The Energy Thread

Even after a dam's reservoir is largely silted up, there's nothing preventing the fall of water through the turbines. What's lost is the ability to store large quantities of energy for use in low flow seasons, as well as ample irrigation & recreational water.

I haven't read anything about the effect of a river carrying its normal sediment load would have on the turbine blades, but it wouldn't be too difficult to continually dredge a small settling pond around the water intakes to minimise that.

a new kind of hydro power may be at the horizon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AjszftPlmc

what he says is interesting but for some reasons it doesn't look like the academic world is rushing to get in on that. maybe it's bunk.

doesn't seem scalable

ugh fuck these people

developing "model legislation" to repeal renewable energy portfolio standards and then passing it around to various state legislatures to try and get them passed

that's their thing, and they are wildly successful. i'm surprised they didn't try it earlier on. republican controlled state legislatures are DYING to shit all over renewable energy, this is like one of their main causes.

yeah they are sponsoring crazy insane legislation in NC and Kansas among other states, pure evil.

in other depressing news,

As IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven points out in the introduction to the report, we are way behind in pretty much every area needed to address the global warming challenge.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/reality-check-renewables-arent-cleaning-up-the-global-energy-system

whenever I feel down about the true viability renewable energy, I am always encouraged by how hard the fossil fuel industry and their pocketed legislators are fighting to kill it.

well mixed-source renewables have reached grid parity in Australia and Hawaii (i.e. same price as fossil fuel), so there is hope.

I mean if they weren't potentially viable, there'd be nothing to lobby against.

efficiency is more ... well efficient in reducing reliance on fossil fuels. unfortunately it's not as simple to sell as a solar panel.

Germany was getting 70% of it's electricity from solar power during periods of Summer 2012. And Germany isn't exactly the sunniest region! and like sleeve mentioned, renewables are at or approaching price parity with coal in many places. with even a small price on carbon (one not even approaching the true costs of using fossil fuels), the whole process would accelerate dramatically. it totally is possible. but if the u.s. congress can't even stand up to the NRA in the wake of a series of tragedies that are immediate, tangible, and provoking of widespread public mourning, they're going to have an even tougher time standing up to fossil fuel interests with even more money/influence, and with consequences of climate change that aren't as tangible and immediate as school massacres.

also, Shakey otm about efficiency. I do solar quotes as part of my day job, and I am continually amazed/horrified at Americans and their excessive energy usage. single family homes using 3,000 kWh a month - almost triple what we use with five people in our house. and almost all of them are weirdly fixated on covering 100% of their usage with solar, as opposed to trying to reduce their usage first. then, when you give them the inevitable answer - that there isn't enough room on their roof to cover more than 20% - the response is usually "well, can't you make better panels?" fucking America, RIP.

yeah everyone is like, DON'T TELL ME HOW MUCH ENERGY TO USE I NEED IT ALL

I left that light on in an empty room FOR A REASON

in ALEC news, the North Carolina bill to repeal their state's RPS has died in committee, with six Republicans voting AGAINST it. This is good news!

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nc-renewable-energy-standard-scores-surprise-win

!!

the republicans must have been confused or something?? i don't understand! still, great news, hopefully a harbinger for similar efforts!

A study out in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined attitudes about energy efficiency in liberals and conservatives, and found that promoting energy-efficient products and services on the basis of their environmental benefits actually turned conservatives off from picking them.

...The study then presented participants with a real-world choice: With a fixed amount of money in their wallet, respondents had to "buy" either an old-school light bulb or an efficient compact florescent bulb, the same kind Bachmann railed against. Both bulbs were labeled with basic hard data on their energy use, but without a translation of that into climate pros and cons. When the bulbs cost the same, and even when the CFL cost more, conservatives and liberals were equally likely to buy the efficient bulb. But slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says "Protect the Environment," and "we saw a significant drop-off in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option," said study author Dena Gromet, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/04/how-do-you-get-conservatives-buy-energy-efficient-products/5435/

god i fucking hate people

isn't that reaction the opposite of being conservative

literally speaking

wow that is amazingly stupid. i'm wondering if this is a case of hating the band because of its fans. and by "band" i mean the planet we need to exist.

conservative pours cyanide into drinking water. "ha! take that you sissy planet loving liberals." drinks it, dies. ghost of conservative doomed to roam a dead planet for eternity: it was worth it!

or could be that environmentalism has become a partisan political stance that makes some people squeamish. wanting human civilization to continue as radical, controversial politics. still fucking stupid and unfortunate.

well, then there's this, from the last few paragraphs of the article:

That doesn’t necessarily mean green advocates need to somehow cover up the environmental benefits of a policy or product: A study from Stanford psychologists released last December found that re-framing environmental messaging in terms of preserving the "purity" of the natural world resonated morally with conservatives.

so...don't talk about protecting the environment...but do talk about preserving the purity of the natural world?

brb i have to go have outside and try to convince an inanimate object to do something

must increase amount of virginity in the air

hmmm ... protect the environment could imply people are doing bad things to the environment ("protecting" here meaning from people), whereas preseving the purity of the environment eliminates that baggage and just focuses on the good.

