A huge fusion reactor in the sky that isn't available in the evening or when it's cloudy.
Try a small game, put PR and the emotion they push aside: who need a war today? If you are honest you have to admit that the most in need of a war are UK first, USA second. UK need a war outside to avoid a civil war inside. Having essentially lost their "empire" status they are simply unable to live anymore. A war would compact people and if won give resource of the looser. USA need a war for similar reasons, mitigated by the fact that USA can actually live on it's own, even alone, "only" correcting it's crazy economy. Not easy at all, but technically possible, so practically when crisis really bite.
China do not need, but like, a war. They have a hyper big food issue, they need to conquer south America to eat. To do so they need to overpower the USA. To do so they need Russia's tech and natural resources, something Russia, a China's historic enemy, do not like that much to share to such a big & powerful giant.
Russia do not like a war at all. It's something that impose agreements with China, imbalanced. EU similarly do not need a war. It simply destroy EU itself due to the lack of natural resources.
So the plan is? Well. USA declare it essentially in the far 2004: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_Mapping%... oh, they are formally just acritical prediction from the intelligence to the politicians. But sounds really accurate. In more modern terms: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
A bottomline: saying that UK and USA need a war means their oppressive ruling classes need it, of course NOT the people, unfortunately as most people in the world those who do need the opposite of their ruling class are the last to understand they are fighting for their own enemy that's not those on the opposite front, but those who march at their head.
Russia may not like a war but Russia needs resources since it wants to be the only store in neighborhood, and unfortunately, Ukraine does have resources. War was not expected outcome of the initial scare tactic but here we are.
However both UK and USA are failed states, their extreme capitalism put too much of their population in poverty and without immigration they simply fall on their own weight.
As before they NEED a war to overthought the table and start over. And they have actually created that, it's not a secret, it's written black on white if only you read their publications from RAND to G8. They use a slightly strange vocabulary but it's clear what they state. They call themselves "the international community" or "the civilized world" but it's clear they just mean their fragmented former colonies. The same have happened in the recent past with the Korea war, as it happened their former colonies start to decide it's time to detach a bit, like SK an Japan themselves https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/japan-korea-defy-us-with-big-r... and even New Zealand https://thediplomat.com/2022/07/new-zealand-will-not-join-th... Australia itself suffering the submarines scam the UK and USA essentially have imposed to them ditching modern but limited French subs to exactly nothing since for a decade at least that's what they'll get (less than nothing since they have payed compensation for the late choice) start to falter undecided witch side to take. Only high treason neoliberal government in the EU keep the USA/UK side against their own Citizens interests.
Some in US and UK have already understood that their war is lost and they menace them to go nuclear in that case, see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-nuc... and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11110441/Henry-Kiss... but the rest of the world, the BRICS start to unite knowing that it's freedom or death for them. They have all tested the "freedom" neoliberal nazi means, to a point in eastern Europe many would welcome back Soviet Union...
The above are NOT political or ideological positions but simply facts anyone observing with honesty no matter the personal political position can't avoid to see.
Long story short: yes, is Russia that have crossed the border, but no, it's not it who start the war in reality.
Care to link to some?
Might not even be wrong to have made this choice, I can't tell — economics (which is an important part of politics) is outside my domain.
Men även med så intetsägande och generiska uttalanden betyder det faktum att jag inte kan någonting om svensk politik att jag kanske saknar något som någon svensk väljare skulle anse som "sunt förnuft".
The in-topic part is for instance about p.v.: if you think a global electricity grid as a solution you dream something that seems to be logic, if you are a manager but is a totally crazy idea because we are not AT ALL a global community. Even if some neoliberals call themselves World Government [1] the reality is that we are various States with different interests and NOTHING at a certain scale can work simply because of that, any other thing aside.
Not only: the idea that we have the production capacity, substitution included, to build and run such monster is another dream, with the same realism of those who say "hey, I produce 130% of my consumption from p.v.". It's an old classic of those who "try and fix on the go", who typically create hyper-big disasters and survive thanks to those who do not work as them. If the entire world take this path such a big fail will not be solved by anyone.
We have some effective storage, like pumped hydro, yes, but we have them where we can, we do not build mountains so far, for instance. Compressed air storage prove to be possible at a certain scale, but so far is just a promise with some experiments and honestly I doubt the actual push is ONLY for environmental and economical reasons. I think we start suspecting that oil is at the end, and we have just 2 decades or so remaining so we need to rush finding alternatives...
Sounds about right.
> If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle...
