Wake Up Call for Green Energy

[Gary_C]

No, this is not a political idea, it's strictly a scientific and engineering message. The idea that the world can convert and massively re-engineer our entire energy system in a few short years is best called a "pipe dream" and the evidence is piling up. In California and Illinois that I know of the government is telling electric vehicle drivers to NOT charge their vehicles right now because it could bring down the electric grid. In France they are working to restart a number of mothballed nuclear power plants to deal with an expected energy shortage now and this winter. A nephew of mine was a nuclear power plant operator in Iowa till he had to find another job (not in nuclear power) because the plant where he worked was scheduled to be shutdown very soon.

I have worked in and around electric power generation systems and know our electric grid is massive, vulnerable, fragile, widely distributed and nearly impossible to rework on short notice (meaning decades or even centuries of years at minimum). There is little margin for error as when you flip that light switch, the electricity you need is generated almost instantly. That leaves little room for error.

Green energy has just too many issues right now to be a viable complete alternative. Green energy is subject to mother nature's whims which can be location specific. With the widely distributed geography of this country, a widely distributed reliable energy grid is going to require either a viable storage system or many more electrical distribution lines to transport electricity from the haves to the have nots. Wishful thinking is not going to be enough. Then on top of the basic electric demand right now, if we try to add the energy demands of transportation on top of existing electric demand, it's just too much to expect in a short time frame.

Here is what is going on in Europe today which will be coming to this country soon.

The 'illusion' of green energy has come 'crumbling' down in Europe

[bigblockyeti]

Much of this is very promising and will be the future but not soon as you've stated.  It will be interesting to see how things develop over the next 50-100 years and how subject to software issues future technology will be.  I'm still a big fan of breaker points and carburetors but outside of a few vintage engines (mostly chainsaws in my case) such ignition & induction systems together have seen their last production days quite a while ago.

[Ianab]

One of the problems is what's called "spinning reserve". That's generating capacity that's running, but not at full load, so it can be ramped up very quickly to cover spikes in power demand. 

Traditional thermal stations (boiler / turbine) take hours to get an idle unit back online, and Nukes would be days. They do best running as "base load" with the units running at 90+% for efficiency. Natural gas or even diesel generators have a much faster startup, so are more often used as "peak" or backup. NZ has a couple of small diesel stations that are simply used as "smoothing", they can be run at low power and tweaked up and down slightly as demand (or the wind) changes. 

NZ is in a fortunate position to make almost 100% renewable electricty possible. But that's not the same as simple, and certainly not the same as cheap. The largest power generation here is hydro, which is pretty predictable short term, so generation can be ramped up in minutes (drawing on the stored water in lakes). The issue we have is a dry season, less rain going into the lakes over winter. If the lakes get too low (and the wind drops), we would run short on generation. That's a different problem from the "spinning reserve", it's more a "power storage" issue.  

One solution put forward is a big pumped hydro system, and it's in the early planning stages. It would basically double the existing hydro storage, with water being pumped up into the lake when there was excess generating capacity. Thus giving that long term reserve. 

But it won't be a cheap solution. Cost of electricity will have to go up to cover the cost. 
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/low-emissions-economy/nz-battery/lake-onslow-option/

[Joe Hillmann]

Was CA telling its citizens not to charge electric vehicles?  Or not to charge them at times of high demand?  There is a big difference.

An electric vehicle that doesn't use it's full range every day could be part of the solution.  They can be charged at times of day when demand is lowest then backfeed that power to the house or grid when demand is high while hanging on to enough charge to cover much more than the driver uses on a typical day.  That way even though the house is using the same amount of energy it is able to shift almost all of it's consumption to times of lowest demand and none durring peek hours.

[Southside]

Not sure I want to walk up to a 1/4 full pickup after I filled it up in the morning and I need to run a bunch of errands an hour away before places close for the weekend, especially when we are talking about hours to refill the battery.  

There is no substitution for grid capacity.  If we are going to add demand, we need to add even more capacity to account for disruptions, fluctuations, etc.  Basically look at the Colorado River issue right now, at the end of the day it's the additional demand (people) that are causing the shortage, not the supply fluctuation.  

[joe_indi]

Instead of sole dependency on electricity, why not explore possible substitutes for fossil fuel ? Maybe bio fuel?
For the past 10 year i have been using upto 40% vegetable oils in my turbo  diesel  car and nearly 70% in my car with a naturally aspirated diesel car. The latter has a higher compression ratio.
I collect used cooking oils, unsellable cooking oils from oil mills and even the accumulated sediments of mills, use a regular deep fat fryer  set at its lowest temperature to allow heat to clarify the oil. 
I use this clarified oil as fuel. Sometimes I blend in .5% gasoline to lower the flash point of the oil. No adverse effects , no visible pollution if the vehicle pollution testing center results are to be believed. And, it reduces my fuel bills quite a bit. Works bests in my non turbo car since the 21:1 compression ratio ensures clean burn at all engine speeds and engine smoothness

[Southside]

My LBZ has never run better, or had better economy than when it runs on B99 diesel, and that's the pump stuff.  I am familiar with gasoline / diesel blending like you mention using cold pressed sunflower oil and up to 20% gasoline - produces more HP in equipment than dino diesel.  Pretty obvious when you can pull a 40' fallow master in one gear higher by just changing what went into the tank.  

