Zombie Coal
theenergytransition.org
theenergytransition.org
Edit: I'm "posting too fast" so i can't reply, but thanks for the comment about batteries, they're good for decarbonization but maybe not great for the environment in the mining of the materials. Maybe that's an okay trade off.
Very few areas are geographically suitable for pumped hydro storage, and batteries can be recycled today with existing supply chains. Batteries can also be rapidly shipped and installed (see: Hornsdale Power Reserve, installed in 100 days).
With regards to generation, "all of the above" that is low carbon. As the cost of renewables approaches less than a penny a kWh (we’re just about there for utility scale projects), the majority of your costs are storage and distribution infrastructure.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20814930
[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/27/humongous-tesla-battery...
[3] https://energycentral.com/news/tesla-pge-get-approval-propos...
If a car took 100 kWh of battery capacity (to use round numbers), the storage facility mentioned would use 10,000 vehicles equivalent storage. (If you use 25 kWh vehicle equivalent, it would be 50,000 vehicles, etc)
https://www.solar-wind.co.uk/off-grid-power-blog/post/lead-c...
re: batteries and mining lithium/cobalt. Sure, mining 1lb of lithium/cobalt isn't any better than mining 1lb of coal, but that 1lb of lithium/cobalt takes you a lot further. You can only burn that 1lb of coal once, but you can cycle that 1lb of lithium/cobalt daily. From a purely environmental standpoint specifically with regards to mining, batteries are still better. However, I don't think the economics are there yet. It will probably be sometime soon though.
On another note, China has slowed down coal production not because of carbon dioxide output, but because of all the acute toxins/pollutants emitted by coal plants. Carbon dioxide is a compound that only developed countries care about, because it has few short term consequences and whose effects aren't observed by your avg. person. Your avg. person, however, does feel the effects of nasty air and acid rain, caused by nitrates/sulfates released by coal plants. This is the chief reason China will publicize moving away from coal. Because of air pollution and acid rain, not because of climate change.
That's huge! Normally generating electricity from fossil fuels is about 1/3rd efficient.
Further more: If we assume, with grid loss, that the whole system is 50% efficient once it reaches a home, and we pair it with an older 2.7 COE heat pump, it means that home heating with a heat pump, when using GE's new generator, is 135% efficient. (A typical gas furnace is 90-ish.)
For those who don't know: A heat pump has greater than 100% efficiency because it sucks heat out of ambient air. It cools the outside air to heat the inside.
It can run on anything. As pro renewable energy as I am, the switch won't happen overnight.
Furthermore, pointing out that heating with a heat pump and grid electricity from natural gas is more efficient than heating directly with natural gas hopefully encourages more homes to use heat pumps now, instead of waiting for incentives that will come in the future.
When I built my house, I had to really push on the contractor to get a heat pump. He wanted to do a gas furnace and still thinks I'm an environmental bozo.
Because digging holes is all that some people know how to do for a living apparently.
I feel like, lately, there's been a big effort to keep these things going in spite of greener energy options being more and more affordable just so we don't put a lot of people out of work.
For people involved in the energy sector, but only really know coal, the only way they can comprehend maintaining and expanding business is to maintain and expand coal operations. The industry may pivot, but the dinosaurs (har har) of coal will often just maintain their current course until they become extinct (har har again).
This is a very old and popular meme. But as an "armchair epistemologist", who also happens to be growing rather weary of endless armchair economic and political critics "telling it like it is", whenever I encounter memes like this, my first question is always: "To what degree is this meme actually true?"
It seems like not just a fair question, but an important one.
> For people involved in the energy sector, but only really know coal, the only way they can comprehend maintaining and expanding business is to maintain and expand coal operations.
"the [only way] [they] [can comprehend]" seems like a rather extraordinary claim (and you know what "they" say about extraordinary claim), that would require rather intimate knowledge of the thoughts of of multiple people.
I'm curious, how did you come to possess this knowledge? By what mechanism?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Li...
https://earthfirstnews.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/narm_aeri...
It turns out that the biggest competition for coal jobs is more efficient coal mines- in this case the strip mines of the Powder River Basin.
It's all the more astounding that solar is cheaper than coal.
Solar doesn't produce energy at night, Wind doesn't produce energy when the wind doesn't blow.
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My personal opinion is that the grid will have to get a lot smarter to realize the benefits of cheap solar, and that home power distribution and appliances will have to get smarter.
Anyway, storage is getting cheaper. Coal’s dead. By the time current capacity goes off line, renewables will have won.
Even of you don’t believe that, nuclear is a far better option.
No one should be building out new coal capacity.
It makes much less sense for other countries with less access to natural gas.
Fossil fuels should be incentivized away as quickly as possible.
And no strip-mining fortunately. Just drilling, pump down some warm water, hydrates dissolve and natural gas starts flowing. Pipeline to land and voila.
We need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
Every time someone says "Fracking gives us 100 years of reserves", they always omit at what price. If most of that is cost-effective at $120 or $140 / barrel, is it really fair to suggest that's a good reserve?
