OT: 'Photon Farming' in California

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 8:44:37 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

Do the most energy-wasteful parts of processes that have multiple
phases. Like, concentrating CO2 for deep-well return to lithosphere.

Plants have synchronized entire LIVES to hot/sunny versus cold/dark
parts of the year, for 'economical' use of their resources.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 18:18:38 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 17:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Pumped storage certainly is econmomic(al). The problem in
the UK is that there is far too little capacity to see us
through lulls in wind production.

The energy we would require to see us through such lulls
is 1200GWh.

Our current pumped storage capacity is 30GWh, and some
of that is earmarked for "black starts".

We could plausibly get up to 400GWh, but 1200GWh seems
difficult.

If /all/ our vehicles were electric and we didn't have
to worry about keeping them topped up for use as
/vehicles/, then that would be sufficient.

Source: http://withouthotair.com/download.html
pages 189-203, or chapter 26 at http://withouthotair.com/
Note the plaudits from /everybody/ from Big Energy to
Big Greens and Big Politicians.


Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.


Here we don't have enough hills and while we have plenty
of water, it flows downhill too fast
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-49199505
Shades of Oroville

Wow, that does look familiar. Water is evil stuff.

Yup, it kills many many people in many interesting ways.


About time to re-read The Nine Tailors.

Don't like DL Sayers; she was to fawningly snobbish
for my tastes. Peter Wimsey succeeded where the local
plod failed because he had the right breeding. Ugh.

She did invent the Guinness Toucan

https://vinepair.com/articles/history-guinness-toucan-ads/

which probably led to "Murder Must Advertise."

Lord P had a lot of well-bred twits as friends and relatives and
murdrers.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disastrous to the Tesla
company.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

 

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 19:59:46 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 7:35:14 PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:52:32 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:42:09 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?


Pump water!

I saw a web page showing about 94% of US energy storage is hydro, about 24 GW. Of the other 6%, thermal and battery are about 700 MW each.

So they call ordinary hydro 'energy storage' ;-).

In practice this is just a dam that can store river water for at least
one day. No hydro is used during the day, when solar is available and
the water is driven once through the turbines during the night. No
low efficiency pumping back involved.

It should be noted that the day consumption is larger than night
consumption, so that less water needs to be stored in the dam.

They use both pumped hydro. Why would you think it's not?

Pumped hydro, electrolysis+fuel cell, battery charging and discharging
is really a bad idea from the total system efficiency point of view
and can be less than 50 %.

Storing water in a dam above a hydro plant during the day and run it
through the turbines only once at night will have a good system
efficiency (90-95 %).

Charging a EV battery in real time when cheap power is naturally
available makes sense, since the battery would anyhow need to be
charged and it is discharged only on the road when the car is off-line
from the grid.

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 01:03:55 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/08/19 00:24, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:32:27 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 1:30:37 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/08/2019 17:42, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

 Pump water!

Doesn't it also coincide with peak aircon loading in the USA?

Pumped storage is very effective for storing a chunk of energy if you
have a pair of suitable lakes at very different heights and the water to
go in them. The latter possibly being in short supply in California.

Summer peak usage is late afternoon when people are returning home as well as retail and businesses are still open... same as UK and most places. I posted links to curves showing this a while back.

Solar peaks literally at midday.

What is this "sun" of which you speak?

OK, so you are in the UK where you better keep an umbrella with you
every day. If you do not get a shower, the sky is often cloudy and
not much solar power available.

Then charge EVs during midday.

Of course this require charging infrastructure in places were cars are
parked during midday, such as on company parking lots. This is not
hard to organize.

Yes, it is...

As usual, you are basing your statements on what is
familiar to you. And it just ain't as easy as you think.

In Finland block heater sockets are common. These are intended for
less than 1 kW load on average. Even on a company parking lot with at
least a hundred socket, thus a single nearby distribution transformer
can easily handle it.

Building similar parking places with 11 kW (3x16A) charging sockets
would not be much more expensive. Surely it would make sense to have a
bigger distribution transformer directly on the parking site Digging
down a medium voltage feeder to the distribution transformer would not
be much more expensive than a thick low voltage feed cables.

The city where I live deliberately restricts the number of
car parking spaces at work to *much* less than the number of
employees, so as to encourage use of public transport. I
believe other cities have similar policies.

If there are good public transport, do really have to own a car ?

Nearly a *third* of car-owners in the UK have no off-street
parking, as they live in a flat or a terraced house. That
makes it effectively impossible to charge an EV at home.

That would justify charging at the company car park, since the
installation cost per socket would be cheaper.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 04:05, Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 8:04:00 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 00:24, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:32:27 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 1:30:37 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/08/2019 17:42, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only
on good days?

Pump water!

Doesn't it also coincide with peak aircon loading in the USA?

