Power companies going the way of the landline by 2030?

[inetdog]

SunKıng - The green brıgade (notice I didn't use the term loony) has their minds made up - no hope for them as science has no meaning to Obama and cohorts.

Unlike the climate change deniers who do not ignore science, they just make up their own?
That said, let's try to keep the politics out of the discussion to the extent that is possible when discussing the future.

[Sunking]

Oh boy: "lots of links."

Try reading them. Each one has more supporting links from peer reviewed scientist, engineers, and universities. It is a simple fact battery systems are well below 1 EROI and thus a waste of resources. Even solar PV on commercial scale does not work with EROI of 3 to 5. Wind barely makes it at 7 to 8, and hydro are the only renewable sources that work. Neither Wind or Hydro can supply current demand, there is no more meaningful hydro to utilize, and wind is very geographically limited and unreliable to be considered a source. That only leaves you fossil fuel and nuclear to work with. Longer you put it off, the more painful and expensive it will be. It is not hard to understand.

[russ]

Unlike the climate change deniers who do not ignore science, they just make up their own?
That said, let's try to keep the politics out of the discussion to the extent that is possible when discussing the future.

I simply mentioned name where science has no meaning. Climate changers Follow what science?

[LETitROLL]

What California is doing is applying a little foresight. That way, we adapt ahead of when the market (or nature) would otherwise demand it.

Is that the same foresight the Liberal officials running that state have used with WATER?, I think i see a pattern developing here. People that can accomplish anything, as long as they have somebody else's money (or other resources) to do it with. Power wont be an issue, they will save a bunch of it when all the water pumps run dry and seize up.

[DanKegel]

It is a simple fact battery systems are well below 1 EROI and thus a waste of resources. Even solar PV on commercial scale does not work with EROI of 3 to 5.

The analysis you're pointing to may have been a bit off; see

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Carbajales-Dale/publication/271699871_Energy_return_on_investment_(EROI)_of_solar_PV_an_attempt_at_reconciliation/links/54f872050cf2ccffe9df2bcc.pdf

for some critiques. For instance, it assumes you need ten days of storage.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...-scale-storage suggests 4 hours may be sufficient.

So, what's the EROI of PV when you use natural gas generators as a backup for cloudy days?
I bet it's a heck of a lot better than the 3 to 5 you quote. Or what if you use a battery for just one hour of peak shaving? Again, probably a lot better than 3 to 5.

[DanS26]

I'm going out on a limb here.....I firmly believe that energy transmission technology is going to be the long term energy technology solution. Energy storage is going to be disruptive short term, but energy transmission technology will change the energy industry around the world.

Your local power company is not going away....they will just have to tap into the unlimited energy source of the sun shining 24/7 somewhere on the earth. The light side will be constantly feeding the dark side....if you can transmit that power without loss around the globe.

Why build 50,000 nuclear power plants when you only need one and it is already in production.

[DanKegel]

SunKıng - The green brıgade (notice I didn't use the term loony) has their minds made up - no hope for them as science has no meaning to Obama and cohorts.

Science is really, really important.

Making rational decisions requires following the data whereever it leads, no matter how painful or embarassing it is for one's own views or wishes.

It pains me when lawmakers try to keep scientists from doing their job, or when people assume that they can get good science from partisan talk radio or cable news shows.

Getting to the truth requires patience, humility, and flexibility... not to mention a good dose of science literacy, things many pundits and politicians seem to lack.

[Ian S]

Try reading them. Each one has more supporting links from peer reviewed scientist, engineers, and universities. It is a simple fact battery systems are well below 1 EROI and thus a waste of resources. Even solar PV on commercial scale does not work with EROI of 3 to 5. Wind barely makes it at 7 to 8, and hydro are the only renewable sources that work. Neither Wind or Hydro can supply current demand, there is no more meaningful hydro to utilize, and wind is very geographically limited and unreliable to be considered a source. That only leaves you fossil fuel and nuclear to work with. Longer you put it off, the more painful and expensive it will be. It is not hard to understand.

I'm not sure those links show what you think they do. Take your linked article in IEEE Spectrum, hardly a bastion of loony greens BTW:

The researchers calculated the energy return on investment (EROI) for various storage technologies in combination with solar and wind power. First of all, when it comes to solar, all technologies considered, including compressed air storage and batteries like zinc-bromine and vanadium redox, worked better than curtailing the generation. So, for solar: always store what you can, no matter what storage medium you've got lying around. The best energy returns come from compressed air and pumped hydroelectric, but lithium-ion batteries aren't bad either.

