Wind and Solar Power Could Meet 80% of US Electricity Demand

[1_rick]

Seagulls and Pigeons are parasites. Owls are....

Who doesn't like a nice pair of hooters?

 

[Deleted member 126051]

LOL. You should tell all the people living off grid that their solar power system is a hoax. I'm sure they'll be glad you gave them a heads up.

Meanwhile, the best way to improve battery technology -- which is how we address match generation and demand -- is to invest in it...

Yeah. All the people who're checking their batteries before running the coffee maker and waiting for really sunny days before doing laundry or taking it into the coin-op in town to do.

Either that or they're living in an area with large amounts of sunshine with being overcast is rare (like the American Southwest).

Otherwise, they're also running generators day in and day out to make up their energy needs.

Few of them are running 10-20KW setups with sufficient battery capacity to run for more than a day or two in conservation mode.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Perhaps, but unlike solar, fusion remains theoretical.

Fission now. Clean, dependable.
Augment with utility grade Hydro and Geothermal where it makes sense.
Further augment with utility grade solar, wind & wave (again, where it makes sense) for peaking.

But, quite literally, there is no feasible, economical way to build enough power storage to cover renewables as a baseline power source. It's just not stable enough.

And, if we ever get fusion working properly, replace the fission plants.

Build such fission sites to be modular. Using BANKS of tractor-trailer-sized reactors.
Then, when it's time to decommission one, you shut it down, let it cool down.
Pack it into a lined travel casing and send it out to be refurbished.
Then just plug another unit in.

This kind of modular build-out would be almost ideal for LFTR.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Technically solar is fusion.

Generally there's implied control over the actual power SOURCE itself.

If you, somehow, have a way to control the nuclear reactions in a star, you're fucking underpaid man...

 

[Gigus Fire]

Generally there's implied control over the actual power SOURCE itself.

If you, somehow, have a way to control the nuclear reactions in a star, you're fucking underpaid man...

So geothermal isn't a real way to generate power according to you? Wind isn't either? Good to know.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Hmmm...if only Earth were a globe.

Okay, some of the longest power lines in the world are interlinks in China. 800Kv lines carrying something like 7.2 GW and running 2900 Km. And the power lost on that line is HORRENDOUS.

The power lost just stepping it UP to 800Kv is horrendous.
The power lost stepping it back down, in phases, to 220/120V is horrendous.

2900 Km...

The STRAIGHT LINE distance from Hong Kong to San Diego is 11,816 Km.
And you won't find a utility in the world who would drop such a power cable in the ocean. PERIOD.

 

[Brian_B]

One thing I do agree about from the Obama era is that you need an" all-of-the-above", diverse energy solution.

Solar isn't bad, unless you do trying to pave over the entire state of New Mexico with it (then I think a lot of New Mexicans would have something to say about it).

Nuclear isn't bad, until it is. And it's expensive, but it checks a lot of the right boxes: carbon free, very high power density, and a few decades worth of trial and error/research into the development of it. I actually wouldn't mind having a reactor in my back yard, I've done a lot of nuclear work in the past. But a few large centralized plants aren't always the best idea, and small distributed nuclear has a whole host of security and other issues that go with it.

Wind works well, in certain spots. But I don't think throwing a 50 sq mile wind farm out in the ocean is a good idea.

Biomass solves a lot of problems and utilizes a lot of existing technologies, but it's the second-most expensive power there is (second only to nuclear).

Fossil Fuels aren't bad by themselves, but if you are reliant upon them for all your energy, things start to break down (like they have been). There is a very large infrastructure in place that relies largely on fossil fuels now, and fossil fuels, for the moment, are relatively inexpensive and dependable. But they are a finite resource, and pollution is an issue (carbon, nox, sox, soot, mercury, etc).

I'm all for people putting solar roofs on homes, solar car ports - solar is good. But you can't think (with a rational and practical mindset) that solar is the only solution that is needed for a national power grid. You lean too heavily on solar, you have to start counter-balancing with batteries, and while I'm also all for energy storage, and yes, investment brings down the price, but you can only force technology to move so fast, and no matter how much money you throw at it, some commodities are still going to be rare and only get rarer with heavier use.

