6 ms·

Altering Course: Why the US may be on the cusp of an energy revolution

44 points by ozdave 11y ago

adventured 11y ago
Almost comically, at the same exact time the pronouncement has been: 'we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters' - we are in fact on the cusp of vast, important technology revolution everywhere you look. Peter Thiel lamented at exactly the wrong time; his statement will, fittingly, coincide with a new epoch of forward progress. - Robotics everywhere - Virtual reality - Stem-cell tech, organ growing, a leap forward in drug breakthroughs (eg Sovaldi) - Transportation (self-driving, electric, hyperloop) - Energy (rapid solar & wind build-out, rapidly falling battery costs) - Artificial intelligence - Nanotech & materials - Indoor farming - Drone tech, which will soon touch everyone and every thing in some form
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  He also understate the importance of those 140 characters by a huge margin. All that progress would take much longer without the Internet.
- nightski 11y ago
  Wasn't that statement in reference to Silicon Valley? Sure some of it is coming from there, but a lot of it is not.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Not just Silicon Valley. It's part of his broad argument that we're seeing a slow down in the rate of progress and innovation (specifically the sort that benefits society), that we're stagnating.
    - digikata 11y ago
      I've been wondering if that these are all coming to a cusp, not soley because of some tech driven revolution, but because there's a shift of who controls investments, in turn driven by a generational changeover in business/industry leadership. (baby boomers are retiring...)
- Alchi 11y ago
  I read Thiel's argument more like a cultural criticism than the lack of talented inventors coming up with great things. Being engineer myself, I believe it's impossible to be a good or sane one without being optimistic. However we always must be aware of the broader society and HN does not represent it. There always was some societal resistance to technological change. Socrates hated books, for example. But take anti-vaccers. This is a group of people who reject an undeniably proven and extremely beneficial to society advancement, because they don't trust doctors and scientists. Or take GMOs. In Europe some countries have banned growing of them and it seems to be because of popular pressure. So if you are a talented crop geneticist you are out of luck. And if you do work in the field of your interest, you probably do at the eviil Monsanto. Because they are the only ones that are big and rich enough to enable them to lobby politicians to stay in business. We should be optimistic of future, but look at the broader culture. After all art does capture the zeitgeist and one of the most popular album of the year 2014 was titled - 1989... (music's nice though)
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Good points, but people are right to be skeptical. Often the technology can be very damaging, from lead (in paint and in the atmosphere) to asbestos to industrial accidents to partially hydrogenated fats to climate change, tech has created a lot of suffering and usually that cost is mostly externalized on the victims. I don't reject all tech, but we can't realistically want people, especially those without the resources to understand it for themslves, to just trust the engineers and scientists.
nostrademons 11y ago
The issue with renewables has always been cost, not theoretical efficiency limits. I recall computing (and then finding that others had computed on the Internet) that a 50x100mi array of solar panels in the Arizona desert could power the U.S. with energy left over, and that was at efficiency levels of a decade ago. I talked to a couple founders at this year's startup school that said that solar was poised to reach grid parity with coal this year, i.e. without tax subsidies it would become cheaper to install solar panels than to buy that electricity from the electric company over the life of the panels. Pretty exciting times, if true.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  No the issue with renewables is storage.
- pkaye 11y ago
  Did you factor in the transmission losses to move the electricity from the Arizona desert to the rest of the US?
  - SapphireSun 11y ago
    You don't have to put it all in AZ, though I'm not sure what the efficiency impact would be. The AZ concept is a thought experiment to demonstrate a simple capability, not a fully engineered solution.
    - CyberDildonics 11y ago
      Nothing goes over my head, my reflexes are too fast.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Also, night time.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    That's only about 5% if we build HVDC lines.
markbnj 11y ago
