renewable energy

interesting thoughts on renewable energy.

I've been repeating these same points for 20 years. The life-cycle costs then were horrendous, but predictions were (as you might guess) VERY "rosy" that 'modern materials and methods' would ramp up the cost effectiveness "next year"!

I used to be under contract with the State of Texas Governor's Energy Office doing energy audits of government-owned facilities. I know what I'm talking about. I also installed solar water heating systems for a while until it QUICKLY became evident they were NOT life-cycle-cost "friendly".

It's amazing how much stupider people have become!

Will we still have petro products to keep our classic bikes going 20 years from now? We COULD (easily). I hope we do, for my grandkids' sake...

"If it ain't broke, fix it till our country is".

I did some work for a windmill company a few years ago who were heavily into offshore wind farms.

The turrets on these things are amazing, 4m diameter shafts running in huge bronze bushes. Fabulous engineering. But you can’t help but look at these things and ask “what’s the carbon footprint in making one of THOSE”?!

But, of course, this was all calculated and factored in to the overall carbon ‘balance’.

Or at least it was originally, but...

The Turrets were supposed to last 25 years with basic TPM. They were having to change them every 5.

They were having to put around 10 times more concrete into the seabed than the original forecasts (concrete has a dreadful carbon footprint).

They were forecasted to run at an 80% utilisation, they were getting slightly more than half of that.

And finally, the increased levels of intrusive maintenance meant they had to build a fleet of platform ships (big flat ships with a huge retractable pole at each corner that lowered to the sea bed to create a ‘platform’ with a crane to change the turrets). I have no idea what the carbon footprint of a fleet of ships is!

None of these factors were re-run in order to re-assess the carbon footprint vs carbon saved. But looking at the huge change and the marginal original ‘case’ it is clear that they were now extremely carbon positive. Yet they carried on.

It was a truly shocking eye opener for me with regards to the ‘Emperors new clothes’ nature of the industry.

Fast Eddie said:

The Turrets were supposed to last 25 years with basic TPM. They were having to change them every 5.
They were having to put around 10 times more concrete into the seabed than the original forecasts (concrete has a dreadful carbon footprint).
They were forecasted to run at an 80% utilisation, they were getting slightly more than half of that.
And finally, the increased levels of intrusive maintenance meant they had to build a fleet of platform ships...

None of these factors were re-run in order to re-assess the carbon footprint vs carbon saved.
But looking at the huge change and the marginal original ‘case’ it is clear that they were now extremely carbon positive. Yet they carried on.
It was a truly shocking eye opener for me with regards to the ‘Emperors new clothes’ nature of the industry.

Click to expand...

This has proven to be "de rigueur", the 'brilliant' minds that think they can make things better by spending more money INSIST on it.

Oh, and the results of this thinking are not getting better, they are trending even WORSE!

SPEND MORE MONEY, QUICK!!! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!!

As Scotty says you cannot overcome the laws of Physics Captain Kirk.

Of note for green technology are the following all of which cannot be overcome by throwing money at them.

1. Wind power is governed by Betz law According to Betz's law, no turbine can capture more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy in wind. Guess where we are now.
2. Battery's are ultimately limited by the amount of energy that can be transported by an Electron moving through a conducting wire. We are near that now with the latest battery's.
3. Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the periodic table, so storage is an issue as it moves through the gaps between larger atoms.

The list is a lot longer but just those 3 kill off most of the current technologies unless you except the higher costs or inefficiencies. I.E. they are so expensive only the rich can afford them. Welcome to the world of the rich Liberal Elite.

I have worked with many hazards. I don't like radioactive isotopes. They are like nerve gas, they play with your mind. You never know when you have been exposed until you begin to die.

This thread lives inside the conservatve, anti-science, pro-corporate thought bubble universe. Near its center are Prager U. & Manhattan pseudo think tank Institute.

tomspro said:

This thread lives inside the conservatve, anti-science, pro-corporate thought bubble universe. Near its center are Prager U. & Manhattan pseudo think tank Institute.

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Hmmm, I‘ve not even watched the Prager clip. I’m just relaying real life info. No politics.

Regarding the ‘anti science’ I’m not sure how you can say that after reading some of the above posts?

