6 ms·

I believe this is the development that will let us avoid run away catastrophic warming. In order to avoid catastrophic warming we have to reduce emissions by s

I believe this is the development that will let us avoid run away catastrophic warming. In order to avoid catastrophic warming we have to reduce emissions by something like 80% by 2050. That seemed a pipe dream before cheap solar panels, now it feels inevitable to me. 70% of the power generated by a coal plant is wasted in the transmission line before it reaches your home, distributed generation has this huge efficiency benefit going for it. The Chinese solar industry has gotten the price down below .50 per watt this year, in a few years it won't make sense to add carbon-sourced marginal capacity. Almost all of new demand can be satisfied with solar pv. We will have to solve the energy storage problem, and I think we will. Superconducting magnetic energy storage gives me hope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ...

jfoutz 12y ago
Flywheels are pretty neat too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
- dragontamer 12y ago
  You missed an easy pun with some outdated lingo. Lemme correct you. Ahem Flywheels are pretty fly yo.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  A lot of research has gone into flywheels over the last 40 years or so. The best that came out of that was ride-trough systems for hospitals and other large consumers (datacenters!) which catch the load until the generators can be spun up and power stabilization for wind parks (but these have now been supplanted by more solid state tech using superconductors). There are all kinds of reasons for that much too involved to go into here but for most practical (and cost efficient) applications fly-wheels are probably not going to happen unless there is a breakthrough in materials that would allow much higher RPM. Other interesting applications where the gyro bus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus ) and a similar system used to power regular cars (the flywheels were in the 100K+ RPM region and the size of a large dewar flask).
  - jfoutz 12y ago
    Well, they just don't seem as science fictiony as superconducting batteries. Coal and oil seem like great ways to store energy until you need it. Turning electricity into coal seems pretty tricky though. If the cost of panels keeps dropping like this, i think a lot more money will go into electricity storage. no idea what that storage system might be though. with home generation, batteries aren't as encumbered by size and weight when compared to a car or a laptop. Maybe some big heavy battery tech will come along and give us a good chemical storage answer. Maybe in the future, power is generated on rooftops, and large centralized installations store the excess energy till night - replacing some fraction of our current coal/oil/gas/nuke generating capacity.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
sliverstorm 12y ago
70% wasted in the transmission line, eh? Where did you get that number? http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Probably confusion with the thermal efficiency (which Wikipedia says is ~33% for coal).
xrange 12y ago
>70% of the power generated by a coal plant is wasted in the transmission line before it reaches your home ...that sounds like an order of magnitude too high. Here's couples of sites that claims that the number is 6%-7%. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Los...
- dpierce9 12y ago
  I think the 70% number includes inefficiencies associated with the generation cycle. A coal plant efficiency is around 35-40% subtract off transmission losses and you are close.
bdcs 12y ago
Just for context, solar provides <1% of world electricity and nuclear provides >10%, both of which produce very little CO2
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  I can install solar on my roof in 1-2 days (after permitting/approval). I cannot install a nuclear reactor on my roof.
  - fletchowns 12y ago
    What's the purpose of stating the obvious here?
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      My interpretation of the post I responded to was that solar and nuclear are both carbon neutral energy sources, but that somehow nuclear was "better" because it provided 10x as much power globally. My post was to articulate that solar can be deployed anywhere, much more rapidly, and is therefore the better choice. Thanks for calling me out on it!
  - cpach 12y ago
    Not yet!
  - Doji 12y ago
    They've become smaller and more maintanence-free than you might expect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      I don't doubt that, and they're probably very valuable in locations that don't get a significant amount of sunlight (near the poles), but I can walk into Costco and pick up enough solar panels to power my house.
dragontamer 12y ago
Solar is only a piece of the puzzle. The main issue is that in the US, we use up twice the amount of electricity in the day than we do at night. Spinning up and spinning down the turbines / generators causes enormous amounts of waste. Green energy can't "spin up" and "spin down" like coal, oil, or nuclear. http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/07/what-is-the-holding-capacity-of-the-us-power-grid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/07/what-is-the-hol... Some large percentage of our grid (in particular, the "dynamic" portion) will have to be Coal, Oil, Gas, or Nuclear. The Gigawatts of energy differential between day-usage and night-usage foregoes any hope of storing that energy.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Combined cycle natural gas turbines are extremely easy to throttle compared to baseload like coal or nuclear. Even most diesel/bunker fuel facilities that were used for peaking have been shuttered or switched to natural gas, because of cost as well. Natural gas turbines are just fine as a peaking stop gap until we have the renewables dispatchability problem solved.
- jgamman 12y ago
  here in NZ (no subsidies in our electricity market) we are about 70% renewable via hydro and geothermal. we run a parallel 'reserves' market (everyone does, it's there to take up the slack of a plant tripping out). typically a hydro plant will run 'tail depressed' which means it's not as efficient as it could be but can scale up within 7 seconds (there's another 7 minute reserve market). prices adjust, people get paid to conserve fuel (water) but it's availalbe when needed. fast start gas turbines are also common but these tend to be at the 10-15 min mark (which is still blistering!). tl;dr 'green' energy _systems_ spin up and spin down just like the regular kind...
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    Hydro is one of the best "green" energy sources, and we definitely need more of it. The downside is that rivers of the size that can power a Hydro-dam are relatively rare, and ecological issues (flood zones, and whatnot) need to be taken into account. So I'll amend my original post with Coal, Oil, Nuclear or Hydro. Solar and Wind are absolutely terrible at "spin up" and "spin down". So other sources are needed to cover the differential.
nawitus 12y ago
Electricity generation is only a small part of carbon dioxide emissions. If you're worried about global warming, I suggest becoming a vegan.
- jgamman 12y ago
  that's disingenuous - electricity from fossil fuels, along with agriculture and transport are the 3 biggies. it makes more sense to say "yes, but don't forget transport and food". cheap solar and electric transport are pretty closely coupled as well especially if your car(s) can seamlessly act as your battery pack reserve.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    Private car transportation is only a small part of transporation.
- Jedd 12y ago
  How would becoming a vegan materially affect carbon dioxide emissions (or more saliently, the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere).
  - amorphid 12y ago
    He's probably referring to methane produced by livestock. http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
    - Jedd 12y ago
      Hmm, but there's lots of livestock that doesn't generate methane (and she/he did specify CO2 there).
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Making everyone else become a vegan (or, at least, internalizing the externalities associated with livestock so that market forces would make that a much more common choice), but doing so yourself won't. Classic tragedy of the commons.
brc 12y ago
1. 70% loss is incorrect as others have pointed out. 2. What 'catastrophic runaway warming'? The latest IPCC report says 1.5 degrees by 2100. Neither catastrophic nor runaway. That is business as usual scenario, which doesn't factor in the development of new generation methods in the next 80 years, which is a virtual certainty.
- willholloway 12y ago
  There is a 70% loss in generation and transmission. Standard coal plants convert 30-35% of the energy in coal to electricity, ~7% is lost in the lines. https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf Runaway catastrophic warming is what we will be dealing with if we stay on the business as usual approach: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/2012... I'm basing my argument on the work of Dr. James Hansen from NASA. The IPCC's predictions keep coming back as incorrect, too conservative. The IPCC has had to rewrite their predictions, the situation is proving worse than they thought.
  - brc 12y ago
    Dr Hansen has had himself arrested for activism so many place little credence in his views, particularly as he likes to contrast his scientific work with exaggeration when talking to the media. The IPCC predictions have all been revised downward with each report. The only thing that has increased is their 'confidence level' which is not statistical confidence but author confidence. I don't know what will happen, but I do know that nobody else does, either. Every single simulation so far has been completely off by a factor which makes it worthless. The only thing we can predict is that better, cheaper forms of energy will be produced, and these are likely to be lower emissions than what we have today. Pricing out lower income people in the present day in the hope of making a difference is morally wrong in thighs is context.