I always enjoy a good energy discussion, but I'm a little dismayed when someone claims to come to the conclusion that we can have a renewable energy economy without lifestyle changes, and then doesn't deal with any of the really hard problems. National grid? Electric cars? Pfft. We already know how to do the first, and the second is closer every day. What about electric over-the-road trucks? Container ships? Jet airliners? Trains we can do. What about bulldozers and all the stuff we use to shape the earth to be the way we want it? Will we be able to use electricity to heat asphalt for road repair? For some of these things the answer is surely yes, but for a lot of stuff centrally generated and transported electric power just won't cut it. There's a staggering amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline, and part of why we are where we are as a species is because you can carry a gallon and a chainsaw five miles into the woods and clear half an acre in a day. And then we could talk about rubber substitutes, plastic, ammonia fertilizer from natural gas, pharmaceuticals, etc., etc. That tasty carbon-rich brew is in fact the underlying basis for the entire Western way of life.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Just replacing grid electricity and cars to renewables you get us 80% there, and make that looming peak oil 5 times easier to handle. Once we get there, we can start thinking about every niche that still uses fossil fuels. People don't need to replace all energy usage at once. Also, people can't do that, and shouldn't anyway because it's a huge risk to throw everything away and start anew.
  - markbnj 11y ago
    I don't disagree, and it will happen because it has to, or we all go out of business. But the article just seemed to me to paint too rosy a picture of a painless transition to renewables without actually getting into the really hard stuff. And by that I mean the things for which we currently have no replacement, or only early concepts of what a replacement might be for fossil fuels.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > And by that I mean the things for which we currently have no replacement, or only early concepts of what a replacement might be for fossil fuels. Can you expound on this? Biofuels will (hopefully) be used for aircraft (best case, algae produced at airports, converted into biofuels), and we can already create plastics from corn and other crops.
jonknee 11y ago
The US is already in the midst of an energy revolution, just not the renewable one in question. Fracking has changed the game and pushed the US into being the largest oil producer in the world. Hopefully fracking's cheap oil won't push the renewables timetable too much farther down the road.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Most fracking expansion in the US has come to a screeching halt due to Saudi Arabia's production rate (which they're using to try to kill fracking). This is only prolonging the oil pain though, as the capital expenditures have already been made and the wells established. You'll see consolidation in the tight oil space over the next year as company's default on their (excessive) debt, and wells come back online as the price of oil heads back up to $100/barrel (futures markets are already predicting ~$70/barrel by the end of the year). So you'll see these erratic price movements in the oil market (death throes?) while this transition to electrification continues; renewables investments aren't directly affected by the price of oil due to them not directly competing with oil (oil = vehicles/airplanes/trucks, renewables = electricity market).
  - adventured 11y ago
    That's not accurate. US oil production is up 10% over this time last year. Most fracking expansion has come to a halt, not fracking itself. The vast fracking production gains have not been reversed. And above $60 to $65, expansion will pick up (which has already begun; along with EOG announcing it will pick up at about $65). Production is currently running near recent record highs: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRFPUS2&f=W http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WC...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Thanks for correcting me. I've updated my post. Also: "Half of U.S. Fracking Companies Will Be Dead or Sold This Year" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/half-of-u-s-fracking-companies-will-be-dead-or-sold-this-year http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/half-of-u-...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Bognar 11y ago
It looks like we killed it. Here's a text-only cache/mirror from Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SmNdAIe4LBMJ:harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/altering-course&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SmNdAIe...
x0054 11y ago
After reading the DC power travels better than AC power, I was skeptical. After a bit of googling I found this article: http://theenergycollective.com/rogerrethinker/204396/ac-versus-dc-powerlines http://theenergycollective.com/rogerrethinker/204396/ac-vers... Its a really good read about how DC power does indeed travel a lot better, especially under sea or under ground. The problem with DC power is that DC/DC transformers are still expensive, and not as efficient as AC/AC transformers.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  Also, breakers are more difficult for DC. But yes, DC does have its advantages. Power through wires scaling with r^2 versus r, no RMS losses, no phase issues, no capacitance losses.

