How to go green without failures and disasters? 17

[RedSnake]

I think it is sad that we have thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and at least one hundred years of exponential technical development and we stil can’t utilize what we know.

I know it has much to do with politics, markets and peoples unwillingness to draw back on consumption and whether or not to believe in the scientists assessment of the climate change.
But I hope that we can keep that part of the discussion to a minimum and try to discuss the engineering and technical sides of things.

But since I am OP, I will start by not following my own advise. ;-)
By saying that, you do not need to be a scientist only a half dissent engineer, to know that if you put to many meta tablets in a toy steam engine and the pressure relief valve don’t work it will a eventually explode.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

And the only way of getting something sensible is conversations like this brain storming running through options.

Unfortunately the conversations which are generally public and the people who make the decisions are all centred round the next elections. And nobody wants to start doing anything if it means they won't be getting another term in power.

 

[1503-44]

What makes sense to me is that we try advancing the most probable solutions on all promising fronts until we find ones that work. Political solutions are also needed. All will likely involve experimentation, trial and error. Many were or will be initially too costly, too capital intensive, or too risky to be taken on by the private sector alone. We once thought nuclear was the only answer. At least we now have more options and we will find others. Some will involve science, engineering, but also government sponsorship. We would not have been able to do the nuclear experiment without the tech derived from the Manhatten Prohect, the work at the DOE labs and other gov sponsored research. Nor would we have the current wind, PV, solar thermal, geothermal, et al options we have today without having had the benefits of tax incentives that made the large scale adoption of those technologies possible and practical, cost effective, viable solutions. Even the space exploration programs played a role in their development, so politics is inevitable.

We as engineers should use our expertise on all fronts as well. If you don't like government mandates, then help find solutions that will be accepted without the necessity of "government mandates". Mandates don't really seem to be mandates, if people agree with the policies behind them. Many state and local offices, even down to the school board, need advice on energy issues. Should they install solar rooftops, install more insulation, get a more efficient gas heating system, or blindly continue to buy gas that's getting more expensive every year. Many of them do not have engineering advice available to them. Many more don't even know if they need engineering advice, or if they do, they don't know the first thing about writing the contract that will provide it, or managing that contract. If you have issues with gov policy or mandates, write to your reps. If you don't, they will only have the opportunity to listen to the line of lobbiests waiting outside their door, or worse, the non-technically inclined nut cases that write to them twice every week. The senators from TX are wasting time and effort sponsoring sanctions against Russian pipelines while their electrical system at home creaters as soon as the thermometer hits 32°F in Austin, then one runs off to Cancun. They need your opinion, if nothing else. They got mine. They (all gov) hardly get anything right left to their own accord. When they block a Russian pipeline and start exporting all their US NGL gas to Germany, and then the price of gas goes up at home, you might not be so keen on methane. It used to be illegal to export US natgas, but "Somebody" got the idea that it kept the domestic supply too high and that depressed the price, so the law was repealed. What I'm saying is, Help make the policies. Get involved. Dont give them the opportunity to mandate you into a corner, or mess with your methane.

 

[RedSnake]

Redsnake,

Try to make a car or more complicated than a spoon or cup without petroleum products. This idea that "we'll just switch to something else" is just a half baked idea that ignores decades research it took to make these products or the added expense that will get passed to the consumer.

I sometimes get this impression that some environmentalist are detached from the reality that most people are living paycheck to paycheck, have near zero net worth, and likely would not prioritize anything that adds to their cost of living. I think that some people think that some groups just don't care about the environment but what it is is the presence of more pressing concerns. This person that just doesn't care is a fiction. There isn't a person alive that ever thought "thank god for smog.". So, in my opinion, when you hear someone denying any human impact on the environment, most of the time what that is is someone saying "I can barely keep my head above water and you want me to give you more of my money." So, with something like moving away from natural gas, aside from the technical problems, you are never going to get buy in on this idea of going 100% renewables when it would likely mean tripling people's electrical bills. Every environmental initiative would sell itself if it helped people keep their head above water. Solar panels are starting to get to that point and that is something that sells itself. You can't expect someone to care about the ice caps when they are behind on their mortgage.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

I can take the example with the car, I have a car more than 30 years old. My beloved now deceased CH was always annoyed at it because he thought it was environmental degradation. He himself bought a new car every 4 years. I drive up an average of 30 liters of 95 octane petrol a month. In winter, it may contain 15% ethanol in summer, 5%.
He often drove diesel cars that had maybe a 3rd part in consumption than mine. but I 6 km to and from work he had 70 km.
I have not done any calculations but I dare say that my CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions when it comes to the car included manufacturing etc. was much smaller than his.

