energy sources

[damian]

Paul:

Funny the conversation has come full circle for now.

The planet has enough food, what we have is a distribution problem. We throw away tonnes of it every year. Having said that your greater point is entirely valid.

The second half of your first paragraph is exactly what my origional post was about. If you can supply the energy to facilitate higher living standards then population growth tends to decline and you avoid a food crisis. Either way you get a problem to solve.

I cannot agree more on your seocnd paragraph. In the US a couple of years ago, supposedly a wealthy developed country, when ethanol production stepped up suddenly it drove massive and immediate increases in basic and processed foods, so much so that poorer people were suffering signifigant hardship buying food. If it happens there that badly and that quickly imagine if it were a worldwide problem.

Bob:

Well, I can give a list if you really want it.

Nope, already done that thread several times. Ain't drunk the coolade and not about to. I'll say it again and leave it at that. I don't accept the premise and I don't accept tipping a cost into energy production without a solid scientific reason. I don't care what politicians say and do and I don't care about overcredentialed scientists posturing. The only thing that will sway me is a solid scientific argument complete with data. Transparent and robust. Love to see it, love to be shown I'm wrong. Ain't seen it yet.

If I get time I'll run some numbers on cooling by circulating water through radiators. It won't be dramatic but it might be worthwhile.

[Bushmiller]

The planet has enough food, what we have is a distribution problem. We throw away tonnes of it every year. Having said that your greater point is entirely valid.

Damian

Agreed.

Try getting those who have too much to give to those who have way too little! Even when the food is not of a nature to go off, there is very little interest.

Regards
Paul

[damian]

Unfortunately there is a cost associated with moving it. Not just cartage. It doesn't seem to get much publicity but the cost of corruption and theft in those impoverished places is much higher than the cost of actually delivering aid. Usually the famines and such are brought on more by war than by drought. Natural disasters are much easier to deal with and the corruption is endemic.

At the risk of getting off topic I've always felt we would be doing those people a much greater favour by protecting them in their homelands than by relocating them to our or other western societies. Most genuine refugees would be happy to stay and work if they were safe. By bringing them here we make their lives hard in other ways. Unfortunately it's politicatlly incorrect to depose an african, arab or south american despot, and when the west does intervene it's usually more about money, religeon and power than altruistic intent.

[woodbe]

So you run your plastic tubes over the roof and into an underground concrete tank to store heat. Circulate the water through radiators in the house to warm the house in winter. No worries. How about in summer you circulate the water at night to cool it and run it through the radiators on hot days to COOL the house ? Anyone ? thoughts ?

Depends on where you live and your budget I think. If you have designed the building to cope with extremes of external air temps and radiant heat effectively, then you should need just a small energy input to tip the internal temperature to comfort - and yes, storing some externally heated/cooled water under the house would be one way of doing that. Your system sounds to me like a switchable thermal mass, I suspect a well designed passive solar home would achieve similar results for less expense.

Your point about insulation in Queenslanders is well made. It underlines the fact that this is not a cookie cutter problem we all face in keeping our homes comfortable, we need to take into account the regional and local climate, the house orientation and construction, and any thermal devices already in place such as shading and insulation etc. What works for one is no license to apply it to all.

woodbe.

[hughie]

Depends on where you live and your budget I think. If you have designed the building to cope with extremes of external air temps and radiant heat effectively, then you should need just a small energy input to tip the internal temperature to comfort - and yes, storing some externally heated/cooled water under the house would be one way of doing that. Your system sounds to me like a switchable thermal mass, I suspect a well designed passive solar home would achieve similar results for less expense.

something similar was done in the USA in the 60's. One wall of the house consisted of 44gal drums on thier side filled with water. The outer wall was all glass and the inner was brick.
The idea was that the sun warmed the drums in during the day and the heat was released via vents top and bottom of the inner wall into the house and I guess they reversed the process come summer by dropping a blind down the window etc.

[Bushmiller]

Hughie

The concept of an absorbent thermal wall, very similar to your 44gal drums, was developed by the French association of Michel and Trombe who were an architect and engineer, although it was not their original idea. You can follow up a little more on this link:

Trombe wall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The modified wall was always the idea that interested me as it is used for both heating and cooling. It uses a wall of glass with a dark thermal mass about 300mm behind it and probably 300mm thick too. The thermal wall has vents top and bottom and according to the season there is a sequence to opening them.

I believe it works very well. The problem is that your north facing wall is black. Many people would find this difficult both aesthetically and in practice. It is another difficult home to incorporate into the mindset of a typical brick veneer suburb, particularly if you ever want to stand achance of selling it.

I think perhaps one of the biggest barriers to coping with neccessary change in energy is convention. We are so locked into a stereotype pattern of living that we tend to dismiss many alternatives.

Regards
Paul

[artme]

Anyone watch Insight on SBS 1??

Good forum on eletricity generation, supply and costs.

A thumbnail summary is:

*Cost of electricity will rise for some years to come
*Cost of PV Panels is decreasing down to half what they were 2 years ago.
*Baseload still presents problems . What happens when the sun goes down and the wind doesn't blow?
*How do you store energy generated or collected hrough the day so it can be released at night.
* There are some innovative thinkers and entrepenuers out there.

