Earth in hot water? Worries over sudden ocean warming spike

[friend of]

SUMMARY: Electrifying everything will not only solve climate change, increase national energy independence and security, decrease long expensive supply lines, decrease pollution and lung disease in the population, and get us into an energy system that could last millions of years - but it is also just more efficient and will ultimately be cheaper and more convenient. You'll see. It's coming, fast!

And where are people supposed to charge all these vehicles?

 

[AV1611VET]

And where are people supposed to charge all these vehicles?

At the supermarket.

Where you can park closer to the doors than the handicapped.

 

[eclipsenow]

And where are people supposed to charge all these vehicles?

Do you honestly think that as petrol cars were first introduced there was a national highway system for them all rigged up and ready to go? But the reality is more and more EV charging stations are being introduced all the time, and most people want to charge their daily car for their daily commute from solar on their rooftop! That's FREE fuel from the sun.

And as I have said before, it's getting CHEAPER than old polluting oil cars - and that's before we count oil's costs to the health system.

Australia’s new company Janus can convert almost any large truck into a full electric truck - which saves the truck, saves the truckie money and speeds up converting the fleet to all-electric! Forget Tesla's 40 ton trucks - these are the big Aussie 100 tons trucks. No - it’s not a miracle new battery. Just a 1 minute battery swap. A guy on a forklift does it. Instead of stressing the grid and batteries in fast charge - they take a few hours charging their batteries from solar on the warehouse roof. They can run 10 trucks from the warehouse roof alone! Truckies save on 60% on servicing and electricity is 1/3 the cost of diesel. These Janus trucks also get regenerative breaking, which slows the trucks going down hill while charging the batteries and avoiding wear and tear on the brake pads. They make their money back in about a year - then make huge profits. The market is going to be SCREAMING for these trucks soon. It’s a thing of beauty - please watch the "Fully charged" 15 minute special.

Note: it's not even really competition with Tesla - as these big rigs can only drive BETWEEN Australian big cities - not WITHIN them. Only Tesla sized semis and smaller trucks can drive around within our cities.

 

[friend of]

Do you honestly think that as petrol cars were first introduced there was a national highway system for them all rigged up and ready to go? But the reality is more and more EV charging stations are being introduced all the time, and most people want to charge their daily car for their daily commute from solar on their rooftop! That's FREE fuel from the sun.

And as I have said before, it's getting CHEAPER than old polluting oil cars - and that's before we count oil's costs to the health system.

Australia’s new company Janus can convert almost any large truck into a full electric truck - which saves the truck, saves the truckie money and speeds up converting the fleet to all-electric! Forget Tesla's 40 ton trucks - these are the big Aussie 100 tons trucks. No - it’s not a miracle new battery. Just a 1 minute battery swap. A guy on a forklift does it. Instead of stressing the grid and batteries in fast charge - they take a few hours charging their batteries from solar on the warehouse roof. They can run 10 trucks from the warehouse roof alone! Truckies save on 60% on servicing and electricity is 1/3 the cost of diesel. These Janus trucks also get regenerative breaking, which slows the trucks going down hill while charging the batteries and avoiding wear and tear on the brake pads. They make their money back in about a year - then make huge profits. The market is going to be SCREAMING for these trucks soon. It’s a thing of beauty - please watch the "Fully charged" 15 minute special.

Note: it's not even really competition with Tesla - as these big rigs can only drive BETWEEN Australian big cities - not WITHIN them. Only Tesla sized semis and smaller trucks can drive around within our cities.

Do you not understand just how disasterous it is that it takes literally hours to charge up an EV battery to full? Where are people supposed to wait? What about all the problems that arise when someone just leaves their EV to charge and doesn't return in a timely manner? What about degenerates slicing up EV ports with knives for no reason? What about losing all charge in the middle of a freeway? There are so many problems with EV, it's cray.

 

[friend of]

But the reality is more and more EV charging stations are being introduced all the time, and most people want to charge their daily car for their daily commute from solar on their rooftop! That's FREE fuel from the sun.

That's a nice idea in theory. But I looked into it and apparently it's not feasible. You won't get enough energy to charge the car even with solar panels attached to it.

 

[dlamberth]

Do you not understand just how disasterous it is that it takes literally hours to charge up an EV battery to full? Where are people supposed to wait? What about all the problems that arise when someone just leaves their EV to charge and doesn't return in a timely manner? What about degenerates slicing up EV ports with knives for no reason? What about losing all charge in the middle of a freeway? There are so many problems with EV, it's cray.

My son has had none of the issues highlighted. He's been very happy with his EV.

 

[friend of]

My son has had none of the issues highlighted. He's been very happy with his EV.

They are all potential realities that will be more fully realized once more people adopt EVs. The more electric cars, the more numerous will be the problems I listed.

 

[eclipsenow]

Do you not understand just how disasterous it is that it takes literally hours to charge up an EV battery to full?

It doesn't - unless you're on slow charge from home which is fine because it's free and you're not using it anyway. Normal non-taxi cars spend 95% of their time sitting parked. It's one reason why I'm a New Urbanist and more into trains than cars - but that's a whole other story.

Where are people supposed to wait?

Only 10% of cars sold worldwide are EV's today. Remarkable things are happening to set up the infrastructure as that grows.

What about all the problems that arise when someone just leaves their EV to charge and doesn't return in a timely manner?

What happens in today's petrol stations if someone does that?

What about degenerates slicing up EV ports with knives for no reason?

What happens in today's petrol stations if someone does that?

What about losing all charge in the middle of a freeway?

What happens in today's petrol cars if some car does that?
Or - more frequently - what happens when a petrol car with an incredibly complex Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) breaks down in traffic?
EV's don't have those inconvenient, expensive, noisy, thermally inefficient things from the 18th Century.
EV's have electric batteries and an electric motor - no ICE at all!
They'll eventually be vastly more reliable.

By 2030 EV's will have over 1000km range per charge and be cheaper than ICE cars to buy, let alone run.
By 2035 ICE cars will probably be ILLEGAL to sell except for novelty historical societies and olde-worlde driving clubs.

There are so many problems with EV, it's cray.

There are so many problems with petrol cars it's cray.

I would prefer we were heading down this pathway instead.
Trains, Trams, and Metro's don't need batteries or recharging.

 

[eclipsenow]

They are all potential realities that will be more fully realized once more people adopt EVs. The more electric cars, the more numerous will be the problems I listed.

The more electric cars, the more the economies of scale kick in.
The more BIG BATTERY takes over Big Oil.
There will be problems - nothing's perfect when people and corporations are involved.
We will have to police their mining practices - metal mining is going to increase sixfold! (IEA.)

Particulate pollution from tyres and road paint coming off in wear and tear is a real problem - and is actually worse than petrol particulates.

"The report estimates 52% of all the small particle pollution from road transport came from tyre and brake wear in 2021, plus a further 24% from abrasion of roads and their paint markings. Just 15% of the emissions came from the exhausts of cars and a further 10% from the exhausts of vans and HGVs... In London alone, it says, 2.6m vehicles emit about 9,000 tonnes of particles annually."

Health impact of tyre particles causing ‘increasing concern’, say scientists

Far more tiny particles now come from tyres than are emitted from exhausts but new tyre designs may help

www.theguardian.com

Particulate pollution costs the health care sector enormously. That's just one more reason why I'm a fan of New Urbanism.

But I'm a fan of EV's as a bridging strategy until we can gradually, over 30 to 40 years, build back more traditional city forms.

SUBURBIA IS BROKEN: They wanted to give every soldier returning from WW2 a ‘manor in the country’. But with homes that large, cars were required. So we threw out thousands of years of city lore and built suburbia for cars. Suburbia is neither rural life connected to farming and nature, nor city life connected to vitality and trams. It’s a bland half-way measure between the two - destroying both.

Traffic jams create smog (with today's vehicles anyway) and drains our time and money and energy and health. The moment we open a new highway it’s already full - and rushes drivers to their next traffic jam! Suburbia uses 10 times the land! As the song says, it “paved paradise to put up a parking lot.” It needs higher taxes to maintain thousands of kilometres of extra roads and plumbing and power-lines and footpaths and gutters and communications. The poor are marginalised to the city edges, driving further paying more for fuel and tolls. They disproportionately suffer more traffic jams and heat islands and pollution.

SUBURBIA DESTROYED THE SOUL OF THE CITY: Why do we build cities in the first place? Aristotle wrote that cities are about "the social pursuits of conviviality, citizenship and artistic, intellectual and spiritual growth.” Aristotle is talking about a connected sense of locality. Of neighbourhood friendships, local politics, and a local artistic and spiritual life all within an easy walk. A town square you can walk to and know deeply, along with the shops and services and people there. Suburbia breaks all this up into a series of random and stressful car trips.

THE ANSWER: Lets build an attractive town square about 30 meters on a side, with a subway or tram line to bring people home from work. The town square is an attractive expression of local culture - such as a village green with a gazebo in England, or a paved piazza with a fountain in Europe. Everything faces the town square - the local school, post office, coffee shop, baker, grocer, diner, church, town hall, council chambers, dry cleaner, and hardware store. It serves the local 15,000 citizens that can walk there, not the distant 300,000 consumers that must drive 20 minutes to a mega-mall full of strangers. Your neighbourhood is walkable because it is made from cute eco-apartments.

IT RESTORES THE SOUL OF THE PLACE: It means more spontaneous interactions between different groups. The doggy park crowd can sit in the square and watch the parents dropping children at day care or school, the people heading to the tram on their way to work, and the elderly buying their morning coffee and newspapers. People can just sit there and soak in the vibe. It’s pleasurable. It’s also safer. There are more eyes watching, so everyone is safer. The town hall is used for all kind of school events, public meetings, even local political meetings. So much more happens.

More on the "Public lounge room" aka "Third Place":

Suburbia traps parents into being soccer mums and prevents kids using their bikes like they do in the Netherlands.

 

[eclipsenow]

That's a nice idea in theory. But I looked into it

Well, if you 'looked into it' you can share your sources, hey?

You won't get enough energy to charge the car even with solar panels attached to it.

That's just not statistically true for one car at least!

One concern that came up in the comments was whether people could fit enough panels on their roof to charge an electric car. But the good news is a car that’s driven the average distance for an Australian passenger vehicle is likely to require less than 8 kilowatt-hours a day. This means for most households 2 kilowatts of solar panels will produce more electrical energy over the course of a year than an electric car will consume. Most homes can fit 2 kilowatts of panels on their roof in addition to enough panels to equal or exceed household electricity consumption.​

​

The bad news is 56% of Australian families have 2 or more cars.​

​

How Many Solar Panels Do You Need To Charge An Electric Car?

Thinking of buying an electric car? Then here's how to make sure you charge it cheaply and cleanly, even if your car is not at home during the day.

www.solarquotes.com.au

 

[Frank Robert]

Welcome to peak oil doomerism 101. Been there, done that, presented material to the NSW Upper House cross bench, co-ordinated an "End of Suburbia" half-hour cut (with permission of the producers) that was presented in the NSW Parliament theatre. Had various exchanges with James Howard Kunstler. Got the mental health issues after 19 years of it.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I am a doomer but I also am a realist. I like Kunstler and have read most of his books. He like many others of the period got it wrong about peak oil.

The EROEI of renewables is FINE.
Even the old doomer Charles Hall's co-founder of the EROEI concept is now saying solar has double the EROEI of oil. I mean, as I show here, Doomers (like Mike Stasse) LOVE to quote Hall and Murphy's old paper. But not so much with Murphy's new paper!

Arch-Doomer Mike Stasse quotes pessimistic old EROEI work but ignores optimistic recent work by the same author!

Mike Stasse’s latest trick is to promote a 13 year old study by (now Emeritus Professor) Charles Hall and Professor David Murphy that concludes nuclear EROEI is too low. The problem is, Stass…

eclipsenow.wordpress.com

Normal economic pressures for efficiency have reduced the materials included and increased the energy output per unit energy invested.
Other studies show the EROEI is fine.

https://medium.com/@erofeev.yury/to-the-question-of-eroi-eroei-of-solar-energy-c68a10e545e2

What's the EROI of Solar?

There's a graph making rounds lately showing the comparative EROIs of different electricity production methods. (EROI is Energy Return On Investment - how much energy we get back if we spend 1 unit of energy.

rameznaam.com

EROI of solar energy < Vikram Solar

What is energy returned on energy invested (EROI)? Energy returned on energy invested (known as EROI or sometimes EROEI) is the ratio of the amount of

www.vikramsolar.com

“Electrify Everything” makes everything more efficient, and lower Energy Return power sources get more bang for their buck!

While oil was this incredibly dense energy source with a very high EROEI - the Internal Combustion Engine is terribly inefficient. Diesel wastes 50% of the energy as it burns, and petroleum is worse and throws out 80% of the energy in a gasoline car. It’s all thrown away as heat and only 20% of the gasoline turns into what we want - forward motion! That's 1/5th the energy doing what we want. How Efficient are Engines: Thermodynamics and Combustion Efficiency

I made no claim about the EROEI of renewables. The main problem of renewables is not EROEI but rather problems brought about by intermittency.

Electric cars only throw away 23% - and convert the 77% other energy into forward motion. That's almost 4/5ths of the energy doing what we want. Are electric cars more efficient than combustion or hybrid cars?

How many people can afford an EV?

How Many Americans Can Afford An Electric Car? – OsVehicle

www.osvehicle.com

According to a new study from the University of Michigan, the answer is about 30% of Americans. The study looked at the affordability of electric cars based on income, vehicle prices, and the availability of federal and state incentives. They found that the average price of an electric car is about $30,000, which is still out of reach for many Americans. However, when you factor in federal and state incentives, the price drops to around $20,000. At that price, about 30% of Americans would be able to afford an electric car.​

Only 1/5th of gasoline works, but with EV's only 1/5th of it is waste.

How does all this work out with EROEI? It appears oil HAD to have a higher EROEI (as measured by mere BTU’s at the well head) because burning it in an Internal Combustion Engine is SO wasteful! Instead of asking how much thermal energy there is in a barrel of oil when counting the EROEI, maybe we should emphasise what we really want - how FAR that oil takes you? Instead of measuring solar’s EROEI as “only” 10 times the energy it took to make the solar panel - what are those solar panels DOING with that EROEI? What work are they achieving by going into electric moetors that USE 4/5ths rather than WASTE 4/5ths the energy?

I agree EROEI is not a problem for renewable energy.

Models hide the shortcomings of wind and solar

A major reason for the growth in the use of renewable energy is the fact that if a person looks at them narrowly enough--such as by using a model--wind and solar look to be useful. They don't burn fossil fuels, so it appears that they might be helpful to the environment. Energy modeling misses...

ourfiniteworld.com

Here are some of the problems with renewable energy from the article:

• Intermittency: Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are intermittent, meaning that they do not produce electricity all the time. This can be a problem for the power grid, which needs a steady supply of electricity to meet demand.
• Storage: Renewable energy sources also require storage, as the electricity they produce cannot always be used immediately. This can be a costly and inefficient process.
• Cost: Renewable energy is often more expensive than fossil fuels, although the cost is coming down.
• Efficiency: Renewable energy sources are not as efficient as fossil fuels at generating electricity. This means that more energy is lost in the conversion process.
• Environmental impact: Renewable energy sources can have an environmental impact, such as the mining of rare earth metals for solar panels and wind turbines.

The article concludes that renewable energy is not a panacea for the world's energy problems, and that we need to be realistic about its limitations. However, it also argues that renewable energy is still a necessary part of the solution, and that we need to continue to invest in research and development to improve its efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Additional problems:

Our present electric grid is a problem for renewables. The grid is designed to handle a steady supply of electricity from fossil fuel plants, which can be dispatched on demand. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are intermittent, meaning that they do not produce electricity all the time. This can be a problem for the grid, which needs to be able to balance supply and demand at all times.​

​

The largest users of fossil fuels are transportation of consumer goods over long distances and commercial airlines. Many challenges such as the weight of the batteries, the cost of the batteries and the infrastructure for charging them will be needed before they will get electrified the weight of the batteries, the cost of the batteries and the infrastructure for charging them.​

​

And then there are The Limits to Growth that we are facing in near future such as, pollution, finite resources, population decline and food.​

​

The Limits to Growth - Club of Rome

06 February 1972 -

www.clubofrome.org

 

[Frank Robert]

The more electric cars, the more the economies of scale kick in.
The more BIG BATTERY takes over Big Oil.
There will be problems - nothing's perfect when people and corporations are involved.
We will have to police their mining practices - metal mining is going to increase sixfold! (IEA.)

One of the main problems with electrifying everything is our aging electric grid. A modern grid will need to handle intermittency and increased power load

Opinion | We Desperately Need a New Power Grid. Here’s How to Make It Happen.

To make renewable energy widely available, the United States needs a lot of new power lines. The nation is struggling to build them.

www.nytimes.com

The United States needs 47,300 gigawatt-miles of new power lines by 2035, which would expand the current grid by 57 percent, the Energy Department reported in February. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine arrived at a similar figure. To hit that target, the United States needs to double the pace of power line construction.​

 

[eclipsenow]

How many people can afford an EV?

Look at the decadal trends. What was the average price of an EV 20 years ago? 10 years ago? Now? In 10 years?
Having said that - I'm a New Urbanist.
I don't even like cars.

But I hear you on intermittency. I really do - it's why I went from hating nuclear power (as part of my background Australian culture, without even looking into it at all!) to loving it over a decade ago. They are working on designs for breeder reactors that eat nuclear 'waste' (the spent fuel rods) which have most of the energy left in them, but just need 'cleaning up' and having all the 'nuclear poisons' removed. (Things that poison the nuclear reaction - not discussing whether or not it poisons us!)

Anyway, then June last year I changed my mind. Nukes are still great for countries that freeze, but renewables are now so CHEAP we can do things they never used to think about. Like Overbuild!

They analyse weather data for the worst weeks of winter, where it might cut production of all those solar and wind farms back to half. For weeks at a time! That’s vastly too expensive to build storage for. What’s the answer? It sounds trite - but peer-reviewed energy engineers have calculated that if your wind and solar are cut back to half during winter - then DOUBLE THEM! Cut it from WEEKS of expensive storage down to a few DAYS. We can afford mere days with off-river pumped hydro. ANU finds 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites in Australia

How can we afford to overbuild renewables by 2 or 3 times (for some nations), build extra transmission AND storage? Because they are 1/4 the LCOE of nuclear.

Here’s a model of Australia’s freak rainy La Nina weather in 2022 that concludes just a 70% overbuild would get us through winter. So don’t build 100% renewables - build 170%! A near 100 per cent renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

Griffith Uni says “overbuilding” the renewable energy fleet (that is, allowing for some spilled energy over time) is also likely to be an efficient source of energy firming.” http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/a...o.2022-04-VRE-droughts-modelling-Griffith.pdf

Andrew Blaker’s ANU 100% electricity system excludes transport and industry, focussing just on the electricity sector. But it concludes that transport would only add another 35% - (because electric transport is so much more efficient than internal combustion engines).
100% renewable electricity in Australia

Looking at other industrial uses of energy, such as heat pumps for domestic and business heating, hydrogen for industry, synthetic fuel for airlines and shipping and some hydrogen for industrial process) will bump up demand further. Electrification – Analysis - IEA

Conclusion? Overbuild is a way off as we keep finding new ways to use electricity. But when it comes it will help us get through winter, and supply super-cheap ‘Super-power’ the rest of the year. What businesses could basically FREE electricity do basically for 10 or 11 months of the year? As long as it can shut down for the worst weeks in winter, it can make extra hydrogen, run various carbon Direct Air Capture systems, or desalinate water in desert countries. What about running Gasifiers to convert all our landfill waste into useful syngas and rock-wool building materials - so half our next house is actually built from household waste? http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/gasification/ Who knows? But it seems the ‘problem’ of intermittency requires a solution that may just solve many other problems at the same time! No wonder Tony Seba calls it ‘Super-Power’.

 

[eclipsenow]

The United States needs 47,300 gigawatt-miles of new power lines by 2035, which would expand the current grid by 57 percent, the Energy Department reported in February. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine arrived at a similar figure. To hit that target, the United States needs to double the pace of power line construction.

I don't know much about the specifics of the US grid state, but as a general principle renewables engineers do seem to factor in a lot of geographic spread. That is, NSW and Victoria down the southeast of Australia would need 5 times the storage for winter IF we ignore Professor Blakers and DON'T build a huge HVDC power line from Queensland thousands of km's down to Victoria.

GEOGRAPHIC SPREAD: Overbuild works best when spreading the weather-risk across a wide area. HVDC transmission is so powerful it only loses 3% per 1000 km. That means Perth sunshine can power dark Sydney evenings 4000 km away, only losing 12%, while sending ‘sunlight’ live around the curvature of the Earth! So Finland getting power from Spain or even Africa is now possible. Transmission reduces storage costs. $100 billion and at least the Australian electricity sector is done. For $100 billion, Australia could have a low cost and reliable zero emissions grid

Here's how Blakers sums it up.
Geographic spread is a major cost in building a renewables grid - maybe 10% to 20%.
Off-river pumped hydro is also a major factor - maybe 10% to 20%.
It depends on the local geography - more of one means less of the other, but both together end up being about 30% of a renewable grid.
The other 70% is all those wind and solar farms.

Together, the whole system is not just cheaper than nuclear. It's cheaper than coal! "Professor Blakers said the cost of a 100 per cent stabilised renewable electricity system would be around AU$75/MWh, which is cheaper than coal and gas-fuelled power."

Hydro storage can secure 100% renewable electricity

Pumped hydro storage can be used to help build a secure and cheap Australian electricity grid with 100 per cent renewable energy, a new study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found. Lead researcher Professor Andrew Blakers from ANU said the zero-emissions grid would mainly rely...

www.anu.edu.au

 

[Frank Robert]

Look at the decadal trends. What was the average price of an EV 20 years ago? 10 years ago? Now? In 10 years?
Having said that - I'm a New Urbanist.
I don't even like cars.

I admit you are verbose, myself not so much because I like to stick to the concepts, so I'll be brief:

Your agreements do not hold up because the working classes fall behind year after year. Why do the working classes fall behind year after year?

1. Working-class families are more likely to live in poverty, which can make it difficult to afford basic necessities like food, housing, and healthcare. (Also new cars)​

2. Working-class students are more likely to attend underfunded schools, which can have a negative impact on their academic achievement.​

In both cases, the working class is more likely to fall behind year after year because of systemic inequalities.​

Electrifying everything is not as practical as you have been led to believe.

Renewables are not economical. In your first comments you gave a reference which placed the EROI for solar at 16. Yet, real life experience places it magnitudes less when you only consider the initial investment and the high energy cost of adding battery backup. Here is what happens in real life when you take reality into consideration:

Why does EROEI drop from 9.4 to 1.3?

Palmer shows the pattern of energy investment and energy payback for a particular off-grid home in Australia which uses solar panels and battery backup. His zig-zag chart reflects two offsetting impacts:​

​

(a) Energy investment was required at the beginning, both for the solar panels and for the first set of batteries. The solar panels in this analysis last for 30 years, but the batteries only last for 7.5 years. As a result, it is necessary to invest in new batteries, three additional times over the period.​

​

(b) Solar panels only gradually make their payback.​

​

Palmer finds that the system would be in a state of energy deficit (considering only energy out versus energy in) for 20 years. At the end of 30 years, the combined system would return only 1.3 times as much energy as the energy invested in the system. This is an incredibly poor payback! EROEI enthusiasts usually look for a payback of 10 or more. The solar panels in the analysis were close to this target level, at 9.4. But the energy required for the battery backup brought the EROEI down to 1.3.​

​

Palmer’s analysis points out another difficulty with wind and solar: The energy payback is terribly slow. If we burn fossil fuels, the economy gets a payback immediately. If we manufacture wind turbines or solar panels, there is a far longer period of something that might be called, “energy indebtedness.” EROEI calculations conveniently ignore interest charges, again making the situation look better than it really is. The buildup in debt is also ignored.​

Source...​

​

Another reason why renewables can not replace fossil fuels ...is the connection between high energy prices and the need to increase government debt. To prevent the continued upward spiral of government debt, any replacement for fossil fuels must also be very inexpensive–perhaps as inexpensive as oil was prior to 1970. In fact, the real limit to fossil fuel extraction and to the building of new wind turbines and solar panels may be government debt that becomes unmanageable in an inflationary period.​

​

I am not a total pessimist. I do believe that there is one energy source which is not a pie in the sky belief and that is deep drill geothermal. But we need to develop the technology to do it.

 

[Frank Robert]

Do you honestly think that as petrol cars were first introduced there was a national highway system for them all rigged up and ready to go? But the reality is more and more EV charging stations are being introduced all the time, and most people want to charge their daily car for their daily commute from solar on their rooftop! That's FREE fuel from the sun.

And as I have said before, it's getting CHEAPER than old polluting oil cars - and that's before we count oil's costs to the health system.

Australia’s new company Janus can convert almost any large truck into a full electric truck - which saves the truck, saves the truckie money and speeds up converting the fleet to all-electric! Forget Tesla's 40 ton trucks - these are the big Aussie 100 tons trucks. No - it’s not a miracle new battery. Just a 1 minute battery swap. A guy on a forklift does it. Instead of stressing the grid and batteries in fast charge - they take a few hours charging their batteries from solar on the warehouse roof. They can run 10 trucks from the warehouse roof alone! Truckies save on 60% on servicing and electricity is 1/3 the cost of diesel. These Janus trucks also get regenerative breaking, which slows the trucks going down hill while charging the batteries and avoiding wear and tear on the brake pads. They make their money back in about a year - then make huge profits. The market is going to be SCREAMING for these trucks soon. It’s a thing of beauty - please watch the "Fully charged" 15 minute special.

Note: it's not even really competition with Tesla - as these big rigs can only drive BETWEEN Australian big cities - not WITHIN them. Only Tesla sized semis and smaller trucks can drive around within our cities.

​

I don't think anyone is dening that electric vehicles will eventually become the norm but that it is only one piece of the transition needed. The world needs to figure out how to make renewables produce the energy as quickly and easily as fossil fuels and still be cost effective. It is easy to get caught up in hype over renewables but reality does not concur.

One immediate obstacle in the US is an outdated electric grid.

Why the U.S. Electric Grid Isn’t Ready for the Energy Transition​

America’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change.​

​

Tapping into the nation’s vast supplies of wind and solar energy would be one of the cheapest ways to cut the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet, studies have found. That would mean building thousands of wind turbines across the gusty Great Plains and acres of solar arrays across the South, creating clean, low-cost electricity to power homes, vehicles and factories.​

​

But many spots with the best sun and wind are far from cities and the existing grid. To make the plan work, the nation would need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines — large power lines that would span multiple grid regions.​

 

[eclipsenow]

I admit you are verbose, myself not so much because I like to stick to the concepts, so I'll be brief:

Your agreements do not hold up because the working classes fall behind year after year. Why do the working classes fall behind year after year?

1. Working-class families are more likely to live in poverty, which can make it difficult to afford basic necessities like food, housing, and healthcare. (Also new cars)​

2. Working-class students are more likely to attend underfunded schools, which can have a negative impact on their academic achievement.​

In both cases, the working class is more likely to fall behind year after year because of systemic inequalities​

I hear you! I've just been watching a bit of Mike Moore's "Capitalism - a love story" on Netflix. Still haven't finished it but it looks like an interesting introduction. Since doing "Political Economy of the Welfare State" in my Social Sciences Advanced Diploma, I've been Social-Liberal aka Ordo-liberal - “Civil rights, social justice and State funded welfare in a market economy.” I’m scared of the corrupting influence of Corporations. Watch these 2 prize-winning documentaries as foundational to understanding what is happening in the Western World. Watch them, even if only in half hour chunks:-

"The Corporation"

"The New Corporation"

The Corporations are making BIG MOVES towards "State Capture" of the democratic system so we no longer live in a Democracy, but instead end up in a Corporatocracy like in the dystopian Sci-Fi series “Continuum.”

It's alarming, and relates in regards to State Capture by big oil and king coal.

Electrifying everything is not as practical as you have been led to believe.

Renewables are not economical. In your first comments you gave a reference which placed the EROI for solar at 16. Yet, real life experience places it magnitudes less when you only consider the initial investment and the high energy cost of adding battery backup. Here is what happens in real life when you take reality into consideration:

View attachment 332657​

Why does EROEI drop from 9.4 to 1.3?

Palmer shows the pattern of energy investment and energy payback for a particular off-grid home in Australia which uses solar panels and battery backup. His zig-zag chart reflects two offsetting impacts:​

​

(a) Energy investment was required at the beginning, both for the solar panels and for the first set of batteries. The solar panels in this analysis last for 30 years, but the batteries only last for 7.5 years. As a result, it is necessary to invest in new batteries, three additional times over the period.​

First - that's a completely invalid comparison. Solar only works a third of the day, meaning you need extra 2 lots of solar to charge the batteries for overnight load in a stand alone domestic situation. The real comparison is to an Australia wide electricity grid that on many occasions will have wind from Queensland or coming off the South Australian Bight running Sydney overnight. Indeed, late afternoon Perth Solar should one day be running Eastcoast winter evenings directly because HVDC lines only lose 3% per 1000 km and so can economically send solar power live directly around the curvature of the Earth!

Bottom line: An Australia wide grid reduces storage and increases live wind and solar working directly on homes much closer to 24/7, reducing metal battery requirements.

Second - why metal batteries? Oh yeah, it's an invalid house market we're talking about! The reality is national grids should be made from wind and solar and HVDC lines bringing as much of it LIVE to your business or home as possible, with 2 days PUMPED HYDRO to back up. Australia has 300 times more potential pumped hydro than we need. Batteries of gravity and water – we found 1,500 new pumped hydro sites next to existing reservoirs

Third - what about export? Basically, if Solar does have an EROEI of 10, why can't it allow the manufacture of more solar - say 10% of which next generation solar goes into running some battery firm in America or China or somewhere. The batteries are shipped to Australia. They run some household - but the original power came from the EROEI of a vast solar manufacturing facility overseas? What happens to the local EROEI? Nothing.

Fourth - make solar panels that last 40 years and their EROEI goes up to 100.

Energy output is over 100 times the input needed to manufacture solar panels

According to a third-party study, the projected output over the 40-year warranty period of Maxeon solar panels exceeds the energy demand of manufacturing them by over 100-fold. Plus, more details from the Maxeon 2021 sustainability report.

www.pv-magazine.com

​

Another reason why renewables can not replace fossil fuels ...is the connection between high energy prices and the need to increase government debt. To prevent the continued upward spiral of government debt, any replacement for fossil fuels must also be very inexpensive–perhaps as inexpensive as oil was prior to 1970. In fact, the real limit to fossil fuel extraction and to the building of new wind turbines and solar panels may be government debt that becomes unmanageable in an inflationary period.​

Solar and wind with PHES are the cheapest source of power we've ever had.
As we "Electrify everything" they will do MORE work MORE efficiently than oil on less energy. (EV's use 80% of their original energy, oil wastes 80%!)

​

I am not a total pessimist. I do believe that there is one energy source which is not a pie in the sky belief and that is deep drill geothermal. But we need to develop the technology to do it.

Could be - and there are new laser techniques that could burn a glass-coated hole down 10km.
But you forgot nuclear breeder reactors.

Try this. It's a 5 minute composite of Kirk Sorenson's most passionate moments on Molten Salt Reactors - the reactors that cannot ever melt down because they're already a liquid.

• They 'eat' nuclear waste, getting 100 TIMES the energy out of each bit of uranium or thorium. This means the UK's waste is worth 500 years of clean energy for them, and America's nuclear waste is a whole millennium!
• They require power to GO, not power to COOL like today's reactors. Total power failure like Fukushima? They shut down - no human intervention required.
• Terrorism? If someone fired an RPG at them and blew a hole in the side - the reaction would shut down as the hot Molten Salt poured into the containment room and solidified.
• The burn all the long-lived actinides out - leaving the broken atoms we call ‘fission products’ or the real waste behind. This stuff is really radioactive but that’s a GOOD thing as you melt it down into ceramic bricks and bury it in a bunker on the grounds somewhere. 300 years later it’s safe. Uranium goes into the nuclear park, nothing comes out but clean power. More from Argonne Labs.

• Nuclear EROEIs can be around 40 to 70 depending on the study. But this is because SO MUCH energy is used mining and refining the uranium ore. Once you get 100 TIMES the energy out of the uranium ore and eliminate the need to repeat the mining and refining step each iteration - you’ve got an EROEI of 4000 to 7000!​

 

[Frank Robert]

First - that's a completely invalid comparison. Solar only works a third of the day, meaning you need extra 2 lots of solar to charge the batteries for overnight load in a stand alone domestic situation. The real comparison is to an Australia wide electricity grid that on many occasions will have wind from Queensland or coming off the South Australian Bight running Sydney overnight. Indeed, late afternoon Perth Solar should one day be running Eastcoast winter evenings directly because HVDC lines only lose 3% per 1000 km and so can economically send solar power live directly around the curvature of the Earth!

You continue to disregard the externalities. Example: that batteries are doing what they are designed to do does not change the fact that they need to be replaced.

Solar and wind with PHES are the cheapest source of power we've ever had.
As we "Electrify everything" they will do MORE work MORE efficiently than oil on less energy. (EV's use 80% of their original energy, oil wastes 80%!)
Bottom line: An Australia wide grid reduces storage and increases live wind and solar working directly on homes much closer to 24/7, reducing metal battery requirements.

Australia has a modern grid. The US does not. Neither do most countries in the world, especially in the global south. You can not use Australia as a comparison for the rest of the world.

Second - why metal batteries? Oh yeah, it's an invalid house market we're talking about! The reality is national grids should be made from wind and solar and HVDC lines bringing as much of it LIVE to your business or home as possible, with 2 days PUMPED HYDRO to back up. Australia has 300 times more potential pumped hydro than we need. Batteries of gravity and water – we found 1,500 new pumped hydro sites next to existing reservoirs

Australia with a population of ~26 million and the resources from ~3 million square miles can not be compared to the US or the rest of the world

Third - what about export? Basically, if Solar does have an EROEI of 10, why can't it allow the manufacture of more solar - say 10% of which next generation solar goes into running some battery firm in America or China or somewhere. The batteries are shipped to Australia. They run some household - but the original power came from the EROEI of a vast solar manufacturing facility overseas? What happens to the local EROEI? Nothing.

Wind and solar do not have a EROI of 10 when you take into all the externalities that renewable industries hype disregards.

On the other hand hydro has an EROI of 30 -50 and geothermal 30 - 100. Geothermal is our best bet because it can be drilled just about every where and can use existing power plants even in the US with its outdated electric grid.

Fourth - make solar panels that last 40 years and their EROEI goes up to 100.

You have not taken into consideration the cost of battery replacement, subsidies for solar and he average life of solar panels which is 25-30 years. However, some panels may last longer, and others may not last as long.

According to the World Economic Forum, wind and solar cover 12% of world electricity supply in 2022. How long do you think it will take to get to 50%? And how long will the subsidies last for renewables?

 

[eclipsenow]

You continue to disregard the externalities. Example: that batteries are doing what they are designed to do does not change the fact that they need to be replaced.

Again - you're quoting an irrelevant old Graham Palmer paper that does not acknowledge that modern batteries last longer. As "Big Battery" replaces "Big oil" we are seeing remarkable innovations in battery tech all the time. Soon we're looking at batteries that will fast charge and go 1000km. Or the "Million mile battery" that will last longer than most cars! In other words, we will NOT be replacing the average household battery every 7 years - let alone going 'off-grid' with those household batteries.

Because the super-grid's are coming, to Australia and the rest of the world.

Australia has a modern grid. The US does not. Neither do most countries in the world, especially in the global south. You can not use Australia as a comparison for the rest of the world.

Australia does NOT have the grid I'm talking about. To replace oil and industrial heat from coal and gas we're going to need 3 TIMES the electricity we use now. Most grids around the world will need upgrading with extra interconnecters, and they will STILL be cheaper than a coal fired grid. You know coal plants require backup coal plants in case one goes down? There's overbuild in today's grids.

Australia with a population of ~26 million and the resources from ~3 million square miles can not be compared to the US or the rest of the world

The rest of this video goes on to explore the world’s off-river PHES sites. There’s plenty - on average 100 TIMES what the world needs. Pick your best 1% of sites and you're done!
Professor Blakers video:

Paper
ShieldSquare Captcha

Wind and solar do not have a EROI of 10 when you take into all the externalities that renewable industries hype disregards.

Except they're MOSTLY going to be powering us live, and then pumping water up a hill for storage. You know a good pumped hydro dam lasts 100 years or so? They can be small, as the one in Western Australia being built for an isolated town of 500, or quite large. We'll be mostly LIVE wind and solar, and occasional pumped hydro and just a few hours of batteries. The EROEI will be fine.

On the other hand hydro has an EROI of 30 -50 and geothermal 30 - 100. Geothermal is our best bet because it can be drilled just about every where and can use existing power plants even in the US with its outdated electric grid.

Except it can't. Yet. I'm optimistic that the new lasers from fusion-research will be able to drill down deep enough, but it isn't a thing yet.

You have not taken into consideration the cost of battery replacement, subsidies for solar and he average life of solar panels which is 25-30 years. However, some panels may last longer, and others may not last as long.

Rubbish. First, I'm not smart enough to calculate all this - I'm running off Professor Blaker's team. He won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering - basically as prestigious as a Nobel Peace prize. You're arguing with him, not me.

Second, solar panels can last 40 years they're just less efficient. So take them off someone's roof and dump them on a solar farm somewhere for another decade or so use.

Third, batteries will be lasting longer as noted above with the "million mile battery" that is on the way.
Fourth, cities don't rely on batteries but PHES. The world has 100 TIMES the sites it needs.

According to the World Economic Forum, wind and solar cover 12% of world electricity supply in 2022. How long do you think it will take to get to 50%? And how long will the subsidies last for renewables?

You might want to google that again. It's already larger than that, and enough solar power factories are coming online in the next few years to QUADRUPLE 2022's output. Normally solar installation rates double every 4 years, but in by 2026 there's a rare thing we're going to see where it QUADRUPLES!

Exponential growth. It's slow at the beginning, and then everything happens at once.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Except it can't. Yet. I'm optimistic that the fusion-styled lasers will be able to drill down deep enough, but it isn't a thing yet.

What on Earth is a "fusion-styled" laser?

I know what fusion is. I know what a laser is. I even know what "styled" means. None of these words go together.