U.N. Admits That Going Green Will Cost $76 Trillion

[WIP]

To add to that, a shorter term solution for the intermittancy of renewables is a lossless power distribution infrastructure. That is, while wind and solar power is intermittent over the size of countries or even continents, if you could average over the whole globe, you could get a much more stable power level. But power transmissions around the world right now would involve too high of an ohmic loss. Superconducting transoceanic electricity transfer trunks that span across the continents before branching off to local power grids would be a big enabler for renewable energy. They could be built with current technology for about a $ 1 billion per km, so a global infrastructure could be built for a few tens of trillions, as opposed to the hundreds of trillions needed for an energy storage infrastructure.

The downside is they are essentially not very useful until the entire system is complete, whereas energy storage backups become usable incrementally as they are built. They are also much more politically difficult since they would require a high degree of international cooperation.

Let's boil it all down to essentials. Your presentation on what you believe our energy needs are depend on maintaining the kind of society we have today. Here's a thought -- get rid of the car culture that the highway lobby has pushed on us since the end of WWII. The building and maintaining of private automobiles, and roads for their use, not to mention the energy needed to drive everyone around in their separate little iron boxes that weigh between one and four tons...try costing that out in energy use terms and then tell me how many power plants and windmills and lithium batteries we need to supply our energy needs!

We've been told that everyone wants their own car and to spend their days driving an hour or more each way from the suburbs to work, but is this really true? Automobiles are the single, greatest cause of accidental death and injury by far, and have become larger as a factor causing stress illnesses than workplace, finances and other typical concerns.

The fact is that our cities and suburbs are deliberately designed for the benefit of the automobile, and penalize everyone who either doesn't own a car or just wants to do less driving. The car culture has increased the stratification among income classes, since car ownership is an obvious larger burden for poor people living in cities with little or no alternative for transportation. Here's an excellent suggestion from Radio Ecoshock producer Alex Smith's latest episode: Kill The Car. And for further information: Yves Engler - Pushing our addiction to cars

[dre]

To add to that, a shorter term solution for the intermittancy of renewables is a lossless power distribution infrastructure. That is, while wind and solar power is intermittent over the size of countries or even continents, if you could average over the whole globe, you could get a much more stable power level. But power transmissions around the world right now would involve too high of an ohmic loss. Superconducting transoceanic electricity transfer trunks that span across the continents before branching off to local power grids would be a big enabler for renewable energy. They could be built with current technology for about a $ 1 billion per km, so a global infrastructure could be built for a few tens of trillions, as opposed to the hundreds of trillions needed for an energy storage infrastructure.

The downside is they are essentially not very useful until the entire system is complete, whereas energy storage backups become usable incrementally as they are built. They are also much more politically difficult since they would require a high degree of international cooperation.

You can store energy in smaller ammounts at or near the point of consumption, and you can generate energy there as well. Some appliances will have their own capacity as well, and this can become part of the system. For example... if there was millions of electric cars that automatically plugged into the grid when you parked in your driveway or garage their storage capacity would because part of the grid. Under normal conditions it doesnt matter when you charge an electric car. And a growing number of appliances wont need to be connected to the grid at all... things like streetlights can be solar LED. If solar PV comes down in price as much in the next ten years as it has in the last ten years then most lowrise buildings can generate all the energy they need plus have extra to sell back to the grid. And while storing the power from a huge central plant is hard with todays technology, storing enough energy to smooth over fluxuations in grid availability for a home is not that tough or expensive to do.

The real trick is to build the grid and make the pricing model. If you do it right, then you would reduce the need for gigantic public utilities. You need universal net-metering, and a fluxuating pricing model, so that electricity costs more during periods of low availability... this will motivate independant power producers to supply power during these periods because theyll get more per KWH. If you make a smart enough grid you could potentially harness the enginuity of millions of entrepreneurs, inventors, and small IPP's, and get the government out of the power generation part.