Recycling is possible — even the absolute dumbest way I can imagine, which is grind the battery into dust and put that dust into the process used to separate rocks into their constituent elements, is still better than mining the actual rocks you'd otherwise get them from.
Recycling facilities better than that necessarily only scale to whatever battery quantity existed x years ago.
But also, the pollution mostly comes from energy, so making the grid greener makes the batteries greener which makes the grid greener etc.
However, you're missing one of the cheapest storage systems: hydrogen. The round-trip efficiency isn't great, but given how cheap PV is, this isn't bad enough to be a problem.
About hydrogen... Well... How much it costs an hydrolysis plant with relevant compression system and storage PLUS the needed fuel-cell to use it once milked? Personally I've already spent for a new house, with relevant not-that-cheap systems, heat-pumps included, who might last 10 years as well (compressor), in the near future an EV who might last 10 years but 5 to 8 seems to be more realistic... Adding the price of a smaller house to add hydrogen start to be REALLY expensive. Long story short: if the Green New Deal demand such big investments I think just 2-3% of the total population in the western countries can afford it, witch does not make anything ecological just for mere scale. If we try bigger scale... So far I see nothing really big (beside old scams). Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems. Only a handful of projects do differently around the world and seems to be in a really early stage of experimentation...
I have nothing against pay to be a pre-alpha tester BUT there is a limit for that honestly...
In particular:
> Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems.
What's "PP scale"?
And are you aware the combined nameplate capacity of all global PV is now close to one terawatt?
The typical power capacity of a gas/coal/nuclear power plant vs the typical capacity of a p.v. one. In general flourishing p.v. plants are far smaller than typical fossil/nuclear power plant. Some big projects in exotic places do exists, in early stage, like the recent Uzbekistan push (who already made unrest and armed revolts) like the old Desertec scam. But real-world active p.v. power plant offer a nominal far little mean power respect of the others.
> And are you aware the combined nameplate capacity of all global PV is now close to one terawatt?
How does it count? I can state equally that the actual uranium collected in human hands can produce far far far more, but that's just a statement simply because "nominal" count nothing. What count is that so far no one is autonomous with p.v. alone, living a normal life, running business etc and so few are partially autonomous with very expensive and little lasting batteries. I'm one of them, since I have a small p.v. with lithium storage. Oh with the artificially skyrocketed electricity prices perhaps (still unsure) it will pay back. But I still need the grid for 50% of my consumption, while some state enthusiastically that "hey you can produce 130% of your energy needs", witch is formally true, practically false because I can't shift my consumption just when the Sun shine AND use it at 100%. I call it the difference between the beancounter computed reality and the physical world reality. Seeing that, and the actual climate I suspect we have the same issue with Green New Deal claims.
Why do you consider this important, rather than the aggregate output of all of them together?
As you say later, you've got PV on your own roof. If everyone in a small city does that, it's the same output as a nuclear plant, if they do that with a battery pack each (and I add a caveat about installation costs which I'm told are needlessly high in some places such as the US) then it can also be the same cost and reliability as a nuclear plant.
(Nuclear is expensive, so batteries backing PV is not (yet) no-brainer cheap, this is part of why I suggest hydrogen and/or global grid whenever the topic comes up).
> Some big projects in exotic places do exists, in early stage, like the recent Uzbekistan push (who already made unrest and armed revolts) like the old Desertec scam.
What Uzbekistan push? What are the rioters supposed to do with any of this?
What Desertec scam? The investors backing out? Because that's just normal for business, and the organisation of that name is still around.
> offer a nominal far little mean power respect of the others.
I have no idea what this is trying to say.
> How does it count? I can state equally that the actual uranium collected in human hands can produce far far far more, but that's just a statement simply because "nominal" count nothing.
What do you mean "how does it count"? It's a significant contributor to the global electricity supply.
> I'm one of them, since I have a small p.v. with lithium storage. Oh with the artificially skyrocketed electricity prices perhaps (still unsure) it will pay back.
Given lithium batteries are the most expensive storage option, and despite that cost it's still something close enough you're unsure about, and it's still getting cheaper, why are you so pessimistic?
It's important in term of national grid design: we have a grid designed to push large amount of power from a single areas to many consumers, not ones designed to move amps around a country... It's not hyper-important especially respect with the variability of the output who impose hyper-quick generators to compensate oscillations quick enough to keep the grid on, but it's still relevant because it strain the grid significantly creating locally problematic frequency perturbation.
