The Environment - Page 48 - Politics and Economics

I'm not sure what that guy is saying, but there was a story out recently that CA is producing so much excess renewable energy it's having to pay neighboring states to take some so that the electricity doesn't overwhelm its energy grid or whatever.

For one thing California has overbuilt natural gas power plants because of the way in which utilities are paid. They get guarantees when they build a new power plant. In general we have a glut of power at the moment. But, the amount of supply and demand of power varies and the market responds. A few times the supply has been so much higher than demand that there has been a risk of overloading the grid. Shutting down power plants and restarting them can be wasteful and expensive. During some of those times no one else really needed power either, but Arizona could take it and shut down some production and some California utilities had to pay them to do it.

It's partly a problem because there is really too much oversupply right now, but there has to be some in order for the system to be reliable, so even in a perfectly designed system it's possible to have to pay someone to take power.

07-13-2017 , 01:06 PM

#1178

Habsfan09

old hand

Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1,552

So the iceberg has broken of the Larson iceshelf. Some people probably should start praying that the rest doesnt get unstable or we are looking at up to 10cm higher sea level.

07-14-2017 , 01:27 AM

#1179

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,476

My source at Intersolar - a big solar conference that just ended in SF - is that most people in the industry feel like Trump is going to go trade war on solar panels, enacting a floor price for imported panels. Distributors are starting to hoard.

07-14-2017 , 10:00 AM

#1180

kerowo

lolcat

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 37,190

Hopefully it isn't too little too late, Solar City announced layoffs this week.

07-14-2017 , 11:14 AM

#1181

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,476

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerowo

Hopefully it isn't too little too late, Solar City announced layoffs this week.

They've been laying people off for a while. I don't think that's a terrible sign in and of itself because I don't think residential solar works well at that scale and the lease is falling out of favor, but they might be looking at real problems like trade restrictions too.

07-14-2017 , 12:12 PM

#1182

kerowo

lolcat

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 37,190

If utilities where interested in solar, which doesn't seem to be the case, community solar sounded pretty promising.

07-14-2017 , 12:40 PM

#1183

Paul D

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Dec 2011 Posts: 14,689

Quote:

Originally Posted by guivre1408

The only green source of energy that can produce without discontinuity is hydroelectricity.

Every other renewable energy will require either fossil or nuclear

100% renewable will be possible once we become elite at storaging electricity. GL with that

Hydroelectricity, as in dams, has been the opposite of green though.

07-14-2017 , 02:53 PM

#1184

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,476

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerowo

If utilities where interested in solar, which doesn't seem to be the case, community solar sounded pretty promising.

There's more utility solar than residential or commercial. They're very interested, but they'd like to keep it for themselves if they could.

I would love to do some community solar, but it's almost impossible to organize, sell, market, deal with the utilities, etc. The programs come and go.

07-23-2017 , 06:19 PM

#1185

Max Cut

Guest

Posts: n/a

https://twitter.com/USGS_Oklahoma/st...38239109890049

07-23-2017 , 07:07 PM

#1186

batair

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 16,802

Nothing to see there but i would not go sticking my head in the sand.

08-02-2017 , 03:12 PM

#1187

O.A.F.K.1.1

Ted Patrick

Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 27,952

Today is Earth overshoot day, its the day on which from now we are using resources the earth cant replace in a year.

This explanation is bad, Im tired, read the link. Also if something like this is in the telegraph, then its bad as this paper is very lol environment we want monies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...ths-resources/

Quote:

Every natural resource that we use from this day - 2 August - onwards is in effect unsustainable in the long term. Over the course of a year we use 170 per cent of the world's natural output.

Earth Overshoot Day comes far earlier in the year than it did a decade ago when we used just 144 per cent of the Earth's biocapacity. However, this is still double the 78 per cent that was used in 1963.

Currently, carbon emissions make up 60 per cent of humanity’s Ecological Footprint. If carbon emissions were cut in half, the date of Earth Overshoot Day would be pushed back by 89 days, or about three months.

08-03-2017 , 09:18 AM

#1188

jalfrezi

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 12,226

Yeah that source probably implies that overshoot day was 3 months ago.

09-09-2017 , 03:42 PM

#1189

Clovis8

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,503

Denying climate change should be a crime.

I could not agree more.

09-10-2017 , 08:27 AM

#1190

Shifty86

veteran

Join Date: Dec 2013 Posts: 2,972

Let's just get it over with and jail everyone. The climate will be perfect then.

09-10-2017 , 06:36 PM

#1191

kerowo

lolcat

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 37,190

So there is no blame for administrators who passed policies that made the death toll and damage from floods worse? Even when those policies can be shown to have made the flood worse? **** you.

09-10-2017 , 07:05 PM

#1192

Csaba

veteran

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 3,131

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerowo

So there is no blame for administrators who passed policies that made the death toll and damage from floods worse? Even when those policies can be shown to have made the flood worse? **** you.

It is completely pointless attempting to have anything approaching a reasonable and rational conversation with shifty. I nearly responded to him earlier but decided to not take the bait. If he posted semi-frequently he would probably have been sent to Unchained by now.

09-11-2017 , 01:26 PM

#1193

kerowo

lolcat

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 37,190

Tru dat, but it's still fun to point out his stupidity.

09-15-2017 , 09:55 PM

#1194

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,476

http://www.solarpaces.org/solarreser...cent-contract/

A new record for solar thermal electrical plants. 6 cents per kwh is competitive with coal. The difference between this and photovoltaics (which are already less expensive than coal) is that this includes energy storage and continues to generate power at night.

09-17-2017 , 09:57 AM

#1195

Csaba

veteran

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 3,131

Paper describing how shipping might be causing lightning storms.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...7GL074982/full

Quote:

Using 12 years of high-resolution global lightning stroke data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), we show that lightning density is enhanced by up to a factor of 2 directly over shipping lanes in the northeastern Indian Ocean and the South China Sea as compared to adjacent areas with similar climatological characteristics. The lightning enhancement is most prominent during the convectively active season, November–April for the Indian Ocean and April–December in the South China Sea, and has been detectable from at least 2005 to the present. We hypothesize that emissions of aerosol particles and precursors by maritime vessel traffic lead to a microphysical enhancement of convection and storm electrification in the region of the shipping lanes. These persistent localized anthropogenic perturbations to otherwise clean regions are a unique opportunity to more thoroughly understand the sensitivity of maritime deep convection and lightning to aerosol particles.