I was thinking of his post too, but responded to you. I'm not sure, but it feels like Shifty doesn't really read other people's posts very much anyway.

I would love to understand the thinking of people who don't trust scientists who they liken to zealots of the religion of environmentalism more than companies with literally trillions of dollars at stake.

I think it's mostly people resent anyone who could possibly be perceived as self-righteous and holier-than-thou. I'm not sure what can be done about it other than handling people with kid gloves, rather than write condescending posts like this one. (I mean my post, not yours.)

Can you prove this? What about this chart: US Air Pollution



I meant polluters who don't follow a set of certain guidelines, not just all polluters. Takes a ton of steel and materials to produce windmills and solar panels, that doesn't appear out of thin air.

No I am not. I am asserting that allowing people to use the cheapest, most plentiful, reliable energy source is absolutely vital to human progress. To ban or put insane penalties for producing or using these types of energy is in moral and will have a terrible impact on the people mostly in developing countries that are using that cheap plentiful energy to have heating/cooling, refrigeration and a light bulb for the first time in their lives and the positive impact that has on a human life, like it did with the western world 100 years ago.

Hey microbet,

I had an idea the other day. So driverless vehicles are coming and will generally be rented rather than owned. We'll need a lot of capacity at rush hour and then the vehicles will largely sit dormant overnight.

So my question is, is it possible to use those vehicles as a bank of batteries for solar storage, with them feeding power back into the grid overnight? Has that been considered?

Absolutely and Elon Musk is definitely on linking electric car batteries up for use as energy storage for the grid.

Seems a little tricky to me because you pretty much want any electric car charged and ready to go whenever possible.

Currently though, there is a big energy surplus at night. Efficient fossil fuel power stations run 24/7, but demand is low at night. A lot of electric cars charging at night will be a benefit for a while.

I'm going to reanswer this question in a while though. I'm just headed out the door.

I still want to see giant flywheels under their houses which store energy during the day and give it at night.

Suzzer,

I was very interested in flywheel energy storage for quite a while. Maybe 20 years ago I saw a car at a car show that promised basically Tesla-like performance with a kinetic energy battery. The flywheel was supposed to be made out of a super strong composite material and able to operate at 100k rpm. But, I guess they couldn't really pull it off.

There are industrial flywheels in use now, but I don't think it's been doing as well as other technologies.

I think the are a lot of small storage solutions which will add up to a lot. One example is ice for air conditioning. Office buildings use a ton of AC and in some places, basically all year. There are commercial air conditioning products that make ice at night, when electricity is cheaper, and use it for cooling during the day.

Chris,

Time-of-Use rate plans are already widely available and the ability for a battery system to be programmed to buy or sell power to the utility has been around for a long time in battery back-up utility interconnected solar systems. So, technically there's no problem with taking advantage of idle shared electric vehicles. If the operators can come up with a plan that does that in a useful way and still leaves the cars charged when they are needed, I can see it happening.

What we really need is open grid. Where people or utilities in Florida can own a system in Nevada and maybe have their batteries in Mexico. You only need lithium ion batteries, they will store power in the long run for less than a nickel a kwh. You also need real costs to connect to the grid maybe $20 a month. That covers the cost of the connection and to maintain the grid. Then you pay for storage 5c a kwh. Then you pay for the extra power you need.

It will be cheap to have the entire country running off hydro, solar, and geothermal. Batteries will not degrade if you use them only once a month. Thus super-peak power will not be much more expensive than peak power. They might be used once a month but last 50 years. Hydro and geothermal might also become obsolete. I don't think you would want to hurt your car battery by using it at night.

Natural gas can be converted to oil for plastics. The only use for hydrocarbon fuel might be long range aircraft and rockets.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/1...ement-36977875

Nice to see states are planning ahead for self-driving cars and solar improvements. Nothing would be worse than having the technology ready and the infrastructure/regulation lagging behind.