Surprisingly quiet here about fracking. Been big protests in Balcombe about this (see here, for example), two boys in America are banned for life to even speak about (this), but ths new fracking frenzy seems unstoppable. Injecting chemicals into the earth to get gas, yeah, great idea...

Solar’s Insane Cost Drop

A lot of the price drop reflects China's intensely competitive solar panel manufacturers pricing below total costs (incl. plant & equipment), and a few have or will go into receivership once their bonds come do. Suntech Power, LDK Solar, Shanghai Chaori were the first to default. With the inevitable consolidation, and as the capital costs of solar manufacturing are incorporated into panel prices (demanded by future investors), I suspect we'll see some rebound.

The price collapse has been terrible for the U.S. solar panel industry.

but good for the US installer industry, correct? I mean, I see your point and have read a lot about it, but it's not as if US solar mfg was ever going to be competitive on a global scale.

FTC literally just approved much more restrictive tariffs against an expanded definition of the supply chain, here's a good overview:

http://pv.energytrend.com/research/20140607-6854.html

How many years do you have to have solar before it pays for itself?

depends on which state you're in and the incentives they have in place, look up your state here to get an idea of payback time on 5 KW:

http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/

(lowest payback time in the US right now is around 6 years, I think)

The US solar installer industry is coining it right now. It has some of the most expensive costs of install in the world. Australia and Germany, both nominally higher wage countries can install panels a lot cheaper than the US. It's a bit difficult to pin down why this should be but the sales model (a lot done by leasing) doesn't seem to incentivise competition on total system price.

a lot of it is soft costs, the permitting is s total mess, each city is different. It needs to have standardized national procedures, which will never happen bcuz America.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509196/why-solar-installations-cost-more-in-the-us-than-in-germany/

the lasing companies don;t seem to care about cost, just how much power they can cram on a roof. I looked at a leasing quote today that had half of the system at a 318 degree azimuth, which would be insanity if you were paying for it yourself.

Ed I'm finally starting to see some installers in higher volume areas get down below $1 per watt, FYI

CLUI looks at the big solar farms being built in the SW: http://blog.art21.org/2014/06/10/solar-boom-a-possible-energy-future/#.U5h3ZPRdXbA

It's interesting because the Australian market competes based on how cheap it can make a nominal 'system'. Maximum inverter size is capped depending on who your distribution network provider is and that cap can be quite small, as low as 3kW i n some areas. The advertising sticker price is some number below $3000, you might see reference to a number of panels in the advert but rarely will you see any mention of the capacity of the system. I suspect the sales process is very much like buying a car and it's almost impossible to get the sticker price.

for any policy geeks out there, the Hawaii grid situation is fascinating/horrifying right now:

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hawaii-crosses-the-energy-rubicon

(speaking of system caps)

Hawaii thing is crazy. we've done some work there (and tried to get more) but omg it is such a nightmare dealing with them

I mean this is just insane:

MECO had been curtailing 28 percent of the output from three wind farms in deference to its own, more expensive, oil-fired generation. This was wasting almost 16 gigawatt-hours of power a year -- a number expected to rise to more than 54 gigawatt-hours.

fucking utilities

Without knowing more I can't be exact but it is not always possible to curtail the output of a thermal plant below a certain value and stopping and starting a thermal plant can be expensive and time consuming. This is the nature of base load power. Without large scale energy storage we are going to see more and more of these anomalous situations where power at essentially zero marginal cost is being dumped in favour of power with significant marginal costs because of the need to provide a reliable network.

Islanded grids like Hawaii are the canary in the coal mine, the current grid model does not suit renewables and highly distributed generation. Now we have renewables that are at parity, if not cheaper, than traditional fossil options we have to rethink the grid. The grid was designed as a hierarchical centralised system to maximise the efficiency of a few large generators. It needs to transition to a peer-network of smaller distributed generators, storage and loads. Theres obviously the massive issue of incumbent monopolies holding on sunk capital that they expect or have been promised a return on. The model that drove those investments is no longer fit for purpose.

For MECO to move beyond the above situation they would have to write off/down significant assets which is finically untenable and make massive new capital investments in storage so they can dispense with the oil plant. In the mean time more and more customers will discover that they can meet their own needs partially or wholly from solar, storage and other technologies, diminishing revenues for the utilities. The utilities are in a bind of their own making but most people will still need a network to provide reliability, I'm not sure the utilities are agile enough to move to the new model, but they currently own the infrastructure needed to support that model

topping and starting a thermal plant can be expensive and time consuming

this is a big part of the problem in Hawaii as I understand it

"stopping", obv

more on Hawaii today:

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/A-Solar-Permit-Slowdown-is-Chilling-Oahus-Installer-Market

I was referring to their building wind farms before dealing with the tie-in issues, if that wasnt clear. My company was doing some pv feasibility studies for some prospectively huge installations and the big issue we came up against was tying them into the grid, regulatory issues, etc. Their regulatory framework is totally fucked up and outdated. HECO is going to have to eat some capital losses, there's no way around it.