Without a nearby dam where water can be pumped uphill to store energy, there really is no way to store the kinds of energy we are talking about

100's of millions of homes have just such a damn near by! And pumping water isnt the only way to store it. The trick is the energy has to be cheap enough so that you can afford the change of phase. Youre going to lose quite a bit of energy turning electricity into mechanical energy to pump water. But assuming you can absorb that cost, then theres a number of ways to store the energy that would scale. You can pump water uphill like you suggested... you can use the energy to speed up gigantic flywheels that spin in a vacuum on magnetic bearings... or you could heat oil in gigantic insulated tanks, and use a heat exchanger to get the power back out... or you could make hydrogen and store it in huge tanks.

Storage technologies arent the bottleneck still its generation costs. If we could produce renewable energy for a few cents per KWH the storage problems will get solved.

[TimG]

Let's boil it all down to essentials. Your presentation on what you believe our energy needs are depend on maintaining the kind of society we have today.

That is the only option that is on the table. Society will not change because of government fiat. It will only change based on real market forces and technological change.

Here's a thought -- get rid of the car culture that the highway lobby has pushed on us since the end of WWII.

The car culture is essential to the economic freedom that has generated the wealth that we have now. Even in places like Germany and Japan you see that cars are extremely important form of transportation and their societies could not function without them.

The fact is that our cities and suburbs are deliberately designed for the benefit of the automobile, and penalize everyone who either doesn't own a car or just wants to do less driving.

Suburbs exist because they provide the kind of lifestyle that people want. No matter how much you pontificate nothing will change even if you tried to make it less affordable. Edited July 9, 2011 by TimG

[dre]

Suburbs exist because they provide the kind of lifestyle that people want. No matter how much you pontificate nothing will change even if you tried to make it less affordable.

Right but transportation is 3 or 4 times as expensive when most of those suburbs were built, and in many places we are running out of space to build them. You wont find very many city planners who wont tell you we need to increase density to support growth.

[TimG]

Right but transportation is 3 or 4 times as expensive when most of those suburbs were built, and in many places we are running out of space to build them. You wont find very many city planners who wont tell you we need to increase density to support growth.

As far as city planners are concerned it would be cheapest to have everyone living in concrete boxes in the city core. But the job of city planners is not to dictate the way we live but to manage cities designed the way people want to live. Every where in the world people want their own piece of private property if they can afford it. Nothing will change that. The only thing that seperates North America from the rest is we have enough land to allow a larger percentage of the population to achieve that universal goal. Edited July 10, 2011 by TimG

[eyeball]

As far as city planners are concerned it would be cheapest to have everyone living in concrete boxes in the city core. But the job of city planners is not to dictate the way we live but to manage cities designed the way people want to live. Every where in the world people want their own piece of private property if they can afford it. Nothing will change that. The only thing that seperates North America from the rest is we have enough land to allow a larger percentage of the population to achieve that universal goal.

Like virtually everything else everywhere else however even the supply of land is dwindling.

The Bottleneck is putting the squeeze on everything. That said most land will probably be dirt cheap once it's behind us. There will of course be a few areas of high value, like the one's that can still sustain life for example.

[Bonam]

The real trick is to build the grid and make the pricing model. If you do it right, then you would reduce the need for gigantic public utilities. You need universal net-metering, and a fluxuating pricing model, so that electricity costs more during periods of low availability... this will motivate independant power producers to supply power during these periods because theyll get more per KWH. If you make a smart enough grid you could potentially harness the enginuity of millions of entrepreneurs, inventors, and small IPP's, and get the government out of the power generation part.

Yes that would be a useful advance.

100's of millions of homes have just such a damn near by! And pumping water isnt the only way to store it. The trick is the energy has to be cheap enough so that you can afford the change of phase. Youre going to lose quite a bit of energy turning electricity into mechanical energy to pump water.

On the contrary, a mechanical pump system can be 98% efficient or even more in terms of turning electrical energy into kinetic energy of the water flow.