Pumped storage is very effective for storing a chunk of energy if
you have a pair of suitable lakes at very different heights and the
water to go in them. The latter possibly being in short supply in
California.

Summer peak usage is late afternoon when people are returning home as
well as retail and businesses are still open... same as UK and most
places. I posted links to curves showing this a while back.

Solar peaks literally at midday.

What is this "sun" of which you speak?


Then charge EVs during midday.

Of course this require charging infrastructure in places were cars are
parked during midday, such as on company parking lots. This is not hard
to organize.

Yes, it is...

As usual, you are basing your statements on what is familiar to you. And it
just ain't as easy as you think.

The city where I live deliberately restricts the number of car parking
spaces at work to *much* less than the number of employees, so as to
encourage use of public transport. I believe other cities have similar
policies.

Nearly a *third* of car-owners in the UK have no off-street parking, as
they live in a flat or a terraced house. That makes it effectively
impossible to charge an EV at home.

Yes, I think at this point it is a given that the UK will not be joining the
rest of the world in reducing carbon emissions any time soon. So just assume
we are not talking about the UK when we mention these sorts of thing.

The problems I mention about living arrangements also
exist in many other European countries, and elsewhere.

I don't mention them because I don't have explicit
references, and the only knowledge I have is of visiting
many and living in a few.

You once challenged me as to how many cities/countries
I had visited, and I gave an answer.

I asked you the same question, and you never answered.

I suspect you have only visited a few cities in the USA,
but am willing to be corrected.

One anecdote:
"A colleague who lives in London did charge his car from
his terraced house and covered the cable, which ran across
the pavement, with basic safety kit to stop passing
pedestrians from tripping up. He okayed everything with
his council but ultimately his neighbours weren't happy
and he decided to give his electric car up."

BTW, I'm sure there are businesses somewhere in the UK that aren't squeezed
by the local government this way and have adequate parking. Even then it
doesn't matter really. You didn't say they have no parking. You said they
didn't have enough for everyone. So that still means there can be charging
at work. The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also
these have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For
biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae growth,
clogging fuel filters.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 08:21, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 01:03:55 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/08/19 00:24, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:32:27 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 1:30:37 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/08/2019 17:42, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

 Pump water!

Doesn't it also coincide with peak aircon loading in the USA?

Pumped storage is very effective for storing a chunk of energy if you
have a pair of suitable lakes at very different heights and the water to
go in them. The latter possibly being in short supply in California.

Summer peak usage is late afternoon when people are returning home as well as retail and businesses are still open... same as UK and most places. I posted links to curves showing this a while back.

Solar peaks literally at midday.

What is this "sun" of which you speak?

OK, so you are in the UK where you better keep an umbrella with you
every day. If you do not get a shower, the sky is often cloudy and
not much solar power available.


Then charge EVs during midday.

Of course this require charging infrastructure in places were cars are
parked during midday, such as on company parking lots. This is not
hard to organize.

Yes, it is...

As usual, you are basing your statements on what is
familiar to you. And it just ain't as easy as you think.

In Finland block heater sockets are common. These are intended for
less than 1 kW load on average. Even on a company parking lot with at
least a hundred socket, thus a single nearby distribution transformer
can easily handle it.

Building similar parking places with 11 kW (3x16A) charging sockets
would not be much more expensive. Surely it would make sense to have a
bigger distribution transformer directly on the parking site Digging
down a medium voltage feeder to the distribution transformer would not
be much more expensive than a thick low voltage feed cables.

I haven't been to Finland, but I suspect the population
density is lower and the street architecture is newer than
in much of the UK.

The city where I live deliberately restricts the number of
car parking spaces at work to *much* less than the number of
employees, so as to encourage use of public transport. I
believe other cities have similar policies.

If there are good public transport, do really have to own a car ?

Yes. But you include the key word: "if"

For the last 30/40 years our libertarian politics has taken
it as axiomatic that "the market is correct" and "the market
will provide". Consequently public transport has been
outrageously milked for profits, without corresponding investment.

Nearly a *third* of car-owners in the UK have no off-street
parking, as they live in a flat or a terraced house. That
makes it effectively impossible to charge an EV at home.

That would justify charging at the company car park, since the
installation cost per socket would be cheaper.

But if there aren't parking spaces at work and it can't
be charged at home, where can you guarantee charging your
car?

 

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 19:59:46 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 7:35:14 PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:52:32 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:42:09 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?


Pump water!

I saw a web page showing about 94% of US energy storage is hydro, about 24 GW. Of the other 6%, thermal and battery are about 700 MW each.

So they call ordinary hydro 'energy storage' ;-).

In practice this is just a dam that can store river water for at least
one day. No hydro is used during the day, when solar is available and
the water is driven once through the turbines during the night. No
low efficiency pumping back involved.

