jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Nnanji
quote:
ORIGINAL: epiphiny43
Missing from the arithmetic of the article is what life time energy resource use for wind turbines vs lifetime for any fossil system, coal, oil or 'natural gas'. What matters is total input in materials and energy to make the physical plant (Initial capital in money, materials and energy) maintenance over system lifetime, plus input in energy (Cost) during production (Real cost of natural gas or coal fired electrical generation) plus recycle costs at end of useful life. Correct size fossil fuel to energy generators, whether coal, refined oil (Gas/diesel) or gas fired are cheaper in initial capital costs. This advantage rapidly diminishes over time as fuel never gets cheaper, while wind and solar voltaic have Zero environmental or money cost energy input once situated and connected. Maintenance cost is present for all systems. More highly stressed systems have more, where low stress wind and solar have major advantages over highly stressed mobile systems (transportation 'engines', for air, truck, train, sea or air transport). NO system yet has zero negatives, land use for Wind is the most absurd of 'costs', with most wind resource in economically and agriculturally useless areas or allowing dual use. Far from perfect, it easily beats exhaust controlled large scale fossil fuel plants for major energy sourcing, and is getting better for larger percentage contributions as battery technology and system lifetimes increases almost geometrically now that major investment is being made in both low cost long life batteries for grid systems, and high energy intensity batteries for mobile electrical power systems to replace fossil fuels for transportation.
That lifetime investments in natural energy recovery systems makes sense is shown by the very practical German experience, where even at all but sub-arctic attitudes, photovoltaic passes the system lifetime comparisons with fossil energy systems, and wind is a no-brainer. China likewise is increasing wind and solar energy investment faster than any other country, because they Did The Numbers. Unlike Wall Street controlled corporations, looking at mainly short term stock prices, China practices a long term view of bringing about a sustainable society that competes favorably with the West as well as the emerging South Asian cultures and Africa, if it ever solves major corruption problems in Every country.
No existing combination of sustainable natural energy recovery matches total energy needs of a technological society, but now known to be necessary major reductions of human toxic pollutants is easily shown, without any reference to global warming. Visit any Chinese or Indian city to see what low cost, low regulation (Which go hand in hand) fossil fuel energy production does to liveable cities. When sea level rise is also considered, costs of Not doing something effective about global warming makes even novelly massive investments the Cheapest solution to disappearing land for simple living, and more important, food production. That fossil fuels do Not have a positive long term cost situation compares badly with the completely obvious fact solar and other renewable natural energy recovery system costs are in all but free fall. When mobile battery tech reaches the crossover point with gasoline for distance per charge and lifetime system cost, there goes 40% of modern urban energy use from fossil and hydrodynamic to far less environmentally damaging sources. Not even talking about basic science advances with highly unpredictable maturity arrival dates.
As for one of the other major thrusts of the article, using old tech steel production figures is disingenuous to the extreme, everyone with any familiarity with modern steel production knows once local plant regulations become realistic for human survival locally, Coal is no longer realistic for the major heat input to iron and steel refining. Coal Has been used both for heat and for carbon sourcing in steel content because coal was cheap as dirt. Now that resource extraction (No longer allowing a 'scorched earth' coal industry, despite efforts of the Trump administration to restore the unregulated ruination of the Appalachian region of the US.) transportation costs are far higher, and cheaper alternatives available, but Mostly because pollution output is regulated, as whole regions health is at stake immediately, and the forests of the Northern Temperate region as well (Acid rain has almost removed several vital forest species from the Eastern US and much of Europe, more damage being reported daily.). Structural and low quality steels stopped open hearth production long ago, during the 1970-1990 period of modernization with oxygen injection replacing single batch open hearth for low end steels. Coke (Processed coal) and coal injection amounts dropped dramatically with the new technology, and coal's huge process heat contribution largely replaced by natural gas and now electric arc. For an overview of current steel technologies: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0110/Manning-0110.html As steel production technology advances, coal use drops for many reasons, direct resource cost may be least of all, though likely sufficient reason alone.
When you discuss lifetime costs on a parity between wind and fossil based power you forgot to account for wind being a unreliable source for driving engines. With the state of battery development your projection of costs is severely limited to a slice in time when winds blow hard. Which bring up the point that a fossil fuel plant can be located anywhere and wind turbines can't on a fraction of the land.
Heat is the most energy consuming thing electricity can be used for. You have no discussion of BTU available in your cost analysis which makes your point moot.
In Germany, electricity costs about four times what it does here after the Government subsidizes it more than our government subsidies oil exploration and aquisition. Your Germany model is also not on parody with fossil fuel without taking that into consideration.
While your mention of acid rain and other negative affects of coal is noted, you don't discuss negative environmental affects of wind. Some have been mentioned above, yet when you list comparisons of coal and wind you only mentioned the problems with fossil fuel.
Hardly any of your discussion was balanced.
I find the mention of batteries when discussing large scale electricity generation for consumer use is flawed, to say the least.
No power plant has a bank of batteries to store electricity that is not being directly fed to the grid, so the current state of battery technology is unrelated to the problem at hand.
The only time batteries need to be discussed is in reference to the much praised electric car, which when you consider the carbon footprint of mining, transporting, refining, transporting again of lithium used in the batteries, well my three diesels have less of a carbon footprint over their expected lifespan.
