the fact that fracking is kind of the extraction of the last natural gas and petroleum resource, a resource that by many accounts has almost run out. (There is a lot of evidence that its been vastly overstated, there clearly isnt even remotely near as much as they claim. What does exist is not worth getting out, unless wages fall a lot to get it. But at what cost? because wells could be fouled and people made ill- fracking impacts peoples health, particularly children and the unborn, and the old.

Speaking generally - Governments are very worried about many jobs going away for good. Which is the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced. Who is going to pay for everything? What are we going to do to organize this transition?

I think this is getting a bit off-topic, but you're still raising an interesting concern here.

Yes we all know many jobs are going away progressively due to many factors including automation, technological changes, societal changes, etc.
The way states are currently working to feed themselves and redistribute wealth will have to change drastically. The current trend in most countries is to lower taxes for companies (in the name of competitivity and the 'employment blackmail') and increase them for individuals. As less and less individuals will have jobs, even if we assume that the overall economy allows to support them, governments will inevitably have to raise company taxation, up to a point that may end up in a global crash.

Fun days ahead. :box:

You are assuming that governments will have a burden they may not have of a social safety net which they are shifting to the private sector. Instead of expensive domestic services, international trade will become the method of solving cost problems. Whatever costs exist, those services are likely much cheaper in some currently isolated area of the world.  E-commerce will enable jobs and hospital beds and patients, and energy, kidneys, and even "gestational carriers" (women who carry other womens babies to term in their own wombs) to be traded in spot markets like hotel rooms, prison cell space and airline tickets are today.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, "The magic of the marketplace". E-commerce is the balm that heals all, according to the free trade advocates. Don't worry jobs will vanish. Ecommerce! say it a few times.. "Ecommerce". The new "better than solar" information roadways to El Dorado.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2018, 02:51:26 am by cdev »
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Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #152 on: November 20, 2018, 11:30:13 pm »
The $100 is delivery fee and all the other fees that get tacked on.  Those are all fixed and not based on usage.  It's not exactly $100 I'm just rounding it, I just know it's up there.  It's at least half the bill.

For UPS I already have a couple hundred ah in lead acids, power does not go out that often here, but it does, so I like to protect my servers.  I eventually want to do a telco style setup though, where everything is always running on inverter, and the batteries are floated.  There's no switch over time that way.  I've been burned a few times by the UPS not switching over fast enough during a brown out.

Yes all other taxes and delivery fee can be around half the bill but I do not think that is the minimum. In my case it was 50CAD total bill and about half 25CAD where taxes and delivery + GST/PST. Maybe at a $200 bill those taxes add up close to half the bill but if energy usage is reduced it should be much less than $100. Maybe I'm wrong as there is a lot of variation.

Still even at $100/month just to be connected and use no energy it is still a good idea to have grid connected storage and no battery storage.
Seems like your main reason for a battery is servers but you may consider outsourcing those unless you have a good reason to have them at home.
There are better quality UPS that will switch in time to to reset your servers. Most use mechanical relays and those have a few ms delay time before switching depending on design and relay quality.
It also depends on your server power supply some have larger capacitors to deal with short power loss but it also depends on what the power consumption of the server is in relation with the size of the capacitors.
In that case where battery is always full Lead Acid will perform better than Lithium as you will do almost no cycling and battery will always (99.9% of the time) be fully charged.

The energy industry would become mostly foreign subcontractors (This has been one of the big aims for a long time because it allows the big companies to shed risks like the risks from huge environmental disasters to subcontractor companies which really means pass the costs to the countries and their taxpayers.)


As energy will witch from traditional sources to renewable and those are produced in automated factories is not relevant where they are produced. Solar PV panels or batteries will cost the same to produce in any country as almost no human labor will be involved.
Coal and Nuclear are already more expensive than solar and natural will soon be more expensive if it is not already



Offline cdev

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #153 on: November 21, 2018, 01:17:07 am »
People shouldn't count on being able to burn wood for heat because of the particulate pollution it creates, which causes many people to have trouble breathing. Its really bad for you. So a lot of communities are banning or considering banning burning wood.

Similarly, burning coal puts a lot of mercury into the air, so much so that many people near where I live have measurably higher mercury levels in their hair than people who live elsewhere.

It particular its dangerous to burn some kinds of coal because mercury and other pro-oxidant substances cause changes in gene expression that could cause autism in children and increased vulnerabilities to cancers in adults, because they use up glutathione, one of our body's repair mechanisms, which is a finite resource.

Mercury vapor measurements in the air can be seen to spike when they are burning coal at a big power plant in Pennsylvania and the wind is blowing our way.

Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.

So that basically leaves natural gas which they want to sell off to Asia, and renewable energy sources so its imperative that we get moving on implementing these kinds of technologies as soon as possible, so that if we need to change any of these plans we can do it soon, rather than get trapped into an ISDS situation where we are being sued for 'reneging on a promise' to export LNG.

What if the Icelandic volcano Hekla or whatever its name is erupts, as they have been saying it may. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the US (and electricity pioneer) wrote about the possibility of something like this way back in the 18th century. He also warned us (as did many of the Founders) about the dangers to democracy posed by amoral corporations.

The whole natural gas chapter in TTIP thing has the stink of a big insider scam to it. 
Or what some economists would call a 'control fraud'.

Like BCCI, and the S&L and the 2008 scam which had its roots in GATS, a fact they are still hiding.

« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 01:25:07 am by cdev »
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #154 on: November 21, 2018, 01:28:25 am »
You are assuming that governments will have a burden they may not have of a social safety net which they are shifting to the private sector

Governments or otherwise private structures. Either way, the society will HAVE to support people not having jobs. It can't work any other way.

You may be thinking that as the private sector progresses and states disappear (if they ever), nobody will actually care about people not having jobs, and just let them die, but if you think about it, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't work that way, and it doesn't have anything to do with morals even. It would be exactly like saying that to get rid of world poverty we would just have to get rid of all poor people.

 

Offline ahbushnell

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #155 on: November 21, 2018, 01:38:35 am »
Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.
I don't think it a technical issue for storage it's a political issue.  NIMBY'
 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #156 on: November 21, 2018, 02:40:56 am »
Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.
I don't think it a technical issue for storage it's a political issue.  NIMBY'

Why even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #157 on: November 21, 2018, 04:13:27 am »
The $100 is delivery fee and all the other fees that get tacked on.  Those are all fixed and not based on usage.  It's not exactly $100 I'm just rounding it, I just know it's up there.  It's at least half the bill.

For UPS I already have a couple hundred ah in lead acids, power does not go out that often here, but it does, so I like to protect my servers.  I eventually want to do a telco style setup though, where everything is always running on inverter, and the batteries are floated.  There's no switch over time that way.  I've been burned a few times by the UPS not switching over fast enough during a brown out.

Seems like your main reason for a battery is servers but you may consider outsourcing those unless you have a good reason to have them at home.
There are better quality UPS that will switch in time to to reset your servers. Most use mechanical relays and those have a few ms delay time before switching depending on design and relay quality.
It also depends on your server power supply some have larger capacitors to deal with short power loss but it also depends on what the power consumption of the server is in relation with the size of the capacitors.
In that case where battery is always full Lead Acid will perform better than Lithium as you will do almost no cycling and battery will always (99.9% of the time) be fully charged.


Haha no way I'm outsourcing that.  Way cheaper to host myself (only have to pay for it once other than power draw - data centres charge you per month based on the server specs) and I can set it any physical config I want, and I have very low latency high speed access and it's more secure because I don't have to worry about setting up VPNs or ways to remotely access etc.  It's all local and I can do what I want because I have physical access.    It's all for hobby stuff while some does run important stuff like home automation, which I plan to redesign eventually.  Harder to do that when it's in a data centre somewhere 100's of km away that I have no control over.   I do have one leased server at OVH but that's for web hosting and public facing stuff.  Sadly my ISP,  like most, don't allow server hosting, otherwise I'd host all my web stuff at home too.   
 

Offline cdev

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #158 on: November 21, 2018, 04:17:22 am »
People don't realize how little CPU + bandwidth the average web site uses. Even very low end hardware today is more powerful than what was considered a powerful server not so long ago. And accordingly could host a fairly large site, if its done intelligently. For almost nothing.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 04:33:33 am by cdev »
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Offline ahbushnell

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #159 on: November 21, 2018, 06:12:04 am »
Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.
I don't think it a technical issue for storage it's a political issue.  NIMBY'
No carbon and it will run 24 hours a day. 

Why even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.
 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #160 on: November 21, 2018, 08:27:29 am »
No carbon and it will run 24 hours a day. 

As I mentioned nuclear fission is at least 2x more expensive than solar so why will you want that.
Cost of nuclear fission is mostly paid in advanced over 75%,  the fuel cost is almost insignificant then there is operation and maintenance making the rest. The decommissioning and waste storage is extra and can be quite a bit of extra that is never factored in the beginning or even at all.

