OT Marine cloud brightening

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:11:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

Of course the Ivanpah pilot plant didn't bother to use molten salt as a heat transfer medium so doesn't demonstrate that. That must have taken a lot of serious influence from the fossil carbon extraction industry.

Solar Two had had thermal storage back in 1995, and Solar Tres - now being built in Spain - will have enough to make it a 24-hour generator (at least in summer), but Ivanpah managed to miss out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

That was hugely expensive at $2.2 billion for only about 400 MW peak,
thus more than $5 / W. Since the capacity is only about 25 %, for such
plants (on different continents) would be required a constant 400 MW,
so in reality the cost would be more than $20 / W.

Compare that to recent nuclear projects. To produce the same as a
1600 MWe nuclear plant, thus four sites (at different continents) with
four CSP plants on each (to reach 1600 MWpeak), thus the total cost
would be $35 billion. Even the worst nuclear price estimates sounds
cheap .

 

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 07:11:45 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
<gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

On Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 2:26:57 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 10/9/19 10:29 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 11:09:34 AM UTC+11, George Herold wrote:
This is interesting,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XRTiojqqJ3wrFFZAf/can-we-really-prevent-all-warming-for-less-than-10busd-with

Read the first comment too.

Lomborg is famously crooked. That doesn't mean that the approach couldn't work, but if he likes it you need to look for lots of reliable supporting evidence, and look at all of it very carefully, because his mode of operation is to produce claims that look plausible until you look at them very carefully.


Of all the things you could do to help mitigate global warming letting
engineers loose on the problem to try and come up with some fucking
clever way to have-cake-and-eat-it-too is probably the worst one.

Yeah (sarcastically) best to let the politicians handle it.

Why not. It _is_ a political problem. Science or engineering have
nothing to do with it but surely high enough taxes will fix it.

 

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 21:21:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 10/10/19 11:09 am, George Herold wrote:
This is interesting,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XRTiojqqJ3wrFFZAf/can-we-really-prevent-all-warming-for-less-than-10busd-with

I linked this article to Blair Trewin, a friend of mine through
orienteering. Blair is Australia's leading climatologist (was head of
the World Meteorological Survey for a couple of years recently). His
first comment was as follows:

"The principles appear sound (although the uncertainties on the
modelling outcomes would be large - clouds are hard to model), but the
practicalities are formidable - you'd have to be continuously seeding
all relevant clouds (probably an area of millions, if not tens of
millions, of square kilometres). I couldn't find any background on the
costings but suspect that $10 billion might be out by at least an order
of magnitude, perhaps much more."

Chump change. Hell, the Demonrat's "health care" plan ("Medicare for
no one") is four orders of magnitude more expensive than that.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2:03:30 AM UTC+11, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:11:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:


Of course the Ivanpah pilot plant didn't bother to use molten salt as a heat transfer medium so doesn't demonstrate that. That must have taken a lot of serious influence from the fossil carbon extraction industry.

Solar Two had had thermal storage back in 1995, and Solar Tres - now being built in Spain - will have enough to make it a 24-hour generator (at least in summer), but Ivanpah managed to miss out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

That was hugely expensive at $2.2 billion for only about 400 MW peak,
thus more than $5 / W. Since the capacity is only about 25 %, for such
plants (on different continents) would be required a constant 400 MW,
so in reality the cost would be more than $20 / W.

Compare that to recent nuclear projects. To produce the same as a
1600 MWe nuclear plant, thus four sites (at different continents) with
four CSP plants on each (to reach 1600 MWpeak), thus the total cost
would be $35 billion. Even the worst nuclear price estimates sounds
cheap .

And solar cell farms are even cheaper. They need storage. At the moment the grid battery market is pretty much in the start-up phase, but once solar cells get their next factor of ten scale-up in volume, halving the unit price again, the demand for grid storage is going to increase dramatically, justifying the same kind of scale-up in production volume.