But assuming you can absorb that cost, then theres a number of ways to store the energy that would scale. You can pump water uphill like you suggested... you can use the energy to speed up gigantic flywheels that spin in a vacuum on magnetic bearings

I mentioned that in my post. To store large amounts of energy, the costs of a giant superconducting maglev flywheel system are prohibitively expensive. Not to mention the potential for disaster if something breaks. I mean, you have a giant spinning wheel weighing thousands or tens of thousands of tons at tens of thousands of rpm, storing terajoules of energy. If all the energy was catastrophically released due to mechanical failure, the resulting damage would be comparable to a small nuke (1 kiloton TNT yield = 4 TJ of energy).

... or you could heat oil in gigantic insulated tanks, and use a heat exchanger to get the power back out...

You can heat the oil at near to 100% efficiency, but you can only convert heat energy back into electricity at the Carnot efficiency at most, which for reasonable temperatures would entail huge losses, on the order of 50%. Also, the giant insulated tanks would be extremely expensive.

or you could make hydrogen and store it in huge tanks.

Producing hydrogen (I assume you mean through electrolysis) entails severe energy losses due to, and converting hydrogen back to electricity again has a big efficiency loss. And, again, the tanks would be hugely expensive.

Pumping water uphill really is the only presently viable energy storage technique for storing the amounts of energy we are talking about, for two reasons:

- Unlike everything else you mentioned, net system efficiency is very high: 90% or more

- The storage medium can be a natural feature, only needing a small (relative to the feature) dam to hold it in

Edited July 10, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

this will motivate independant power producers to supply power during these periods because theyll get more per KWH. If you make a smart enough grid you could potentially harness the enginuity of millions of entrepreneurs, inventors, and small IPP's, and get the government out of the power generation part.

It is not going to happen. Economies of scale exist in electrical generation just like they exist in every other business. The large producers will always be able to supply the cheapest electricity and small producers will have to be subsidized which makes the system unsustainable.

Storage technologies arent the bottleneck still its generation costs. If we could produce renewable energy for a few cents per KWH the storage problems will get solved.

Again, it won't happen because the majority of renewable capital cost is the labour required to transport and install the things. These costs cannot be significantly reduced just like the cost of a building a house never goes down.

[Bonam]

Again, it won't happen because the majority of renewable capital cost is the labour required to transport and install the things. These costs cannot be significantly reduced just like the cost of a building a house never goes down.

Self-replicating nano-assemblers

[TimG]

Self-replicating nano-assemblers

If such technology did develop it would likely behave like plants grow. This means it would slow and chaotic in the form it takes. It would still require a 'gardener' to direct its growth properly.

Generally, I am technology optimist but I divide problems that can likely be solved and those which require some new laws of physics. For example, flying cars are often talked about but it takes a fair amount of energy to lift a car off the ground and keep it there. This additional work pretty much ensures that ground based transport will always be more economic so matter what power sources are invented in the future.

Edited July 11, 2011 by TimG

[Bonam]

If such technology did develop it would likely behave like plants grow. This means it would slow and chaotic in the form it takes. It would still require a 'gardener' to direct its growth properly.

I was mostly joking. Such technology will only be achieved around the time we have fusion energy anyway. Theoretically, though, nano-assemblers can be programmed to produce a pre-designed pattern in a pre-designed way, with no chaos involved.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

Theoretically, though, nano-assemblers can be programmed to produce a pre-designed pattern in a pre-designed way, with no chaos involved.

Sure, and plants produce near identical leaves. The problem is how do you organize multiple instances of the patterns growing in variable environments (i.e. not on a flat test bed). This higher level of assembly requires human control or chaos.

Fusion is another technology I am sceptical of. The only examples of working fusion reactors rely on gravity to provide the input energy (i.e. the sun). But gravity is weak and requires a lot of mass to get the reaction started. I am not convinced that less efficient forms of energy conversion will ever be able to sustain a fusion reaction that produces more that it consumes More important, if we did find a super efficient conversion process to do that we could use the power directly instead of fiddling with fusion.

