LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

The US needs to build a bigger, stronger grid. FERC has a plan for…

A new federal proposal would task grid operators, states and utilities with planning a grid that can support clean energy over the long term — and fairly share…

www.canarymedia.com

Over the past nine months, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been working on a major reform to U.S. transmission-grid policy, one that clean-energy advocates say could determine whether or not the country will be able to build the vast amount of solar and wind power needed to combat climate change.

On Thursday, FERC approved the first fruits of that process — a proposal to require transmission providers to develop new planning processes and draw up 20-year plans for building large-scale regional transmission and sharing the costs. The aim is to build a grid robust enough to handle a rapidly changing energy mix over decades to come.

FERC’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) doesn’t directly address some factors holding back clean-energy growth. For example, it doesn’t propose policies specifically aimed at reducing interconnection queue backlogs and costly grid upgrades for wind, solar and energy-storage projects — issues that the agency intends to take up in a future proposed rulemaking.

But the NOPR has earned cautious approval from clean-energy backers like the American Clean Power Association trade group for laying the groundwork for building the kind of grid the country will need to capture the cost, reliability and decarbonization benefits of clean energy.

“Clean energy resources are abundant in the U.S., but our grid falls short of connecting clean-energy-rich regions to the population centers that need it most,” American Clean Power CEO Heather Zichal said in a Thursday statement. “We encourage FERC to refine and finalize today’s proposal so that current and anticipated transmission needs can be met in a timely and cost-effective manner and support a transition to a clean energy future.”

Thursday’s 4–1 vote approving the NOPR is only the first step in this process. Stakeholders — including transmission grid operators, state utility and energy regulators, transmission-owning utilities, independent transmission and energy developers — will have months to comment on the proposal and debate how planning should be conducted. Then FERC will vote on a final rule, potentially before the end of this year.

continues....

Quote from JedRothwell

$15,840 / 197,100 kWh = $0.08/kWh

Every ten years you have to replace the inverter. But today's panel give you 25..30 years guarantee for 90% name plate! So they will last much longer!

UK national health now issues a new report about all respiratory virus. Between the lines they complain that CoV-19 diagnosis is far to low....

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1070353/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w16.pdf

Reason about 10 x more people go to hospital because of an other virus. So in fact CoV-19 has always been largely over reported...

Also nice to see that respiratory ED visits follow the pollution and is lowest in South west.

The only question that remains: Why do they (press) still publish "fake" CoV-19 death numbers albeit we know that most are with not from?

New detailed physics study about wind farm dynamics and their potential once fully understood: Physics - The Answer is Blowing in the Turbine (aps.org)

Quote from Shane D.

New detailed physics study about wind farm dynamics and their potential once fully understood: Physics - The Answer is Blowing in the Turbine (aps.org)

Interesting and not unexpected. On the topic of turbulence, it has many unexpected outcomes and uses. One of my former students works at an engineering development company in the UK where they are re-designing the bearings used in wind systems. Normally these are just conventional roller races, but like all moving systems these can develop flat spots on rollers or craters in the race housing. The new bearings they are developing have a chicane in the track the rollers follow which introduces a degree of randomness into the interaction between rollers and race thus delaying the development of flat spots and improving bearing life by a factor of at least 3X.

Here is a good article about the Traverse wind farm. It has many good photos that give you a feel for how these things look:

'The sound of money': Wind energy is booming in deep-red Republican states

Wind turbines don't just dot the landscape in Oklahoma; they dominate it.

www.cnn.com

Quote from JedRothwell

Here is a good article about the Traverse wind farm. It has many good photos that give you a feel for how these things look:

I think they are beautiful. Part of the high plateau in France has hundreds, quite a sight.

i'm really agree even if i don't find them as really efficient and promising for the future however they exude a certain aesthetic, i think.

Quote from Alan Smith

I think they are beautiful. Part of the high plateau in France has hundreds, quite a sight.

Quote from Shane D.

New detailed physics study about wind farm dynamics and their potential once fully understood: Physics - The Answer is Blowing in the Turbine (aps.org)

Fascinating! I love the way they use snow as a way to measure the effect of the turbine on air. It is so clever to use a nature as an instrument, rather than inventing some complicated laser, lidar, radar gadget.

I can't decide if I think wind turbines are beautiful, or whether they look like "toilet brushes in the sky" as one conservative UK opponent said. But they sure look better than coal fired generators! We used to have many of these in Georgia. I have driven by them during inversions. They were hellish.

I hope wind turbines do not kill many birds. If they do . . . well, no technology is perfect. They all have disadvantages. They sometimes have tragic consequences.

Sailing ships were the first great wind powered technology that changed the face of the earth. Most of the European populations of North America came here with wind power. Millions of people and billions of tons of goods were moved all over the earth with wind power. Large sailing ships had megawatt levels of power. They were the biggest, most powerful machines for a long time, even after steam engines were developed. Sail boat and sailing ships are beautiful to look at. They are wonderful machines. The techniques used to propel them are ingenious. They can be sailed into the wind, or into a dead halt in a high wind, with the hove to maneuver. That's all wonderful, but working on a sailing ship was a nightmare. It was very dangerous. So they were beautiful to look at, but ugly and awful to experience.

If wind turbines are replaced with cold fusion, I won't miss them for a second.