It takes a little bit of everything. Let various geographical areas play to their strengths. Ease permitting, eminent domain, and environmental restrictions for transmission projects (not generation projects, that's different). Continue to subsidize energy storage and transmission research. I'm generally against carbon taxes, but I actually do think that a universally applied, fair method of attributing an environmental cost for generation is worth discussing that would include more than just carbon. For example, solar has a large land use requirement and disposal concerns, lithium has recycling concerns, nuclear has long-term waste issues, etc. --- but that starts to get political real fast and once that happens, the science goes out the window.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Yeah - nukes. Supplemented by distributed rooftop solar and powerwall-type batteries to lessen the centralized need.

Screw wind. Ugly, takes up tons of space, even MORE variable than solar.

This sort of micro-generation is always going to be a trivial thing.

1: The sheer QUANTITY of battery required would basically consume battery production for the entire planet for more than a year. And that's just for the US!

Battery-backed home solar is about fixing costs for power over a 20-40 year cycle. Not about leaving the planet cleaner.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

So geothermal isn't a real way to generate power according to you? Wind isn't either? Good to know.

I didn't say that solar couldn't be a HARVESTED power supply.
Just that, if you wanted to call it "fusion", you're playing a little fast and loose with the terminology.

 

[Brian_B]

And you won't find a utility in the world who would drop such a power cable in the ocean. PERIOD.

Now it's not 8000+km,

But there is a 53-mile HVDC interlink that connects San Francisco to the main power grid that was recently constructed - so San Fran could shut off their local diesel generation. It runs at 200kV, and transmits up to 400MW of power, under the ocean.

I admit that crossing the Bay isn't the same thing as crossing the Pacific. But going underwater isn't an insurmountable task... and we have been transporting energy across the ocean for a really, really long time now. It's just been bound up in hydrocarbons and shipped via large supertankers.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

I doubt that centralized solar and wind farms are the future.

Once solar panel efficiency gets up over 40% and prices drop, nobody will have asphalt shingles on their roofs anymore, they will have solar "shingles". People will have battery storage to charge their cars at night and to supply their home's evening electrical demands. Industry will buy power off of the residential homes and the residential power grid will power businesses during the day. (Those businesses that don't have enough solar capacity on their buildings for all of their needs.) For industrial parks, there will still be natural gas demand generators to augment the residential solar supply.

It makes perfect sense. The infrastructure (power grid) is already in place.

The solar shingles will also have a benefit in that they will help pay for your house through the sale of excess electricity.

Just my $0.02.

BP

Let me correct this for you.

"If solar panel efficiency gets up over 40%. And if prices drop enough. Many people with sufficient money will look at solar as a more viable option."

Will it replace asphalt shingles on the low-end? Unlikely.


As for the utilities, they're NEVER going to be huge fans of buying power off their customers.
First off is the cost.
Second off is the dependability.

And NO, the power grid ISN'T already in place for something like this.
Most of the US power grids are set up for one-way transmission, utility to point of sale.
Re-engineering to accept power BACK from the grid requires expensive retrofitting. And in a lot of places, rather than actually try to stabilize the dirty power coming back from the end-users, they simply dump it into the ground.

 

[Gigus Fire]

I didn't say that solar couldn't be a HARVESTED power supply.
Just that, if you wanted to call it "fusion", you're playing a little fast and loose with the terminology.

No, it is fusion. The sun is a huge fusion reactor. PV converts the output (light) into energy. You don't need control of a source of energy to call it what it is, you just need to harness the source. Just like hydro electric harnesses the sun and gravity, yet we have no control over the sun and no control over gravity, we just utilize it in an ingenious way to generate electricity. Just like tide generators would harness the power of gravity and the moon.
If you think about it, most energy production harnesses heat. Nuclear is just heating water to steam and turning a turbine. It's not like we're converting gamma radiation into electricity directly. Anything in which we can create heat or push things generates energy for us. PV is one of the only sources of energy which we utilize materials that create electricity from light directly.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Now it's not 8000+km,

But there is a 53-mile HVDC interlink that connects San Francisco to the main power grid that was recently constructed - so San Fran could shut off their local diesel generation. It runs at 200kV, and transmits up to 400MW of power, under the ocean.

I admit that crossing the Bay isn't the same thing as crossing the Pacific. But going underwater isn't an insurmountable task... and we have been transporting energy across the ocean for a really, really long time now. It's just been bound up in hydrocarbons and shipped via large supertankers.