Edited July 11, 2011 by TimG

[Bonam]

Fusion is another technology I am sceptical of. The only examples of working fusion reactors rely on gravity to provide the input energy (i.e. the sun). But gravity is weak and requires a lot of mass to get the reaction started. I am not convinced that less efficient forms of energy conversion will ever be able to sustain a fusion reaction that produces more that it consumes

Gravity doesn't provide the "input energy", it provides the confinement. The challenge of fusion is that it can only occur at very high temperatures and densities. Particles at high temperatures and densities want to fly off very fast, not hang around near each other and fuse. Gravity prevents them from flying away and escaping.

The input energy to heat up the particles, though, is produced by the fusion process itself. When two nuclei fuse, they release energy, and that energy heats other nuclei. It works like a fission chain reaction in that sense.

The technology needed to achieve fusion is better confinement of hot, dense, plasmas. There is substantial progress being made toward this goal on many fronts, and I've been personally involved with some of the research on magnetic confinement fusion. With the present state of the science, I really have no doubt that a fusion reactor that produces energy (much more than it uses to operate) can be built today. The problem is cost. ITER, a 500 MW experimental tokamak reactor being built in France and designed to produce 10 times more power than it takes to run (though the heat energy thus produced is not actually going to be harnessed to generate electricity), relies on giant superconducting magnets and will cost over $20 billion as a result.

But there are many other fusion reactor designs besides the tokamak, many of which can be built much more cheaply, and the plasma physics understanding necessary to build them is progressing rapidly.

More important, if we did find a super efficient conversion process to do that we could use the power directly instead of fiddling with fusion.

In terms of base power production, the only technology that comes to mind based on currently known physics that is more efficient (more energy per unit fuel mass) than fusion would be throwing matter into a black hole. You could get over 99% of the mass back as energy. Antimatter provides 100% mass to energy recovery, but there is no known natural source of usable antimatter for the annihilation reaction. DT fusion provides about 0.5% of the mass back as energy, about 5 times better than uranium 235 fission which is about 0.1%.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

Gravity doesn't provide the "input energy", it provides the confinement. The challenge of fusion is that it can only occur at very high temperatures and densities. Particles at high temperatures and densities want to fly off very fast, not hang around near each other and fuse. Gravity prevents them from flying away and escaping.

I don't see the distinction you are making. The energy required to maintain containment is input energy. Even once the process is going this energy is required.

ITER, a 500 MW experimental tokamak reactor being built in France and designed to produce 10 times more power than it takes to run (though the heat energy thus produced is not actually going to be harnessed to generate electricity)

Here is what wikipedia says:

Research into controlled fusion, with the aim of producing fusion power for the production of electricity, has been conducted for over 50 years. It has been accompanied by extreme scientific and technological difficulties, but has resulted in progress. At present, controlled fusion reactions have been unable to produce break-even (self-sustaining) controlled fusion reactions.[3] Workable designs for a reactor that theoretically will deliver ten times more fusion energy than the amount needed to heat up plasma to required temperatures (see ITER) were originally scheduled to be operational in 2018, however this has been delayed and a new date has not been stated.

Do you disagree with it?

In any case, does the 10x calculations take into account the 30%-40% effiency to convert of coal to electricity (worst case)?

[Bonam]

I don't see the distinction you are making. The energy required to maintain containment is input energy. Even once the process is going this energy is required.

The gravitational force exerted inside a star in hydrostatic equilibrium does not actually do any work, since there is no net motion of material, since the star is in steady state. Thus, after the star is initially formed, no gravitational energy is expended.

Similarly, with a magnetic confinement fusion system, once confining magnetic fields are created by currents in superconducting magnets, those currents will continue to circulate and generate the fields, and the magnetic fields will not do any work (thus expend no energy) on confining the steady state plasma. In fact, by the very nature of the Lorentz force, magnetic fields fundamentally can not do work. The reaction can operate for long time periods, so as to make the initial energy input to first create the confining magnetic fields negligible.

The relevant input energy for a steady state reaction is the energy needed to heat the plasma. In steady state, there are constant heat losses to the outside of the system (the chamber walls). These must be continuously overcome to maintain plasma at the temperature necessary for fusion. In a fusing plasma, after fusion is initiated, this heating can be provided by the fusion reaction itself.