But hey, how about an education in "alternative energy" for the masses.
Scattered around this great nation are geothermal zones, some are quite dramatic, such as Yellowstone, others not so much, such as Hot Springs Arkansas. They do have one thing in common, at some depth in the ground, water is heated up by a significant factor, and comes back to the surface.
Now, in places like Hot Springs Arkansas, by the time the water finds a way out of the ground it has cooled considerably.
However, if someone were to drill down to the point that water is being heated, and pipe that directly to the surface, it is hot enough to create steam which can spin turbines and generate electricity.
In the oil patch it is referred to the 'devil's brew' and generally not wanted.
Well, there have been a lot of groups who have, over the years, tried to bring geothermal electricity production to various places around the country, only to be shot down by locals, even locals who want 'clean' and 'renewable' energy.
Geo thermal is renewable since you pump the water right back down to where you got it once it has been used.
Technically, it is 'clean' because you aint burning nothing and you wont have any nuclear waste laying around.
So, why did those green, tree hugging jackasses fight against it?
The smell.
Even with the tightest of pipe fittings, there will be some steam leakage, and it smells like rotten eggs, the same as those wonderful, money making hot springs do.
The difference is that there water would be hotter, and thus smell worse than the springs, although it is barely noticeable once you get a couple of miles from the plant.
We want the electricity but not the smell argument killed a number of those projects.
But wait, how about an idea that has no smell?
Pumped storage hydro electric plants.
You build two reservoirs, one higher than the other, and as the upper one drains, you use that water to spin turbines to generate electricity.
The protests over those were 1) cant use the lake for public recreation, and 2) takes up a lot of land.
Yeah, about a tenth of the land needed for a solar cell power generation farm, and a shit ton less than what wind farms take up.
Of course for cars and trucks there is the Walther Turbine.
You combine hydrogen peroxide with a bit of diesel and burn it in a semi closed system. Exhaust is primarily water and oxygen. The Germans developed the engine in the late 30's for uboats, finally got around to putting it on their long range boats by the end of the war, about six were completed but never actually saw service.
Thing is, they could run those turbines completely submerged since the hydrogen peroxide was its own oxidizer, so the boats would have had all the same benefits of a nuclear boat, without the spent fuel problem.
The big three played with the engine for about 15 years after the war looking at the military applications, but nukes showed up and it got shitcanned, kinda.
Every now and then an engineer will look at it for automotive applications but that rarely goes far because hydrogen peroxide at that concentration is corrosive.
That is the government argument, completely discounting the number of industrial uses of hydrogen peroxide at a higher concentration with zero storage or accident issues.
Then there are bio fuels.
The big argument against bio fuels is that it takes land out of food production.
Well yeah, if you stick to corn, soybeans or canola beans.
However (and this is the big rub) there is a few oil producing plants, of a particular plant family that would fit the bill and will grow in soil that nothing else useful will grow in.
We are talking hemp, particularly cannabis.
Well gee, cannabis is a drug! Didnt stop the US government from paying farmers to raise the stuff in the forties and fifties to use to make rope for the navy!
On the plus side, you can take cannabis and grow it in ground that was poisoned in industrial accidents and it will draw the toxins into the plant, and after about 10 years, the ground that was too toxic to grow food is safe to grow anything.
And the toxins never make it to the oil that you press out of the plant to use in biofuel.
The real kicker is that anything you can make out of crude oil can be made out of plant oils. Plastics etc. In fact some companies are already using plant based plastics, which surprisingly enough is BIODEGRADABLE.
In fact that diesel engine was designed originally to run on vegetable oil.
And it is not big oil fighting bio-fuels, contrary to what many believe, but big government.
You see, a lot of the land presently in oil production is owned by the federal government, and even though they charge relatively low amounts for the leases, it still is a substantial source of revenues for the government.
And before some of you liberal twits go pointing the finger at the conservatives, I might point out that Obama only limited the scope of drilling on federal lands and ocean drilling, he did not shut it down. And in some fields already in production, he very quietly expanded production.
Big oil companies know and understand that their refineries would need a bit of minor updating to go to large scale bio oil processing and bio fuel production, and considering they still own large tracts of land in the US (oil companies are the 5th largest land holders in the states, either outright or by long term leases) oil companies could actually save money in the switch over and INCREASE profits substantially.
Right now, with the taxes and federal fees (part of the environmental protection crap) oil companies make 2 cents off each gallon of diesel, and little more than 6 cents off a gallon of gas.
And since processed plant oils are biodegradable, they get to save money that gets paid out on the chance that a pipeline breaks and causes a spill.
While it is true that gas engines will be burning a high alcohol content fuel, which means some tweaking of the electronics on the car controlling engines, you still end up with a carbon neutral fuel.
In other words, the technology to eliminate burning fossil fuels in cars and trucks has been around since the 1890's. A more efficient engine has been around since the late 30's.
And when you stop to think about how much corn and other high oil grains are sitting in storage silos around the great plains (much of which never actually gets used for anything other than seed when it lays around for too long) the impact on food production would be minimal.
Thus the problem of going totally green is not financial, it is perceptual.
As I said earlier, humans are inherently stupid, refusing to change their perceptions even when the benefits of said change are so obvious that a dead blind man can see them.
_____________________________
Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?
You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.
Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
|
A look at wind power - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread