Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Odd really, I seem to remember following those discussions closely at the time and I don't actually remember you being involved at all - incidentally, the discussions seem to have happened before you registered under your current profile which probably raises plenty of questions or provides oodles of answers for a number of current forum members! ...

Z

The most likely answer is that I am on the payroll of big oil here to spread fake news and slow the deployment of wind power right? :rotfl:

Anyway good to see you did not try to disagree with the idea that externality costs are mostly hyped propaganda using shoddy assumptions and data like valuing shortened lives in the many millions of dollars

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I appreciate your response, but I think my warning was appropriate, my position on batteries is, I believe, solid. It's well considered, and I've explained it in detail. Your approach, based on a small fragment of information failed to see the big picture, and that's where many discussions on these matters go astray. If you don't see the big picture, then you will fail to see the whole context.

I believe that you have the issue backwards regarding your complaints about subsidies towards the RE industry. These subsidies are needed to deal, as soon as possible with an enormous and growing problem, on which the scientific community is virtually unanimous, and national policies across the globe are also close to unanimous.

So I'd suggest you need to stop raising concerns about RE support for a while, and first deal with the underlying issue of AGW.

If you can successfully prove that the science is wrong, then you would be in a position to criticise the response to the science which is the global response to AGW.

This may sound cheeky, but it really is that simple, first get a peer reviewed scientific paper that contradicts the 50yrs of solid science on this matter, then we can discuss the merits, or not, of promoting/supporting low carbon technologies - especially given the far greater annual support that the FF industry still gets..

That the world is heating up does not mean it is a big net negative it is most likely just a very slight positive or negative.

Every single natural disaster, every single ice age, every single mass extinction, every single change in the earths atmosphere and oceans that happened on earth to date was not only good but was likely essential for the lifeforms that exist today.

michaels

Over the next 10-20 years the trickle of second life car batteries is likely to become a flood, offering a cheap source of storage (assuming in that period new cell costs have not fallen so sharply that it is not even worth reusing the old car cells).

https://thinkprogress.org/how-used-electric-car-batteries-will-turbocharge-the-renewables-revolution-4baf33d4b15f/

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Over the next 10-20 years the trickle of second life car batteries is likely to become a flood, offering a cheap source of storage (assuming in that period new cell costs have not fallen so sharply that it is not even worth reusing the old car cells).

https://thinkprogress.org/how-used-electric-car-batteries-will-turbocharge-the-renewables-revolution-4baf33d4b15f/

Yep, and I hope I've got the next bit right, as I asked for advice (a few years back) from those with large batts, and large batt experience:

The loss of capacity does not mean a loss of efficiency, that's to say that the battery efficiencies losses will remain as a percentage of the charge and discharge, and not reflect the original batt capacity.

That made no sense.

Ok, let's try an example. You start of with a 100kWh car battery, that has a 90% efficiency cycle (so around 110kWh in) and after 10yrs, perhaps 250,000 miles, its capacity is down to 80%.

The car owner would like more range, so swaps it out.

The batt is now effectively an 80kWh battery but will still be 90% efficient, in that it now takes about 88kWh to charge it if you want 80kWh's out. It doesn't still take 110kWh in to get 80kWh out.

Or at least that's what 'they' told me. :whistle:

zeupater

GreatApe wrote: »

The most likely answer is that I am on the payroll of big oil here to spread fake news and slow the deployment of wind power right? :rotfl:

Hi

Most likely?, no not at all ... the most likely scenario is that, for some unknown reason, the current profile is one in a series going back a number of years, each of which has been used to create argument by injecting dubious postulations with very little to support the claims, many of which are targetted at environmental issues for some (as yet) unknown reason but I doubt that 'big oil' would be backing such an obviously biased & argumentative approach, it's simply not in their own interests!

Anyway, I seem to recall that one of the main protagonists involved in the previous discussions ended up deleting a shed-load of posts at a point where most of the postulations & claims employed had been successfully challenged and effectively been proved unfounded ... whether an attempt to cover ineptitude or simply their tracks so as to rinse & repeat at a later stage - who knows, but what is interesting is the way that old arguments are targetted at the same individuals by different profiles and continued as if they were one & the same ...

Whether the above is considered as being fair, or unfair, I have held a strong feeling that the conclusion is correct for some time ... it's just that it seems to have been confirmed in recently stating to another member .. "We had this discussion .." .. when the timeline involved clearly shows that not to be the case, unless multiple profiles have been employed!

Anyway, thanks for the interest on this thread on the G&E board, I'm sure that some find your own contributions to be insightful, but sampling a couple of the latest ones has confirmed that leopards & spots apply, I'll just bow out and leave your profile on my ignore list (where it's been for some considerable time!) as opposed to having an interest in what's posted!

Z

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Yep, and I hope I've got the next bit right, as I asked for advice (a few years back) from those with large batts, and large batt experience:

The loss of capacity does not mean a loss of efficiency, that's to say that the battery efficiencies losses will remain as a percentage of the charge and discharge, and not reflect the original batt capacity.

That made no sense.

Ok, let's try an example. You start of with a 100kWh car battery, that has a 90% efficiency cycle (so around 110kWh in) and after 10yrs, perhaps 250,000 miles, its capacity is down to 80%.

The car owner would like more range, so swaps it out.

The batt is now effectively an 80kWh battery but will still be 90% efficient, in that it now takes about 88kWh to charge it if you want 80kWh's out. It doesn't still take 110kWh in to get 80kWh out.