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To be clear, I'm not in love with coal; I'd much rather have a mostly solar powered grid, but I think it will be more expensive and complicated to get there than just "put some solar on it"
When solar wins some percent of the total market (20%?, 40%?; I don't know) then things get complicated. Immediately obvious is the fact that generation is tied to sunlight, so when it is dark out due to rain or nighttime or shortened seasons, grid capacity will be reduced.
There are other issues besides production though. Generators with great big spinning metal shafts currently (heh) control the frequency of alternating current power that we use in our homes. Direct Current Inverters can mimic the A/C sine wave, but it's not exactly the same.
It's great to have batteries or other storage, but will you have storage equivalent to 20 or 40% of grid capacity? Or will you have to make hard decisions about how to apportion energy?
Maybe you think everyone should have a home energy storage point? Sure, that's great. Do you think that should be mandatory or voluntary?
Think about the consequences of each of these decisions. Think about what you are asking your neighbors to do. Think about the goals of grid operators and how they might reach them.
Some places use batteries to provide frequency stabilization for cheaper than the spinning metal they used to use. Odd that you would pick one of the most cost-effective use-cases of utility-sized batteries as an example.
Do you have a source that talks about frequency stabilization in particular?
BTW you might also note that HVDC and DC-to-DC interconnects are becoming popular. If your theory about batteries being bad for frequency stabilization were true, they'd also be big problems.
I'm not an electrical engineer, so all of this has been my lightly informed opinion. I don't have the right words or depth of knowledge to convey my impressions, sorry.
I don't know about big problems, but there are certainly complications and concerns when converting DC to AC at grid scale, as you can see in the Disadvantages portion of the wiki. Sorry I don't have a better source.
I don't think batteries are "bad" for frequency stabilization, I just don't think they're good at it.
With regard to spinning metal, I think you may be referring to flywheel storage? Flywheels do have lower energy density than batteries. I was referring to base load generation by spinning generators.
I was referring to the same thing you were with "spinning metal". At the top of this thread, you said "great big spinning metal shafts".
There is never a time when the wind doesn't blow on some part of the interconnected grid. If the wind stops everywhere at once, there's a much larger problem at hand.
<SAFIRE can create, control, contain, sustain, and repeat-at-will any number of plasma regimes. No other technology in the world can do this.
Seven years of empirical testing has resulted in a unique patented stable spherical "SAFIRE" plasma reactor. AUREON ENERGY LTD. will commercialize the SAFIRE technology into three key markets:
> clean energy production > heating > remediation of nuclear waste
Each market in itself represents a trillion dollar industry over the next ten years. AUREON ENERGY is currently engaging investors to commercialize the technology.
Edit: More details and direct URL added.
Edit again: ha to the down voters. Pretty weak pressing a button without explaining why you think their science is flawed.
In essence it's just a cathode chamber containing hydrogen gas surrounding a spherical anode which they are able to make light up like the sun when the current and voltages are held below arc discharge levels.
The end is nigh for oil and coal.
> Yes! Monty Childs has already hinted multiple times that gravity seems to be shielded within the double layers of their plasma. It’s even listed in one of their videos. The Fluxliner Alien Reproduction Vehicle used a self organizing plasma vortex within itself to produce a bubble of magnetic vector potential that could nullify inertia, gravity, and mass.
First, it is somewhat related to the post but not very related, so the comment adds more noise than information. Perhaps you can submit it as an independent post instead of a comment.
Nuclear fusion is full of promises, fraud and snake oil. There are some interesting project, but there are also a lot of bad projects.
> clean energy production
Prototype or it didn't happen. IIUC they are still researching that, so the commercialization to the trillion dollar market should wait.
> heating
This look easier, you don't need a self sustainable reaction (ignition). Anyway, it would be interesting to see the analysis of the cost of the equipment and how often it need replacement, and how much power it can process. I can believe they have something here, but I'd like to see the evidence.
> remediation of nuclear waste
I don't understand what they are talking about. (I actually can imagine something like that, but what I imagine seams too difficult. So it smells like a void promise to get money. But let's be optimistic and say that I don't understand what they are trying to do.)
<First, it is somewhat related to the post but not very related, so the comment adds more noise than information. Perhaps you can submit it as an independent post instead of a comment.
It's very related in my opinion. I submitted a post once about a important new method of electromechanical desalination but it didn't get anywhere so it seems like comments are the surest way to get eyes on the info here. I have been reading the bickering scene here for awhile and just recently signed-up to post, not sure how the algo works.
< Prototype or it didn't happen.
They have two working protypes already after many years of research. Check the vid.
Actually perhaps the most controversial part of what they have done with their work is validation of the Electric Sun theory. The energy spin-off was not the original goal.
About the other submission, some submissions are lucky and some unlucky. Keep trying. (I took a look, it looks too complicated. Do they have a working prototype?)
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I watched the video. It shows a device to produce plasma. Fluorescent lamps also use plasma, so I'm not impressed.