This isn't guaranteed to halve the unit price - vanadium flow cells

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

do depend on vanadium. There's quite a bit around, but not a lot of it is being dug up at the moment

https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-resources-and-advice/australian-resource-reviews/vanadium

It's a transition metal, a good deal less abundant even titanium, but there's still quite a bit around, and it may take a while to get mining and extraction going in volume.

There are lots of other battery chemistries. Presumably we'll find one that can be produced cheaply, in volume.

And there's always the point that a big gas-fired backup generator doesn't cost a lot to keep ready to go, even if it runs only 5% of the time.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2:37:38 PM UTC+11, k...@notreal.com wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 07:11:45 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

On Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 2:26:57 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 10/9/19 10:29 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 11:09:34 AM UTC+11, George Herold wrote:
This is interesting,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XRTiojqqJ3wrFFZAf/can-we-really-prevent-all-warming-for-less-than-10busd-with

Read the first comment too.

Lomborg is famously crooked. That doesn't mean that the approach couldn't work, but if he likes it you need to look for lots of reliable supporting evidence, and look at all of it very carefully, because his mode of operation is to produce claims that look plausible until you look at them very carefully.


Of all the things you could do to help mitigate global warming letting
engineers loose on the problem to try and come up with some fucking
clever way to have-cake-and-eat-it-too is probably the worst one.

Yeah (sarcastically) best to let the politicians handle it.

Why not. It _is_ a political problem. Science or engineering have
nothing to do with it but surely high enough taxes will fix it.

The decision to tackle the problem is obviously political. Science and engineering have come up with more or less affordable solutions to the problem but the people who make a lot of money out of digging up fossil carbon and selling it as fuel have enough political clout - at least in the US - to block the implementation of any solution that cuts into their cash flow.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2:40:38 PM UTC+11, k...@notreal.com wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 21:21:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 10/10/19 11:09 am, George Herold wrote:
This is interesting,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XRTiojqqJ3wrFFZAf/can-we-really-prevent-all-warming-for-less-than-10busd-with

I linked this article to Blair Trewin, a friend of mine through
orienteering. Blair is Australia's leading climatologist (was head of
the World Meteorological Survey for a couple of years recently). His
first comment was as follows:

"The principles appear sound (although the uncertainties on the
modelling outcomes would be large - clouds are hard to model), but the
practicalities are formidable - you'd have to be continuously seeding
all relevant clouds (probably an area of millions, if not tens of
millions, of square kilometres). I couldn't find any background on the
costings but suspect that $10 billion might be out by at least an order
of magnitude, perhaps much more."

Chump change. Hell, the Demonrat's "health care" plan ("Medicare for
no one") is four orders of magnitude more expensive than that.

And the US health care system is half as much again more expensive per head than anybody else's, and delivers poorer outcomes.

That has to be a much more extravagant waste of money. Obamacare did halve the number of Americans who didn't have health insurance - from about 16% to about 8%.

Every other advanced industrial country has some form of universal health, so complaining about the cost of the American system is the kind of idiocy that only someone as brain-damaged as krw could go in for.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 20:41:28 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2:03:30 AM UTC+11, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:11:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:


Of course the Ivanpah pilot plant didn't bother to use molten salt as a heat transfer medium so doesn't demonstrate that. That must have taken a lot of serious influence from the fossil carbon extraction industry.

Solar Two had had thermal storage back in 1995, and Solar Tres - now being built in Spain - will have enough to make it a 24-hour generator (at least in summer), but Ivanpah managed to miss out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

That was hugely expensive at $2.2 billion for only about 400 MW peak,
thus more than $5 / W. Since the capacity is only about 25 %, for such
plants (on different continents) would be required a constant 400 MW,
so in reality the cost would be more than $20 / W.

Compare that to recent nuclear projects. To produce the same as a
1600 MWe nuclear plant, thus four sites (at different continents) with
four CSP plants on each (to reach 1600 MWpeak), thus the total cost
would be $35 billion. Even the worst nuclear price estimates sounds
cheap .

And solar cell farms are even cheaper.

