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🇨🇦 tunetardis

@ tunetardis @lemmy.ca

Posts
2
Comments
305
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Is renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels? In most cases, yes

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  • So, a few thoughts on this. If you consider the minimum on any of these graphs as a kind of base load capacity, you would need to build enough solar and wind to cover what's demanded by the population. The fluctuating part above that line is excess which maybe might find some sort of opportunistic use but will more likely be discarded. I guess the industry term for this is curtailment.

    The more you invest in storage, the less you will need to curtail. But given that even with a month worth of storage (which is a colossal amount if you crunch the numbers), there will be some curtailment, my takeaway from this is that there is room for synthetic fuel production like green hydrogen that would kick in once you've saturated all your batteries, pumped hydro, etc. I'd been wondering about this. There is energy loss (relative to say batteries) in making fuel out of electricity, but the energy in this case is essentially free, so why not give it a go? And we are really good at stockpiling fuels. The amount of energy stored that way around the world is orders of magnitude beyond everything else combined.

  • Is renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels? In most cases, yes

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  • Here's what it looks like after 7 (top) and 30 (bottom) days of averaging to give an idea of how much more reliability you can buy with a week or month of grid storage.

    Of course, there is also variability on the demand side you need to match. Hmm…

  • Is renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels? In most cases, yes

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  • Nice! Can you get that data in spreadsheet form? I wouldn't mind running some averaging filters on it to plot how much smoothing would happen with different numbers of days worth of storage.

    It's handy that it seems increased wind in the winter months makes up for reduced solar, at least in Europe.

  • Is renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels? In most cases, yes

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  • While it would probably be a good idea to look at their sources more carefully, this is the kind of analysis I'd like to see more of.

    It's true that with almost every type of emissions reduction, there is a point of diminishing returns where it becomes prohibitive to address those last few percent. From a policymaker's standpoint, they have to decide how much society is willing to pay and then attempt to optimize the allocation of resources within that framework. That's where you get your cap-and-trade and so forth.

    This article suggests the lower up-front cost of renewables like wind and solar show a windfall up to 57%, but are still cost-competitive even up to 90%. This is encouraging. They mention the remaining 10% includes hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation. I think even in general electrical production though, there are diminishing returns.

    If you consider that to overcome the challenge of variability in supply with wind and solar, you need to invest in grid storage, there is the question of just how much storage you need? A day's worth? A week's worth? A month's worth? The more storage you have, the more edge cases you will cover, but your costs go up exponentially and may never reach 100%. If you reach say 99%, that's still around 3 days out of the year when you have to fire up some backup generators. Is that an acceptable compromise?

  • High shower pressure can help people save water, study suggests

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  • “Higher-pressure showers were definitely shorter,” said Walker. “The open question is really: why is it shorter? Is it that it just rinses products off quicker? Is it that it’s more satisfying, and you feel clean quicker?”

    Or is it that it's less comfortable and relaxing, and people just want to get it over with? I would not automatically assume the shortness is due to a superior experience.

  • Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns

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  • Ah ok, that's fair.

  • Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns

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  • A bit of googling and I came across a company called solarfold that seems to make a pre-wired solar array that unfolds out of a standard shipping container across a pair of rails.

  • Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns

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  • Where I live in Ontario, there seems to be quite a bit of solar going up. The article mentions that ideally, the panels would be deployed on land that is marginal from the standpoint of agriculture. I'm not sure how much that is the case? I get the impression that proximity to power corridors and transfer stations is the main driver of where the solar actually goes.

    The article mentions concerns about food security if too much agricultural land is given over to solar. I seem to recall similar arguments being made about corn diverted to make ethanol, and can't help but think solar would still be a better use for the land than ethanol production?

    I wonder if they could design a solar farm that would be relatively easy to move? Then you could put your panels on fallow land and rotate them around every year. Just a thought.

  • The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal.

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  • That's some food for thought. Would a field covered in panels be warmer or cooler than the same field without? On the one hand, the albedo of a panel is super low. That's sort of the point as they don't want any of the sunlight lost. On the other hand, the panels are thin and have little heat retention, so one would expect them to shed whatever heat they build up during the day quickly at night compared to the ground. I suspect the shading effect on the ground would win out in the end, but I'm not sure?

    Heat dissipation is an issue for solar panels, to the extent that some have tried deploying floating panels on a lake to get a better cooling effect from the water. Water bodies already have extremely low albedo, so the panels would likely have little effect in that regard. I suppose they might reduce evaporative cooling depending on how thorough the coverage is?

    There is also research into materials with radiative cooling properties and whether these can be combined into PV cells. Radiative cooling exploits the infrared transparency of the atmosphere at certain wavelengths that thankfully aren't being blocked by greenhouse gases. I think this is a great idea and could reduce urban heat islands and save energy on A/C in hot climates, essentially for free.

  • The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal.

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  • In fairness, a typical PV cell is somewhere around 20% efficient at converting solar energy into electricity with the rest lost to heat. The article mentions that renewables are not perfectly efficient either but that their losses do not contribute pollution, making the losses less egregious. I guess the conclusion to draw from this is that if you must burn coal, you should look seriously at cogeneration schemes where you use that heat directly for other purposes such as industrial processes or even municipal heating to get the most out of the energy.

  • Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet

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  • Good Lord, if the US nuclear arsenal is that antiquated, I shudder to think of where the Russians are at. Please don't short-circuit and accidentally launch…

  • Satellite to ‘name and shame’ worst oil and gas methane polluters

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  • Ah ok, thanks!

  • Satellite to ‘name and shame’ worst oil and gas methane polluters

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  • Satellite to ‘name and shame’ worst oil and gas methane polluters

    That's fascinating! Looks like there are some seriously leaky pipelines in Russia and Algeria. They need to get on that.

    I wonder why there is a large emission source along what looks like the northern Appalachians? I wasn't expecting that.

  • Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car

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  • Oh for sure, yeah. I have a sedentary office job, so the e-bike commute is my primary source of exercise (particularly after I quit the gym during the pandemic), so I tend to keep the pedal assist low and try to get a workout. There are exceptions though. Sometimes I'm just tired or sore, or it's really hot with bad air outside, and I elect to go all electric on days like that. It's nice to have the option!

  • Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car

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  • I'm in Canada and my e-bike does indeed have a 32km/h limiter. I was a little amused, though, to discover that there is a phone app which can lift this limit, so it appears to only be in software. But I have left it at 32 regardless. I'm perfectly happy with that.

  • Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car

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  • I guess it's hard to gauge an e-bike since they often have a variety of operating modes ranging from progressively higher levels of pedal assist up to full throttle. But that's fascinating to think that an all-electric ride may actual consume less energy in the grand scheme of things. I had never looked at it that way!

  • Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car

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  • Interesting. I've never owned an electric car, but just guesstimating based on those numbers, my daily commute would cost something like 25 cents in electricity. Not too shabby.

    I did buy an ebike a few years back and watched to see how much the bill went up, but frankly never noticed any change. At 2 cents per day, it's basically a rounding error relative to other electrical usage, so that makes sense to me now.

  • Traffic shut down on Crimean Bridge amid reports of explosions

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  • Ah ok, that makes more sense. It does look like there is only a single highway linking the town of Feodosia to Kerch, so a blockage along that route would be annoying to the Russians, though obviously not as catastrophic as an attack on the Kerch Bridge itself.

  • Traffic shut down on Crimean Bridge amid reports of explosions

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  • I'm a little confused. Feodosia, the town, doesn't seem all that close to the bridge when I look at Google Maps. Or is Feodosia also the name of a county (or whatever they're called) which extends towards Kerch and the bridge?