[stavebuyer]

I have a small solar set-up at my off-grid farm and have dozens of solar lights on my various outbuildings. I am plenty supportive of the concept. I was also a very early user of cell phones(Motorola bag-phone in the mid 90s) and no longer have a landline telephone. Time and technology marches on. Electronic ignition has proven to be much more reliable than points. I am very pleased with my electronic Stihl's and my battery powered hand tools but there is no alternative for a felling chainsaw as of yet so don't outlaw the gas model I depend on or the diesel tractor on my farm that has no electric service.

I am a firm believer that the market will deliver solutions if allowed. I also believe Isaac Newton summed things quite nicely with his "Equal and Opposite Reaction" theory and that some amongst seem to buy into the idea that government can provide a free lunch. Somebody somewhere has to pay and the ecological savings from "clean power" in LA will be paid for with sand dredging, copper mining, aluminum smelting somewhere else and the third world miners doing the mining and smelting will someday want their own air conditioners and cell phones too.

If the world lies at a tipping point it is because too many are consuming too much and that people fighting for survival in Sri Lanka or Somalia have their own concerns and air quality or a temp rise in LA probably isn't too high on their list of priorities. The money being spent to "outlaw" fossil fuel in the developed world will achieve nothing on the gobal scale as the third world will be glad to gobble up and burn the oil we abandoned. Let the "Alternatives" develop on their own, spend a few tax dollars to subsidize research and help the less developed become more efficient.

If electric cars and solar power prove to be superior the market will adapt without coercion or management by government "experts".

[Ianab]

f electric cars and solar power prove to be superior the market will adapt without coercion or management by government "experts".

I understand your point, but if you rely 100% on pure economic forces you might not like the results. It's pretty well accepted that uncontrolled burning of coal is a bad idea.  General air pollution / acid rain / cancerous chemicals etc, without even getting started on CO2. 

So Govt policies discourage coal use for sensible reasons. Same with car air pollution standards, airline safety standards etc.   

[Ianab]

Instead of sole dependency on electricity, why not explore possible substitutes for fossil fuel ? Maybe bio fuel?

It's being done. Air NZ has been working with Boeing / Airbus and the engine makers to test various vegetable oils in jet engines. It can be done, but there are of course issues with certifying the fuels and engine to make sure they work. No good if the fuel turns solid at -50C when you are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean etc. 

Brazil is already a big user of Ethanol Fuel, with regular gas being E25 and most new cars able to run on E100 (pure Ethanol). This has of course required some Govt "encouragement" in the form of higher taxes in gas vs ethanol. But once that playing field is set up car makers have had no problem producing vehicles that work properly on "flex fuel". 

But  like a lot of things, what's technically possible and what scales up to large scale adoption are two different things. Like where is all the vege oil and ethanol going to come from? Maybe rows of sugar beet planted between the solar panels ??? 

[bigblockyeti]

The money being spent to "outlaw" fossil fuel in the developed world will achieve nothing on the gobal scale as the third world will be glad to gobble up and burn the oil we abandoned. Let the "Alternatives" develop on their own, spend a few tax dollars to subsidize research and help the less developed become more efficient.

If electric cars and solar power prove to be superior the market will adapt without coercion or management by government "experts".

Truer words have never be written.

The ethanol thing was great in concept and poor in execution, again, not political but as explained by a fellow engineer.
America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows - YouTube

[Walnut Beast]

Electric cars are nothing new! 1909 Baker electric car that Jay Leno owns and drives 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnjMdzGusc

[jb616]

Interesting comparison of E 85 to Gasoline from Edmunds.  In the long run the E 85 cost $30 for for the same trip even though the initial cost/gallon was lower. Also the lbs of CO2 emitted was only 3.5lbs more with gasoline because of the increased use / efficiency of the ethanol. https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/e85-vs-gasoline-comparison-test.html

[bigblockyeti]

It also can be a range issue if you're in the middle of nowhere, like 300 miles between stations and your vehilce will go 350m on E0 but only 290 miles on E85, makes the last leg walking with a gas can a bit more unpleasant.

[Joe Hillmann]

Not sure I want to walk up to a 1/4 full pickup after I filled it up in the morning and I need to run a bunch of errands an hour away before places close for the weekend, especially when we are talking about hours to refill the battery.  

There is no substitution for grid capacity.  If we are going to add demand, we need to add even more capacity to account for disruptions, fluctuations, etc.  Basically look at the Colorado River issue right now, at the end of the day it's the additional demand (people) that are causing the shortage, not the supply fluctuation.  