Exactly. The problems are:

A) The distance
B) How high they'd have to step up the power to go over that distance
C) The consequent transmission losses.
D) The consequent heating from said transmission loss
E) Coming up with a coating that could handle that sort of thing long-term.
F) You're essentially crossing not one, but TWO tectonic subduction zones. How does one stop the cable from eventually getting dragged in?
G) You're also dropping into the area of one of the deepest ocean crevases in the world.

There is no single, or group of energy utilities that's going to spend the cash for that. They'd simply run a land line up through Russia, across the Bering Straight, through Alaska, and down through Canada first.
And the cost of THAT kind of cable outlay would be MONSTROUS.

And I'm sorry, there's a HUGE difference between tankering oil and trying to set up a 12,000 trans-Pacific power interlink.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

No, it is fusion. The sun is a huge fusion reactor. PV converts the output (light) into energy. You don't need control of a source of energy to call it what it is, you just need to harness the source. Just like hydro electric harnesses the sun and gravity, yet we have no control over the sun and no control over gravity, we just utilize it in an ingenious way to generate electricity. Just like tide generators would harness the power of gravity and the moon.
If you think about it, most energy production harnesses heat. Nuclear is just heating water to steam and turning a turbine. It's not like we're converting gamma radiation into electricity directly. Anything in which we can create heat or push things generates energy for us. PV is one of the only sources of energy which we utilize materials that create electricity from light directly.

Fine. You want to claim it's magical unicorn farts too? Go ahead.

I'm freshly out of fucks to give.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Oh yea, I would rather have this over those windmills any day. But can you do me a favor and have nuclear plants built near your home? That would great. No reason really.

What you're looking at there aren't even the reactors. That little brown building in the lower left?

THAT is the reactor building.

What you're seeing there are just the cooling towers for the water turbines.

If we could get off our current solid-fuel, boiling water reactor system, and use some newer heat recovery technology, they could reduce the size and steam output of such cooling towers.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Saw that coming. The problem is that society as a whole has to change to address the problem.

But like I said...our current lifestyle is unsustainable. Sooner or later, if we don't do it, it will be done for us. And that would be ugly.

Actually, power consumption is flattening out in the US.

Also, 40% of all power consumed in the US is consumed by BUILDINGS.

Simply tweaking building codes towards better air sealing and slightly higher levels of insulation can result in significant savings in residential sectors ALONE.

So instead of getting shitty building envelope and an OMFG kitchen with $300/month energy bills, you get a tight building envelope, a nice kitchen, and energy bills in the $100-150 range.

And look at projects like the Empire State Building energy retrofit.

They looked at all the options, and just went after the low-hanging fruit.
The three main things were:

1. New windows (technically they rebuilt the ones they had)
2. New HVAC system
3. Energy efficient lighting.

They basically cut their energy consumption for the whole building by something like 38%. Something like $4.4 MILLION in power bills A YEAR.

I'm not saying rebuild everything TODAY or anything dumb like that.

Just saying that new construction, and intelligent retrofitting when it comes up, can allow us to continue making greater demands on our power infrastructure in one area while decreasing them in others, effectively balancing it out.


So no, our lifestyle is NOT unsustainable.
Changes just need to be made in WHERE we demand power.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

A perfect way to have solar and not build huge arrays is simply to have homeowners install solar shingles onto their homes and add to the grid.
There would have to be some incentive of course, tax breaks or the government helping.

This won't happen though since power companies would be cut out from the loop unless THEY used your home and installed the shingles.
If they gave you free energy by using your property to produce power they can then sell the extra, it could be a win-win.

Again, this will require massive upgrades to the grid.
And such a placement would have to happen in conjunction with the local utility so they can tune and balance the grid.
Otherwise you just have lots of "dirty" power inputs.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Good call, we should probably go back to this, much better:

Nobody's saying "strip mine the earth dry".

Just that Solar and Wind simply aren't going to get us there.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

How about we just reduce the human population by 80%. That'd fix a lot of problems.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Wow. That was amazingly clever. I never thought anyone would've responded that way.

How about... reduction over time by limiting new births? Oh, but no! That would be UNFAIR. Better to keep increasing populations until the planetary ecosystem collapses under its weight. That's a *really* good plan, and no amount of carbon-emission taxes, wind farms, or solar power generators are going to stop that from happening. At this rate, it's just a matter of time.

Yes. Because population control works SO well in China.

And it's just SO humane! Ask all the girl children!

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Okay and let me be clear here.

I have NOTHING against Wind, Wave, Solar, Hydro or Geothermal. They all have their place.

For the NOW, what I'd prefer to see.