What about a simple device that lifts water up then runs it through a turbine when needed? Pretty sure I'm the first person who's ever thought of that - so this will serve as public record of prior art.

That is pumped storage hydro power and is by far the most common energy storage method and has been in use for a long time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...orage_projects

So when do I get my royalties?

http://www.australiangeographic.com....to-hatch-early

climate change leading to increased chick mortality by way of early hatchings

It is not the cheapest if you include all the costs that are externalized.

There is a way of using tide power that I have never seen proposed.

A rising tide will lift an oil tanker that weighs hundreds of thousands of tons. At high tide if you can then capture that weight somehow using gearing or whatever, you then have the energy potential of that weight and the distance to low tide. At low tide you simply detach and start again.

Twice a day every day.

You can capture the up and down energy of the water with a float that pulls a cable or piston that can capture energy various ways. I think the simplest is by using compression to force a liquid through turbines. And, instead of twice a day, why not at every wave?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azur..._power_device)

There's very little in the way of development of systems like this, I believe because the construction is so difficult and expensive.

Most tidal power operates by either water flow directly running turbines under water or damming water and running turbines as the water is released. The latter is the most common and as the project below does (the largest in the world), it can double as flood control/wave breaker.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihw..._Power_Station

Can you explain what cost are externalized?

So in 20 years or so, when solar+battery storage becomes the cheapest and most reliable energy source, will burning coal be considered stupid?

No, people should be free to chose. The cheapest most reliable will always win. Do you have any practiculair reason why you think solar will be the cheapest and most reliable? Keep in mind that it accounts for less then 1% of total energy use currently and for every person on the planet to use the same amount of energy as the average American we'd need to quadruple our energy consumption.

The graph doesn't disprove anything I said? Coal plants in the USA are forced to spend a lot of money on filters to reduce pollution but currently CO2 is not considered pollution. Add CO2 to that graph and it will look quite different.

Subsidies on other energy sources and the above extra costs for operating coal plants has reduced the amount of coal used for energy production in the USA by 25% in the last 10 years alone. So the USA is actually doing what I want it to do which is passing laws that make the cheapest energy source no longer the cheapest energy source. They are just not doing enough because CO2 is not considered pollution yet.

The rest of your post is still arguing that what we did 100 years ago is still valid now and I also wonder which developing countries are just getting light bulbs and refrigeration.

If you really believe that what we did a 100 years ago to get where we are is good for developing countries now then do you also have no problem with Brazil and Indonesia clearing their forests like Europe did to get more grazing lands and cheap fuel to burn.

All cost associated with pollution.

Even if you include CO2, US greenhouse gas emission has been dropping for almost a decade.

We are talking about CO2 from energy production and that has been pretty stable over the last 25 years. You can see that in the top chart here.

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/

Combine that graph with the one I quoted and the picture is completely different no matter how you are going to add how polluting any of those elements are per gram of emission.

Ok, so your argument is to add something that is not considered a pollutant? Can you tell me why CO2 should be considered one?

I would argue there are other factors affecting the burning of coal, the growth of hydraulic fracturing being the main one.

1.2 Billion people have zero access to electricity

You seem to have this opinion that any affect on nature has to be a negative one. If clearing land for grazing lands and burning fuel (solar, wind, fossil) feeds and helps humans live and live a better life then yes I have no problem with it. Human life should always be our standard of value when talking about these sort of things and the big picture. You can't just say "you like fossil fuels so you must also be in favor of clearing forests for grazing lands". I like cheap, plentiful reliable energy and the ability to make the environment wonderful for humans. If wind and solar can do that, great! But I don't think there is any evidence it can at this current time. To try and ban the only reliable energy source humans have had will have terrible consequences on a lot of peoples lives.

If you don't agree that we should consider CO2 production pollution then you are in the wrong thread. The climate change thread is where you want to argue your point.

I also never said to stop using all fossill fuels. We should limit the use of coal and not just go for the cheapest fuel.

Cheap fuel is also not what is stopping those people without electricity. That is an infrastructure problem.