See what I bolded? So Li-ion batteries are pretty close to compressed air and pumped hydro in EROI. What's more, looking at the tiny chart provided, I can't see that EROI for solar with Li-ion battery storage ever drops even close to 1 in EROI. As for the data in your chart from the bravenewclimate article, it gives EROI of solar without storage as 3.9 which seems very pessimistic compared to other estimates e.g. it's half of what was assumed in your IEEE Spectrum article. Some of that may have arisen by considering PV in Germany, which I'm sure we can all agree is not optimum for solar production compared to say where I live. For that same PV system here in the desert, the numerator in the EROI calculation would be far higher and so would EROI itself.

[Sunking]

Ian you lost the argument. Accept the fact Solar PV with storage is useless and a waste of resources. End of story.

[J.P.M.]

Ian you lost the argument. Accept the fact Solar PV with storage is useless and a waste of resources. End of story.

It might not be cost effective or practical at this time, but the future's not written over the past, so maybe the story's not quite over just yet.

Derrick: I bet you'd prefer plant operations to R & D huh ? I think we need both types.

[russ]

WHAT percentage of homes have the location or resources for solar? Few

What we have here is small group of converted types evangilizing solar shere it doesn't fit today nor by 2030

[Sunking]

Derrick: I bet you'd prefer plant operations to R & D huh ? I think we need both types.

Not at all JPM, I am all for R&D.

The issue with batteries is they are not energy sources or a source of fuel. Like hydrogen, batteries are carriers of energy. Water is another example as we can pump energy into water in the form of heat to make steam. So I think everyone can understand that.

But here is the catch. Just like Hydrogen it takes energy to make a battery, a lot of it. No battery known to man today can store and cycle more energy in its lifetime than it takes to make the battery from cradle to grave. Hydrogen is the worse at 5% efficiency meaning you have to pump in 20 units of energy to get 1 unit out. Not only does that mean the EROI is less than 1, it also means the price of the battery will be a multiple greater than 1 of the source fuel used to make it.

Once you know and understand that relationship. it is very easy to understand why using batteries is a very poor option to store energy. Currently today Pump Back Lakes and Compressed Air have the highest EROI but is still less than 1. It is just the simple law of physics you know all to well JPM.

I am not saying there cannot be a battery out there with an EROI greater than 1 someday in the future, but today none exist or any on the drawing boards yet. So back to the R&D we go. Personally I prefer my money to go into development of Fast Breeder Reactors and sources of energy. Finding a new source of energy is more important than finding a storage medium. Solar is not a good option as a source with EROI of 3 to 5. Wind is more promising with EROI of 8 but like solar very geographically restricted to where it can be used which are not near population where it can be used readily. Fast Breeder Reactor can be in your basement and supply several square miles of high density population and is the Core tool to be used in a Smart Grid. Works like Cell Towers. If one trips off-line the surrounding reactors pick up the slack.

[DanKegel]

I am not saying there cannot be a battery out there with an EROI greater than 1 someday in the future, but today none exist or any on the drawing boards yet.

I think the figure of merit for batteries alone is ESOI, not EROI.
According to http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/artic.../ee/c3ee41973h
Li-ion batteries have an ESOI of 32, and compressed air storage has an ESOI of 797.

The same paper gives the EROI of wafer PV as 8, thin film PV as 13, and wind as ~85.

According to that paper, storage with currently available Li-ion batteries improves EROI for solar, but not yet for wind.

I have not yet read that paper carefully enough to see how it fares vs. the EROI paper I posted earlier, e.g. I don't know how many days of storage this paper assumes.

[DanKegel]

WHAT percentage of homes have the location or resources for solar? Few

What we have here is small group of converted types evangilizing solar shere it doesn't fit today nor by 2030

Depends on what you expect from it.
It's taking off in rural Africa, where people don't have many resources, because it solves a real need economically.
See http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-solar-energy/

[SunEagle]

I'm going out on a limb here.....I firmly believe that energy transmission technology is going to be the long term energy technology solution. Energy storage is going to be disruptive short term, but energy transmission technology will change the energy industry around the world.

Your local power company is not going away....they will just have to tap into the unlimited energy source of the sun shining 24/7 somewhere on the earth. The light side will be constantly feeding the dark side....if you can transmit that power without loss around the globe.

Why build 50,000 nuclear power plants when you only need one and it is already in production.

Never going to happen even with low resistance super conducting transmission lines. There just isn't enough real estate in the world to build enough solar pv to run the entire planet from the "Sunny Side". Even locating the panels in space won't work due to the amount of "junk" flying around which would damage the panels.

Sure it would be nice to have RE as the only power source but physics are physics and the math doesn't equal out. Maybe if they get the solar panel efficiency above 50% they may have a chance to supply large populations with land based pv but without Nuclear or Fossil fuel burning generators relying on RE will put a lot of people in the dark where the sun isn't shining.