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Solar Power isn't Feasible
Topic Started: Dec 30 2013, 12:31 AM (2,233 Views)
Brewster
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Mike
Jan 1 2014, 06:48 AM
colo_crawdad
Jan 1 2014, 06:37 AM
Mike and Brew, allow me to say it certainly is nice to have a couple of folks like yourselves who actually know something about that which hey are posting. Thanks to the both of you for the valuable information.
Lowell, I forgot to wish you a Merry Christmas, the memory is not what it once was. I do hope all is well with you and your wife and family.

In past conversations I remember that Brew and his wife have taken steps to cut energy use at his home as well. I would suggest all members here do the same, and I believe that once you look into the available products and opportunities... that any doubt or questions will be relieved. Every little bit helps and every effort is rewarded with less energy use for the nation and your family.

A penny saved is a penny earned. :smile:
Yup, still working at it, Mike.

We're busy converting our light bulbs to LED's - they're still expensive, so we're doing about one a month, changing the lights used the most first - My electric bill is already down abt $4-6 a month, I expect to have it drop about $15 by the time we're done.

We're also considering replacing our car with a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid next year - should cut our gas consumption around town almost in half. (Wanted to get a Volt, but management on our Apartment absolutely won't consider plug-ins - says the building was never built for it.)
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Brewster
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Mike
Jan 1 2014, 06:54 AM
Brew,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I pray for you and your wife daily through my prayer book. I know you two have had your battles with health issues. I never ask permission, I just do it. :smile:

The point you made is an example of what I was referring to...the answers are already being explored and acted on as alternative energy begins taking hold.
Thanks very much, and Good Wishes to you as well...

My wife and I are both in very much better health than we have been for some time - I think that I'm in the best health I've been in a decade - my doctor just finished a whole battery of tests on me, and he agrees!

I suspect the prayer helped...
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Neutral
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So now one doesn't know beans about solar unless they "say" they own a system? LOL
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Brewster
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Congratulations on once again avoiding all facts presented, Neut.

I must say, you have a real talent. You managed to reduce 11 pages of statistics, technical explanations, anecdotal evidence, strong opinions and general discussion down to a one line irrelevancy.
Edited by Brewster, Jan 1 2014, 07:28 AM.
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Neutral
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I saw no facts, just stories.
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Berton
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Mike
Jan 1 2014, 06:31 AM
Brewster
Jan 1 2014, 06:26 AM
That article is absolute rubbish, Bertie.

The only truth in it is that power ramps up & down.

That is a good thing, as they can export to other countries in midday, when consumption is at its peak, and save all those countries money.

The claim that "If Germany’s neighbors also had as many solar panels, they would all be trying to export and import at the same time, and the system would fall apart." is ridiculous on many fronts - cloud cover does not match, and never will match, and they're in different time zones anyway. The bigger the area involved, the more likely it'll all average out. And in any case, there's a new invention called Batteries, and they're getting better all the time - long before every EU country has switched to Solar and Wind , Battery storage will be common, and everybody will be using power stored in the maximum periods, when, incidentally, power will be the cheapest.

But beyond that, there's an even bigger stupidity involved = believe it or not, scientists worked out many years ago exactly when the Sun sets, and even when it rises - the claim that
"The ramp-down of solar output in the evening happens faster than the rest of Germany’s generation capacity can ramp-up. (Massive power plants can’t change output very quickly.) Which either means blackouts as people get home from work, or using non-solar-powered neighbors as buffers." is totally idiotic.

Germans are pretty smart - I bet they can figure out that they should start increasing the output of their generators 10-15 minutes before the Sun sets. And if you actually looked outside, I bet that even in Oklahoma the Sun's light doesn't disappear like somebody threw a switch - the gradual fading of sunlight is a pretty good match for the gradual increase in power output from a generator.

I note you didn't put in a link - good thinking - I'm sure it would have just made you look sillier...

Man, that Right Wing Ideology sure makes you gullible.

Nice effort at protecting your Truth Virginity tho'.
Brew,

You can store the excess energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines in water and use the super heated water to turn turbines at night for electricity production. You can also use the same to store heat in water for home heating at night or extract cold air from it to cool during the day. The objections I have read already have answers and those who embrace the objections are embracing nonsense.