> As you say later, you've got PV on your own roof. If everyone in a small city does that, it's the same output as a nuclear plant, if they do that with a battery pack each (and I add a caveat about installation costs which I'm told are needlessly high in some places such as the US) then it can also be the same cost and reliability as a nuclear plant.
So far it's only in my garden, having a east-west root, but the real issue is that I'm FAR from being autonomous... To be almost autonomous (witch means no grid usage most of the year) I'll need something like 200kWh storage with the needed p.v. to recharge at least 40kWh in 3-4 hours + supply in the same amount of time enough peak power to run most home appliances like 3kW (absorption) heat-pump to quickly heat enough water to pass the rest of the day, night and new early morning in cold winter days, +5-6kW of various home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, ...) to been able to very quickly do most high power usages in few hours of sunny days in winter dedicating the rest just to basic self-consumption to strain batteries the minimum possible and passing the night with no more than 15% daily DoD. That's means something impossible in essentially all EU cities (too dense) and possible only for some not-so-small homes around the EU south. Nothing more.
Oh, if I add H₂ to the game, something not on sale so far and then something I can't add anyway no matter how much money I put on the table, the price and needed equipment skyrocket even more... Perhaps in France just 2-3% of total population can do something like the only lithium + p.v. + hot water storage. All the rest can't economically and most of them even physically constrained by their homes and terrain sizes.
> What Uzbekistan push? What are the rioters supposed to do with any of this?
http://intellinews.com/sun-drenched-uzbekistan-on-the-verge-... or https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/solar-energy-project-leaves-...
something similar happen in Australia https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/bold-steps-needed-to-power...
Azerbaijan https://bbj.hu/economy/energy/green-energy/hungary-joins-aze... and others sunny and not much inhabited lands... All with similar plots.
> What Desertec scam?
http://www.desertec-uk.org.uk/reports/DII/DPP_2050_Study.pdf Desertec was, partially is, since partially was founded and some little PP was made, by a classic private-public mafia-aggregation ranging from major Germans banks, Siemens, ABB, Cevital, ... others from energy sectors, even the Morocco's Royal funds and others big names from Ignacio Campino, Fritzhjof Finkbeiner, Hassan bin Talal etc so far they have created some plants, mostly eolic, in western Sahara with a series of abuse on local population and polemics about the real usefulness of the project.
> I have no idea what this is trying to say.
Essentially that so far already-made and functioning p.v. plants have produced intermittent energy at rates well below the peak power in means. Like you have a 100MWp or a 5kWp plant, normal daily production is well below the 100MW or 5kW nominal power. For instance today my peak p.v. power was 4355W for few seconds. Most of the day I was below 3kW. That's what I'm try to say in my poor English: you can't count real power on the sum of p.v. modules peak power.
> What do you mean "how does it count"? It's a significant contributor to the global electricity supply.
We need to keep 50/60Hz in the grid. That means if we have let's say 5GW p.v. in a country during a sunny day that country still need at least 2.5 or more GW classic power plants on-line ready to compensate p.v. production variation. Of course they do not produce actually 2.5GW but to be ready and quick enough they need to be powered on and that's means they consume gas/coal etc or they are NPP and in that case there is no point in lowering their production to use p.v. since they cost the same used at full power or left in stand-by.
> Given lithium batteries are the most expensive storage option, and despite that cost it's still something close enough you're unsure about, and it's still getting cheaper, why are you so pessimistic?
So far they are the only realistic option on sale, except pumped hydro witch is not something domestic, and they have MANY issues and limits. The biggest is their limited operational life compared to their costs. You can't discharge daily more than 10-15% of the battery if you want to hope it will last around 10 years. You need to regularly fully charge the battery to balance cells, but in that case you need something, like the grid, to reject cyclic overvoltages when a load drops and the battery/p.v. inverters are not lower their production fast enough or you strain the battery anyway (similar problems for BEVs, you need to charge them 100% regularly but also need to consume a bit before drive or accept the loss of generative breaking (witch means in practice "the engine break" if you have a long descent for instance, and still strain the battery a bit when you lift the foot on the accelerator...). Even with 10% DoD/day, overvoltage rejects to the grid (CC included, something not very legal in some countries) etc you lost 1.something% a year of battery capacity.
Do you really think we can produce let's say 40kWh battery for let's say 5k€ maximum, for most homes (at least) of a country in few years + the relevant recycling when they EOLs + all the batteries needed for EV etc? I honestly doubt. It's far more likely to build many NPP in far less time.
So no, if you want a world that run on p.v. you need a global grid to harvest enough energy AND I doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level.