In any case, does the 10x calculations take into account the 30%-40% effiency to convert of coal to electricity (worst case)?

No, 10 is the Q of the fusion reaction. It refers to the energy of the fusion reaction products compared to the input energy. Electricity generation through a Rankine cycle or other heat engine is another stage, entailing its own energy losses, just as in any other thermal power plant.

Edited July 12, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

Similarly, with a magnetic confinement fusion system, once confining magnetic fields are created by currents in superconducting magnets, those currents will continue to circulate and generate the fields, and the magnetic fields will not do any work (thus expend no energy) on confining the steady state plasma.

Magnetic fields require electricity to maintain them. I guess this is where the superconductors come in because that would minimize the losses. However, superconductors must be cooled - no? This must consume a lot of energy.

I think we are talking past each other on the input energy. I am talking about all losses from all equipment required to sustain the reaction. I am not limiting my definition of input energy to the energy specifically provided as input to the reaction.

No, 10 is the Q of the fusion reaction. It refers to the energy of the fusion reaction products compared to the input energy. Electricity generation through a Rankine cycle or other heat engine is another stage, entailing its own energy losses, just as in any other thermal power plant.

There are two losses. The losses when you burn coal to produce the 1 unit of power input and the losses when you convert the fusion heat to electricity. One of these losses can be written off as common to all thermal generation. One must be included in the energy efficiency calculations. So that 10x is really <5x in practice plus whatever else has been left out.

[Bonam]

Magnetic fields require electricity to maintain them. I guess this is where the superconductors come in because that would minimize the losses. However, superconductors must be cooled - no? This must consume a lot of energy.

I think we are talking past each other on the input energy. I am talking about all losses from all equipment required to sustain the reaction. I am not limiting my definition of input energy to the energy specifically provided as input to the reaction.

That's fine, and there are certainly all kinds of energy losses.

Cooling superconductors actually doesn't take too much energy, since you generally insulate the cryogenic mass really well. For example, when I worked at TRIUMF, our national particle accelerator lab, the thermal load on all the superconducting magnets in the superconducting section of the accelerator was only a few hundred watts.

Superconducting magnets are amazing things, once you've actually built them. They can support currents for years with no measurable degradation, cooling them requires very little energy if they are properly insulated, and they can generate magnetic fields far stronger than permanent magnets or conventional electromagnets can.

The downside is the initial capital investment and the technical complexity of the required systems.

There are two losses. The losses when you burn coal to produce the 1 unit of power input

I'm not sure that I follow. There is no loss in the combustion reaction itself. Unless you are talking about reaction efficiency compared to its maximum theoretical stoichiometric efficiency or something, but that is not really commonly talked about in power generation. To a power engineer, a reactor is just a heat source, regardless of what goes on inside it, chemical reactions or nuclear.

and the losses when you convert the fusion heat to electricity. One of these losses can be written off as common to all thermal generation.

Indeed, and, if anything, fusion suffers from lower losses since it can operate at a higher Carnot efficiency since you can easily achieve higher temperatures than by burning oil or coal, though this is limited by material considerations.

One must be included in the energy efficiency calculations. So that 10x is really <5x in practice plus whatever else has been left out.

Yes, the engineering Q is lower than 10 if you want to power all the reactor support systems using the output power from the reactor. Nevertheless, if you start with Q in the 10-20 range, you can run all the support systems and still end up with a significant net surplus of power. As I said though, this won't be the case at ITER, where the output heat will not be harnessed to produce electricity at all. It is being built solely to perfect the tokamak fusion concept and more fully characterize the relevant physics as well as to gain experience with the associated engineering challenges.

I could honestly talk about the nitty gritty details of tokamaks and a dozen other fusion schemes all day long if you really want. I don't know if there's much point though, this is not a technical forum dealing with physics. My point of view is that the technical feasibility of fusion is a lot closer in the future than most people outside the fusion science community realize, though the economic viability is of course farther off.

Edited July 12, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

The downside is the initial capital investment and the technical complexity of the required systems.

One hopes this goes down over time.