Look at the graph for US representing energy production by sources notice no new nuclear since the 1990 and only natural gas and renewable see an increase.
Natural gas will peak soon and renewable will take the main spot (that is just my prediction).


Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #161 on: November 21, 2018, 06:45:39 pm »
People don't realize how little CPU + bandwidth the average web site uses. Even very low end hardware today is more powerful than what was considered a powerful server not so long ago. And accordingly could host a fairly large site, if its done intelligently. For almost nothing.

Meanwhile data centres still charge $100+/mo for low end hardware.  Though sometimes you can find a good deal.  Where they rape you is ram and hard disk space.  If you want more than 1GB of ram or 1TB of space you have to pay extra per month for an "upgrade".  Meanwhile I can throw in 4 10TB drives in a home server and have ~18TB of redundant space (raid 10) and only pay for it once.  That's why anything I can offload to a local server like test environments or production stuff that does not need to face the internet, I do so.   Only the stuff that has to face the internet goes on the leased server.   Local compute resources are practically free compared to online resources as you only pay once for local.   I guess if you consider power then there is a small cost but it's small and I'd by paying that anyway.  The mining rig uses more than everything else in the rack.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #162 on: November 21, 2018, 06:55:37 pm »
Nuclear fission is not an answer either, because they still have not figured out a good plan to deal with the waste. The US's aging nuclear fission power plants are in terrible shape and arguably accidents waiting to happen.
I don't think it a technical issue for storage it's a political issue.  NIMBY'

Why even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.

The reson we need to care about fussion is why have a 600 year supply of nuclear that's already beeen processed.  The only other use for the that materail would be to enrich it and make nuclear warheads.  (Which is where the fuel came from in the first place.)

Then you are also not factoring in next gen nuclear, that's where the fuutre is.  Frrance, United States, India, European Union Japan and Chinia as well as nearly 100 private compnaies are all working on next gen nucelar.  You can't get more green than next gen nuclear.



 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #163 on: November 21, 2018, 07:01:41 pm »
Why even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.

The reson we need to care about fussion is why have a 600 year supply of nuclear that's already beeen processed.  The only other use for the that materail would be to enrich it and make nuclear warheads.  (Which is where the fuel came from in the first place.)

Then you are also not factoring in next gen nuclear, that's where the fuutre is.  Frrance, United States, India, European Union Japan and Chinia as well as nearly 100 private compnaies are all working on next gen nucelar.  You can't get more green than next gen nuclear.

I was talking about fission the only available option at this time. Fusion is a different subject and as of now not a solved problem so it can not be considered until it is solved and then cost may still be to high depending on how it is solved.

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #164 on: November 21, 2018, 07:06:26 pm »
Why even care about fission as it is at least 2x more expensive than solar and long therm waste storage is not even included in the price.

The reson we need to care about fussion is why have a 600 year supply of nuclear that's already beeen processed.  The only other use for the that materail would be to enrich it and make nuclear warheads.  (Which is where the fuel came from in the first place.)

Then you are also not factoring in next gen nuclear, that's where the fuutre is.  Frrance, United States, India, European Union Japan and Chinia as well as nearly 100 private compnaies are all working on next gen nucelar.  You can't get more green than next gen nuclear.

I was talking about fission the only available option at this time. Fusion is a different subject and as of now not a solved problem so it can not be considered until it is solved and then cost may still be to high depending on how it is solved.

Fussion is an experimant in progress, but hasn't France already started buidling?  And then what do we do with the 600+ year of existing nuclear fuel that came from the 150,000 or so nuclear wareheads we once had.  We have the fuel, why not use it?  Can't use it for anyting else. 


 

Offline coppice

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #165 on: November 21, 2018, 07:14:04 pm »
Fussion is an experimant in progress, but hasn't France already started buidling?
France is building the next generation of the experiments. The ITER system they are building will not even approach something that might be a viable production power plant. JET, NIF and other systems have taught scientists and engineers a lot in the last half century, and its looking like it will be possible to achieve a sustainable net positive energy output from future systems. The big continuing unknown is whether that net positive will ever be big enough to make these systems viable.
 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #166 on: November 21, 2018, 07:20:11 pm »
Fussion is an experimant in progress, but hasn't France already started buidling?  And then what do we do with the 600+ year of existing nuclear fuel that came from the 150,000 or so nuclear wareheads we once had.  We have the fuel, why not use it?  Can't use it for anyting else.

Yes there is a large tokamak being build in France started in 2005 but it will take some time before it will be completed best case end of 2025,  and 2035 when operation will begin. They have a theory that only a very large tokamak cant work as up to now they put in 2x more energy than they get out in best experiments so they hope for a net gain with this large one.
This reactor will be using hydrogen and deuterium so will not solve the problem of existing nuclear waste.