jfoutz 12y ago

Flywheels are pretty neat too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

dragontamer 12y ago
You missed an easy pun with some outdated lingo. Lemme correct you. Ahem Flywheels are pretty fly yo.
jacquesm 12y ago
A lot of research has gone into flywheels over the last 40 years or so. The best that came out of that was ride-trough systems for hospitals and other large consumers (datacenters!) which catch the load until the generators can be spun up and power stabilization for wind parks (but these have now been supplanted by more solid state tech using superconductors). There are all kinds of reasons for that much too involved to go into here but for most practical (and cost efficient) applications fly-wheels are probably not going to happen unless there is a breakthrough in materials that would allow much higher RPM. Other interesting applications where the gyro bus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus ) and a similar system used to power regular cars (the flywheels were in the 100K+ RPM region and the size of a large dewar flask).
- jfoutz 12y ago
  Well, they just don't seem as science fictiony as superconducting batteries. Coal and oil seem like great ways to store energy until you need it. Turning electricity into coal seems pretty tricky though. If the cost of panels keeps dropping like this, i think a lot more money will go into electricity storage. no idea what that storage system might be though. with home generation, batteries aren't as encumbered by size and weight when compared to a car or a laptop. Maybe some big heavy battery tech will come along and give us a good chemical storage answer. Maybe in the future, power is generated on rooftops, and large centralized installations store the excess energy till night - replacing some fraction of our current coal/oil/gas/nuke generating capacity.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

sliverstorm 12y ago

70% wasted in the transmission line, eh? Where did you get that number? http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3

maxerickson 12y ago
Probably confusion with the thermal efficiency (which Wikipedia says is ~33% for coal).

xrange 12y ago

>70% of the power generated by a coal plant is wasted in the transmission line before it reaches your home ...that sounds like an order of magnitude too high. Here's couples of sites that claims that the number is 6%-7%. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Los...

dpierce9 12y ago
I think the 70% number includes inefficiencies associated with the generation cycle. A coal plant efficiency is around 35-40% subtract off transmission losses and you are close.