Rebuild our various national grids into a single grid (or at least a group of fully compatible, fully interconnected grids)
Build nuclear (fission) with a goal of 125% of our peak load power TODAY. Build towards modularity and newer, passively safe tech like LFTR, etc.
Exploit Geothermal and Hydro where we can.
Using utility-grade Wind, Wave and Solar, along with various forms of power storage (Flywheel, pumped hydro, battery) for future peaking.
Commodity grade battery backed solar on homes as well as possibly micro-wind on farms and the like, with the ability to sell back to the grid in an on-demand fashion. This could help stabilize supply/demand issues on local grids, leaving regional and transit grids less taxed.

Start doing carbon offset work, desalination in areas with water issues, etc, with the surplus power.

Additionally, if we ever get fusion power to the point where it can replace fission, SAFELY, begin a decommission/retrofit process to go from fission to fusion at base-load power plants.


Meanwhile, on the consumption side. Start tightening up building codes with an eye towards better building envelopes (air sealing, insulation, etc) and possibly financial incentives for greener/more energy efficient equipment.

Offer incentives on existing buildings for retrofits to reduce energy consumption.



Anyone here see anything particularly egregious or unacceptable with this general plan?

 

[Semantics]

Does that include calculations for all the bitcoin miners?

 

[velusip]

I certainly can't bash nuclear. It's the current best pick. Unfortunately, there is too much red tape and bad examples that people are overwhelmingly against nuclear.

Now about that diagram... an acre of solar is about half a MWh over the course of a year with the cheapest polycrystalline panels available. That would be closer to 81 squared miles to match projected Hinkley C (approximately one eighth of that yellow circle). However, the area shrinks a lot once you use the more sensible monocrystalline panel which is cleaner to manufacture, much longer lasting, and yields 25% more energy density (and cost).

There's a very important metric that makes solar desirable, and that's how it can efficiently satisfy peak hour loads. Solar panels output incredible levels of energy which can efficiently match the demand for power at peak hours during the day with no waste of resources. This compensates for distribution losses of a grid (often over 40% total capacity). Solar is not supposed to replace nuclear, but it augments efficiency during peak hours and that alone can make up for downtime.

 

[sleepeeg3]

Just reduce the feral cat population by a few percent to make up the difference. House cats kill one to four billion birds a year.



A single nuclear plant is in the $10-20 billion range now, the capital costs are simply unmanageable and I don't have a lot of faith that they're going to deliver on any of these nuclear Renaissance ideas like the miniaturized reactors. Renewables obviously can't match nuclear efficiency but they're available immediately and really not that expensive any more.

The total upfront costs are higher, but the price / kwh is still far cheaper than solar/wind. That's even with all the red tape the Vogtle reactors have been subjected to by the anti-nuclear lobbyists, being the ONLY nuclear expansion in the US. If nuclear reactors were being mass produced, the costs would be a lot cheaper.

Ever do the math with the efficiency and lifetime replacements costs factored in? Do it. You will see how astronomically expensive solar/wind are.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

The total upfront costs are higher, but the price / kwh is still far cheaper than solar/wind.

Ever do the math?

Have you? You're talking the cost of an Apollo program for a single nuclear plant with a 40-80 year lifespan.

Even if the fuel was completely free it doesn't change the economics much, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the capital costs. This is why private sector nuclear power has really struggled everywhere, it only works when you have a big standardized national program like France.

I keep seeing these disingenuous arguments like 'look at solar/wind replacement costs' or 'anti-nuclear lobbyists' like it's all a big conspiracy. It all comes down to money. US nuclear output actually tripled after Three Mile Island, the slowdown didn't start until the end of the Cold War. The federal government doesn't want to deal with the risks of the nuclear fuel chain or storing waste, localities don't want to deal with the insurance costs, the nuclear industry misled the public about the complexities of building these new reactors (see the Votgle fiasco) and both private investors and communities have difficulty financing these projects (people around Votgle are paying taxes for reactors that may never even be built). That's why the US installed more solar and wind capacity in the last 12 months than new nuclear capacity in the last 12 years.

 

[tetris42]

But there's solutions for everything. Desalinization plants for starters. Just replant forests. A lot of paper/wood producers do exactly that and farm trees for wood. Over-fishing is inevitable. Move to better fish farming instead as alternatives, or synthetic fish meat.

The only thing that an imbalance means is that a balance will have to be met in the future.

