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[Timedog]

If the collective world were to put full effort (however you want to define that, money, manpower, whatever) into changing the world into having 80%+ green/renewable energy, how do you think we should go about that? What technology or group of technologies should we use? In what timetable? What promising tech should be heavily invested in for R & D? What already proven tech should be put into place immediately or more widely adopted?



Some technologies my drunk brain can think of offhand:

-4th Gen Nuclear Fission: Good old nuclear plants like the one Homer Simpson works at, but with newer designs. This collection of various "modern" nuclear fission reactors are supposedly much safer and produce less waste than the currently running plants which were designed decades ago. Some designs can use current nuclear waste as their fuel. Still creates waste but usually in much smaller amounts.

-Nuclear Fusion: The energy of the stars. Just like Dr. Octopus in Spiderman II starring Toby MacGuire (who also starred in the action-thriller Seabiscuit, a personal fave), we have the technology to create nuclear fusion in a laboratory, which is the "holy grail" of energy sources that are currently even remotely feasible. Unfortunately we haven't been able to make fusion into a profitable energy source yet. There are government projects like ITER trying to change that, as well as private companies like General Fusion and Lockheed Martin (which claims it will have fusion reactors in under a decade, which are, curiously, "about the size of a jet engine"). *tinfoil intensifies*

-Cold Fusion (or LENR): Some sort of weird nuclear-like anomalous heating effect that some scientists and enthusiasts claim to have observed when combining an powered electrode of palladium with "heavy" water made from deuterium atoms. Mostly ignored by mainstream science because if there is an effect (and the extra heat isn't a mismeasurement), it's not always reproducible and there isn't an accepted theory for how the effect occurs. Val Kilmer knows though. Kinda fringe but I added it because there's been some somewhat recent renewed interest and investment into it.

-Wind: Why do we need anything nuclear when we can use the breath of The Lord to tickle our sexy energy fantasies? Whenever I walk outside and notice it's windy I pretend that sexy Jesus is blowing me a kiss. Currently costly. Intermittent so would need to rebuild the grid if this was the sole energy source. Takes up a lot of space. But hey, I did say "full effort" at the beginning of this post; do you think we can make it work for us to a much much greater extent with a bunch of R&D?

-Solar: If Wind is god/supermans freeze breath, then this is his lazer eyes attack. Have you ever been high as fuck on LSD when you were 16 and then look up into the sky on a hot summer day and realized that the Sun itself is the eye of god, and then ran away from all your friends to your house and told your parents? Even if that never happened to you, just know that solar power is really expensive right now, and like wind, would require a change in the grid if it's meant to go beyond a supplemental energy source. Takes up a lot of area but easier to work into existing structures than Wind.


Stuff I haven't really looked at even for like 15-20 seconds because i'm real dumb:
Geothermal?
Ocean wave power?
Cow Fart Collecting?


I hope there are going to be strong opinions swaying different ways. I hope a fight breaks out about energy density vs nuclear waste vs. r&d costs with no guarantee of success.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Solar. The tech is there just not the gumption.
Nuclear is good under strict surveillance. Too many private plants fuck up.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Solar. The tech is there just not the gumption.
Nuclear is good under strict surveillance. Too many private plants fuck up.

But we can only harvest gumption from fossil fuels! D:

 

[Ban Puncher]

Every day it's a different countries population turn in the giant mouse wheel for the rest of the planet.

Can't even boil the kettle when a city state is on duty though.

 

[Guevara]

Solar. The tech is there just not the gumption.
Nuclear is good under strict surveillance. Too many private plants fuck up.

Limited rare-earth minerals will be a problem, in a way they will be the new oil

 

[Azulsky]

The Lockheed information on their Fusion device seems scifi. But its the same division that built the F117 so they done crazy before.

I would put my money on Fusion. Interim we need to ride out current Fission tech and work on Grid scale storage and general smart grid enhancements.

 

[CadetMahoney]

Using Solar is banned in Spain and other countries (iirc).

Spain:
http://www.thelocal.es/20131112/spains-solar-police-to-kick-in-your-door

Oklahoma:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/oklahoma-to-charge-homeowners-who-install-solar-panels/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/...w-means-its-a-threat-to-koch-brothers-allies/

The powers that be simply don't want the common man harvesting energy from nature.

