LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.
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Curbina it is not surprising that 80% subsidy makes everything very attractive. When Ontario they subsidised electric cars by 14k we had waiting lists.
Luckily not all countries have that so manufactures have to improve PV to make them competitive against fossils.
Well, asking for the subsidy is a bureaucratic nightmare so many people do this with their own money, it just helped many more people realize that Solar was very practical and you can kiss the grid good bye for ever with a well designed project and never look back.
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Curbina what is the warranty on solar panels? Do they have performance guarantee and for how long? Not sure about your locale but in Canada I do not see how I am going to recover full price of the panels during my relatively short life.
Well I often forget that I live in a privileged area from the solar energy point of view, so forgive me my enthusiasm. However I have read online of successful solar off grid users as far as Alaska, they have to be very energy budget conscious and have a small windmill too.
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Curbina in remote areas you should always include one time cost associated with connection to the grid which can be comparable with entire solar install. I mean 4 zero figures. Plus power supply is not reliable so you need to install additional backup. I live in the city and I believe electricity must go up x3 before I consider paying full price of solar out of pocket. Criminal decision of my government to pay up to 80 cents per kw for the energy home solar generates provided initial boost but like m any other stupid programs form the government, except hot fusion, didn't last long.
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Curbina it is not surprising that 80% subsidy makes everything very attractive. When Ontario they subsidised electric cars by 14k we had waiting lists.
Luckily not all countries have that so manufactures have to improve PV to make them competitive against fossils.
In UK (high fuel price) most people reckon EVs will be competitive without subsidy before 2025.
The whole PV / EV thing is a great example of how govt subsidies and regulation can switch round even an industry as complex and traditional as automobiles.
Look at the enormous research effort going into PV + batteries - and how it has paid off with spectacular price decreases and performance advantages.
We are now at the end of the easy performance gains for PV (unless something new works out, which it may) but batteries are a much more difficult thing to crack and we have a lot of performance improvement there still in the pipeline.
Exciting times.
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It is exciting. Not sure if the projections are correct. You need to include possible x2 electricity price increase due to the need to upgrade infrastructure. I don't think that weather in UK or Canada will allow for charging your EV from typical size roof.
Longevity of the panels is another developing story. I am not aware of any statistics here but recent Walmart vs Tesla suit over 7 roof fires is an indicator that not everything is so shiny with PVs
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Just ate my second Impossible foods burger. This time at Burger King. For reference, I am a burger lover. Also been eating meatless "burgers" like Boca, and the Morningstar veggie patties for many years. The Impossible Whopper was as tasty, and meat-like (including texture) as any burger I have ever eaten. They must have changed the formula since last time I ate one, because this tasted even better. Could not get over how similar it was to hamburger meat. And it far surpasses any of the other meatless burgers.
Hard to mention a food item, and transformative in the same sentence, but this may just be that. The ingredients are dirt cheap (soy basically), so once the competition kicks into gear, the price should come down, and different cuts of "meat" hit the market.
Have you seen the backlash to vegetable meat imitations?
Meat the “marrot”.... https://stories.inspirebrands.…tables-megetables-marrot/
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depressed over the impending Dead Earth.
Impending doom is decades away but solar and wind power won't stave it off.
Battery storage is a dream
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So let’s suppose we blanket the United States with enough industrial-scale wind and solar facilities to replace the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours Americans used in 2018 – and we manufacture and install enough king-sized batteries to store sufficient electricity for seven straight windless or sunless days. We would need something on the order of one billion 100-kilowatt-hour, 1,000-pound lithium and cobalt-based battery packs –
similar to what Tesla uses in its electric vehicles.
(This does not include the extra battery storage required to charge up the cars, trucks and buses we are supposed to replace with EVs.)
via Anthony's WUWT.
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Impending doom is decades away but solar and wind power won't stave it off.
Battery storage is a dream
"
So let’s suppose we blanket the United States with enough industrial-scale wind and solar facilities to replace the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours Americans used in 2018 – and we manufacture and install enough king-sized batteries to store sufficient electricity for seven straight windless or sunless days. We would need something on the order of one billion 100-kilowatt-hour, 1,000-pound lithium and cobalt-based battery packs –
similar to what Tesla uses in its electric vehicles.
(This does not include the extra battery storage required to charge up the cars, trucks and buses we are supposed to replace with EVs.)
via Anthony's WUWT.
WUWT is not a reliable science site - it depresses but does not surprise me that RB thinks it is!
I'll leave it to others to see the idiocy in this argument, or to look at the (real) work done on storage and base load needed for given fraction of renewables. And note that solar + large battery facilities in the US are replacing old gas utility plants and are cheaper.