44 points by ozdave 11y ago

Almost comically, at the same exact time the pronouncement has been: 'we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters' - we are in fact on the cusp of vast, important technology revolution everywhere you look. Peter Thiel lamented at exactly the wrong time; his statement will, fittingly, coincide with a new epoch of forward progress. - Robotics everywhere - Virtual reality - Stem-cell tech, organ growing, a leap forward in drug breakthroughs (eg Sovaldi) - Transportation (self-driving, electric, hyperloop) - Energy (rapid solar & wind build-out, rapidly falling battery costs) - Artificial intelligence - Nanotech & materials - Indoor farming - Drone tech, which will soon touch everyone and every thing in some form

marcosdumay 11y ago
He also understate the importance of those 140 characters by a huge margin. All that progress would take much longer without the Internet.
nightski 11y ago
Wasn't that statement in reference to Silicon Valley? Sure some of it is coming from there, but a lot of it is not.
- adventured 11y ago
  Not just Silicon Valley. It's part of his broad argument that we're seeing a slow down in the rate of progress and innovation (specifically the sort that benefits society), that we're stagnating.
  - digikata 11y ago
    I've been wondering if that these are all coming to a cusp, not soley because of some tech driven revolution, but because there's a shift of who controls investments, in turn driven by a generational changeover in business/industry leadership. (baby boomers are retiring...)
Alchi 11y ago
I read Thiel's argument more like a cultural criticism than the lack of talented inventors coming up with great things. Being engineer myself, I believe it's impossible to be a good or sane one without being optimistic. However we always must be aware of the broader society and HN does not represent it. There always was some societal resistance to technological change. Socrates hated books, for example. But take anti-vaccers. This is a group of people who reject an undeniably proven and extremely beneficial to society advancement, because they don't trust doctors and scientists. Or take GMOs. In Europe some countries have banned growing of them and it seems to be because of popular pressure. So if you are a talented crop geneticist you are out of luck. And if you do work in the field of your interest, you probably do at the eviil Monsanto. Because they are the only ones that are big and rich enough to enable them to lobby politicians to stay in business. We should be optimistic of future, but look at the broader culture. After all art does capture the zeitgeist and one of the most popular album of the year 2014 was titled - 1989... (music's nice though)
- hackuser 11y ago
  Good points, but people are right to be skeptical. Often the technology can be very damaging, from lead (in paint and in the atmosphere) to asbestos to industrial accidents to partially hydrogenated fats to climate change, tech has created a lot of suffering and usually that cost is mostly externalized on the victims. I don't reject all tech, but we can't realistically want people, especially those without the resources to understand it for themslves, to just trust the engineers and scientists.

nostrademons 11y ago

The issue with renewables has always been cost, not theoretical efficiency limits. I recall computing (and then finding that others had computed on the Internet) that a 50x100mi array of solar panels in the Arizona desert could power the U.S. with energy left over, and that was at efficiency levels of a decade ago. I talked to a couple founders at this year's startup school that said that solar was poised to reach grid parity with coal this year, i.e. without tax subsidies it would become cheaper to install solar panels than to buy that electricity from the electric company over the life of the panels. Pretty exciting times, if true.

happyscrappy 11y ago
No the issue with renewables is storage.
pkaye 11y ago
Did you factor in the transmission losses to move the electricity from the Arizona desert to the rest of the US?
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  You don't have to put it all in AZ, though I'm not sure what the efficiency impact would be. The AZ concept is a thought experiment to demonstrate a simple capability, not a fully engineered solution.
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    Nothing goes over my head, my reflexes are too fast.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Also, night time.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  That's only about 5% if we build HVDC lines.