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #167 on: November 21, 2018, 07:54:26 pm »
Two separate issues.  Existing nuclear fuel which we have a 600-700 year supply.  And Next Gen nuclear which is an experiment in progress and is another 20 years or more.  But won’t Next Gen Nuclear be the answer?  United fuel source and no long lasting nuclear waste.  Completely green.

Not knocking solar and wind, but best estimates are in 20-30 years solar and wind will at best be able to supply 18% of the worlds electricty.  For the amount of solar panels and wind turbines which would be needed we just don’t have the production facilities or the raw material to pordouce more.

 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #168 on: November 21, 2018, 08:26:29 pm »
Two separate issues.  Existing nuclear fuel which we have a 600-700 year supply.  And Next Gen nuclear which is an experiment in progress and is another 20 years or more.  But won’t Next Gen Nuclear be the answer?  United fuel source and no long lasting nuclear waste.  Completely green.

Not knocking solar and wind, but best estimates are in 20-30 years solar and wind will at best be able to supply 18% of the worlds electricty.  For the amount of solar panels and wind turbines which would be needed we just don’t have the production facilities or the raw material to pordouce more.

As mentioned nuclear fission is expensive even compared with solar prices two or 3 years ago and fusion still need to be proven as working and on top of that when working it will need to be cheaper.
Not sure where you got that 18% figure but that is sure not true. As demonstrated with my own house solar can be used to day for 100% of the house energy (Heating and electricity) and also the most cost effective energy source.

Hydro, wind and solar PV are all forms of solar energy and thus renewable.
In Canada there is a lot of hydro generated electricity and a bit of Wind (about 6 to 7%) and almost no solar for about 65% renewable.
It is hard to make prediction's especially about the future :) and I may be biased, but I do not see anything that will be able to compete with Solar PV now or in the near future, and there is no problem in producing PV panels as many as needed.



Offline cdev

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #169 on: November 21, 2018, 08:53:35 pm »
Given that radiation lasts a very long time in the environment,(its turning out radioactive non-decay longer than they predicted with Chernobyl) the cost of a single nuclear meltdown could end up being astronomical.

So we have to get much better at preventing them. Corporations are not the answer to things like this. There is no accountability. These are events which we cannot afford to have happen, period.

Why is 'meltdown' arguably a possibility with nuclear fission plants? Look up "Loss of the ultimate heat sink" and read the request by the New England NGO that requested that we put serious energy into figuring out solutions before we build any more nuclear fission plants.

In particular, the risk posed to the grid by DC pulses - EMP caused by a solar storm, by a solar flare - a coronal mass ejection - or a nuclear detonation in space - and its interruption to the grid is a serious one.

We could find ourselves one morning with a global mega disaster in progress because of a Carrington class- CME. (like the one in 1859) One narrowly missed the Earth just a few years ago.

Note that several meltdowns happened at Fukushima, not just one. That means the design has this fundamental flaw. An interruption in power requires backup cooling capacity to come online fairly soon. Maybe a day or two at the most, if regular pumps are not working.  This is a fixable engineering problem, superficially but its not a trivial one.



As I mentioned nuclear fission is at least 2x more expensive than solar so why will you want that.


It could be much much much more expensive than we could ever imagine if we dont address these risks before these things happen. They happen randomly, so its just luck that it hasn't happened.

We narrowly missed being hit by one in 2013.

Imagine 20 nuclear meltdowns, or 50 or even more nuclear meltdowns going on around the globe at the same time.  Thats what scientists say could happen if we dont figure out how to cool them all no matter what happens to the grid.

Its not enough to plan to take the grid offline if we detect a solar CME heading our way, because what happens if that capability is interrupted? Recently a tsunami hit an area that was wired to the gills with tsunami detection buoys, etc. But, the system proved to not work in that instance when it was needed. Murphy struck.

 Its not adequate to have the entire world's safety hanging by these threads.

Similarly, a single huge volcanic eruption- something which history teaches us happens every few decades - with really big ones happening every few centuries, could be similarly catastrophic for solar, wind and hydro for up to a year or two all at the same time all around the globe. The ash in the atmosphere could throw either one hemisphere or the whole planet into a dry, desiccating winter that would not end until the ash percolated out. Rivers would run dry, crops would fail. The sun would shine but only weakly and without bringing warmth.