Mikd, that is discussed in the article. I keep wondering why you refuse to read it.

Child, I call you that since you keep resorting to childish name calling, the link is the same. It is on page 3. A link you dismissed without reading it showing just how ideological and foolish you have become.


"Issue 3: Displacing the wrong kinds of power

You may have noticed in the daily generation chart above how wind power is throttled back when the sun comes out. Residential solar has legal right-of-way over utility-scale wind. A lot of the power generation that solar is displacing is actually other renewables. Most of the rest is displacing natural gas and nuclear power. Coal power is growing rapidly. [6,8]

Here’s what the weekly generation profile is predicted to look like in 2020:

Posted Image

[22]

Notice the saw-tooth shape of the big grey “conventional” (coal/gas) category. What all this solar is doing is eating into its daytime base load generation, which seems good for displacing fossil fuels, but in the long run, it’s doing the opposite.

The majority of electricity worldwide comes from coal and nuclear base load plants. They are big, efficient, and cheap. But base load generation is extremely difficult and expensive to throttle up and down every day. To simplify the issue a bit, you cannot ramp nuclear plants as fast as solar swings up and down every day. It takes several days to shut down and restart a nuclear plant, and nuclear plants outside France are not designed to be throttled back, so nuclear cannot be paired with the daily oscillations of PV solar. Supply is unable to match demand. You end up with both gaps and overages."
Edited by Berton, Jan 1 2014, 08:05 AM.
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Berton
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To continue the lesson for those who wish to learn.

"Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of the Fukushima accident, but the Germans didn’t really have a choice. They are being forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output. That’s a big, big problem — Germany gets four times more electricity from nuclear than solar, so the math doesn’t add up. The generation time-profile is wrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replace nuclear plants with something else.

The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas “peaker” plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and load-following gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they’re doing is building more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It’s expensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and then throttle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilities than nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has been fighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, and coal is in.

If you’re a regular follower of my writing, you’ll know what a terrible idea this is. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionably the most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistake that any group of environmentalists has ever made. It’s unbelievable how much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushima meltdown was pretty much a “worst case scenario” — one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactor meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions — and not a single person has died from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer rates due to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number too small to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful to the public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation has killed more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone had just stayed in place. [26,27]

In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceans with mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other human activity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the industrialized world. [23]

This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important. Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricity demand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damage this does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit from the solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solar power that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When you get to the “duck chart” stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you’ll end up worse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.

So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet. But there’s more."
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colo_crawdad
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Berton
Jan 1 2014, 11:47 AM
To continue the lesson for those who wish to learn.

"Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of the Fukushima accident, but the Germans didn’t really have a choice. They are being forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output. That’s a big, big problem — Germany gets four times more electricity from nuclear than solar, so the math doesn’t add up. The generation time-profile is wrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replace nuclear plants with something else.

The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas “peaker” plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and load-following gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they’re doing is building more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It’s expensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and then throttle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilities than nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has been fighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, and coal is in.

If you’re a regular follower of my writing, you’ll know what a terrible idea this is. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionably the most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistake that any group of environmentalists has ever made. It’s unbelievable how much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushima meltdown was pretty much a “worst case scenario” — one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactor meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions — and not a single person has died from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer rates due to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number too small to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful to the public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation has killed more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone had just stayed in place. [26,27]

In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceans with mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other human activity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the industrialized world. [23]

This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important. Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricity demand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damage this does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit from the solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solar power that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When you get to the “duck chart” stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you’ll end up worse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.

So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet. But there’s more."
Again, a direct quotation with no indication from whence it came. SOP

Oh yeah, there is probably somewhere in this thread a link to some source that might be the source of that quoted material. :sarcasim:
Edited by colo_crawdad, Jan 1 2014, 11:16 PM.
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Neutral
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/04/should-other-nations-follow-germanys-lead-on-promoting-solar-power/3/
Now comment on the article Colo instead of your usual games.
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Berton
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They all know where it came from Neutral. Even Fr. Mike found it and quoted the link.

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