You pointed out that the resources are "and it will be more costly to extract what's left, leading to a reduced EROI." You're assuming today costs when costs are always going down due to automation. Imaging mining rare earth minerals by deploying mining robots. Imagine planting genetically engineered mushrooms that will dig roots into the earth and pull out the gold on the top of it. These are things we might see in our future.

As for most other materials, they can be reused.

Again, oil is just an easy source of energy until we perfect the next thing big, which is fusion. Nuclear is also available and with thorium we'll have thousands of years of energy before we need to move on to something else.

If fusion becomes a reality, desalinization plants become even easier to operate. Having practically unlimited energy and unlimited water will make most of the items necessary for humans to survive abundant.

What you're saying mostly has merit, though there's two things you might be overlooking:

1. While we can still hit the same markers for some things like lumber, fish, etc. The artificial solution can wreck the ecosystem in ways we weren't anticipating, the damage of which may take millennia to reverse. Again, we can just replant trees, but we've lost half of all wildlife in the process and cause mass extinctions. If we overfish, then the algae gets out of control and kills other chains of marine life, which causes die-offs farther up the ladder. Then that allows some pests to spread out of control which interferes with other species that normally pollinate crops we depend on. Point is, the ecosystem is the result of millions of years of balancing that we're unlikely to replicate if we tear it all up and could lead to worse problems than we realize.

2. We're partially in disagreement about the RATE this happens in. It could work out exactly as you say, but again, the numbers I've seen on many things don't make me think that's how it will go. We're cutting it so close, it's like of like a trapeze act. If the acrobat is flung into the air and caught at the right moment, everything's great and it's astounding. If the person catching them is off by a few seconds, the first acrobat is dead. That's really where I see the transition from oil and environmental sustainability currently heading.

Nobody's saying "strip mine the earth dry".

Just that Solar and Wind simply aren't going to get us there.

My point was I'll take a few turbines here and there over mountaintop removal any day. I realize solar and wind have issues, but the sightliness of wind turbines should be at the bottom of the list considering some of the alternatives.

 

[B00nie]

LOL. You should tell all the people living off grid that their solar power system is a hoax. I'm sure they'll be glad you gave them a heads up.

Meanwhile, the best way to improve battery technology -- which is how we address match generation and demand -- is to invest in it...

Off the grid users have have made serious compromises to their lifestyle and quality of living so you can't even begin to compare them to on-grid people. They run expensive battery packs and struggle to run even the most basic appliances such as house lighting. At winter time they need to heat the house manually and in the north they get even no electricity from the panels due to sun being down for the whole winter.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

My point was I'll take a few turbines here and there over mountaintop removal any day. I realize solar and wind have issues, but the sightliness of wind turbines should be at the bottom of the list considering some of the alternatives.

What you're apparently missing is that you simply cannot build the necessary capacity in to run wind as a baseline power replacement.
And, even if you could build enough turbines to cover peak demand in this country, you're never going to see that kind of capacity out of them, as Wind is (and always will be) an intermittent source.
And before you start talking about battery backup. Remember that we simply cannot BUILD that kind of battery capacity without taking over world battery production every 10-20 years.

 

[B00nie]

Which completely messes up ocean creatures that use magnetic fields to navigate...

Wind murders bats MUCH higher than anticipated due to low pressure differences exploding their lungs :

Wind turbines are killing bats, including ones on the endangered species list, at nearly double the rate set as acceptable by the Ontario government, the latest monitoring report indicates.
Bats are being killed in Ontario at the rate of 18.5 per turbine, resulting in an estimated 42,656 bat fatalities in Ontario between May 1 and October 31, 2015, according to the report released by Bird Studies Canada, a bird conservation organization.
Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources has set 10 bat deaths per turbine as the threshold at which the mortalities are considered significant and warrant action.
The bats being killed by turbines in Ontario include the little brown bat, tri-coloured bat, eastern small footed bat, and northern long-eared bat, all on the endangered species list.



Solar manufacturing is extremely harmful to environment, Nuclear is still best.

Not to mention that wind power creates huge subsonic sound pollution that reaches several miles away. In one documented case a family that lived 600m away from a turbine had their son freaking out on weird symptoms. They recorded their sons ear - you could hear the boys ear drum make a clicking sound at the same rate as the turbine was spinning.

In the end they had to abandon their house and move away at their own expense. The power company admitted nothing.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Have you? You're talking the cost of an Apollo program for a single nuclear plant with a 40-80 year lifespan.