It is not a working prototype, it is just an experiment. They should show a device that can create a self sustainable reaction without being plugged in, and release energy. Specially because it is a low energy nuclear reaction (aka cold fusion) that is an area with a very shady history.
The video has some claims like "Energy density analogous to the Sun" but note that the outer layers of the Sun have a very low density.
The main result is that the device gets hot (113°C = 235.4°F), but it is only the temperature of a single spot in a big device running for a long time. Why don't they keep the temperature stable for a while?
They reuse the Hydrogen? All of them or a part is lost in fusion?
I also read the link in Science and Technology > Theory and is has a huge disclaimer and then three theories that are unrelated to how the device work and that have no experimental support and have very little support in the community.
Right, ok well thread drift seems to be the norm on HN. Connecting ideas et al. The link is to 'theenergytransition.org' -- and this is about that.
>About the other submission, some submissions are lucky and some unlucky. Keep trying.
OK, might do that with a sharper hook.
>(I took a look, it looks too complicated. Do they have a working prototype?)
Actually the mechanical induction desalinator design looks like it could be relatively simple to make with 3D printing and a pancake coil. It's on my project list. Not sure at what stage Vorsana has taken it to so far. The suite of related radial counter-flow patents were sold to an ex-employee who now has a manufacturing startup based in Vernon, BC. I think they previously ran a successful company based on prior patents from the same inventor. A similar counter-spinning design purifies water via cavitation, can be powered by a bicycle.
>I watched the video. It shows a device to produce plasma. Fluorescent lamps also use plasma, so I'm not impressed.
It's controlled ball lightning producing transmutations (like turning radioactive uranium waste into lead (Pb), apparently). And it's a possible replication of the sun, complete with solar flares.
>It is not a working prototype, it is just an experiment.
ok agreed. They were hired to test the Electric Sun theory (aka Electric Universe). Their first experiment was done in a bell jar and was successful so they built this reactor to take further measurements.
>They should show a device that can create a self sustainable reaction without being plugged in, and release energy.
Their current reactor needs to be shut down after reducing input to 7% because the temperature goes off the charts. So now they are building a new reactor that can remove heat.
>Specially because it is a low energy nuclear reaction (aka cold fusion) that is an area with a very shady history.
The shady history part is mainly one of science suppression. Amongst many others, even the US Navy SPAWAR has published replications of the original reactions. Pons & Fleischman have been fully vindicated but mainstream hasn't caught up yet. Till now the effects have not been controlled to such a level because they were working with gas loading powders etc and using heat instead of electricity.
>The video has some claims like "Energy density analogous to the Sun" but note that the outer layers of the Sun have a very low density.
Maybe you are mixing physical density with energy density? Haven't watched it all in awhile.
>The main result is that the device gets hot (113°C = 235.4°F), but it is only the temperature of a single spot in a big device running for a long time. Why don't they keep the temperature stable for a while?
See https://aureon.ca/experiment-results
>They reuse the Hydrogen? All of them or a part is lost in fusion?
Yeah the hydrogen is not consumed.
>I also read the link in Science and Technology > Theory and is has a huge disclaimer and then three theories that are unrelated to how the device work and that have no experimental support and have very little support in the community.
Right. Well I think what they are getting at is their system could be an explanation of what is being seen elsewhere in the LENR community. Their website needs work.
As mentioned in the article about Safire linked in my other comment (https://e-catworld.com/2020/04/04/all-revealed-the-safire-pr...):
>26) Are you saying that the phenomena in The SAFIRE Project reactor could be the explanation for Cold Fusion?
>Yes! Although this is not absolutely proven yet, the evidence seems to be clear. What’s important to note though is that what The SAFIRE Project has done, even without knowing, is isolate the central mechanism of LENR (probably millions or more of tiny EVOs) and produce a system that generates a singular LARGE SCALE and steady state EVO that can be reproduced on demand. So instead of having to struggle with electrolytic and powder based systems, we now have the knowledge of how to “purify” the phenomena. You see, tradition LENR systems depend upon getting hydrogen into metal which can be challenging to say the least. The fuel has to be specially treated (cleaned, degased, subjected to repeated hydrogen loading cycles, coated with nano-particles, etc) which can make the results difficult to repeat. A pure plasma based system like The SAFIRE Project reactor is FAR more reliable and potentially MUCH more powerful. Many of the variables are removed because we are no longer having to deal with the extreme complexities involved in traditional cold fusion systems.
Anyways, now some of you know. cheers.
> The shady history part is mainly one of science suppression.
Physicist love unexpected experimental results. You make a few tweaks here and there, you get a somewhat interesting result and then you have a paper or a dissertation for your graduate student.
Take for example high temperature superconductivity. The idea that a ceramic can be a good high temperature superconductor is totally ridicule. There was no theoretical explanation. But they had a good recipe to make your own ceramic superconductor, so a lot of people confirmed and improved the result.
I suspect the answer is, "There are no plans for a production reactor", but hey, prove me wrong!