I'm not sure that I follow. There is no loss in the combustion reaction itself.

I am taking two scenarios - burn coal and use the electricity for something else and burn coal and use the electricity to run a fusion reactor. In the first path you have only one thermal-electrical loss. In the second path you have two thermal-electrical losses. That is why I add that in.

Yes, the engineering Q is lower than 10 if you want to power all the reactor support systems using the output power from the reactor. Nevertheless, if you start with Q in the 10-20 range, you can run all the support systems and still end up with a significant net surplus of power.

This is what I was not clear on. My understanding is the fusion facility consumes a lot of power and you would need more than 10x to break even.

I could honestly talk about the nitty gritty details of tokamaks and a dozen other fusion schemes all day long if you really want.

And I am happy to listen. But this is not the thread for it.

[dre]

It is not going to happen. Economies of scale exist in electrical generation just like they exist in every other business. The large producers will always be able to supply the cheapest electricity and small producers will have to be subsidized which makes the system unsustainable.

Again, it won't happen because the majority of renewable capital cost is the labour required to transport and install the things. These costs cannot be significantly reduced just like the cost of a building a house never goes down.

It is not going to happen. Economies of scale exist in electrical generation just like they exist in every other business. The large producers will always be able to supply the cheapest electricity and small producers will have to be subsidized which makes the system unsustainable.

Thats only true to a point. It entirely depends on the technology, and technologies that that produce power at or very close to the point of consumption have some big advantages. Centralization has big draw backs as well despite scale of production, and theyre ALSO heavily subsidized. Central plants require expensive transmissions lines that often have to be built by the government, on thousands of acres of public land. If a private utility had to get their power to your home, while paying market price for all the property they need to do it then their product would cost a lot more. Thats why the government is so heavily involved in the energy sector.

The reality is that if you live in a lowrise building enough energy lands on your roof to easily power your home, and probably the car in your garage as well. If the price of PV comes down as much in the next few years as it has in the last few years while the cost of energy from public utilities keeps going up, then youre going to see people ditching their large utilities. And if you can EASILY sell power back into the grid, then thousands of smart people and companies will work on ways to make it.

Most likely our electricity system will follow in the steps of the internet and computers. Sure... its cheaper to produce CPU cycles and store data in a gigantic facility because of scale of production. But theres big advantages to doing your processing and storing your data locally, the biggest one being the cost of moving work product around... so the internet emerged as a very decentralized system with processing and storage happening on billions of tiny peers. We will only move back towards a centralized model once the network is much much faster... youre already seeing the beginnings of that with cloud computing, and corporations moving their processing and storage into big data centers.

Theres other huge benefits to such a system a system as well. They have higher fault tolerance, they are more resistant to attack, and system wide outages are impossible.

And theres another big disadvantage that central plants have.... They have to be built by specialized people and those people are expensive North Americans, and relatively few plants get built... plant costs are increasing. Home generation appliances however can be made by the millions in bannana republics where labor costs pennies per hour!

Bonam, on 11 July 2011 - 09:44 PM, said:

The downside is the initial capital investment and the technical complexity of the required systems.

One hopes this goes down over time

.

Its NOT going to down. My centrally generated power has gone from about 5 to 8 cents in the last few years, and my utility just announced a 50% increase over the next 5. The cost of technologies that would make sense for small scale generation is rapidly coming down, and once those two lines intersect on a graph the gig is up for big public/private utilities.

And taxpayers have little interest in government megaprojects these days, and states, cities, and municipalities in the west are broke.

Edited July 16, 2011 by dre

[TimG]

Thats only true to a point. It entirely depends on the technology, and technologies that that produce power at or very close to the point of consumption have some big advantages.

Which is why building a coal plant next to a city is more economic that importing wind power over long distances. However, when you get down to really local production you will only see cost benefits if you can reduce the size of your grid. As it stands right now the grid has to be able to distribute all the power that people might want even if they have local generation. This results in an unnecessary duplication of infrastructure and added costs.

Centralization has big draw backs as well despite scale of production, and theyre ALSO heavily subsidized.