And sometimes I get this impression that some people finds one problem with CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions that "can't" be solved and use that as a free card for not doing anything at all.

I do know that some people has the presence of more pressing concerns, and that most humans have mind sets that is very short-term and now I mean that it is actually in the genes set and not a you choose.
But you can change it with education and understanding of how things work.
It is much easier to do nothing then to do something, and if people are coastally told that there is no point because it's unfixable that wont help.
If I have managed to make someone in this forum buy a juniper wood butter knife instead of a plastic next time, at least I have made a small difference in the world.
Have I solved the CO[sub]2[/sub] no , but I have at least done something.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

I saw this reportage on the news about Chinese environmental activists.
My own opinion was which was not said in the reportage that they are actually employed by the state ;-)
It is young people in "uniforms" who walk around and inform people about environmental issues.
And they said that they have it as a subject in school as well.

Which made me remember that we actually have it too.
Already in preschool, the children gets to learn about environmental impact and sorting and recycling.
But it is mostly about showing and practicing how cycles work through cultivation, then when they get older by showing how things are made and the process and show the consequences.

It would probably be easier for the future if all children had "environment and environmental impact" as part of the educational plan.
At least giving them a tool, to make wise choices if they want to and can.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[FacEngrPE]

OK Here is a new question, related to the electrification of transportation.

In the US we have weather events that can take out portions of the electric grid. Ice storms, hurricanes, winter storms.

The only really significant one that impacted me was the Dominion outage following Isabel in 2003, which has all of the power off line for most of a week, and was not fully restored for two weeks. One of the reasons the restoration took so long is that the damage to the transmission system was huge, and access was impeded with roadways clogged with downed trees.

From the report attached "Dominion: Utility workers had to contend with 62 downed transmission lines (1,600 miles of high-voltage lines); 1,150 disrupted primary distribution circuits; 2,311 broken utility poles; 3,899 snapped cross-arms; and 7,363 spans of downed power lines.​

Here is a collection of additional reports for several years of events
Emergency Situation Reports 2003 to 2016

During the outage traffic was greatly reduced as most businesses closed however it was possible to pump fuel at a limited number of gasoline and diesel fuel stations that were able to obtain relatively small generators.

Lets move to the "Greener" situation that could develop. If the city police department has 100 patrol cars, that need daily charging, and the utility can not provide power, what provisions need to be made? What about fire trucks, and other emergency responders? This sounds like a big - several MW generating plant. I have not heard any discussion about what measures should be taken to mitigate this conceivable situation, or if the events are sufficiently rare on a local level that mitigation is not cost effective.

The Big Texas Freeze Doesn't Bode Well For EV Infrastructure discusses a similar problem with electric public transportation.

Any opinions if this question should be in a different thread?

Fred

 

[RedSnake]

FacEngrPE.
Your question is okey here at least in my opinion.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

Well we have the same problem here in different degrees during winter, worse when it is storming.
It is the transmission providers job to keep enough free space around the powerlines to prevent this from happening.
Of course they never manage to fully uphold this , not even close.
Even if this hade been done properly it would not help for icing, when it is freezing rain around zero degress.
Here they have started taking down the overhead lines and putting down ground cables.

If I understod you right you are asking how to handle if all vehicles are battery powered.
My first assumption is that crimes are fewer during these extrem weather events and that people in general, try to stay indoors as much as possible.
This could help by using peoples preloaded vehicles as backup power.
Here when the extrems hit we have to put in the civil defense to help out.
They of course have vehicles that run ordinarie fuel and have tracked vehicles that can get around in the snow without the roads being open.

I think there must a mix and a plan for these event's, at least here the civil defense always make's planes for a kind of situations, how well they actually works in reality I am not shore. ;-)

Best Regards A



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

If the city police department has 100 patrol cars, that need daily charging, and the utility can not provide power, what...

Increase the use of underground wiring wherever possible. The US is very dependent on above ground wiring for local distribution lines, so exposure to damage from wind, fire, ice and trees is high. Many areas in Spain use UG conduits.

All essential services, including at least some percentage of police, fire and ambulance fleets, will continue to require redundant power sources, if their normal supply is undependable. Today that might be a private gas station, but tomorrow it might be a natgas, LNG, or H2 fired IC generator, or a solar/wind & battery supply with storage sufficient to allow enough time to make repairs to the normal supply.

As for the linked article, not much meat there. Just another typical case of not thinking the problem through. Apparently when the lights stay on for 99.7 percent of the time, it does not occur to many people, including city planners, that there is still a chance that they will go off for 0.3% of time (27 h/yr), or that they thought that nobody would be going to work during such emergencies anyway, or those that need to will find other transport solutions.

Austin would probably not need to plan on powering the entire fleet of electric busses in such an event, because many people would stay home, especially now that we have discovered that a good number of people can work from home, at least if they still have internet. The demand for bus service would likely be greatly reduced and 20MW ? normal demand might fall to 2. Perhaps some portion of the bus service can actually be replaced by a robust, freely available, 5G WiFi.

Speaking of working from home, we have not seen the end to the effects C19 may have on many fronts. There is some thought that demand for both human transportation and office buildings will never recover to previous levels. Things will certainly be different. I have a friend that used to work full time in Dublin, but now she is there only 1 week per month and works from her native Budapest the other 3. Strangely enough, she now flies more than before, but uses public transport far less, only 4 taxi rides per month. I think we will have to make many different kinds of adjustments to our previous ways of planning the future. Maybe a significant amount of city office space will be replaced by 5G. That could have knock-on effects far and wide. Power use inside cities may drop with some demand moving to suburban, or rural areas. Population of cities may decrease. Will we stop building freeways and start building, reinforcing, or replacing rural power distribution, transport, water supply, sewer treatment and telecom networks? London tube use fell to 20% at times. Many trains were taken offline. How many will come back? Will there be more demand for smaller aircraft and more rural airports? Schools? All of this could go a number of different ways and right now I doubt anybody knows which, or how much.

 

[Fischstabchen]

1503-44

It rarely makes sense to bury electrical distribution. It cost around 9 times as much and often doesn't lead to 9 times less unavailability. It is harder to locate faults and repair problems compared to overhead. In the Houston area, underground distribution is something developers pay for for rich neighborhoods. I have seen more underground distribution in parts of Florida to harden it for hurricanes but I suspect that nearly every time a hurricane takes out the distribution the load is gone as well. When Galveston was last hit, the electrical system came back way before people rebuilt. After Hurricane Katrina, there were Entergy substations that were not repaired for years because the load never returned. What is the point of hardening the electrical system when nothing else is hardened?

 

[RedSnake]

Maybe you are right that it's 9 times more expensive, I do not know.

Here it is probably more about what is society's norm.

Your norm seems to be that everything should be as cheap for the consumer as possible, but if you then get water damages on your house because of outages and a lot of extra expenses and people die and production is down for a week or several months for a natural disasters or extreme weather event, it's ok.
But is it really cheaper all together?

We as a country can not afford a week's standstill due to power outages and everything that comes with it.
It's not norm here and not acceptable, neither for the consumers, the businesses, the industry or society.
It might cost a bit more, not much every day, but in the long run it is cheaper for everyone.

Burying cables may be more expensive than making overhead lines.
But overhead lines occupies more land that can be used for other things.
And buried cables require less maintenance than overhead lines.
In new densely populated areas, they often put down electric cables together with water, sewage, fiber cable for data and district heating at the same time.
Here, where we have a lot of forest, wide areas for line streets must be made before overhead cables can be set up.
When putting them in the ground it is not required, less ground work is required.
Today, there are measuring instruments that tell you how far out on the cable the fault is if you get a drain or short circuit, so finding the fault is not a big problem.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[Fischstabchen]

Redsnake,

You are conflating the natural gas problems in Texas with a problem with the electrical grid. The grid ,with probably a few downed lines, operated as it should have and wasn't the weak link. There is an incredible amount of redundancy designed into the grid.

It is misleading to call reliable and cost effective electrical distribution as cheap. Using the word cheap, gives the impression that it is unreliable and substandard when it is not that. There are a lot of very large industrial customers that demand extremely reliable service and cost effective services and that is what is provided. The only times I have lost power over the last 15 years in Houston has been this last cold snap, Hurricane Harvey, and Hurricane Ike. The cold snap is the only one that was preventable.

 

[CWB1]

If I were to start dumping my household waste on your property or in your apartment, which ever is the case.
That would be totally okay for you?
I am mean I am just exercising my freedom of choice.
I mean you can always take advantage of your freedom and move, if it does not suit you.

Improperly disposing of household wastes has proven, measurable environmental effect even if your trash is simply a visual annoyance. Manmade climate change OTOH is an unproven scientific theory with many holes, many proven fraudulent claims, and little measurable effect from one region to another. Comparing the two is silly. Govts worldwide have spent many trillions of dollars over the last half century attempting to show tangible environmental impact, and have failed. While it may be "trendy" in a few small circles to be perpetually outraged or offended by everything others do, as engineers we need to remain ethically neutral lest we needlessly harm industry.

 

[cranky108]

Yes it can cost 9 times as much to underground electric lines, and after about 30 years, you have to replace them. Overhead poles in some cases last 100 years, the lines I doubt will last that long.
The problem with underground lines, is contractors somes times dig them up. Usually contractors that refuse to call for locates.