Even if the fuel was completely free it doesn't change the economics much, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the capital costs. This is why private sector nuclear power has really struggled everywhere, it only works when you have a big standardized national program like France.

I keep seeing these disingenuous arguments like 'look at solar/wind replacement costs' or 'anti-nuclear lobbyists' like it's all a big conspiracy. It all comes down to money. US nuclear output actually tripled after Three Mile Island, the slowdown didn't start until the end of the Cold War. The federal government doesn't want to deal with the risks of the nuclear fuel chain or storing waste, localities don't want to deal with the insurance costs, the nuclear industry misled the public about the complexities of building these new reactors (see the Votgle fiasco) and both private investors and communities have difficulty financing these projects (people around Votgle are paying taxes for reactors that may never even be built). That's why the US installed more solar and wind capacity in the last 12 months than new nuclear capacity in the last 12 years.

This is part of why we need to pursue smaller, modular nuclear and liquid fueled reactor tech.
Instead of building huge facilities for fuel ponds, build refurbishable units the size of a tractor trailer that can be taken offline, cooled off and removed for reprocessing.
The nice thing about things like LFTR, most of the byproducts aren't things that are mildly radioactive for millions of years. Most of the stuff that isn't medically or scientifically valuable is stuff that's MUCH more radioactive, but breaks down in far shorter order.

The reason the government really doesn't want to do storage of fuel that still, essentially 90-95% "unburnt", is because we honestly can't guarantee the physical integrity of such a structure over hundreds of millennia.
But a facility to store true, end of fuel cycle, stuff that only lasts a couple hundred years? We could do that standing on our head.

 

[Gigus Fire]

Fine. You want to claim it's magical unicorn farts too? Go ahead.

I'm freshly out of fucks to give.

It's not a claim. It's reality. Anything solar is fusion based.
Lets say we create a sustained fusion (like a mini sun) here on earth. Now extracting the heat out of that reaction to create energy is probably the most efficient use of it to generate electricity, but if i line the exterior of that reaction with solar cells to generate electricity, it's not fusion?

 

[c3k]

Nanobots are the future. Create nanobots which will have a chlorophyll substrate (or something) and they'll self-manufacture more of themselves. Every human will then become a mobile power plant. ("Plant": see what I did there?) Include a lithium-ion battery (nanobots again, natch), which humans can excrete as it is charged. We'll all be pooping fully charged batteries all day long. Energy "crisis"? Solved.

And we'll have other nanobots in our guts so we can eat the expended batteries and re-use the raw materials to make fresh ones. Food shortage "crisis"? Solved.

Unemployed people could opt to trade their bitcoin credits for better chlorophyll. They'll become super-poopers. Unemployment "crisis"? Solved.

 

[DejaWiz]

Fail-safe Nuclear would always meet 100% of the US energy demand while being a hell of a lot cheaper over the long run: requiring much less physical space, no to very little backup storage, and a much longer life cycle (80 to 120 years or even longer per plant). Call your Representatives and Senators to demand they give all-in support to a fully nuclear power infrastructure. This could have actually happened decades ago (and we wouldn't be in the atmospheric CO2 saturation mess we are in now) if it weren't for the...

Damned dirty tree hugging hippies letting emotions get in the way of logic and facts, which they now seem to think that grossly inefficient and stupidly expensive (manufacturing, transporting, land requisition, construction, maintenance, and short life cycle replacements) photovoltaic and wind spinners are a magic solution to a very real problem.

 

[DejaWiz]

Actually, power consumption is flattening out in the US.

Also, 40% of all power consumed in the US is consumed by BUILDINGS.

Simply tweaking building codes towards better air sealing and slightly higher levels of insulation can result in significant savings in residential sectors ALONE.

So instead of getting shitty building envelope and an OMFG kitchen with $300/month energy bills, you get a tight building envelope, a nice kitchen, and energy bills in the $100-150 range.

And look at projects like the Empire State Building energy retrofit.

They looked at all the options, and just went after the low-hanging fruit.
The three main things were:

1. New windows (technically they rebuilt the ones they had)
2. New HVAC system
3. Energy efficient lighting.

They basically cut their energy consumption for the whole building by something like 38%. Something like $4.4 MILLION in power bills A YEAR.

I'm not saying rebuild everything TODAY or anything dumb like that.

Just saying that new construction, and intelligent retrofitting when it comes up, can allow us to continue making greater demands on our power infrastructure in one area while decreasing them in others, effectively balancing it out.