Regarding the ‘pro-corporate bubble universe’ it IS the corporates who are behind the industries guilty of this ‘emperors new clothes’ thinking! They’re the ones making billions on the back of peddling expensive solutions with exaggerated claims !

I’m certainly not anti green. We HAVE to go that route. But I believe we are forcing ‘solutions’ onto the world that technology just can’t yet support. Its kinda like trying to run the internet on floppy discs.

kommando said:

As Scotty says you cannot overcome the laws of Physics Captain Kirk.

Of note for green technology are the following all of which cannot be overcome by throwing money at them.

1. Wind power is governed by Betz law According to Betz's law, no turbine can capture more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy in wind. Guess where we are now.
2. Battery's are ultimately limited by the amount of energy that can be transported by an Electron moving through a conducting wire. We are near that now with the latest battery's.
3. Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the periodic table, so storage is an issue as it moves through the gaps between larger atoms.

The list is a lot longer but just those 3 kill off most of the current technologies unless you except the higher costs or inefficiencies. I.E. they are so expensive only the rich can afford them. Welcome to the world of the rich Liberal Elite.

Click to expand...

Whaddya mean..... 'expensive'

Well I am so anti this technology I have a solar panel array.

1. Bought 2nd hand 2 to 3 years old castaways by some Green but throwaway idiot at £80 per 300W panel.

2. Never asked for a subsidy and will never export any excess electricity.

3. Excess electricity is automatically diverted to immersion water heater so never wasted.

4. I did all the work myself and self certified by a competent person ie Me, as it allowed but not publicised.

4. Payback is 5 years, then the electricity is free.

5. Paying at full retail it would take 20 years for payback and the panels then close to end of life.

I only do these projects if it financially works for me with no subsidy, this is the only one that does. I have tried to cost the following on same basis and none of them work.

1. Hydro, I own a field with a fast flowing stream, 10M drop over 100M. The extraction licence (it counts as extraction in UK even though all the water gets returned) approval process is impossible, the greens object every time alleging you are destroying ecology.

2. Heat pump, the technology is a con, UK electricity prices are 4 times the cost of Gas per KwH. A heat pump gives you a 4 times return on the electrical input. Guess where you end up, the energy cost remains the same but with a huge capital outlay of the heat pump costing 4 times the gas boiler. The lower water temp means ripping out your radiators and refitting huge replacements. The colder it gets the less efficient the process using electricity at 4 times the cost of gas. Reviews of heat pumps show they do not work as advertised.

Have your Green fantasy's but before you start investing ask an engineer if its viable.

...Did I mention my Dad and both older brothers whom I worked with for 20 years are all Mechanical, Electrical, Structural and or Architectural Engineers? They basically gave me a free college education in that time. Actually, even better, because there were no off-topic courses apart from jabber-jawing about hunting, fishing, flying and the like...

Science denier? Not me. Science was, and still is, my favorite subject (well, second to classic motorcycles)

Kommando
We are building a new house in the mountains of north East Tennessee . The winters here can get below 0 F so for that reason i want to use a geothermal heat pump. We do not have natural gas and electricity is reasonably priced, also we have plenty of land to do horizontal ground loops and have access at no cost for a 15 ton excavator. IMHO an air coil heat pump is a looser below 32 F even they claim the new units will work down to the high 20 s

In the UK electricity is currently £0.16 per Kwh and rising as wind and solar subsidies kick in and can only get higher, I don't have access to gas only heating oil at £0.04 per Kwh which compares well to gas, oil boilers do cost a bit more than gas but I can install oil boiler myself for commissioning by engineer, but not gas so oil boiler installation is the commission fee and takes me 2 days plus 4 hrs commissioning.

A guy over the other side of the valley has just ripped his ground loop geothermal heat pump out after 5 years, the installing company have been back and forth numerous times but its been costing him a fortune. He got another heat pump company in and they quoted a huge amount to replace the pump and also could not explain what was wrong with the current heat pump, which is suspicious. It may be just the UK companies but the internet is littered with similar UK stories. I have my own digger, plenty of land and enough room above the bedrock for the horizontal slinky but not going there.

And for balance one that did but it was a vertical bore not a loop.


220M deep vertical bore hole, old house gutted and super insulated.