That is where you plan in advance, if you know tomorrow you will need to drive more than what you usually do you keep more of a charge in your battery.  The average EV has a range of 250 miles at 40kwh.  The average daily commute in America is 40 miles.
Lets knock off the top and bottom 10% of the battery and say the realistic range is 200 miles or 32kwh.  If you want to keep 100 miles of range in your battery that leaves you 16 kwh of electricity that you can use to power your home or back feed the grid during peak hours. Since the average home use 30kwh's per day that 16 kwh would cover half the needs of the house and still allow you to drive 100 mile.  If you have an energy efficient house and conserve due to shortages you could reduce that 30kwh down to 20 or even less without making huge sacrifices.
I don't disagree that more load means they need more production, but batteries in every drive way can help to even out when the load is needed and not require more expensive peaker plants to switch on reduce the rick of power outages, and if there are power outages the houses can use the power from the battery to continue life as normal.

[Joe Hillmann]

Instead of sole dependency on electricity, why not explore possible substitutes for fossil fuel ? Maybe bio fuel?
For the past 10 year i have been using upto 40% vegetable oils in my turbo  diesel  car and nearly 70% in my car with a naturally aspirated diesel car. The latter has a higher compression ratio.
I collect used cooking oils, unsellable cooking oils from oil mills and even the accumulated sediments of mills, use a regular deep fat fryer  set at its lowest temperature to allow heat to clarify the oil.
I use this clarified oil as fuel. Sometimes I blend in .5% gasoline to lower the flash point of the oil. No adverse effects , no visible pollution if the vehicle pollution testing center results are to be believed. And, it reduces my fuel bills quite a bit. Works bests in my non turbo car since the 21:1 compression ratio ensures clean burn at all engine speeds and engine smoothness

For some reason biofuel was mostly skipped in the attempted switch from gasoline and diesel to electricity.  Even though gas vehicles being made and sold to day may still be working 20-30 or 40 years from now so having a way to power them on man made fuels from renewables feels like it should have been a priority.
  Especially since there are many applications where electric simply won't work,  It would be easier to run farm equipment that is run 20 hours a day at harvest time with some type of liquid fuel than it would be to run it on electricity due to the charging time and the fact that most fields don't have charging stations set up for the two times a year that a bunch of equipment will be needing to recharge in a very short window.  A  fuel that can be brought out in a fuel truck and fuel things up in minutes is what is needed for most farm and construction equipment and isn't possible with batteries YET.  Man made fuels from renewables would be a great midway point between diesel and electricity.

[Jeff]

How come we hear very little, actually nothing about tidal energy.

[Southside]

Nobody makes any money that way?

[brianJ]

How come we hear very little, actually nothing about tidal energy.

As I understand, several demonstration projects have shown just how harsh a salt water environment is for generators.   The robustness needed for this makes the resulting economics laughable.

[Jeff]

You mean, like wind.
So how much energy do you feel is expended to lift a 1200ft fully loaded container ship twice at dock for 24 hrs if you had to do it without the tide? How much would it generate when it went back down, without the tide.

[Hilltop366]

I'm in the neighbourhood of some of the worlds highest tides (Bay of Fundy), there is a tidal generator in Annapolis Royal on the river where they trap the tide going up but it was shut down a few years ago after running for almost 40 years.

There has been testing on in stream generators around Brier Island near Digby (they look like stout windmills) but I think all of them have failed before they ever got corroded by getting beat up by the tides and big rocks moving around. I think that the engineers under estimated the power of the water there.

I have thought of the idea of large containers being floated up and down with the tide actuating a generator, I figure if they were on a pole of some sort you could have one that fills up and goes down with the tide (or shortly after) then empties to float up again and another that fills up and waits until the tide is down so it can generate power when the other one is at ebb tide then empty and wait to go up to generate power when the other is at flood tide that way there would always be power generated with no interruptions at ebb and flood tide.

The tide height at Digby is about 20' further up the bay it gets to 50'.

[peakbagger]

How come we hear very little, actually nothing about tidal energy.

There is actually a fairly active industry trying to come up with tidal energy projects that are affordable and durable. To date the most promising units are capturing power from underwater currents. The problem is its very rough environment. There are some prototypes that go for tidal action but they tend to be very complex and dependent on incentives. 

[stavebuyer]

DDT was a "wonder chemical" until it wasn't. California's Imperial Valley can feed us all. Hydro is the solution, but now we are tearing out the dams. Atoms will power the future; we are smart enough to build failsafe systems and deal with the waste. Coal causes acid rain; but Wyoming's cleaner coal can fix that. Natural gas is clean and abundant. Thats the path to energy independence. 

I am uneducated yet smart enough to know that I don't know. Seems to take the highly educated a while longer to come to that conclusion. Anything new and implemented on a grand scale is going to generate unintended consequences because we are nowhere near as omnipotent as we imagine ourselves to be. A lesson we seem unable to learn.

But this time will be different.  :D

[newoodguy78]

It's amazing the amount of education that goes into becoming totally oblivious and void of common sense. 

[Ianab]

Anything new and implemented on a grand scale is going to generate unintended consequences because we are nowhere near as omnipotent as we imagine ourselves to be. A lesson we seem unable to learn.

I agree.

But you have to wonder if burning a zillion tons of previously buried hydrocarbons  doesn't fall into that class.  100 years is "new" in geologic terms where changes occur over tens / hundreds of thousand years.