Author Topic: Blasphemy..... Solar power.  (Read 148569 times)

basewindow

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #240 on: November 27, 2017, 09:22:54 AM »
Perhaps Humerus? ? ?  😉
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AdeV

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #241 on: November 27, 2017, 11:43:10 AM »
Don't get me started on Hummus..... (blech)
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broncodriver99

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #242 on: November 27, 2017, 03:28:29 PM »
Glort, you may have mentioned it before but what are you paying per kwh? Also, I just noticed you mentioned Feb 2018 being your next meter read. Are you on a 3 month billing cycle? I am trying to wrap my head around the expense of your electric bills. Obvoiusly you have pretty high usage since you are adding so much solar as an offset but those bills seem mind boggling to me. Way above any kind of average I would expect here in the US.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2017, 01:25:31 AM by broncodriver99 »

LowGear

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #243 on: November 27, 2017, 05:17:41 PM »
E=MC^2
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mikenash

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #244 on: November 27, 2017, 08:35:35 PM »
OK, enough with the sniping lads. Some of us like to write lots, some not so much. Feel free to skip the bits you think you're not interested in, but let's not have any carping about the fact they were written.

And yes, I know you all probably have tongues firmly in cheek - but remember, good natured sarcasm/irony and indeed humour is very hard to put across when you've only got the written word and a few smileys to play with. Please, read what you've written and imagine you're a visitor to this forum. We know it's all in good humour, but a stranger might think this is a bit of a vicious place to hang out...

PS: Yes, you lot all spell humour incorrectly. Just putting that out there.  ;D We invented the bloody language, you lot should toe the line.

Glort - I'll write a considered reply later - right now I've got a pizza in the oven, and there's a film on the TV that ain't going to watch itself...

Ade - I dunno how to break it to you, but you gents didn't invent the language - you cobbled it together from French (spoken by the Ruling Classes in Blighty for a couple of centuries),  Latin, from the Romans who ruled your green islands for a wee while, the old "Anglo Saxon" family of languages that predates the conquests by Rome and then the Normans and random bits borrowed from the various European and Asian nations you chaps traded with

"Humour" is a case in point, being an old Latin word borrowed by the French, who changed the meaning/use of it substantially before lending it to the English, who changed the meaning of it again before lending it to the Americans who struggled with the spelling of it (and whose President, arguably, struggles with the concept as a whole)

Just saying . . .

Cheers

mike90045

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #245 on: November 27, 2017, 11:48:57 PM »
Wow.  I hope with the huge bills and high backfeed, you have all the T's crossed and i's Dotted with the power Co so they don't sic the Fraud Dept on you.

broncodriver99

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #246 on: November 28, 2017, 01:24:02 AM »
Quote
Also, I just noticed you mentioned Feb 2018 being your next meter read. Are you on a 3 month billing cycle?
Yes. to the best of my knowledge that's standard here for Physical reads but I think those with smart meters may get or be able to get monthly bills.

If I understand correctly, your electric bill is ~$400/month. That makes a little more sense. I would say that is a high average here. A buddy of mine runs about that in the Summer when he runs his pool pump and 2 central air units.

AdeV

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #247 on: November 28, 2017, 07:56:45 AM »
The Tesla Battery

Quote
I was reading up on that a bit more last night as it's due to go online in a few days, Dec1.  the realists are analyzing the thing and pretty much laughing at it.  What it will apparently do is help a lot with smoothing the grid from the fluctuations of the RE that state now relys on and keeping the voltage and frequency stable as the now blown up power stations did before.  If the wind stops at night, that battery will literally last about 30 sec to a min before it's done and the lights go out.  The experts are saying that's basically inevitable and pondering the ramifications for the state, the greenwashed gubbermint and Musk and Tesla whom have hyped this up so much.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the politics, greenwashing etc., I don't believe the battery is there to hold the grid up if the wind stops... It's there, as your 2nd sentence says, to smooth the inevitable fluctuations from wind power.

There are innumerable problems with wind power: It's unreliable, unpredictably intermittent and fluctuates by the moment. It also changes voltage and frequency every time the wind changes speed, unless the windmills are governed to a specific speed (which wastes energy & causes wear increasing maintenance costs, blah). Wind power, in short, is about as useful as a fart in a space suit. It has to be converted to DC to get rid of the variable frequency, then put back through "true sine wave" inverters (which are $$$ at domestic sizes, let alone industrial) which are aligned with the grid, and only then can the power be injected. By which time you've binned a load of it. The purpose of the battery is to store a bunch of that DC power, then you take the feed from the battery at a nice constant voltage & current; yes, it still needs the expensive inverter etc. but now you can size it to somewhere close to the battery bank's output capabilities; and unlike cars, as we know electronics prefer to be run pretty close to flat out, so long as you keep them cool.