With 16 acres of land you can have a 4 year coppice cycle with willow and burn the chipped willow in a boiler for a lot less money and have it serviced by normally trained tradesmen. Just as green but low tech and cheaper.

I have just put solar panels on my house. In doing so, I have probably simply moved the maintenance costs from the electricity supplier to myself. However there are many instances whether big coal has worked constructively to inhibit development of renewable energy.. In Australia, a lot depends on who funds the governing political parties. It also depends on BELIEF. The Murdoch media supports redneck idiocy. They co-partner the sports bodies, so the average punter buys their bullshit content. Our media is full of cricket and football -, including the ABC. It is all a con job.

Here in Nova Scotia all energy is costly , plus the type that is pumped or dug from ground is taxed more heavily .... burnt wood for heat for 40 years ..... getting old and lazy so 4 years ago went with enclosed propane fireplace space heater , will keep entire house as warm as we need ( except basement) ..... before we switched I got a grant to insulate our home to today’s standards (costly) but well worth while , upgraded electrical entrance to 200A , and installed baseboard heaters throughout the 3 levels including basement .... works great ! extremely low maintenance plus 1btu of propane is much less costly than 1btu of electricity here .... I think if we had been more rural we would have opted for a geo-thermo unit as well , I believe the science proves this system is very efficient and works well here , even with our lowest temps hitting well below 0 deg.F for periods of several days mid-winter .... big up front costs but if house is well insulated , think it can be best system especially for new construction ..... interesting thread ....

Geothermal ground loops fail because the soil in which the loops are situated, becomes "heat depleted". By heat depleted, I mean heat is extracted by the heat pump, and the soil surrounding the loops becomes chilled, and this soil is not replenished with heat conducting in from soil distant from that around the loops. After all, soil is a reasonably good thermal insulator. Or to put it in simpler terms, the heat pump takes heat out faster than nature puts it back.

If one can get the loops into an aquifer, that would be ideal, but do not let the local authorities learn you are putting refrigerant filled pipes in a potable water aquifer.

Nothing is as easy as it first seems.

Not all renewables are ideal in North America.
Solar is useless in Ontario, Canada during our winter Months. For example, there is an average of 80% of our Daylight time during the month of November that is overcast and you are simply not making power. The solar industry was never intended to make power...only the subsidy we have to pay them so we feel all warm, fuzzy and green. Wind turbines are not the best either except when placed along the Great Lake shorelines which take advantage of Offshore and Onshore wind currents. Who wants to look at them when you pay a premium for lake side property.
Gridwatch is a very interesting website: https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html that show our base load for the province. On average, 60% for Nuclear. 24% Hydro and the remainder gas and bio, wind then finally, Solar which is abysmal small potatoes in the grid mix. It is the most costly as well. Our coal plants were all shut down and it was the cheapest per kilowatt hour to produce power to the grid. We shut down coal while china can't build them fast enough and they have no intension to change their ways. why isn't David Suzuki or Gretta beating on Xi's door. Crickets!
My two cents,
Cheers,

One thing you see a lot of in Kernow is windmills. As soon as I cross the border I know Im home because you see them off in the distance. But I never fail to notice that there are always some in every group that are not turning. So there is a maintenance problem one assumes. What does this do to the return on investment? And of course some days there isn't much wind and they are all stopped or turning very slowly.
As for solar you see large fields of them as well. What happens when they are life expired? What is the total cost over lifetime?
How do you get rid of them?
I think the biggest green success so far is insulation and sealing. What a difference it makes!

to that, I would add LED lighting. In one room (kitchen) I have replaced 8of GU10 50W halogen lamps with 5W LED equivalents. 400W worth of lights replaced with 40W, and a 'nicer' light. win win.

solar 'farms' seem a bit mad. Surely farms are for making food?

Yes wind turbine salesman states they have a life cycle of 25 years but in reality they are lucky if they last 15 years, Mostly gear box problems.
No one says a peep about how many bird strikes per year per unit. I would get arrested if I shot a redtailed hawk or any raptor. Fair game for the wind farms.
whooda thunkit. Have you ever looked at videos of the solar array power plant in the US. When birds fly through the concentrated focal point of the system they are known as streamers. birds fried in midair.