Or at least that's what 'they' told me. :whistle:

My understanding too. With a fixed installation where 'max range' is not a factor it may be more efficient to avoid the top and bottom 10% of the remaining capacity as the loss per cycle is more than made up for by getting many more cycles.

JKenH

It’s all getting a bit personal on this thread so I think I will bow out. I know that’s what forums are like. It’s a risk everyone takes when putting forward an opinion. GW is an emotive issue, AGW even more so (and I accept that the very fact that I have just made that distinction may see even more flack fired in my direction).

I don’t set out to cause offence or belittle anyone and certainly would apologise if my comments came across to anybody like that. I may put forward an alternative point of view and, given that this is a “green and ethical” forum, that may offend some people’s sensibilities. I will make my point and usually then leave it there. Prolonged exchanges on forums frequently degenerate in civility so in my view are best avoided.

I won’t take any of the recent comments made to heart or take offence; I am just leaving it here for now.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Over the next 10-20 years the trickle of second life car batteries is likely to become a flood, offering a cheap source of storage (assuming in that period new cell costs have not fallen so sharply that it is not even worth reusing the old car cells).

https://thinkprogress.org/how-used-electric-car-batteries-will-turbocharge-the-renewables-revolution-4baf33d4b15f/

Will it even be necessary?

As you install more and more PV the price will be lowest when solar is highest so the EVs will likely almost all opt to charge during the max sunshine hours

In the UK if we have 35 million cars using 4MWh / yr that is close to 380GWh of storage top up needed daily. Say the cars charge during the peak 8 hours of sunshine in the peak summer days that equals close to 50GW for 8 hours the cars will be able to soak up

Not all solar panel output correlates 100% say 80% and that gives you ability to add 60GW of solar without any additional storage, just using EV fleet top up add int he maybe around 40GW the grid can handle now and you have room for 100GW PV in the UK without needed any additional stationary storage

Allow a small amount of vehicle to grid output and you can up that figure to 150GW of solar PV which could take PV to an annual 25% of electricity needs (including transport)

150GW PV + 100GW offshore wind and allow upto 10% export&curtailment and you get towards 95% wind/PV and 5% imports or gas fired

EVs solve so much of the problem
Offshore wind (or rather high CF wind be it onshore or offshore) also solves so much
Wind + EVs might even allow a lot of seasonal heating to be solved.

The next thing to discuss maybe in around 10 years time is when to ban gas boilers.
That would be quite a rapid transisition as some ~2 million homes each year need to replace their boilers.

Maybe start regulating all new builds to be electric only some time in the early 2020s with the better insulation they should be good candidates also less losses and more efficient system overall. I would probably do it asap maybe start for 2020 all new builds electric only no NG and with some solar if the local grid connection is not strong enough for solar on all builds in the development then have the solar feed the hot water tanks

One of the good things about france is their nukes actually do more than electric they also do a lot of heating for the french which is one of the reasons they use less NG (even when you account for the NG burnt in uk power stations the french use a lot less NG becuase more of their homes and factories and businesses are electric heated rather than NG)

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Most likely?, no not at all ... the most likely scenario is that, for some unknown reason, the current profile is one in a series going back a number of years, each of which has been used to create argument by injecting dubious postulations with very little to support the claims, many of which are targetted at environmental issues for some (as yet) unknown reason but I doubt that 'big oil' would be backing such an obviously biased & argumentative approach, it's simply not in their own interests!

Anyway, I seem to recall that one of the main protagonists involved in the previous discussions ended up deleting a shed-load of posts at a point where most of the postulations & claims employed had been successfully challenged and effectively been proved unfounded ... whether an attempt to cover ineptitude or simply their tracks so as to rinse & repeat at a later stage - who knows, but what is interesting is the way that old arguments are targetted at the same individuals by different profiles and continued as if they were one & the same ...

Whether the above is considered as being fair, or unfair, I have held a strong feeling that the conclusion is correct for some time ... it's just that it seems to have been confirmed in recently stating to another member .. "We had this discussion .." .. when the timeline involved clearly shows that not to be the case, unless multiple profiles have been employed!

Anyway, thanks for the interest on this thread on the G&E board, I'm sure that some find your own contributions to be insightful, but sampling a couple of the latest ones has confirmed that leopards & spots apply, I'll just bow out and leave your profile on my ignore list (where it's been for some considerable time!) as opposed to having an interest in what's posted!

Z

If it intrigues you so much the reason is i wanted to spend less time on this forum so I set the account to a different email address (so I cant recover the password) and changed the password. It worked I was away for a while but then I came back (and had to use a new account as I had effectively made recovery of the old one impossible) as the house prices and economies board is somewhat interesting

Either way my views have evolved primarily because of the invention of high CF offshore wind it will allow wind power to dominate and actually work without the need for mass storage you could get to 50% wind today with no battery storage at all. That was not possible in the days of 20% CF wind farms and also the land use problems with onshore turbines would make mass onshore wind unviable

I was also pro nuclear but now am anti nuclear for the simple reason that you cant build a small number of anything successfully including even custom homes (always over budget and not on time) and since nuclear stations are so powerful even big nations like the UK need so few that most of them will be built over budget and with long delays. So no nukes instead offshore wind power. Although china/India being much bigger consumers of electricity could do nuclear successfully although if wind is cheaper then do wind instead

Coastalwatch

Had a quick look at the National Grid live status earlier today. It was showing 46.8% being delivered by renewables with Wind even outstripping Nuclear. Around 11pm this evening Renewables were generating 37% of our requirements and Wind being the largest single source. Sadly Coal was still in use, delvering about 5%. Perhaps they are taking the opportunity to disippate the pollution while the wind is blowing!:)