Transmission lines are generally NOT subsidized. I suspect their are a few examples but not enough to make your point even remotely valid.

If a private utility had to get their power to your home, while paying market price for all the property they need to do it then their product would cost a lot more. Thats why the government is so heavily involved in the energy sector.

The government is involved because it is not economic to have competition in electrical distribution. This means the government regulates the rates. It does NOT mean transmission is subsidized.

The reality is that if you live in a lowrise building enough energy lands on your roof to easily power your home, and probably the car in your garage as well.

For 6-8 hours, maybe 200 days a year. That means the same size of grid must exist to provide power when you need it. The common mistake that renewable boosters make is they ignore the cost of the redundant infrastructure required to make renewables acceptable to the public. This redundant infrastructure IS part of the cost of renewables.

And if you can EASILY sell power back into the grid, then thousands of smart people and companies will work on ways to make it.

Again, the economics simply do not work because power companies don't always want to buy the power because it costs too much to shut down a coal/gas plant to compensate for the spikes from these sources. In texas, wind operators often PAY the grid to take their power because that allows them to collect subsidies. In Scotland, wind power operators are paid to shutdown their turbines.

Most likely our electricity system will follow in the steps of the internet and computers. Sure... its cheaper to produce CPU cycles and store data in a gigantic facility because of scale of production.

Yeah whatever. I am know all about the big plans. I am building stuff that will be part of this 'grid of the future'. Without large scale deployment new electrical storage technology the grid of the future will work a lot like the grid of today. The only difference is IT technology will make it cheaper to deliver power the old fashioned way.

Theres other huge benefits to such a system a system as well. They have higher fault tolerance, they are more resistant to attack, and system wide outages are impossible.

Nonsense. The grid is already extremely fault tolerant. Nothing will change with microgeneration because everyone will still need to get all of their power from the grid.

My centrally generated power has gone from about 5 to 8 cents in the last few years, and my utility just announced a 50% increase over the next 5.

And a big part of the the reason is the push to force utilities to use uneconomic sources of power like wind and solar.

And taxpayers have little interest in government megaprojects these days, and states, cities, and municipalities in the west are broke.

What you don't seem to get is renewables are bloody expensive. If governments are strapped for cash they cannot afford to subsidize renewables. If governments don't subsidize renewables nobody will use them. Edited July 16, 2011 by TimG

[dre]

Which is why building a coal plant next to a city is more economic that importing wind power over long distances. However, when you get down to really local production you will only see cost benefits if you can reduce the size of your grid. As it stands right now the grid has to be able to distribute all the power that people might want even if they have local generation. This results in an unnecessary duplication of infrastructure and added costs.

Transmission lines are generally NOT subsidized. I suspect their are a few examples but not enough to make your point even remotely valid.

The government is involved because it is not economic to have competition in electrical distribution. This means the government regulates the rates. It does NOT mean transmission is subsidized.

For 6-8 hours, maybe 200 days a year. That means the same size of grid must exist to provide power when you need it. The common mistake that renewable boosters make is they ignore the cost of the redundant infrastructure required to make renewables acceptable to the public. This redundant infrastructure IS part of the cost of renewables.

Again, the economics simply do not work because power companies don't always want to buy the power because it costs too much to shut down a coal/gas plant to compensate for the spikes from these sources. In texas, wind operators often PAY the grid to take their power because that allows them to collect subsidies. In Scotland, wind power operators are paid to shutdown their turbines.

Yeah whatever. I am know all about the big plans. I am building stuff that will be part of this 'grid of the future'. Without large scale deployment new electrical storage technology the grid of the future will work a lot like the grid of today. The only difference is IT technology will make it cheaper to deliver power the old fashioned way.

Nonsense. The grid is already extremely fault tolerant. Nothing will change with microgeneration because everyone will still need to get all of their power from the grid.

And a big part of the the reason is the push to force utilities to use uneconomic sources of power like wind and solar.

What you don't seem to get is renewables are bloody expensive. If governments are strapped for cash they cannot afford to subsidize renewables. If governments don't subsidize renewables nobody will use them.