So no, our lifestyle is NOT unsustainable.
Changes just need to be made in WHERE we demand power.

You are spot on about the efficiency of buildings playing a HUGE factor in energy consumption.

My previous house was an 1850sqft split level built in the early 80s.

My current house is 2800sqft two story with 2x6 exterior construction and a hell of a lot of insulation (even has an unfinished basement).

The electric bill for this newer and much bigger house was roughly the same for about the first year, but has gotten slightly cheaper (just simple things like changing burned out CFL bulbs to LED as time passes).

...and that is setting the thermostat for ultimate comfort: 71-72 during the day and 65-66 at night, with the blower always operating in circulation mode. Something we could never have done at the old house or our electric bill would have been 50-60% higher.

 

[Master_shake_]

Not to mention that wind power creates huge subsonic sound pollution that reaches several miles away. In one documented case a family that lived 600m away from a turbine had their son freaking out on weird symptoms. They recorded their sons ear - you could hear the boys ear drum make a clicking sound at the same rate as the turbine was spinning.

In the end they had to abandon their house and move away at their own expense. The power company admitted nothing.

When you own reasearchers your conclusion could blame unicorns.

 

[travisty]

Can it be done? Sure. Can it be done affordably? Not even close. Wind 3x as expensive and solar 6x as expensive as conventional alternatives.

Solar/wind advocates never talk about two things - costs and replacements costs. Both technologies are extremely expensive to build and have to be replaced every 20-25 years. Conventional power plants last for 60-100+ years.

Your figures are really old. Per kw cost, wind and solar are half the price of natural gas and still falling. Even with batteries they're cheaper



Solar and wind are just too cheap to consider alternatives and that's why they're winning now

 

[bugleyman]

Whoa, way too many posts to address individually, but:

1. Arguing about the definition of fusion is pedantic. Yes, solar power relies on the FUSION reaction of the sun. But when people say "fusion" in the context of power generation, that clearly isn't what is meant.
2. No, solar isn't perfect, and is only a piece of the puzzle. But calling it a "hoax" is obtuse.
3. Fission -- especially using modern designs -- has a lot to offer. Right now, it's probably the best option we have. FUCK NIMBY.
4. Yes, we must continue to become more efficient, and the gains for doing so are not trivial. Our current standard of living, however, remains unsustainable on a global level, at least with present technology. Barring some sort of technological leap, fixing that is going to require all of us to make some adjustments. Stop insisting that "freedom" necessarily means "freedom to trash the planet." It doesn't. Individual liberty must always be balanced by the public welfare. That isn't communist...it's common sense.
5. Stop framing unicorns. What did unicorns ever do to you?

Ok, back to our regularly-scheduled sniping.

 

[ep0x73]

One thing to consider which is obvious, the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine but once you insert rods to start a reaction nuclear produces power 24/7.
Nuclear fission is still the holy grail of producing clean power for a modest cost.
This is were we should be investing $$, not wind or solar.

 

[nutzo]

Much of the prosperity from capitalism comes from depleting existing resources and essentially borrowing from the future. It doesn't work well with hard limitations. The entire system is founded upon endless growth, which by its very definition is unsustainable.

As I said before, a complete lack of faith in capitalism.

Capitalism is NOT borrowing from the future, it's about making the best use of current resources.
It's about millions of people making millions of decisions about what is the best use of those resources.
Capitalism results in a growing middle class and a higher standard of living for most people.

Socialism is about a small number of people making those decisions for us.
It tends to waste resources and pollute the environment far more than a prosperous capitalist society, because they don't have the prosperity to clean up their messes.
Socialism eventually fails when it runs out of other peoples money. It's Socialism that borrows from future generations and destroys their future.

The further a country moves to socialism, the bigger the debt grows, until they end up like Venezuela or Cuba.

All that being said, capitalism isn't perfect, but it's far better than anything else that has been tried.

 

[DukenukemX]

Yeah. All the people who're checking their batteries before running the coffee maker and waiting for really sunny days before doing laundry or taking it into the coin-op in town to do.

Either that or they're living in an area with large amounts of sunshine with being overcast is rare (like the American Southwest).

Otherwise, they're also running generators day in and day out to make up their energy needs.

Few of them are running 10-20KW setups with sufficient battery capacity to run for more than a day or two in conservation mode.

It can be done. We have the technology.