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Battery storage for South Australia..
WUWT is not a reliable science site - it depresses but does not surprise me that RB thinks it is!
The politicised premature ablation of 900 MW of coalfired generation capacity in
South Australia's led to the knee jerk installation of a Tesla Bank
These actions contributed to the highest electricity price in Australia.
about 60% higher than the nongreen rest of Australia.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/ho…in-south-australia-20393/
Despite the green lobby there is huge public resistance in the most populous states Queensland, NSW, Victoria
to the premature closing off of 18000 MW of coalfired generation.
Rather than 100 or so expensive Tesla Banks and a forest of solar panels and wind turbines
the engineers/technologists are looking at cheaper options
such as pumped hydro . and the politicians are delaying the green..
all with difficulty... the available options are expensive.
Across the Tasman,NZ prides itself on its green hydro and geothermal; 80% renewable electricity.
Hopefully LENR can change the Australian scenery.
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Despite the green lobby there is huge public resistance in the most populous states Queensland, NSW, Victoria
to the premature closing off of 18000 MW of coalfired generation.
And in the US 50% of the population strongly resist neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, believing that the variety of life on earth is positive evidence for an intelligent creator.
Public opinion is no substitute for science.
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And in the US 50% of the population strongly resist neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, believing that the variety of life on earth is positive evidence for an intelligent creator.
Public opinion is no substitute for science.
Well, I may be in the 50%, (but not for religious reasons) Not predictable, not testable, no internal consistency, parsimony, empirical adequacy, and no pragmatic adequacy, 2nd Law Thermodynamics ..... we could go on?
If it were any other field, it would be disparaged as such.... but then I do not want to get off topic! 
Cordyceps :
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no substitute for science.
There is no substitute for numbers..
THHuxley will find it difficult to find numbers to extend his claim of
"solar + large battery facilities in the US are replacing old gas utility plants and are cheaper."
to the replacement of 18000 MW of coalfired generation in Australia with battery facilites
without raising electricity prices by at least100%.
solar/wind plus battery in South Australia has raised prices by 60%..
even including considerable government subsidies..
and still just 20% of its 1000 MW generation is solar/wind (with the $100M , 100MW Tesla battery bank)
the rest... 800MW... is natural gas fired.
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The answer to all our energy problems is simply to use much less and develop widespread wood-fuelled power stations supplied by sustainable willow plantations which will act to give a zero carbon footprint. Or large-scale hemp cultivation would do the same thing for God's sake! (which is why marijuana was made illegal in the first place because the timber/paper industry realized the potential threat to their monopoly). Running out of fuel is not the problem- over-population is.
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wood-fuelled power stations supplied by sustainable willow plantations which will act to give a zero carbon footprint.
Am I missing some sarcasm or irony here? Something wood-fueled has a zero carbon footprint? And are we planning to run airliners by burning willows?
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Only joking (even if it happens to be true)!
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Am I missing some sarcasm or irony here? Something wood-fueled has a zero carbon footprint?
Yes, it has zero carbon footprint, because new trees are planted, and the carbon is extracted from the atmosphere and put back into the wood. It is a form of solar energy.
If you do not plant enough new trees, and you end up reducing the total mass of wood on the continent, then this method adds to carbon in the atmosphere. You have to grow enough trees to equal consumption.
And are we planning to run airliners by burning willows?
At the end of WWII, Japanese airplanes were fueled with gasoline made from pine trees. We run a significant fraction of our automobiles by burning corn. So it could be done. It is a lunatic thing to do from the point of view of economics, pollution and ecology, but it could be done.
It would be far more efficient to run airplanes on hydrogen gas made with solar or wind power. You could also make synthetic hydrocarbon fuel, but hydrogen is a better choice for airplanes, because it is light. With wind turbines in North and South Dakota alone, the U.S. could make more synthetic fuel than all of the oil coming out of Middle East. Or, we could do that with an array of solar panels ~100 miles square in the South West deserts. It would cost a lot of money going in, but it would make a lot of money, and it would put OPEC and Russia out of business.
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The answer to all our energy problems is simply to use much less and develop widespread wood-fuelled power stations supplied by sustainable willow plantations which will act to give a zero carbon footprint. Or large-scale hemp cultivation would do the same thing for God's sake! (which is why marijuana was made illegal in the first place because the timber/paper industry realized the potential threat to their monopoly). Running out of fuel is not the problem- over-population is.
Overpopulation is a fars, our situation is based on fear of the right technologies, greed and lack of efficiency. No need to go back to timber fires. Stable atomic and condensed hydrogen fires are the next step, a stronger push going into optimising nuclear science is the path.