It should be noted that the day consumption is larger than night
consumption, so that less water needs to be stored in the dam.

They use both pumped hydro. Why would you think it's not?

If you insist on pumping hydro, for less environmental impact use some
old abandoned mines. If there are large empty spaces say 1000 m below
ground level, the required amount of water that needs to be stored in
the top or bottom reservoir is small with such high difference.

Even better if you can use an existing lake as the top water
reservoir. In the best case, use the ocean as the top reservoir.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 6:35:08 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also
these have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For
biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae growth,
clogging fuel filters.

The hydrogen economy freaks want you to use liquid hydrogen, which doesn't have that kind of problem.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 01:52:21 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 6:35:08 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also
these have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For
biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae growth,
clogging fuel filters.

The hydrogen economy freaks want you to use liquid hydrogen, which doesn't have that kind of problem.

How much cooling power is required to keep the hydrogen in liquid
form, especially if the extra boost by hydrogen is needed once a week
or once a month, when wind production is very small ?

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 22:18:38 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

Lord P had a lot of well-bred twits as friends and relatives and
murdrers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1FfrnOXGHg



--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't
care how we get our energy, provided the arithmetic
(technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that
if you install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW
of conventional plant. The renewable zealots also absolutely
refuse to discuss whether the cost of such "idle" conventional
plant should be added to the cost of the wind plant.

That's deceitful and objectionable.

For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also
these have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For
biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae growth,
clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees
no need for it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and
demonstrates that "the market" needs to be controlled.
But that's a heresy.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 4:22:25 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

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

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-27/tesla-battery-cost-revealed-two-years-after-blackout/10310680

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

This doesn't seem to have been one of them. He might have taken a loss if the battery hadn't been installed fast, but it seems to have been delivered when promised.

It has made a bundle - pretty much it's purchase price in the first year - for providing grid stabilising services when other suppliers go off-line suddenly and unexpectedly. It works much faster than the servicess that had been in place.

Its natural business - buying power from the grid when it's cheap, and selling it back when it isn't - makes an order of magntiude less money, but still quite enough to have made it a profitable investment.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disasterous to the Tesla
company.

Tesla seems to have just used a bunch of his car batteries. A bigger system would justify exploiting more appropriate battery technology, and investing in manufacturing it in volume.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

You didn't know how much the system costs or how much money it makes, but you still know that it isn't as cheap as it needs to be. Great insight.

Vanadium flow batteries are being touted as the more appropriate technology for the job.

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

There are working examples around, though none as big the Tesla battery bank in South Australia.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 12:09:46 AM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 8:44:37 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

Do the most energy-wasteful parts of processes that have multiple
phases. Like, concentrating CO2 for deep-well return to lithosphere.

Plants have synchronized entire LIVES to hot/sunny versus cold/dark
parts of the year, for 'economical' use of their resources.

Some time back when Scientific Ameerican was an interesting magazine to read, they had an article on carbon sequestration. A number of proposals were about removing carbon from the air. Seems a bit silly to me to release carbon in massive amounts and then try to collect it rather than sequestering it at the source. Or just not generating it in the first place.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:22:25 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disastrous to the Tesla
company.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

At this time Tesla can't take on any truly massive battery projects as they need all the batteries they make to build cars, around 25 GWh per year.

Are Li-ion batteries really needed for power buffering? Can't lead acid batteries be used? The telephone company seems to have used them successfully for many years. Li-ion are used for transportation because they have a much better energy to weight ratio.

--

Rick C.

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[Cursitor Doom]

On Sun, 04 Aug 2019 06:56:38 -0700, Rick C wrote:

> You can't. So the UK is stuffed when it comes to EVs.

Why are you and Sloman constantly bashing the UK? Some online equivalent
of penis envy?



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On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:22:25 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Last I looked Musk was paying $190/kWH for LiIon batteries. If the cells
last 1,000 full cycles, that's $0.19/kWH for the battery alone.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 7:37:15 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

Tesla seems to have just used a bunch of his car batteries. A bigger system would justify exploiting more appropriate battery technology, and investing in manufacturing it in volume.

I thought you were the "let's use car batteries while they are still in the cars" guy??? I suggested that batteries would become more specialized when used in high volume lowering the cost of utility owned batteries below the cost of using batteries in cars. Now you are agreeing?

--

Rick C.

+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't
care how we get our energy, provided the arithmetic
(technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that
if you install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW
of conventional plant. The renewable zealots also absolutely
refuse to discuss whether the cost of such "idle" conventional
plant should be added to the cost of the wind plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time. If you want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving, let someone else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the lowest cost solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil fuel plants the capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs. Remove the fuel costs and the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also
these have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For
biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae growth,
clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees
no need for it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and
demonstrates that "the market" needs to be controlled.
But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

--

Rick C.

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