 

[Necromanti]

Harvesting wind energy from planets further from the sun, or any other resources that those planets may offer. That would be in the distant future, though.

 

[DedValve]

Solar. The sun just sits there, doing nothing. Might as well put that lazy bum to work for once.

 

[Aureon]

Battery tech for Solar\Wind.
Mass Mind Control tech for Nuclear.

Using Solar is banned in Spain and other countries (iirc).

Spain:
http://www.thelocal.es/20131112/spains-solar-police-to-kick-in-your-door

Oklahoma:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/oklahoma-to-charge-homeowners-who-install-solar-panels/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/...w-means-its-a-threat-to-koch-brothers-allies/

The powers that be simply don't want the common man harvesting energy from nature.

Spain is basically trying to recouple grid\subside costs they've spent in solar.
Spain is home to the world's biggest solar power plant.

 

[Enduin]

Would that new super black shit there was a thread on the other day be applicable to Solar energy? I know pretty much nothing about how the whole photovoltaic effect works.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Solar. The sun just sits there, doing nothing. Might as well put that lazy bum to work for once.

says the person in the spec of dust

 

[$200]

Nuclear Fusion of course. We will have them in 36 years according to SimCity.

 

[Zaptruder]

Solar/Wind (henceforth solar) + Economic scale battery tech is the way to go.

Nuclear is an important part of the mix to help shore up in prolonged weather fluctuations.


But the important things to look at are - cost per watt of energy generated is tumbling for Solar.

Has exceeded the threshold for energy used in manufacturing - so now Solar panels generate net life time positive energy (has been true for several years). Over time efficiencies improve and essentially you'll be able to generate multiple solar panels for the cost of one solar panel - providing humans with a virtual perpetual motion machine.

Couple exponential decrease in cost with short manufacturing and installation times and smart distributed power systems, and solar energy will quickly prove to be the most economical and secure form of power which just happens to not generate any emissions.

Additionally, as solar energy production ramps up, the cost payback for fossil power plants become less and less tenable. They're still currently largely built with the expectation that they'll continue to be able to supply their lifetime's worth of power and power per unit are amortized on that basis. As solar grows, it'll become increasingly evident that this is not a workable economic assumption - and that when reduced usage capacity is considered, the amortized per unit energy will continue to grow faster, placing further economic incentive on solar power generation.

Problem with nuclear is mainly is long lead time from building to energy generation - 8-10 year period. By the time you get interest in Nuclear up, Solar has already had a decade of exponential cost decrease, and by the time you get it built, you've had 2 decades of exponential cost decrease + new solar paradigms (e.g. graphene based solar tech which in theory should allow for among other funky things - transparent solar panels on windows (with reduced light transmission, because it's turning some of the solar light into energy).

Having said that, in a few decades where we start to cap out solar power and still find ourselves with growing energy appetite, nuclear fission and fusion will help to increase the total energy available to humanity so that we can do some truly ludicrously energy intensive things... like maybe reorganizing atoms (through nanobots or other processes) on a massive scale for production purposes.

 

[JCizzle]

https://lasers.llnl.gov

 

[speculawyer]

1) No single technology! We need a diversity of sources to deal with variability in weather conditions, maintenance schedules, reliability, unforeseen issues, etc.
2) Negawatts - The cheapest cleanest electricity is the electricity you don't use. LEDs, LCD & OLED TVs, Efficient appliances, etc.
3) Big Wind is awesome. Zero emissions. Very cost effective. Heck, even Texas is convinced, they have more turbines than any other state. Keep building them like crazy. House Cats kill an order of magnitude more birds.
4) Solar PV. Rooftop solar PV is also awesome. Zero emissions, zero noise, no moving parts, close to zero maintenance, generates the electricity right where it is used. I self-installed a 6KW solar PV system for $13K in parts and it provides all my net electricity needs . . . including my electric car so I haven't paid for gasoline or electricity in many months. Utilities are now running scared. Don't let them get politicians to bail on net-metering.
5) Geothermal - Not many ideal sites but it is another nice zero emission technology.
6) Tides - Again, not many sites but take advantage of it where you can.
7) Solar Thermal - Not very attractive now due to cheaper solar PV but the fact that you can store the energy as heat and continue operating after sun down makes it a good technology to help with the evening peak demand.
8) Nuclear Fission - very expensive, we still don't know what to do with the waste, keep it out of seismically active areas . . . but we are going need it.
9) Natural gas - Our bridge to the above technologies. And use it as peaker plants.

Coal - It is a garbage fuel from its initial mining all the way to the toxic emissions and toxic ashes. Should be banned, IMHO. Phase it out. Put a tariff on goods from countries that rely too much on coal.
Fusion - Keep working on it. Hopefully we'll figure it out. But I worry that if we do figure it out, we'll fuck up the planet with all that cheap energy.
Thorium - An internet favorite. But there is currently no plans for a commercial reactor. Someone come up with plans and build a pilot plant.

 

[Zaptruder]

1) No single technology! We need a diversity of sources to deal with variability in weather conditions, maintenance schedules, reliability, unforeseen issues, etc.
2) Negawatts - The cheapest cleanest electricity is the electricity you don't use. LEDs, LCD & OLED TVs, Efficient appliances, etc.
3) Big Wind is awesome. Zero emissions. Very cost effective. Heck, even Texas is convinced, they have more turbines than any other state. Keep building them like crazy. House Cats kill an order of magnitude more birds.
4) Solar PV. Rooftop solar PV is also awesome. Zero emissions, zero noise, no moving parts, close to zero maintenance, generates the electricity right where it is used. I self-installed a 6KW solar PV system for $13K in parts and it provides all my net electricity needs . . . including my electric car so I haven't paid for gasoline or electricity in many months. Utilities are now running scared. Don't let them get politicians to bail on net-metering.
5) Geothermal - Not many ideal sites but it is another nice zero emission technology.
6) Tides - Again, not many sites but take advantage of it where you can.
7) Solar Thermal - Not very attractive now due to cheaper solar PV but the fact that you can store the energy as heat and continue operating after sun down makes it a good technology to help with the evening peak demand.
8) Nuclear Fission - very expensive, we still don't know what to do with the waste, keep it out of seismically active areas . . . but we are going need it.
9) Natural gas - Our bridge to the above technologies. And use it as peaker plants.

Coal - It is a garbage fuel from its initial mining all the way to the toxic emissions and toxic ashes. Should be banned, IMHO. Phase it out. Put a tariff on goods from countries that rely too much on coal.

No to the bolded. Those are the hydrogen fuel cell of alternative energy vehicles. Technological dead ends with less economic efficacy than the others that will just draw funding and focus away from the more effective and useful technologies. Especially gas - a bridge to nothing is what that shit is.

Also, we should look to accelerate energy production. Negawatts will be taken care of by smart tech. The idea of preserving power only makes sense where we're dumping fossil fuels into our atmosphere - otherwise, energy abundance allows for faster and more dramatic technology growth (as well as exploration of energy intensive technological solutions - such as desalination for freshwater).

 

[Blargonaut]

Tidal power will save us all.

Divide the oceans into seafood farms, desalination plants and floating power-generating turbines.

Equip all whales with ear muffs for protection.

We both get to survive as species and they get sick new headgear.

win-win

 

[Aureon]

4) Solar PV. Rooftop solar PV is also awesome. Zero emissions, zero noise, no moving parts, close to zero maintenance, generates the electricity right where it is used. I self-installed a 6KW solar PV system for $13K in parts and it provides all my net electricity needs . . . including my electric car so I haven't paid for gasoline or electricity in many months. Utilities are now running scared. Don't let them get politicians to bail on net-metering.
8) Nuclear Fission - very expensive, we still don't know what to do with the waste, keep it out of seismically active areas . . . but we are going need it.
.

First off, Disclaimer: I'm Pro-Anything-That-Works, not pro-any-specific-source.
Generating energy 'right where it's needed', eg. decentralized generation, in the current grid situation, is NOT a positive. At all.
With that said, solar cost\efficiency has skyrocketed in the last ten years, where it's actually a decent idea nowdays - but still, mostly effective due to subsides and TERRIBLE disposal procedures (Which are pretty intensive for both inverters and PV panels, generate orders of magnitude more toxic stuff than nuclear scories, and since public opinion loves solar unconditionally, we don't mind that the current method is literally "Ship them back to china and who cares how they dispose of them".

Nuclear fission, on the other hand, has just one main problem: public opinion. Engineering-wise, it requires long pre-planning, but it's absolutely, bar none, the best solution we have. It's zero-emission, and extremely cheap. Scories are so few that, with proper reprocessing, you could store hundreds of years of worldwide production just in Yucca.
But over-regulation has functionally killed nuclear.

 

[Currygan]

shit. I'm serious

 

[XenoRaven]

I feel that the prospect of hydrogen powered cars is a pretty neat idea. I think BMW and Honda had a prototype (along with some other companies I'm sure) but I don't know what became of it. Is there some major problem with it other than cost?

 

[bionic77]

Nuclear seems like the best option we have right now until we can come up with something better.

Of course we can't build those reactors near fault lines and the coast. But assuming they are away from major cities and every safety precaution is taken then it seems like the best current option.

 

[Zaptruder]

Generating energy 'right where it's needed', eg. decentralized generation, in the current grid situation, is NOT a positive. At all.

Can you explain this assertion? Distributed energy is considered by many to be a positive for a few important and significant reasons;

1. Increased energy security - A few powerplants shutting down doesn't take out power for millions of households.

2. Decreased to no power loss due to transmission.

3. Ability to (with smart energy distribution systems) shift to a distributed sharing model of energy away from paying centralized energy utilities for power.

Those are hugely significant gains to be had from distributed power... so I'm interested to see your rebuttal given the strength of your assertion.

 

[J-Rzez]

We can never rely on one source as the end all be all for our energy needs, especially when it comes to wind and/or solar for obvious reason. I wouldn't doubt Lockheed's proposition though, and it "could" be as close to one-source needed as possible.

Don't forget about proposed Geothermal solutions too.

 

[unholyrevenger72]

8) Nuclear Fission - very expensive, we still don't know what to do with the waste, keep it out of seismically active areas . . . but we are going need it.

Build Space Elevator. Build Rail Gun at the end of Said elevator. Shoot waste onto Venus.

 

[Zamorro]

If the OP is going to include Cold Fusion, I might as well also include Blacklight Power.

A youtube of their latest public demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRnfuO6uQyU#t=664

Their website:

http://www.blacklightpower.com/

The process basically consists of water and a catalyst metal being ignited with a low voltage, high current ignition and the resulting light being transformed into energy by using photovoltaic cells.

The catalyst metal can then be reused in the process, with only the water having been expended which has been turned into something called hydrino's.

Hydrino's, hydrogen atoms in an energy state below ground level, according to their theory is also the nature of black matter in the universe.

Sounds like bullshit right? The wikipedia page for Blacklight Power certainly agrees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackLight_Power

The last paragraph however, after all the bashing, is rather interesting:

In 2012 after investigating the BLP process, both Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary of Rowan University and Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara, W. Henry Weinberg claimed that the BLP process is legitimate.

 

[Kinitari]

I think the most realistic and safest is Nuclear for near future. While I love solar, it's not ready to replace baseline power generation. Look to Germany to see why.

Nuclear is extremely safe and has very little waste, and that's not even considering gen 3/4.

If we can make nuclear cheaper, and create an abundance of energy to the point that it is cheap, then a shit load of powerful opportunities are suddenly viable. Mass desalination of water, cheap vertical farms, you name it.

We can just store nuclear waste away, with very little risk.

 

[King_Moc]

Has to be a combination of solar, wind and (mostly) nuclear with current technology.

It irritates me no end that all the supposed do gooder groups campaign against nuclear as much as they do. And yet they also don;t want us to use fossil fuels. What the hell do they want? 100% wind and solar? That'll go well in the night, or when there's no wind or when it's cloudy.

I also enjoy hearing daft solutions, like solar panels in the African desert that could power the whole world. Ignoring the fact that you lose electrical current as you transmit it.

 

[mrklaw]

I was reading in an (old) New Scientist that wind/wave power isn't an option for more than a small portion of renewables, as you would be taking energy out of those systems and potentially damaging the climate more than simply burning coal.

I think Solar can be done without he dependency on rare metals, or at least there is research going on there. You don't even need fancy batteries. You could use excess energy during the day to pump water to high reservoirs and then use hydro for night time demand - we do this in the UK to cover peaks of demand right now, so that could be expanded.

I'd like to see a lot more micro generation on a personal or local level. All new build houses should have solar installed as standard, and things like heat pumps to reduce the energy needs of new houses generally

 

[Chris R]

Build Space Elevator. Build Rail Gun at the end of Said elevator. Shoot waste onto Venus.

Why not just shoot it into the Sun. What did Venus ever do to you

 

[TheExodu5]

If used extensively enough, are wind and solar really sustainable? Just wondering if there might be a negative impact, climate wise. I can't imagine there would be, seeing as how our current infrastructure (roads, buildings, etc...) must have a far greater impact than any reasonable amount of solar panels or wind turbines would.. The only thing is that I'm not sure how many of these would be actually needed to sustain our electricity needs.

 

[Dougald]

It irritates me no end that all the supposed do gooder groups campaign against nuclear as much as they do. And yet they also don;t want us to use fossil fuels. What the hell do they want? 100% wind and solar? That'll go well in the night, or when there's no wind or when it's cloudy.

I'll take sticking some radioactive tubes in a pool in some secluded mountain for eternity over smog and air pollution any day.

At least until we get the tech for crazy Isaac Asimov space solar power stations.

 

[Frankfurter]

First off, Disclaimer: I'm Pro-Anything-That-Works, not pro-any-specific-source.
Generating energy 'right where it's needed', eg. decentralized generation, in the current grid situation, is NOT a positive. At all.
With that said, solar cost\efficiency has skyrocketed in the last ten years, where it's actually a decent idea nowdays - but still, mostly effective due to subsides and TERRIBLE disposal procedures (Which are pretty intensive for both inverters and PV panels, generate orders of magnitude more toxic stuff than nuclear scories, and since public opinion loves solar unconditionally, we don't mind that the current method is literally "Ship them back to china and who cares how they dispose of them".

Nuclear fission, on the other hand, has just one main problem: public opinion. Engineering-wise, it requires long pre-planning, but it's absolutely, bar none, the best solution we have. It's zero-emission, and extremely cheap. Scories are so few that, with proper reprocessing, you could store hundreds of years of worldwide production just in Yucca.
But over-regulation has functionally killed nuclear.

Nuclear fission actually is extremely expensive. It only works because of insane public subsidies.

Has to be a combination of solar, wind and (mostly) nuclear with current technology.

It irritates me no end that all the supposed do gooder groups campaign against nuclear as much as they do. And yet they also don;t want us to use fossil fuels. What the hell do they want? 100% wind and solar? That'll go well in the night, or when there's no wind or when it's cloudy.

I also enjoy hearing daft solutions, like solar panels in the African desert that could power the whole world. Ignoring the fact that you lose electrical current as you transmit it.

I guess they want us to combine several renewable energies, PV, wind, water, geothermal and better battery technology. Natural gas as a good companion (energy production can be adjusted very quickly, especially compared to nuclear which simply doesn't make sense as a renewable companion) definitely will be needed for quite some time. You can also synthesize natural gas if there is too much of say wind or sun at a given time.

You can also synthesize natural gas

 

[speculawyer]

I think the most realistic and safest is Nuclear for near future. While I love solar, it's not ready to replace baseline power generation. Look to Germany to see why.

Solar PV is fine. Look to Germany to see why.


Solar PV is working just fine there. Are they having black-outs or brown-outs? No. Was it expensive? Yes . . . but that was back when they installed much of their solar PV . . . it is much cheaper now. People are now complaining when solar PV generates too much electricity. Oh jeez . . . talk about your first world problems. Boo-hoo, buy some electric cars and plug them in.

 

[Air]

It won't be just one tech, but probably a bunch of them. Perhaps all that you listed.

 

[Neo C.]

We can just store nuclear waste away, with very little risk.

It's just very, very difficult to find a good place to store the waste, politically spoken.
At least in my country, all villages stops every single project for nuclear storage by saying "not in my house", which results in dangerous and questionable transport to Russia.
Basically, no one wants to take the responsibility.

Edit: We really need improvisation in storing energy. Solar and Wind would suffice if we can store massive amount of energy, making it available for peak time.
I wonder why compressing air on massive scale isn't an option yet. Some car companies are working on hybrid cars with air compressor, and they work just fine (with the advantage of not using a complex battery with massive eco footprint).

 

[metareferential]

Fusion for industry and solar for everyday people.

First profitable (energy efficient) fusion reactor to be active in 2019/2020 (the ITER in France).

EDIT: already mentioned in OP.

 

[Jinaar]

Humans, ack dammit! We got so many of them, they're like a renewable resource! I hear they are like a battery.

Edit: I'm not a robot.

 

[Jasup]

Better infrastructure.

How our communities and power distribution systems work in present day is so wasteful it's ridiculous. We don't only need power plants to create energy, we need additional power plants along the line to make up the wasted energy due to our inefficient AC power grid. Luckily High Voltage DC grids are becoming much more available.

But even that doesn't solve our problem with the power needed to move people. We have an infrastructure that demands that every one of us owns and uses a car for almost everything. The amount of energy wasted on individual's need is enormous compared to tighter, better planned infrastructure with good transit options for everyday use is a must.


Maybe something will come and save us, but whatever the new technology it is, it will need the infrastructure to distribute the energy we need.

Edit: This means also mixed use in power plants. For example many Nordic countries utilise combined heat and power plants. Basically normal thermal power plants, from which the cooling water is fed to the communal heating grid to heat the houses around the city. Basic stuff.

 

[Bedameister]

Mainly solar and a mixture of other energy technologies as energy source and hydrogen as energy carrier

But the most important thing is to save energy and ressources

 

[Muppet of a Man]

In the near term, a Nuclear-Methanol Economy (nuclear as in 4th+ gen nuclear fission: e.g., LFTR, IVR, etc.) would be the most realistic, as I've gone on about before. The nuclear part would be for the electric grid and the methanol part would be for liquid fuel for vehicles, etc.

Renewables like photovoltaics and wind (paired with next-gen battery technology--e.g.., carbon-nanotube-based batteries), nuclear fusion, etc. for the long-term when those technologies mature and/or are feasible.

 

[Dougald]

Solar PV is fine. Look to Germany to see why.


Solar PV is working just fine there. Are they having black-outs or brown-outs? No. Was it expensive? Yes . . . but that was back when they installed much of their solar PV . . . it is much cheaper now. People are now complaining when solar PV generates too much electricity. Oh jeez . . . talk about your first world problems. Boo-hoo, buy some electric cars and plug them in.

The post you quoted specifically stated baseline power, which we cannot really do with solar yet.

I was under the impression Germany now imports a lot of their baseline power from French nuclear reactors. Not to say solar is useless, but we cannot rely on on a method of power generation that is inactive half the day

 

[Kabouter]

Fusion power is a typical technology that always seems to be thirty years off, betting on that for anything but the long-term is foolish. Green energy technologies that are proven like solar, hydro and wind have major drawbacks that can be ameliorated to a degree, but even with that, can never produce enough to meet current energy needs. People betting on massive efficiency increases that will suddenly make these technologies capable of powering our massive consumption (and projected growth in consumption) are deluding themselves.

People need to stop being obsessed with the supply side of energy. The best, cheapest and most logical step towards solving the energy crisis is by using less. That means things like communities that are designed to favour walking over driving, incentives for people to move closer to their job, more efficient design of houses (less glass and better isolation for instance), a reduction in meat consumption, a stop to excessive waste in packaging and countless other solutions that are a far surer and better bet than any new power generation technology.

As long as we continue to obsess over generating ever more power, efficiency is never going to be the focus that it needs to be. We will continue to bet on technologies that can never meet our demand and burn fossil fuels at an ever faster rate to compensate for this fact.

 

[Geeker]

Unless LENR pans out i think we have to pray that carbon capture and storage actually will work economically.

I also agree that coal should somehow (and that is the complicated part) be priced much higher to substitute it for natural gas which is much cleaner and a stepping stone until next gen power generation.

In any case the exploration for oil and gas must continue unabated to limit the use of coal as much as possible and generate enough surplus in the economy to research new power sources.

 

[FStop7]

Wind, solar, hydro.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Solar PV is fine. Look to Germany to see why.


Solar PV is working just fine there. Are they having black-outs or brown-outs? No. Was it expensive? Yes . . . but that was back when they installed much of their solar PV . . . it is much cheaper now. People are now complaining when solar PV generates too much electricity. Oh jeez . . . talk about your first world problems. Boo-hoo, buy some electric cars and plug them in.

