Days

It seems to me 2014 was not so much the year of "living dangerously" as of living hysterically regarding global warming. 2015 might still bring more of it before (I hope) sobriety begins to return to the energy / climate discourse.  The first thing we probably need to understand is the MAGNITUDE of the high carbon energy we should replace with lower carbon varieties. Here we see our total primary energy consumption in 2013*: As we may see, fossil fuels overwhelmingly dominate the current energy market and this is not due to cute political tactics but to the fact that fossil fuels excel in many of the most important energy attributes (per Peter Tertzakian): 1. Versatility 2. Scalability 3. Storability and transportability 4. Deliverability 5. Energy density 6. Power density 7. Constancy 8. Environmental sensitivity 9. Energy security Not to mention that most of the current energy infrastructure in the world is designed around fossil...

According to the EIA in 2012 the world consumed 21,081 billion kWh and we are on track to raise our consumption to ~ 38,000 billion kWh by 2040. Let's make a first approximation on how much generating capacity we would need to supply the latter amount with low carbon sources. I want to underline this is a simplification since we are just going to consider the average annual electricity consumption while in the real world: 1. Electricity use varies locally by the hour and throughout the year. 2. We don't have a single global grid and thus we need spare capacity all over the globe. 3. There will never be a single technology supplying all the electricity. 4. The cost of the kWh is paramount, so electricity supply is more an economic consideration than a technical one. However, having said the above let's just make the calculations to arrive at a ball park figure per technology. The average global annual consumption would be:      38,000 bi...

This report is for my friends Lars and Francis. The problem:  We consume ~ 21 GWh per year and want to switch over to 100% renewable energy. The first steps: We already had preliminary meetings with two renewable electricity companies. Interestingly, one is a "pure play" solar and the other is an almost "pure play" wind. This is the solar one: http://mepmx.com/ This is the wind one: http://kalosenergy.com/ In essence, both offer the same thing: 1. No upfront investment. 2. We are required to sign a multi-year supply contract. 3. Our electricity cost will be 10 to 15% lower versus the regular utility. 4. We will not physically be connected to either their solar panels or wind turbines but the respective energy we consume will be virtually assigned from the renewable production. In other words, there will be no change in our connections to the current electricity company. 5. Even if a catastrophe wiped out the win...

Feasibility of Moon Energy Project I do concede this is a project where costs would be quite difficult to estimate. However, first there is a fundamental technical question that needs to be answered: 1. What percent of the microwaves sent from the moon antennae network will be received by the respective antennae on Earth?  I don't know if it is physically possible to focus microwave beams so most of the energy hits relatively small antennae more than 350,000 kilometers away.  Once the above question is properly answered, we can move to the cost. The following list is not comprehensive, it is just to start the conversation: Establishing of the mining/manufacturing/deployment moon base. How many tons of equipment would be sent from Earth? How many people will work there full time? How often will they come back to Earth? We'll obviously need to know the cost per ton of delivery to the moon. According to the IEA, the Earth will consume 40 trillion kWh b...

No energy technology should strive to label itself as fail-safe because... it would be setting itself for failure. Nothing is safe in an absolute sense. Hundreds of persons die every year in airplane accidents and yet plane travel is the safest mode of transportation. More than a million persons die every year in car accidents (and close to 20,000,000 are harmed) and yet nobody is seriously considering banning the automotive industry.  Even if we focus on electricity itself, just in the USA, ~60 persons die every year in accidental electrocutions.** Are we going to ban electricity? I don't think so.  So, nuclear should label itself as what it really is: the safest energy source our civilization has access to, bar non.* And yes, just like the aviation industry has gotten dramatically safer over the years, nuclear will certainly continue to improve to maintain, long term, its badge as the safest energy we have. Today nuclear accounts for 4.8% of the ...

In the energy discourse, we see all sorts of interesting possibilities to generate electricity but the first thing we have to understand is that electricity is a commodity and thus price is all important. One cent per kWh can make or break a technology. Consequently, all technologies aspiring to a significant participation in the energy market need to calculate what the cost of their kWh will eventually be. Just yesterday, this idea was brought to my attention: http://www.lunarsolarpower.org/ Their value proposition is: "Harnessing solar energy using solar panels on the moon would not be an easy undertaking, but if you consider what we stand to gain, Lunar Solar Power is not just a solution for our power needs as a country, it is  the  solution for the power needs of the  world!"  It sounds interesting, but we have to make the pertinent engineering questions: 1. How will they deal with the (long) lunar night. On Earth the intermittenc...

It seems to me that current "environmental leaders" don't preach by example. They travel all over the world (in airplanes, not in bicycles or wind powered boats). Of what magnitude are the annual carbon footprints of Al Gore, Kumi Naidoo and of the newly minted green spokesperson, Leonardo DiCaprio? In my opinion, trying to push the green agenda by jetting all over the world all the time is the equivalent of "smoking against tobacco," or "fast fooding against obesity," or "drinking against drunk driving." No, we all should DEMAND higher standards from the "green leaders." Here are some suggestions: 1. They should live in Paraguay or Albania (100% of the electricity in those countries is hydro). Or, at the very least, they should live in France (thanks to nuclear, less than 6% of the electricity in that country is produced with combustible fuels).  2. They should pledge never again to travel by plane. Not...

This chart is deceiving in so many ways that it makes you wonder if there is a deliberate effort to confuse people. Here are some pertinent questions: 1. That amount of land is supposed to cover all our energy needs or only the electric ones? 2. Does that amount of land include the space needed for the pairing fossil fuel power plants (to supply power at night or during cloudy days)? 3. If no pairing fossil fuel plants are being considered, then, does that area include the massive storage capability that would be needed (banks of industrial batteries, lakes, etc.). 4. Is the area needed by the inverters and transmission lines already included? 5. And probably the most important of all: do those areas include the massive mining / manufacturing / assembly operations required for such a solar PV build-up and for the regular replacement of all the components in this global system? 6. Let's not forget that also massive amounts of transportation / construction equi...

This post is for Suzy: Difficult for 140 characters, so please bear with me. Grid connected solar is very easy to calculate. Say your annual electricity consumption is 6,000 kWh and that the annual solar capacity factor (CF) where your home is located is 15%. First, let's calculate your average power use: Av Power Use = (6,000 kWh / 365 / 24)*1000 = 685 Watts. How much solar installed capacity would you need to produce that average power =      685 / 15% CF = 4,567 W, or 4.567 kW.  Let's round it off to 5 kW. That's it! Easy! Sure, during April you'll probably produce MORE energy than you need and the excess would be dumped into the grid, then in December you'll probably produce much LESS energy than you need and the grid will supply the difference.  Let's say in April you produce 150% of your needs and during December only 20% of your needs. But the fact is you don't have to worry at all if the days are cloudy or short or long or if t...