That is exactly my point, you can get raw PV panels for $0.25/W and I
do not expect that a fixed mount and mains inverter would drive the
price above $0,5/W, this Ivanpah CSP is just 10 times more expensive
at $5/W.

>They need storage.

I am not so sure about that.

First of all, there is a big difference between day and night
consumption. It is perfectly OK to install solar panels with a peak
production as large as the day/night difference. Using 1.5 to 2 times
installed capacity so that some panels can be installed pointing to E,
SE, S, SW and W.

At low latitudes, in which the sun rises and sets rapidly, the sun is
high enough to avoid most air mass loss (AM) the nearly the full power
output can be obtained from about 1 hour after sunrise to one hour
before sunset. Using tariffs will push some of the late evening
consumption to earlier sunny hours.

If significant amount of hydro is available, close the turbines during
the day and run them only during the night. This moves upwards the
sensible maximum installed solar capacity. Only if too much solar
power is installed, then the question of storage becomes significant.

One way to extend the limit of how much unreliable renewable
generation (wind/solar) is sensible to install is to use continent
wide HVDC links to cross weather systems and also time zones (both
consumption as well as solar generation).

One must be a really desperate alarmist if one intends to live with
100 % from (unreliable) renewable and only then are large scale
battery storage needed.

At the moment the grid battery market is pretty much in the start-up phase, but once solar cells get their next factor of ten scale-up in volume, halving the unit price again, the demand for grid storage is going to increase dramatically, justifying the same kind of scale-up in production volume.

This isn't guaranteed to halve the unit price - vanadium flow cells

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

do depend on vanadium. There's quite a bit around, but not a lot of it is being dug up at the moment

https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-resources-and-advice/australian-resource-reviews/vanadium

It's a transition metal, a good deal less abundant even titanium, but there's still quite a bit around, and it may take a while to get mining and extraction going in volume.

There are lots of other battery chemistries. Presumably we'll find one that can be produced cheaply, in volume.

And there's always the point that a big gas-fired backup generator doesn't cost a lot to keep ready to go, even if it runs only 5% of the time.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 5:21:46 PM UTC+11, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 20:41:28 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2:03:30 AM UTC+11, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:11:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

<snip>

And solar cell farms are even cheaper.

That is exactly my point, you can get raw PV panels for $0.25/W and I
do not expect that a fixed mount and mains inverter would drive the
price above $0,5/W, this Ivanpah CSP is just 10 times more expensive
at $5/W.

They need storage.

I am not so sure about that.

First of all, there is a big difference between day and night
consumption. It is perfectly OK to install solar panels with a peak
production as large as the day/night difference. Using 1.5 to 2 times
installed capacity so that some panels can be installed pointing to E,
SE, S, SW and W.

At low latitudes, in which the sun rises and sets rapidly, the sun is
high enough to avoid most air mass loss (AM) the nearly the full power
output can be obtained from about 1 hour after sunrise to one hour
before sunset. Using tariffs will push some of the late evening
consumption to earlier sunny hours.

If significant amount of hydro is available, close the turbines during
the day and run them only during the night. This moves upwards the
sensible maximum installed solar capacity. Only if too much solar
power is installed, then the question of storage becomes significant.

One way to extend the limit of how much unreliable renewable
generation (wind/solar) is sensible to install is to use continent
wide HVDC links to cross weather systems and also time zones (both
consumption as well as solar generation).

One must be a really desperate alarmist if one intends to live with
100 % from (unreliable) renewable and only then is large scale
battery storage needed.

George Monbiot's "Heat" published in 2006

https://www.monbiot.com/books/heat/

estimated that we need to cut CO2 emissions down to about half a ton per head per year to stop anthropogenic global warming getting worse.

Burning fossil carbon to generate electric power isn't practical if we are going to get there. There's nothing "desperately alarmist" about this observation.

Solar cells have halved in price since then. Battery storage hasn't had a much work yet.

<snipped the stuff where I made the same point at greater length>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney