***Alternative Energy Forecasts*** 21

[deltawhy]

Hello, so I know everyone here has at least an opinion on this subject. I would like to see what the industry experienced members think of alternative energy and the forecast for the near future.

Within the next 5, 10, and 15 years, what do you think will become dominant in North America, Europe, and Australia?

One of the main issues plaguing alternative energy is the method of energy storage. What do you think will become dominant? New types of chemical batteries, flywheel storage, compressed air, water pumping, etc.

How about less known about methods, like plasma gasification and MSW energy?

Will micorgeneration become a major player, with the addition of hybrid and electric vehicles putting massive amounts of stress on the already stressed grid?

Any thoughts?

Regards

 

[YoungTurk]

My take away from "Without the Hot Air" (and the class I read it for) a year or so after reading and forgetting the details is as follows.

At some level, most energy is (once was) solar energy, so in the long view humanity will either:

(a) transistion to solar energy sources (PV, heat engines),
(b) replicate solar energy (nuclear) or
(c) go extinct.

The only question is how long we have to choose and how we handle what happens environmentally in the mean time. Every energy source has an environmental price.

[As an aside, I also learned in the same class that anybody who talks about AGW but doesn't understand the atmospheric infrared window is talking from the wrong end of their anatomy. For that reason, I've refrained from having an opinion on AGW until I reseach this topic further :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_window

]

 

[cranky108]

Ahhh. the ideas of old men who write books.

Howcome the writers of these books don't see the techalogical problems and develop solutions?

Or is that the difference between and engineer, and a scientist? One does things, the other only thinks about things.

 

[KENAT]

C'mon molten, surely you know what "" marks mean?

I was quoting the OP's 14 Sep 11 12:24 post.

Was the sarcasm in my post not clear enough?

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[lacajun]

YoungTurk, go extinct? I can't buy that. Man predates the O&G industry.

Having worked in the glass industry, I can verify it takes a lot of capital and natural gas to make flat glass. It is not an inexpensive venture. Those campaigns run for 12-14 years once begun. At the end of the life of a tank, they shut down and rebuild. But, during the campaign, it is a 24x7x365 operation throughout those years, with huge natural gas burners to melt the silicate.

A local PV company is using flat glass from one of the plants I know very good.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[moltenmetal]

Sorry KENAT, I misread your original post and took a swing at your quote of the OP's line that you re-quoted.

 

[YoungTurk]

Yes, a bit hyperbolic, but look at it. What do we do for energy 100, 1000, even 10000 years from now? Mankind extinct, probably not, but civilization will need a makeover when the gas pump runs dry and the tractors stop running.

To the OP, 5-15 years isn't a long enough time scale to expect major change. I expect more of the same, more of everything, with engineers doing our jobs and pushing efficiency values ever so slowly towards the technological limits.

If you haven't read the "Hot Air" book, I also recommend it for considerations on alternative energy and storage. Zdas makes some fair points, but so does the book.

I've also been following a new blog "Do the Math" which recently covered several of the topics addressed here from a rough mathematical perspective.

Energy Storage Posts:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/got-storage-how-hard-can-it-be/

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/

 

[zdas04]

Instead of looking forward 100, 1000, or 10000 years look backwards.

10,000 years ago man's energy usage was burning wood and potential energy (i.e., chasing bison over cliffs). People in most places couldn't imagine that rocks could burn.

1,000 years ago the vast majority of energy usage was burning wood, and while many people understood that peat and coal were potential energy sources, the use was very localized. They couldn't imagine burning a liquid or a gas.

100 years ago burning wood and coal was starting to be seen as undesirable for local air quality in high-density populations, but they were absolutely the dominant energy sources on the planet. Liquid and gas fuels were coming into their own, but the supply was very localized and the distribution was crude at best. Electricity was confined to very small patches and people were heatedly debating the appropriate delivery conditions (voltage, AC vs. DC, and frequency). Wind was used for very localized needs. PV and nuclear were unheard of.

If we look forward 100 years what do we see? Murk. An asteroid may hit the earth before I hit "submit" and no one will ever read this and a hundred years from now mankind could easily be struggling to keep wood fires burning. Or there could be a breakthrough that lets us synthesize lightning bugs into an unlimited power supply (see Robert Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll). If there is no breakthrough in technology then we will still be burning coal for the majority of our electric power and using some sort of liquid carbon-based fuel for transportation. The coal may not look like the coal that was discovered over 10,000 years ago, but it is too abundant to be ignored ("clean coal" is not nearly the oxymoron that the Greenies claim).

Looking back is useful in identifying how MUCH we didn't know yesterday about tomorrow.

David

 

[cranky108]

So when was the last time you have seen liquid fuels? Because if I remember correctly liquids don't burn. Maybe that is why oil is such a dirty fuel.

If I look back I see that as technology prgresses, our energy consumption inceases (same with water usage). And as population increases, and also energy increases. So either we need one of three things. Reduce technology (which I don't like), or reduce population (who chooses), or reduce the consumption of the devices we use (be smarter).
I would be concerned that if the third dosen't happen, one or both of the first two will.

But the people who want to push for solutions right now have an agenda, and are trying to force a false time line.

And the real irritating things is they quickly over look the easy solutions in favor of there agenda.

So it is my belief is we need to work smarter at energy consumption reduction. Not demand specific solutions now.

 

[KENAT]

So Cranky, what is your preferred term to cover diesel fuel, kerosene/paraffin, petroleum, alcohol(s), lamp oil, vegetable oil... if you find the term "liquid fuels" so ludicrous?