Harvesting from orbit beside the fact it's so far mere theory have various major issues, not just in environmental terms (a catastrophic impact, probably higher than a nuclear war on ground) but in mere technical terms: without the atmospheric shield anything in orbit at a certain scale have a very short life span. Substitute them demand a very big quantity of fossils and an industrial capacity we do not have in the entire world so far.
Nuclear fusion on ground is the most promising tech but so far it's far from being ready, seen the actual status PERHAPS we can have it at an initial general availability around 2060-2070. Before we have just fission. Now if we invest in fission witch is far from cheap and simple to build on scale it's a nonsense also investing in p.v. witch is far less expensive but for what? Once a reactor is started you consume uranium anyway, producing energy from steam or not. p.v. might play a role in averaging the load, theoretically, that means "please all loads that can be run just when the Sun shine do run them only with it", but doing so for now is pure theory and at a nationwide grid scale it's already almost impossible. Beside that we have an enormous issue: climate change. Did you know how vulnerable are infra on ground?
We try the small reactor path NOT because they are safe (it's the opposite), not because they are cheap (again, it's the opposite), but because they are flexible: instead of depend on LARGE infra we can deploy small one so reducing the impact of any outage.
In the nearer future we have the nightmarish problem of replace oil and gas sparing them for the use we do not know how to do without them. In the mid-term future we need resiliency and nuclear fission, another nightmare. In a mid-long term we hope for fusion, but we do not really know and we anyway need to essentially rebuild the changing world coping with sea levels rises, floods, landslides etc that push people in altitude locally and world-scale migration in general. That's the actual sore reality for what we can see directly and read from so many sources with contrasting interest to being able to call them very likely true.
While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.
I'm a bit skeptical, but in any case consider a thing: we need to count an initial construction BUT also a regular substitution of old modules, managing their disposal (witch actually is just shred and bury in most cases) and in doing so we need to count the life cycle: if we construct something slowly things reach EOL in small batches so we can keep a regular production since the initial demand is not hyper-big and the future substitution rate start BEFORE the initial demand finished and keep a slow rate. If we are quick:
- we need a monster production to satisfy the demand
- then the demand drops equally sharply and you get hyper-big factories who do almost nothing
- the the demand skyrocket again
If you think it's theoretical see actual Italy: a gazillion of CA infra was built quickly in few years after WWII, now are en equal batch EOL... There is a reason, more than one, why almost any big project end up badly while most small succeed...
1.740 × 10^17 W ≈ total power received by Earth from the Sun
1.91 × 10^13 ≈ average total power consumption of the human world in 2019
> If we are quick
I don't know about the growth of batteries other than "factories are being made as fast as they can be, and car companies are investing in mines now", the growth of PV is still approximately exponential. Also, if PV production switches from growth to fixed output at the end of this year, given how long the stuff lasts, it would end up in a steady state of about 8 TW nameplate capacity; given what the capacity factor is like, in practice that would be enough to make all electricity green but not enough to electrify everything else.
I'm not expecting the exponential to come to a sudden stop at the end of this year.
> most small succeed...
Do they, though? I think you're just not hearing about most of the small failures because they're boring.
About projects, in any field, big, complex projects normally never get done well, smaller normally succeed. That's is. Since it's valid from IT to A&D why it should be different for something else?
Off topic, but why do you consistently spell "which" as "witch"? I sympathise if it's ESL, but if so: the latter refers to pointy hats and pentagrams, not a determiner.
Sorry, I'm Italian living in France, my English is far from good...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector
[2] https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...
The electrical loss through HVDC cable is approximately 3% per 1000 km of cable, far less than with AC grids. The physics do work out, the only real barriers are economics and politics.
The physics works out just fine. Where did you get your information from?
See also:
"On the technology front we have covered significant ground in the past two decades. We have raised power capacity from 50MW to more than 1,400MW – enough to power several million households. We have enhanced voltage levels from 80kV to 525kV, thereby increasing distance capability from 70km to over 1,000km. And at the same time we have continually brought down transmission losses which are now at less than 1 percent." https://eepower.com/news/abb-doubles-hvdc-capacity-and-celeb...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331959599_A_compreh...
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/building-a-2... (2 billion seems too cheep)
The cables are designed for crossing relatively small bodies of water such as the Mediterranean or the North Sea, and can be tweaked for more efficiency if the goal is to cross the Pacific Ocean, but even without that, it would still work.
The rest of the day works though.
Electricity isn't stored, it is consumed.
Don't make us tap the sign.