JedRothwell

Quote from JedRothwell

Fascinating! I love the way they use snow as a way to measure the effect of the turbine on air. It is so clever to use a nature as an instrument, rather than inventing some complicated laser, lidar, radar gadget.

Smoke might work better. I think a study of turbulence from windmills might put to rest the idea that the area covered by a windmill's base is the area affected by it.

You Europeans have a problem and six months to solve it. With Russia cutting off natural gas imports you need LGN from the U. S. You wouldn't make a deal with Trump. Now what? You need ships and Russian nickel is also gone. Well, as I mentioned, there is a nickel mine (the Eagle Mine) 80 miles from me. They fought to stop that mine from being built, now you need it's product. How fortuitous is that?

LPP fusion Update.

500: We've Run Into An Issue | Mailchimp

Here is an example of an incremental improvement to wind power. This is why wind and solar have gradually moved ahead of concentrated solar, fission and other alternatives. No single breakthrough made them cheaper. It was a series of incremental improvements. If companies had invested in concentrated solar or fission, those methods might have improved and they might be cheaper.

Technology usually progresses incrementally, although in some cases there are big breakthroughs that change everything, such as integrated circuits or fiber optics.

How 3D printing could revolutionize wind energy development

GE has opened a new research and development facility in Bergen, New York that is exploring how to 3D print the concrete base of wind towers.

www.renewableenergyworld.com

I have always thought that 3D printing was an overhyped technology. I can see niche applications for it. If there is a need to produce one off components without the expense of creating a custom mould. But the materials choices are clearly quite limited. You cannot easily 3D print with molten steel. And if you tried to, spraying a liquid onto an already solid layer would create weaknesses within the material - grain boundaries that are weakly fused for example. This would happen because one layer of metal had already formed grain boundaries as the layer on top cools and solidifies forming relatively weak bonds with the layer below. It is precisely to avoid problems like this that casting requires very specific cooling rates for any high stress components.

3D printing of concrete sounds like something that would be time consuming. You must wait for one layer to set before you add another, otherwise the structure will slump under its own weight. Given that turbine towers are mass produced anyway, what does this do for anyone that cannot be achieved by pouring concrete into moulds, and allowing them to set in controlled conditions? The same is true for thermoplastic components, as soon as you want more than just a few of something. Injection moulding can do just about anything that 3D printing can. And it is quite old technology now.

Quote from Calliban

You cannot easily 3D print with molten steel. And if you tried to, spraying a liquid onto an already solid layer would create weaknesses within the material - grain boundaries that are weakly fused for example.

No- but you can use it to make casting patterns that work very well. This video gives a very good and clear account of the whole process.

Quote from Calliban

what does this do for anyone that cannot be achieved by pouring concrete into moulds, and allowing them to set in controlled conditions?

As explained in the article, this allows them to fabricate the tower bases on site, rather than fabricating them elsewhere and sending completed ones by train and truck. They are getting bigger and bigger, so it must be increasingly difficult to transport them. It is not difficult sending many truckloads of concrete. I think this also allows automated production, so you don't need as many skilled workers.

You see from the photo that this is a complicated structure. You could not produce anything so complicated on site, outside a factory, without an automated machine. A gigantic 3-D printer is apparently the best way to automate this. I have seen other gigantic concrete 3-D printers used to make houses and other structures. Here's one:

MudBots 3D Concrete Printers

Get more done in just a third of the time and save up to 70%. 3D Concrete Printing is the future of construction industry. Start printing now with Mudbots.

www.mudbots.com

Quote from Calliban

You must wait for one layer to set before you add another, otherwise the structure will slump under its own weight.

Judging from the photo, they make a layer, let it dry, and then make another. That is how people make dams and other concrete structures. You can see lines that apparently separate layers. Perhaps they have the machine work continuously on several of them, in a round-robin fashion.

Here is some other info about the GE concrete printer. The layers are a few inches thick. I recall a few years ago when a section of I85 in Atlanta collapsed, they built up a new structure in record time with fast-drying concrete.

Fit To Print: GE Is Looking At 3D-Printing Wind Turbine Towers From Concrete For More Efficient Wind Farms | GE News

www.ge.com

Quote from JedRothwell

Judging from the photo, they make a layer, let it dry, and then make another. That is how people make dams and other concrete structures. You can see lines that apparently separate layers. Perhaps they have the machine work continuously on several of them, in a round-robin fashion.

I don’t recall exactly the numbers, so feel feel to correct me, but it was something like engineers calculated that for a single pour (if possible) for the Hoover Dam it would take in the order of 100 years for the concrete to set to structural strength but in carefully managed back and forth pouring for a semi-set between poured “layers” the engineered strength set time dropped to months.

Concrete printers could be the ultimate in economizing cementeous material capabilities.

The machine that grinds up, refreshes, mixes, pours, and perfectly flattens ashphalt roads is a bit of a precursor. I have seen crews making 8 or 9 miles a day of new highway surface. The original painted centerline split in half, with a nearly imperceptible lip at the old pavement, made perfect when coming back the other way. The radiant heat coming off the flame throwing, post grind, pre pour surface heater section is easily felt through car windows when passing. No reason why a concrete-making one couldn’t be built. Feeding in the correct raw materials in the required volume would be the biggest bottleneck for big projects.

On the moon, dust is a big problem. Pave a few square miles of moon surface with moon dust-into-concrete usng autonomous concrete-making rover drones and it should be fairly dust free in the middle of the concrete pad when done.