I'll agree, they succumb to a lot of batshit alarmist BS. I'm considering the goal as "cleaner than current coal technology and with renewable/very abundant sources". So yes, nuclear is on the table, as is tidal, as are large wind and solar farms. It's not all that likely to happen, given the constant issue of NIMBY, but we need to try.
Have you heard about the new ideas for solar thermal? They require lots of sun to work well, but they are much cheaper (don't use Si or voltaics in general), and they have the capacity for power storage without batteries.
that's the technology I referred to that Fuzzy was working on. Quite cool (hot, actually), using solar mirrors to heat working fluids from water to (even neater) salt. The salt stays VERY hot for a VERY long time, allowing power to be extracted at some level 24-7, mitigating to some extent the criticisms about solar power not being suitable for base load production.
You may be surprised that I completely agree that we need to revamp our power production structure to be cleaner and more modern, ideally cheaper as well. Standard of living, health, and national productivity all require energy, and lots of it.
I just want realistic goals and methods. 100% renewable/clean power in 10yrs just won't cut it, and that bastion of conservatism, the Washington Post, even says:
“Half the nation’s electricity comes from coal plants, and most of them have expected operating lives beyond 10 years; replacing them would require massive capital investment and throw scores of big energy firms into turmoil. Moreover, solar and wind equipment
( ... )
Tidal surge is relatively crap. In part, because the main electricity is created at the wrong times, and doesn't help peak load. This means you have to store that electricity, which will always represent a decrease in efficiency.
Geothermal is pretty useless unless you are Iceland or you want to rip open Yellowstone. I am OK with that, but I have a cold, cold heart.
I think instead we should aim lower. Remove foreign oil from America in 10 years. To do that you probably have to go to the electric car, which then shifts all your load to your power plants. Now that you have isolated all your power needs to the grid you can now start making changes to your power sources.
Did I mention Heating Oil for homes and how that is also bullshit? We need to kill every gas tank in America. We ship oil half way across the globe to be refined, so we can heat our houses, because we are too damn lazy to upgrade our existing infrastructure. Petroleum needs to be used for more important things like specialty chemicals.
The US alone has a total installed generating capcity of about 1TW (just over 1,000,000 MW). Total solar power cells deployed in the entire world as of 2006 was less than 6,000 MW.
Solar power costs about 15 to 22 cents per kWhr. Nuclear and coal around 2 cents (nuclear slightly cheaper than coal). Oil and gas are about eight cents, and more expensive because they're peak power, not base load power.
I think the point Gore has been trying to make, both in his movie and in efforts like this, is that the time to fret about the monetary cost of clean energy has long since passed. Right or wrong, his belief is that catastrophic climate change is imminent. If you know you're going to be shot, you don't worry about the price of the bulletproof vest.
Re: *blinks innocently*douglascoleJuly 22 2008, 13:56:25 UTC
Yes, it will. The market will provide the most profitable power to the most people in the least time. At the moment, if there were sane regulatory hurdles, this would likely be clean nuclear power at less than two cents per KW-hr.
In certain areas, distributed generation of power by wind or solar could locally replace grid power, and each consumer would have to weigh the benefits of supplementing their grid connection (or even going off-grid) based on payback.
Will they all work? I don't know; probably only some of them will actually pan out and be affordable. Like a ton of the talking heads are saying, we need to invest in lots of these crazy ideas - some of them will fail but some of them will be worth it x1000. And the more development we do now, the faster we separate the wheat from the chaff and get some seriously sustainable energy developed.
Nuke Power works for everyone, but not everyone wants it, of course. Tidal power would work great for most of the coasts, I imagine, and wind power for parts of the plains. This is just giddy guesswork on my part though.
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Have you heard about the new ideas for solar thermal? They require lots of sun to work well, but they are much cheaper (don't use Si or voltaics in general), and they have the capacity for power storage without batteries.
Reply
You may be surprised that I completely agree that we need to revamp our power production structure to be cleaner and more modern, ideally cheaper as well. Standard of living, health, and national productivity all require energy, and lots of it.
I just want realistic goals and methods. 100% renewable/clean power in 10yrs just won't cut it, and that bastion of conservatism, the Washington Post, even says:
“Half the nation’s electricity comes from coal plants, and most of them have expected operating lives beyond 10 years; replacing them would require massive capital investment and throw scores of big energy firms into turmoil. Moreover, solar and wind equipment ( ... )
Reply
Geothermal is pretty useless unless you are Iceland or you want to rip open Yellowstone. I am OK with that, but I have a cold, cold heart.
I think instead we should aim lower. Remove foreign oil from America in 10 years. To do that you probably have to go to the electric car, which then shifts all your load to your power plants. Now that you have isolated all your power needs to the grid you can now start making changes to your power sources.
Did I mention Heating Oil for homes and how that is also bullshit? We need to kill every gas tank in America. We ship oil half way across the globe to be refined, so we can heat our houses, because we are too damn lazy to upgrade our existing infrastructure. Petroleum needs to be used for more important things like specialty chemicals.
Reply
The US alone has a total installed generating capcity of about 1TW (just over 1,000,000 MW). Total solar power cells deployed in the entire world as of 2006 was less than 6,000 MW.
Solar power costs about 15 to 22 cents per kWhr. Nuclear and coal around 2 cents (nuclear slightly cheaper than coal). Oil and gas are about eight cents, and more expensive because they're peak power, not base load power.
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In certain areas, distributed generation of power by wind or solar could locally replace grid power, and each consumer would have to weigh the benefits of supplementing their grid connection (or even going off-grid) based on payback.
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http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/government/a/al_gore_energy.htm
that being said, I think our population is too large to commit to renewable sources. Nuclear, solar, wind and tidal would work, you think?
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