So, what happens if the wind stops? Same as happens now; the wind farm stops putting energy onto the grid, and something else (usually a CCGT) takes over. Or a BFO diesel engine. Or a coal plant, if any of them are left... but most likely a gas turbine, because they're dead quick to spool up, and pretty efficient. The thing is, the power companies (the organised ones, at least) use some pretty heavy duty weather forecasting to make sure they've got a damn good idea when the wind is going to stop & start, so they've got their spare capacity ready. They won't run the battery flat when the wind stops, because they'll already be replacing its power with something else.

Full disclosure: My dad used to work in the power distribution industry here in the UK, and only retired a couple of years ago, so I do have some clue as to what I speak of.

Wind power, in my & the power industry's opinion, is a crock of shit - but it's been forced on them by the green weenies. Therefore, we (and they) have to live with it. There are better alternatives. For Australia, solar power is the obvious one.... an industrial sized solar farm - either solar-pv, or more likely a molten salt system ala the solar power plant in southern Spain, would provide a pretty reliable output - and provided they account for any likely clouding, a pretty predictable output (which is one of the most important factors to the power companies). At night, when it's obviously not producing anything, the electrical load is generally lower anyway, so no great loss. And unlike wind, the sun shines every day (even if it's shining on the tops of rain clouds while they're pissing on us....). Here in the UK, where we sometimes don't see the sun for weeks at a time, tidal power makes more sense. We're a small island, and the tides are rising or falling somewhere around the UK 24x7. Tidal systems are also fraught with difficulties - most difficult of all is the corrosive nature of seawater, and the requirement not to mince to many fish - but these can be overcome with suitable materials, and investment. Unfortunately, the lion's share of investment has gone to...... yep, you guessed it. Wind power. Fecking idiots. But that's getting political again, and is an argument for another place, another time.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2017, 07:59:19 AM by AdeV »
Cheers!
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LowGear

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #248 on: November 28, 2017, 02:18:28 PM »
I was wrong.

With a 20 cent differential between night and day doesn't a storage battery make sense?  10 KW a day would be $2 a day or $700 a year.  How much would that sort of thing cost in your town.

A neighbor was working in one of the "Nicer" neighborhoods when he heard two people in the next yard discussing power rates.  One sums it up to the other;  "If $5,000 a month for electricity sounds like a lot maybe you're in the wrong neighborhood!"  Life can be sweet.  That was when we were paying 42 cents a KW so now that it's down to 28 I'd guess most anyone can move into that neighborhood.

I'm pretty careful about fooling around with the electrics in my house because of the fire insurance problem.  The insurance company disqualifies a claim because you have undocumented modifications to the wiring.  Is that part of the private enterprise program in Australia?
« Last Edit: November 28, 2017, 02:50:58 PM by LowGear »
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LowGear

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #249 on: November 28, 2017, 03:03:04 PM »
Where good old fashioned petroleum comes from and how some Americans are helping with that cause.

https://www.facebook.com/BoldNebraska/videos/1526910027357612/

I'm think $42 is a nice round number and it's also the answer to life, the universe and everything.  What's on your giving Tuesday list?

The League of Women Voters

Consumer Reports

Union of Concerned Citizens

Drug Policy Alliance  (required for all greenies)

Oops, I almost forgot the wonderful progressive politicians I hope to see in office.

 :)
« Last Edit: November 28, 2017, 03:06:33 PM by LowGear »
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mikenash

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #250 on: November 28, 2017, 03:28:23 PM »
Guys

Sweeping statements again . . .

IMHO it's wrong to blanket describe renewables as "greenwashed" or "problematic"

Down here in our small country we are almost 100% renewable (the exception being a couple of old "backup" generation sites not actually in current use)

We have hydro and wind

Some of the hydro plants are 70 years old and still ticking along

If ever we have power outages they are local ones and it is inevitably due to the greed of the distribution companies who are inclined to continue to use old transmission assets until they fail.  There have been no failures of generation within my living memory

Just my $0.02

LowGear

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #251 on: November 28, 2017, 05:45:20 PM »
Yes glort; we know.  I was hoping others might read it with a grin on their faces and give some thought to how long we can live in the good ole days that weren't as good as we like to remember.  My ancestor's screwed Native Americans out of just about everything.  I'd like my generation to see a stop to that abuse (better hurry up as I turn 74 in January).  How's that refugee thing going for you guys?

I know Australians don't pay their fair share in the Middle East so perhaps that burden is why some of us are so fed up with the dominance of the petroleum industry in our lives and you're not.  And their insistence that there be no subsidies.  We spend billions there every year on our navy alone.  It's one of the reasons that stuff is so cheap - relative to solar, wind and batteries even with direct subsidies.

I believe my brother and sister greenies also trump (pun intended) conservation as the first step in responsible energy management.  I still remember my first house caulking workshop.  Some of the cracks were so wide we had to foam them and come back the following week with caulk.

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AdeV

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #252 on: November 28, 2017, 07:03:52 PM »
Personally, I suspect the renewable alternative to oil, is going to be..... oil.

Yep, really...