A good engineer will plan for the unexpected as well as the expected.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 09:10:04 pm by cdev »
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Offline DougSpindler

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #170 on: November 21, 2018, 11:00:22 pm »
The cost for nuclear power does that include the cost of mining and enriching?  Or is that number based on the fact we have a 600 year supply of nuclear fuel ready to go?

The 18% is the number being given by the Solar Energy Society and Wind Energy Association.  These are there numbers.  While many people erroneously think these numbers could be much higher the society and association states the limiting factor for not being able to produce more are the raw materials, aluminum, steel, and concrete followed by funds to build new production facilities.

Solar wind might work for you, but that's one data point out of nearly 8 billion.


Radiation is what makes solar and wind generated electricity.   I think what you mean is ionizing radiation.  This lasts for a billionth of a second to billions for years.  We know the cost of a single meltdown and we have several to use a data points.  Also look at the amount of our planet that's uninhabitable and the number of deaths associated with nuclear power.  It's less than 100 and for the last accident it was zero.

@cdev Now compare that to coal/fossil fuel.  How many lives have been lost to coal mining accidents.  It's over 10,000 times more than nuclear.  Care to guess how much ionizing radiation is released into our air from the burning of fossil fuels?  It's in the millions of tons.  Then how much of our planet has been permanently ruined by mining for coal?  And then what about the waste from coal mining.  All of that is radioactive too.  And what about our oceans.  Burning of fossil fuels has polluted our oceans with heavy metals like mercury.

This is not to say we haven't dumped nuclear waste in our oceans, we have.  Just 20 miles from San Francisco UC Berkeley dumped their nuclear waste there where it remains today in what is now a National Wildlife Refuge.

Remember the first nuclear reactor on Earth was a naturally occurring one in Gabon.

Can we agree we don't "perfect" solution?  And by no means am I saying nuclear is the "perfect" solution, it's not and it's not without risks either.  Same is true with solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, coal, natural gas, coal and every other way we generate electricity.

Can we agree one solution is not going to be the answer?  So if we look at wind/solar that's only going to give us 20% at best?  So were are we going to get the other 80%?

I hope we can agree fossil fuels and coal are the bottom of the list as being the worst.  So what's left?  Well with nuclear we know we have a 600 year supply of fuel.  We know of all of the various ways of generation electricity nuclear has resulted in the least amount of lives lost even if we include winds and solar.  Yes when there'a meltdown there are hot spots, but as we now know the environmentalist lied to us in saying after a nuclear accident the land would turn int a barren wasteland.  California, Chernobyl and Fukushima have proved the environmentalist were completely wrong.  There is diversity of life around Chernobyl and Fukushima is now far greater than before the accidents.  Yes there are some hot spots where humans can't survive but then there are naturally occurring areas where humans can't survive either like volcanoes, sulfur springs etc.

Think about it... what's the least worst solution we have for generating electricity, isn't it nuclear at the top of the list?  With coal/fossil fuels at the bottom?

Or do you have a better solution?  Our real hope is next generation nuclear.  It's clean, it's green and worst case we have a California, Chernobyl or Fukushima accident in just 20 - 30 years all of the ionizing radiation/radioactive materiel will have all decayed away.

Seems to me Next Gen Nuclear is where we should be headed.  But in the mean time what do we do?

 

Offline Marco

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #171 on: November 21, 2018, 11:20:10 pm »
aluminum, steel, and concrete

That assumes modularized solar cells mounted on concrete footing ... that's not how you'd roll it out in the future when it gets really cheap.

To go really cheap you need the PV to be delivered on a roll. So you roll it out it out on the minimally prepared terrain and stake it down, maybe pump in some expanding foam into a pocket to give it a bit of an angle.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #172 on: November 21, 2018, 11:27:08 pm »
aluminum, steel, and concrete

That assumes modularized solar cells mounted on concrete footing ... that's not how you'd roll it out in the future when it gets really cheap.

To go really cheap you need the PV to be delivered on a roll. So you roll it out it out on the minimally prepared terrain and stake it down, maybe pump in some expanding foam into a pocket to give it a bit of an angle.

Please send me a link to where I can buy such a product? 
I'm looking into buying solar now and might be exactly what I need.

 

Offline Marco

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #173 on: November 22, 2018, 12:34:17 am »
They're in the same place as (non Russian) commercial breeder reactors, future.
 

Offline electrodacusTopic starter

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Re: PV energy less expensive than natural gas.
« Reply #174 on: November 22, 2018, 12:35:55 am »
Please send me a link to where I can buy such a product? 
I'm looking into buying solar now and might be exactly what I need.

What will you need the PV panels for and how large of a PV array will you need ?


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