markbnj 11y ago

I always enjoy a good energy discussion, but I'm a little dismayed when someone claims to come to the conclusion that we can have a renewable energy economy without lifestyle changes, and then doesn't deal with any of the really hard problems. National grid? Electric cars? Pfft. We already know how to do the first, and the second is closer every day. What about electric over-the-road trucks? Container ships? Jet airliners? Trains we can do. What about bulldozers and all the stuff we use to shape the earth to be the way we want it? Will we be able to use electricity to heat asphalt for road repair? For some of these things the answer is surely yes, but for a lot of stuff centrally generated and transported electric power just won't cut it. There's a staggering amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline, and part of why we are where we are as a species is because you can carry a gallon and a chainsaw five miles into the woods and clear half an acre in a day. And then we could talk about rubber substitutes, plastic, ammonia fertilizer from natural gas, pharmaceuticals, etc., etc. That tasty carbon-rich brew is in fact the underlying basis for the entire Western way of life.

marcosdumay 11y ago
Just replacing grid electricity and cars to renewables you get us 80% there, and make that looming peak oil 5 times easier to handle. Once we get there, we can start thinking about every niche that still uses fossil fuels. People don't need to replace all energy usage at once. Also, people can't do that, and shouldn't anyway because it's a huge risk to throw everything away and start anew.
- markbnj 11y ago
  I don't disagree, and it will happen because it has to, or we all go out of business. But the article just seemed to me to paint too rosy a picture of a painless transition to renewables without actually getting into the really hard stuff. And by that I mean the things for which we currently have no replacement, or only early concepts of what a replacement might be for fossil fuels.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > And by that I mean the things for which we currently have no replacement, or only early concepts of what a replacement might be for fossil fuels. Can you expound on this? Biofuels will (hopefully) be used for aircraft (best case, algae produced at airports, converted into biofuels), and we can already create plastics from corn and other crops.

jonknee 11y ago

The US is already in the midst of an energy revolution, just not the renewable one in question. Fracking has changed the game and pushed the US into being the largest oil producer in the world. Hopefully fracking's cheap oil won't push the renewables timetable too much farther down the road.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Most fracking expansion in the US has come to a screeching halt due to Saudi Arabia's production rate (which they're using to try to kill fracking). This is only prolonging the oil pain though, as the capital expenditures have already been made and the wells established. You'll see consolidation in the tight oil space over the next year as company's default on their (excessive) debt, and wells come back online as the price of oil heads back up to $100/barrel (futures markets are already predicting ~$70/barrel by the end of the year). So you'll see these erratic price movements in the oil market (death throes?) while this transition to electrification continues; renewables investments aren't directly affected by the price of oil due to them not directly competing with oil (oil = vehicles/airplanes/trucks, renewables = electricity market).
- adventured 11y ago
  That's not accurate. US oil production is up 10% over this time last year. Most fracking expansion has come to a halt, not fracking itself. The vast fracking production gains have not been reversed. And above $60 to $65, expansion will pick up (which has already begun; along with EOG announcing it will pick up at about $65). Production is currently running near recent record highs: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRFPUS2&f=W http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WC...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Thanks for correcting me. I've updated my post. Also: "Half of U.S. Fracking Companies Will Be Dead or Sold This Year" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/half-of-u-s-fracking-companies-will-be-dead-or-sold-this-year http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/half-of-u-...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Bognar 11y ago

It looks like we killed it. Here's a text-only cache/mirror from Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SmNdAIe4LBMJ:harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/altering-course&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SmNdAIe...

x0054 11y ago

After reading the DC power travels better than AC power, I was skeptical. After a bit of googling I found this article: http://theenergycollective.com/rogerrethinker/204396/ac-versus-dc-powerlines http://theenergycollective.com/rogerrethinker/204396/ac-vers... Its a really good read about how DC power does indeed travel a lot better, especially under sea or under ground. The problem with DC power is that DC/DC transformers are still expensive, and not as efficient as AC/AC transformers.

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
Also, breakers are more difficult for DC. But yes, DC does have its advantages. Power through wires scaling with r^2 versus r, no RMS losses, no phase issues, no capacitance losses.