bdcs 12y ago

Just for context, solar provides <1% of world electricity and nuclear provides >10%, both of which produce very little CO2

toomuchtodo 12y ago
I can install solar on my roof in 1-2 days (after permitting/approval). I cannot install a nuclear reactor on my roof.
- fletchowns 12y ago
  What's the purpose of stating the obvious here?
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    My interpretation of the post I responded to was that solar and nuclear are both carbon neutral energy sources, but that somehow nuclear was "better" because it provided 10x as much power globally. My post was to articulate that solar can be deployed anywhere, much more rapidly, and is therefore the better choice. Thanks for calling me out on it!
- cpach 12y ago
  Not yet!
- Doji 12y ago
  They've become smaller and more maintanence-free than you might expect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    I don't doubt that, and they're probably very valuable in locations that don't get a significant amount of sunlight (near the poles), but I can walk into Costco and pick up enough solar panels to power my house.

dragontamer 12y ago

Solar is only a piece of the puzzle. The main issue is that in the US, we use up twice the amount of electricity in the day than we do at night. Spinning up and spinning down the turbines / generators causes enormous amounts of waste. Green energy can't "spin up" and "spin down" like coal, oil, or nuclear. http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/07/what-is-the-holding-capacity-of-the-us-power-grid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/07/what-is-the-hol... Some large percentage of our grid (in particular, the "dynamic" portion) will have to be Coal, Oil, Gas, or Nuclear. The Gigawatts of energy differential between day-usage and night-usage foregoes any hope of storing that energy.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Combined cycle natural gas turbines are extremely easy to throttle compared to baseload like coal or nuclear. Even most diesel/bunker fuel facilities that were used for peaking have been shuttered or switched to natural gas, because of cost as well. Natural gas turbines are just fine as a peaking stop gap until we have the renewables dispatchability problem solved.
jgamman 12y ago
here in NZ (no subsidies in our electricity market) we are about 70% renewable via hydro and geothermal. we run a parallel 'reserves' market (everyone does, it's there to take up the slack of a plant tripping out). typically a hydro plant will run 'tail depressed' which means it's not as efficient as it could be but can scale up within 7 seconds (there's another 7 minute reserve market). prices adjust, people get paid to conserve fuel (water) but it's availalbe when needed. fast start gas turbines are also common but these tend to be at the 10-15 min mark (which is still blistering!). tl;dr 'green' energy _systems_ spin up and spin down just like the regular kind...
- dragontamer 12y ago
  Hydro is one of the best "green" energy sources, and we definitely need more of it. The downside is that rivers of the size that can power a Hydro-dam are relatively rare, and ecological issues (flood zones, and whatnot) need to be taken into account. So I'll amend my original post with Coal, Oil, Nuclear or Hydro. Solar and Wind are absolutely terrible at "spin up" and "spin down". So other sources are needed to cover the differential.

nawitus 12y ago

Electricity generation is only a small part of carbon dioxide emissions. If you're worried about global warming, I suggest becoming a vegan.

jgamman 12y ago
that's disingenuous - electricity from fossil fuels, along with agriculture and transport are the 3 biggies. it makes more sense to say "yes, but don't forget transport and food". cheap solar and electric transport are pretty closely coupled as well especially if your car(s) can seamlessly act as your battery pack reserve.
- nawitus 12y ago
  Private car transportation is only a small part of transporation.
Jedd 12y ago
How would becoming a vegan materially affect carbon dioxide emissions (or more saliently, the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere).
- amorphid 12y ago
  He's probably referring to methane produced by livestock. http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
  - Jedd 12y ago
    Hmm, but there's lots of livestock that doesn't generate methane (and she/he did specify CO2 there).
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Making everyone else become a vegan (or, at least, internalizing the externalities associated with livestock so that market forces would make that a much more common choice), but doing so yourself won't. Classic tragedy of the commons.

brc 12y ago

1. 70% loss is incorrect as others have pointed out. 2. What 'catastrophic runaway warming'? The latest IPCC report says 1.5 degrees by 2100. Neither catastrophic nor runaway. That is business as usual scenario, which doesn't factor in the development of new generation methods in the next 80 years, which is a virtual certainty.

willholloway 12y ago
There is a 70% loss in generation and transmission. Standard coal plants convert 30-35% of the energy in coal to electricity, ~7% is lost in the lines. https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf Runaway catastrophic warming is what we will be dealing with if we stay on the business as usual approach: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/2012... I'm basing my argument on the work of Dr. James Hansen from NASA. The IPCC's predictions keep coming back as incorrect, too conservative. The IPCC has had to rewrite their predictions, the situation is proving worse than they thought.
- brc 12y ago
  Dr Hansen has had himself arrested for activism so many place little credence in his views, particularly as he likes to contrast his scientific work with exaggeration when talking to the media. The IPCC predictions have all been revised downward with each report. The only thing that has increased is their 'confidence level' which is not statistical confidence but author confidence. I don't know what will happen, but I do know that nobody else does, either. Every single simulation so far has been completely off by a factor which makes it worthless. The only thing we can predict is that better, cheaper forms of energy will be produced, and these are likely to be lower emissions than what we have today. Pricing out lower income people in the present day in the hope of making a difference is morally wrong in thighs is context.