There's a Japanese scientist (or possibly a team) who have discovered an cultured a species of alge who convert sunlight, CO2 from the air (or maybe the water, given that algae live in water) and spit out crude oil as a waste product. It's early days yet, and it's not been made clear how difficult it is (or isn't) to make the things reproduce; but it strikes me as an elegant solution to the problem. Suck CO2 out of the air, convert it into oil using solar power - and given the huge deserts (with lots of sunshine) available in Australia, the Middle East, southern USA and Africa; that's a LOT of high-solar land area which could be used to generate this (for want of a better word) bio-oil. It'd give a decent boost to Africa's economies too, if they can manage to make it without shooting each other. And since it's crude oil, it can be cracked to give us all of our favourite "fossil" poisons - petrol, diesel, lubricating oil and maybe even propane and/or butane.

The future's green, literally, and still just as oily as it has been since the 1900s.

e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/85bb7f54-54da-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f
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BruceM

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #253 on: November 28, 2017, 09:22:45 PM »
Alas, AdeV, there's a paywall for the link you provided so we can't read the article, which I'd love to read.  If you give us the researcher's name maybe there's a copy cat article elsewhere in the public domain.

Algae oil has long looked like a very good renewable fuel source that could use sewage waste as a secondary benefit,  but large scale follow through has not happened and the devil is always in the details.  Large scale takes huge bucks and the inevitable problems are an expensive education.

There's some work by Sandia Labs in the US Salton Sea area that looks interesting regarding algae  for oil/chemical production.

https://share-ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/salton-algae/#.Wh3KO3lryo8

 That area has long been proposed as a place capable of growing enough algae oil to provide most of the US oil needs, if LA sewage and seawater was piped in.  Alas, the devil is always in the details.

It is going to smell- no way around that for large open air algae systems. There is more exploratory commercial development for small closed systems.

Until we make the cost of fossil fuels reflect the total cost, including military and environmental, it's not possible for many other fuels/energy sources to compete. People will scream, but then shift to ways that save them money.  The trick is to harness personal and corporate greed to take us in a direction where we have a decent future for future generations, without a big negative impact in present quality of life.  Various carbon tax and cap/trade systems have been proposed to help facilitate this change.

The arguments stated against wind (except the obvious that we can't control the weather) are largely outdated and have been proven false; efficiency of the inverter type systems are now very high, and grid stability augmentation is built in the newer systems, and those developed techniques will be required for new PV systems in California.  At one time the power industry claimed over 10% PV or wind would destabilize the grid...but Denmark is now at 40% of their countries total average electrical power use and climbing.  Some days they are 100% wind and are they are often able to export excess capacity to Sweden via high voltage DC cables in the sea.

http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy/

They've also created a windmill export industry for themselves so I tip my hat to them.  Even though wind is not my personal favorite, in some places/climates it makes very good sense.  When PV was more expensive, here in the White Mountains of Arizona many off grid homes used wind; it provided battery charging 24 hours a day when winter storms rolled in and storm clouds greatly diminished PV output.  Now it is less popular because of cost and maintenance relative to PV, again, specific to our climate and weather patterns.

Solar air conditioning is an area that definately needs some investment stimulus.

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

One technology that could be used in the entire SW USA is Lithium Bromide air conditioning.  Direct solar heating can run the cooling- similar in concept to ammonia cycle refrigeration.  Much smaller roof footprint due to the higher efficiency of direct solar heating vs PV to conventional refrigerant compressor. PV prices now make this less appealing than superinsulation and PV/refrigeration for homes but for commercial buildings it could be the best way to go.

My own cooling needs have been largely eliminated by superinsulation for my particular climate; a one time cost that requires no ongoing maintenance and also saved me a lot of money for the solar hot water heating system as well.

I don't think it's stupid to plan for the future based on the best available science and start working out practical solutions to get there, even though the road will be full of the usual human follies.







broncodriver99

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Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« Reply #254 on: November 29, 2017, 01:21:48 AM »
Do you live where it gets to 30oC + for days at a time and if so, how have you found the trapped heat is over come?
Do you just run the AC or can you ventilate it out at night easily? Does the building warm up and then the radiated heat keep going back inside?

We spend about 3 months of the year at or above 30C(86F). Our temps start rising in late May but the nights are still cool enough that one can get away with no AC. By mid June we are usually into the 90'sF with random days at 100F+. July and August can be pretty miserable here in the 90'sF most days and at least a week or two of mixed temps into the low 100'sF. Our biggest issue is not the temperature, one can acclimate to that, it's the humidity. Without AC there is just no way to dry off without sitting still in front of a fan which doesn't always work either.

I don't dare open my windows from June 1 to September 1 as it takes days for the AC to pull the humidity back out once the house is closed back up. There aren't many around here that don't have at least a window AC unit to keep one room cool on the hottest days. I used to be OK with toughing out all but the hottest of days but I have zero interest in it anymore. I work outside all day in the heat and sun and have no interest in sweating while sitting on my couch so I run the AC.

We had a whole house fan growing up, it moved a serious amount of air. We closed the windows in the AM before it got too warm and opened them up in late evening and ran the fan all night. I doesn't seem like it got as hot back then but I do believe that spending too much time in AC makes it harder to bear higher or lower temperatures.