We also find the same types of things for water, gas, and sewer. Although having a contractor dig up a sewer is it's own reward.

Yes we are trying joint trenching, but the cable and phone companies don't want any part of it. And many line people are worried about having gas and electric in the same trench.

 

[1503-44]

Contractors dig up pipelines all the time, but we still manage bury them. You can join the "call before you dig" campaign and you'll most likely find the cables will last at least 60 years, after you get good at installing them. Most pipelines are designed for 25-50yrs or less and some still going at 75-100, although that's pushing it. They'll go for 50. Besides, they will pay for themselves within the allotted design life, then you'll get to do it all over again and make them even bigger. They'll need to be bigger by then anyway. We run them in an adjacent trench with the fibre optical cables. They fit. Much of that cable can be installed with a plow, without digging a trench, so that's cheaper than digging a trench wide enough for both. We actually don't even put multiple gas lines in the same trench.

Just think. The countryside will be more beautiful. Birds won't get electrocuted. Trees don't fall on them. Trees can grow tall make shade and lots of O2. People won't hit the poles with their cars, or shoot at the wires. No wildfire damage. More expensive, so the value of assets will be higher. Ah... stock price rises. Not so vulnerable to terrorists. Many kites saved from a horrible death. More tax advantages for depreciation. Its just win, win, win.

 

[cranky108]

Sorry to step on your dreams, but most birds don't get electrocuted on the lines, just on the switches. Trees should be cut, people will hit trees and not the power lines with their cars. We don't have stock, or taxes. And we have too many trees for kites. And most of the terrorists are looking to sell any copper they can steal (we fixed that with micro etching the copper, and charging dealers that pay the terrorists).

 

[RedSnake]

You are conflating the natural gas problems in Texas with a problem with the electrical grid. The grid ,with probably a few downed lines, operated as it should have and wasn't the weak link. There is an incredible amount of redundancy designed into the grid.

Okay I will correct myself.
The reason I mix up power grid with use of gas is because we do not use gas, so if we would get a problem like the one in Texas it would be because of a electrical grid problem.

So we as a country can not afford a week's standstill due to anything regardless of reason.
It's not norm here and not acceptable, neither for the consumers, the businesses, the industrys or society.

It is misleading to call reliable and cost effective electrical distribution as cheap. Using the word cheap, gives the impression that it is unreliable and substandard when it is not that. There are a lot of very large industrial customers that demand extremely reliable service and cost effective services and that is what is provided. The only times I have lost power over the last 15 years in Houston has been this last cold snap, Hurricane Harvey, and Hurricane Ike. The cold snap is the only one that was preventable.

First of I would like to say, that everything is preventable if you are willing to pay for it. ;-)

Cheap well you can be right, the Swedish word for cheap has not that underlying meaning.

So let me put it like this, it seems to me that your think that it would be to costly for the consumer if prevented messures where to be taken so that things like this does not happen.
But is the total cost for society all together really less costly.
With damages to private homes, people dying and production downtime for a week or several months for a natural disasters or extreme weather event?

Best Regards A







“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

While it may be "trendy" in a few small circles to be perpetually outraged or offended by everything others do, as engineers we need to remain ethically neutral lest we needlessly harm industry.

Whether you believe in the scientists or their findings, this is not a little trend in a few small circles.
Most industrial companies in industrial nations on this side of the Atlantic do everything to make their products CO[sub]2[/sub] neutral.
And they do so because that is what the customers wants.
So no matter what you believe, if you as an industrial nation want to be on the train, and have a future for your products, I think that you will have no choice but to adapt whether you like it or not.

I can not decide if this fits into yours statment that we as engineers needs to remain ethically neutral lest we needlessly will harm industry.

Best Regards A





“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

I also don't understand what he means. Maybe a typo?
Is industry more important than everything else? Why say "not harm industry", instead of not harm people, for example?

 

[cranky108]

I believe the problem here is so many people here have no idea of how the world works, and have no technical background. These people want what they believe is green, and know nothing about the natural carbon cycle.

The area that I live in has a good deal of high tech, and is a vacation spot, and at the same time is growing in population. The basic industries are being squeezed out, like logging, and mining, in favor of things like entainment, and more access to protected forest land. And sadly we are losing property rights to people who could care less (an idea imported from the west coast). Yes they care, but don't know enough to know what to care about. Trails everywhere, but if we see a bear, we need to have it moved somewhere else.
Yes to the 1000's of little bambies, you can over graze the forest until you starve to death.

This my view of the green movement. Clueless for the most part, and no plan for the future.