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[zdas04]

Thanks KNEAT, I was going to say "well, the stuff going into my gasoline tank this morning certainly looked liquid, might have been a solid but it sure gurgled like a liquid". Your response was less snarky.

By "Oil" (I'm assuming Cranky means a fuel oil like Bunker C) is "dirty" because it is barely refined crude that still has most of the crap that mother nature dumps into the environment. It still has some amount of sulfur, ash, and disolved solids--all materials that leave an ash when burned (Class "A" fire?).

Advances in energy consumption per unit over the last few decades have been astounding. One of the graphs in the presentation that Fisch88 pointed us to shows the rate of decline in energy consumed per person to be very steep. But at the end of the day you really can't save yourself into prosperity. Improvements in effeciency are offset by increases in population and have resulted in an increase in the total energy demand.

David

 

[KENAT]

No problem Zdas - it wasn't my first draft either, but the first I figured wouldn't get edited by 'the management'.

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[cranky108]

I was just making a poke at the fact that liquids don't burn. They must be gasified in some way to burn.

However, if that gasification is incomplete, there would be some unburned fuel in the tail pipe.
And I do remember distilling kerosene in chemestry lab, and all the stuff left behind in the flask.

So the cadilic converter is there to burn this, I guess. Or is that the job of the AIR system (funny little air compressor for the exast).
So we put all this stuff on our cars, and were thinking they don't do enough.

So why do they say natural gas is a much cleaner fuel? Can't we clean up oil fuels to a better quality, and not need so much stuff on our cars?

 

[lacajun]

YoungTurk, I'm still in Zdas's camp. Sorry! But, I don't see more of alternatives. I see alternatives as being a fad.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[lacajun]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/09/28/government-bank-financing-more-solyndras/

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[csd72]

In the UK, there are a lot of wind farms going up with plans for a number of floating wind farms in the channel and elsewhere. I dont know how much provision there has been for storage. Solar panels are pretty popular for microgeneration on houses e.t.c.

In Australia, I once heard a reliable source state that a 1km x 1km square of solar panels could produce enough energy for the whole country and that the only barrier was cost. Not sure how this would be stored though.

In the US the policy depends on the state and is all over the place with the best being those like california. I have seen hydraulic storage in operation in a few areas of the states and would think that this existing technology would be most easily adaptable to storage green energy.

In summary, I think it will definately need a mix of technologies as each is affected by incumbent conditions. Storage by hydraulic storage whenever this is possible with other methods introduced when this is not an option.

All 3 regions you mentioned are at the very least investigating the possibility of new nuclear power stations and I expect to see this as a source of base power. Even Australias traditionally strong anti nuclear policy is starting to soften and I expect that they will have a few power stations in few decades.

 

[YoungTurk]

csd, glad you chimed in. At least this way I'm not the most optimistic one in the room!

Modern nuclear has fantastic potential, but I think Fukushima set the industry perception back decades, and it with it the future of the industry.

I'm surprised you think pumped hydro will play a large role as well. If the following link got it right, 800 lb at 3 m stores 3 W hr, or one AA battery.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/got-storage-how-hard-can-it-be/

I'm optimistic on solar, but a square kilometer is 1,000,000 square meters. If I do the math right (second try this week), that would give an approximate practical upper limit of 200 MW peak (1,000,000 m2 * 20% efficiency * 1000 W / m2 peak insolation), or 50 MW average power (@ 250 W/m2 average insolation). 20% is an optimistic solar efficiency number for a large installation. Per wikipedia, Australia produces a total of 257 TWh of electricity per year. 50 MW average gives 0.44 TWh (50 MW * 24 hr * 365 days / 1,000,000 MW per TW).

To get 257 TWh, it would take nearly 600 km2, which feels about right based on this common graphic used for solar power:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Solar_land_area.png

 

[owg]

Thanks for your interesting posts Zdas04. You wrote "By "Oil" (I'm assuming Cranky means a fuel oil like Bunker C) is "dirty" because it is barely refined crude that still has most of the crap that mother nature dumps into the environment."
I think Mother Nature gets away with too much. She sure made a mess mixing all that oil and/or tar with sand to make the oil sands, but we are doing our best to clean up her mess.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[csd72]

Youngturk,

Thanks for the reality check, as I was going from memory I must have remembered it wrong regarding the solar panels.

As the cost of energy bills is skyrocketing I think that the market will eventually push for more economical solutions which can only really be nuclear in the long run.

Very good articles.

I thinks all articles on solar power miss one important option that would negate the option for storage, this is the option of a global electricity grid.

This may sound like science fiction but actually science fiction is way ahead of this, one writer has proposed the possibility of a sufficiently advance society surrounding their sun with with a ball of solar panels and living on the outside skin of this ball.

 

[YoungTurk]

You're thinking of a Dyson Sphere. It is all over in sci-fi but the physicist gets the credit for the concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

A global grid would require some immense transmission lines and the associated immense tranmission losses. I'm thinking the associated costs would far outweigh storage costs.

Molten salts may be a feasible way to store thermal solar for night usage. Solar thermal as a whole may prove more economically viable than photo-voltaic. It certainly has a lower startup cost.

 

[cranky108]

So does a Dyson Sphere have anything to do with the Dyson ball vacuum cleaner?

(Before you make comments, it is intended to be a joke).

Gee, if you want free heat storage, build your home into the earth.

If you want a renewable fuel, make natural gas from plant or anamial waste. Or a mixed gas from baked wood (byproduct is charcoal).

Why is renewable so often made so complicated?