Nonsense. The grid is already extremely fault tolerant. Nothing will change with microgeneration because everyone will still need to get all of their power from the grid.

No its not nonsense, its a basic engineering concept. And millions of people per year are effected by blackouts, and like we saw on the east coast a year or so ago, a problem in the grid can crash the system even for users that are hundreds of miles away.

Transmission lines are generally NOT subsidized. I suspect their are a few examples but not enough to make your point even remotely valid.

That infrastructure is HEAVILY subsidized and in many cases outright owned by public utilities. Again... if a private power company wanted to sell power without the governments help they would need to purchase or rent strips of land going to the home of every consumer from their plant at market value. They are allowed to use thousands of acres of public land they dont have to purchase, which is a subsidy.

For 6-8 hours, maybe 200 days a year. That means the same size of grid must exist to provide power when you need it. The common mistake that renewable boosters make is they ignore the cost of the redundant infrastructure required to make renewables acceptable to the public. This redundant infrastructure IS part of the cost of renewables.

Thats not a problem once the storage technologies are there and the grid is smart enough to smooth over fluxuations in availability. This is the whole point of a smart grid.

Without large scale deployment new electrical storage technology the grid of the future will work a lot like the grid of today.

Did you not read the conversation before you started participating? This is exactly what both Bonam and I were already saying.

The only difference is IT technology will make it cheaper to deliver power the old fashioned way.

No it wont, and it isnt. New plant designs are extremely expensive to build, and the cost of producing energy the "old fassioned way" is steadily increasing, and the increasing cost of gas/oil/deisel is making things like mining for coal, then transporting it to a plant cost a lot more.

Again, the economics simply do not work because power companies don't always want to buy the power because it costs too much to shut down a coal/gas plant to compensate for the spikes from these sources.

This wont be an issue once the network is smarter and had more storage. And these technologies are improving and emerging fast.

What you don't seem to get is renewables are bloody expensive. If governments are strapped for cash they cannot afford to subsidize renewables. If governments don't subsidize renewables nobody will use them.

What you dont seem to get is that the cost of renewables is rapidly decreasing with investment, while the cost of conventional energy is increasing. If this continues we will reach price parity in most areas within a few short years.

[TimG]

Thats not a problem once the storage technologies are there and the grid is smart enough to smooth over fluxuations in availability. This is the whole point of a smart grid.

There are no economically feasible storage technologies that can be deployed at the scale required. Your entire plan depends on a miracle happening. I bet on technology advancing; I don't bet on miracles.

What you dont seem to get is that the cost of renewables is rapidly decreasing with investment, while the cost of conventional energy is increasing. If this continues we will reach price parity in most areas within a few short years.

I don't think we will see that cross over any time soon - especially with all of the natural gas that we are finding now. Also, the cost of renewables is in the real estate, transmission lines, backup power and labour. The cost of the generators themselves is a less important component.

[Oleg Bach]

The UN is frinking nuts! Those that sit in the comfort of that building do not have a clue what green is - it may as well be green toxic enamel paint! As said by myself earlier - to generate 76 trillion dollars you have to kill a lot of nature...the whole idea of putting a price on the repair of nature is counter to nature.

[Oleg Bach]

Who are the accountants who crunched these figures? I bet none of them even take a good look at a green tree - or wonder in awe at a beautiful sky and wild landscape....accountants can not save the world - they don't know how.

[dre]

There are no economically feasible storage technologies that can be deployed at the scale required. Your entire plan depends on a miracle happening. I bet on technology advancing; I don't bet on miracles.

I don't think we will see that cross over any time soon - especially with all of the natural gas that we are finding now. Also, the cost of renewables is in the real estate, transmission lines, backup power and labour. The cost of the generators themselves is a less important component.

There are no economically feasible storage technologies that can be deployed at the scale required. Your entire plan depends on a miracle happening. I bet on technology advancing; I don't bet on miracles.

Yeah... storing large ammounts of electricity would be... a miracle

Edited July 17, 2011 by dre