They're building new coal plants, household energy costs are obscenely expensive (~48% above the European average), and they import a huge chunk of their power from France. Not sure if I'd call this a success story.

 

[Log4Girlz]

A fusion powered jet engine could be something Lockheed had toyed with, perhaps a lot of black project cash has been spent on trying to figure fusion out.

Anyway, fusion is the key. We figure that out and energy woes are no more.

 

[Aureon]

Can you explain this assertion? Distributed energy is considered by many to be a positive for a few important and significant reasons;

1. Increased energy security - A few powerplants shutting down doesn't take out power for millions of households.

2. Decreased to no power loss due to transmission.

3. Ability to (with smart energy distribution systems) shift to a distributed sharing model of energy away from paying centralized energy utilities for power.

Those are hugely significant gains to be had from distributed power... so I'm interested to see your rebuttal given the strength of your assertion.

First, please note the qualifier: 'In the current grid situation'. This is not a long-term statement, but a present-day (and nearby-day) statement.
The issue is that our massive-scale electrical grids run on predictability. Both underloads and overloads can rapidly cause blackouts and/or damage to grid infrastructure.
Locally-placed power-generating equipment means equipment the grid management doesn't know about, suitable for spikes in both consumption and generation, local and gridwide.
This also compounds the problem of a tech in which local blackouts correlate with other local blackouts, both predictably (night) and unpredictably (weather), meaning that peaking equipment has to be kept on stand-by, which in the modern day means keeping a power plant on, since switching a coal\gas cycle on/off takes hours, and even more in reaching full efficiency\capacity - and if backup is always on, and is just wasting produced energy (In the pan-european grid, there's spikes in the spot energy price in which said price is actually negative: eg. we're paying you to offload that energy RIGHT NOW so our grid doesn't overload)

Proven a practically do-over of our electric grids, and/or substantial advances in energy tech, it could be very beneficial - but as it stands now, no. Very often, it actually makes the whole point moot - What energy you are saving is actually being thrown away in another place.
We're used to picture electric appliances as energy - fuel makes care move - but it's actually a delicate matter of power, where at every single painstaking second, the available supply has to be equal to the demand, and peak smoothing \ battery tech is very, very lacking at this moment.
This i why i asserted that the most important energy advance we can make right now is batteries, batteries and more batteries.

Nuclear fission actually is extremely expensive. It only works because of insane public subsidies.

I'm sorry, but i'm going to need a citation, and one that comes in a .pdf form from a very, very reputable source.
This is my source on my claim:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf (page 6)

Yes, it's subsidized, but even without it, it's very near to most fossil fuels, and far below most non-dispatchable technologies, whose values do not take into account further peak costs (They do take in account downtime, but not opportunity cost of not having energy when you want it)

Solar PV is fine. Look to Germany to see why.


Solar PV is working just fine there. Are they having black-outs or brown-outs? No. Was it expensive? Yes . . . but that was back when they installed much of their solar PV . . . it is much cheaper now. People are now complaining when solar PV generates too much electricity. Oh jeez . . . talk about your first world problems. Boo-hoo, buy some electric cars and plug them in.

Grid overload is a problem, and some electric cards aren't going to make a dent.
A standard car battery is 10KWh. Having 20 million of them would be 200 GWh, which is half an hour of the european grid's throughput.
The issue is that when you are over-producing and some energy has to be wasted, the energy the solar panels are producing is completely useless - since you couldn't turn off in time the generation methods that actually work when you want them to.

Germany has energy when it's value is negative, and needs it when it's high. Usually imports nuclear during the night from France, as nigh-all europe does.

 

[Walter White Walker]

There's another cheap and easy "technology" - conservation. Use less of it, less needs to be produced.

 

[Geeker]

I'm sorry, but i'm going to need a citation, and one that comes in a .pdf form from a very, very reputable source.
This is my source on my claim:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf (page 6)

Yes, it's subsidized, but even without it, it's very near to most fossil fuels, and far below most non-dispatchable technologies, whose values do not take into account further peak costs (They do take in account downtime, but not opportunity cost of not having energy when you want it)

I dont have citation at hand, but IIRC the supply chain for nuclear power generation would become very constrained if you substantially increased the capacity in order to replace fossil fuel as base power supply.