I wonder if the carbon tax will eventually force electricity prices down/ As PV becomes more efficient and affordable how much less electicity will be provided by burning coal?
Less coal derived electricity should mean lower carbon emissions. How will that be factored into the cost equations?

[damian]

The problem is that people who can take up PV will buy it and probably save. People renting (the landlord does not pay the electricity bill) and those who barely manage week to week will miss out. Meawhile the coal power stations will buy their credits overseas for half what the Australian government expects to get for them, so there will be no money to fund the compensation nor the research projects they have promised.

Perhaps this is a dire scenerio, I'm known to be cynical, but as I say over and over - I am financially ok, they really can't hurt me, but I am loath to infict signifigant, likely and demonstrable economic hardship on others not well equiped to deal with it.

Socialist intent by conservative means perhaps

[woodbe]

The problem is that people who can take up PV will buy it and probably save. People renting (the landlord does not pay the electricity bill) and those who barely manage week to week will miss out.

Depends on your worldview.

There are plenty of people who could buy, but still choose to rent. There are advantages to renting that people who buy cannot access. Renters miss out on PV, sure, but they also miss out on paying the capital up front to install it. We know that even with feed in tariffs, payback is 5+ years (probably double that or perhaps never with no FIT) People who rent are not investing capital in the property, possibly they wouldn't be very interested in investing capital in PV either...

People who have insufficient income to make a rent/buy choice miss out, yes. They also feel the pain of cost increases that are coming down the line because of a lack of investment in energy infrastructure for many years now. We are locked into an expensive catch up mode that will see heavy increases regardless of the new tax. Hopefully, the government is as good as its word and will support them adequately. (probably won't happen but we can only hope)

woodbe

[citybook]

There is little doubt that energy prices will rise for years to come - the interesting question is what to do about it.

It has been true in the past that solar doesn't work at night - but now the pressure has come on to develop renewables, it is obvious that there is a huge resource in the air - carbon.

You can use solar to gather carbon from the air during the day and use it for fuel at night.

Sandia Labs is doing "Sunshine to Petrol" - Los Alamos Labs has "Green Freedom" to convert CO2 to fuel - the ELCAT (several European Universities) project is a catalytic process to convert CO2 to hydrocarbons - University of Nottinghan is converting CO2 into natural gas.

I have heard that UQ wants to build a Lackner tower to generate solar methane.

So carbon is the storage.

And of course the Solar Tres in Spain will run all night - base load - storage is molten salt..

So right now we do have technology to do solar base load.

Cheers,
Bob.

[artme]

Renters need not miss out. Wewere told when I brought up the subject of putting PV on a rental house that I would, as the owner get the initial cost outlay off sets but, naturally, the benefits for the use of the system would go to any tennant.

Seems to me that many of us- self included - have not been smart when it comes to installations and their cost. I will bet London to a brick that if a group of owners were to approch the various suppliers of PV they would do better than each acting individually. For owners of investment properties this would provide extra incentive to invest in PV.

[Bushmiller]

Anyone watch Insight on SBS 1??

Good forum on eletricity generation, supply and costs.

A thumbnail summary is:

*Cost of electricity will rise for some years to come
*Cost of PV Panels is decreasing down to half what they were 2 years ago.
*Baseload still presents problems . What happens when the sun goes down and the wind doesn't blow?
*How do you store energy generated or collected hrough the day so it can be released at night.
* There are some innovative thinkers and entrepenuers out there.

I wonder if the carbon tax will eventually force electricity prices down/ As PV becomes more efficient and affordable how much less electicity will be provided by burning coal?
Less coal derived electricity should mean lower carbon emissions. How will that be factored into the cost equations?

Artme

I am sceptical that prices will come down. If and when the carbon tax is in place the price of retail electricity will undoubtedly be higher then now, but the development of alternative power sources will gradually lead to a displacement of traditional fossil powered stations and the price will remain static instead of rising as would normally be the case.

Woodbe has already pointed to 24 hour generation by solar stations using saltbeds, although I don't know how economic it is at this early stage. Remember that the existing thermal stations will pick up night time generation for a long time to come so there is a long lead time to develop technology to overcome this problem.

The initial challenge is to get solar power up and running. Once there is serious momentum it will become the norm.

Just as an aside, back in about 2000 it was the accepted yardstick that the price per MW/hr for a new generator to enter the market was $35. Today, in Queensland, 11 years later, the average price is less than that. Nearly all the QLD generators forecast a loss for 2011 and that was before the imposte of the carbon tax, which will make the market even more grim.

Regards
Paul

[damian]

Depends on your worldview.
woodbe

Hm. I should restate my point.

Energy prices will rise anyway because of infrastructure underinvestment. IMO a seperate issue.

Energy prices will be pushed up more by carbon taxes etc. Whether the energy comes from taxed (and thus artificially expensive coal etc) or "renewables" which aren't used now because they are necessarily more expensive doesn't matter. If you penalise the cheapest option the cost rises. (This is a purely economic argument, I'm not interested in the enviromental aspect, we've already done that elsewhere).

Solar may or may not get cheaper and the payback time may or may not shorten. Either way there is an upfront cost and supposedly savings ongoing to recover that.

Scenerio 1: We continue as we have exploiting the cheapest options. People pay more for electricity.

Scenerio 2: We artificially inflate energy costs above the necessary increases and many of the least able to cope with energy price increases will not be able to access any potential savings solar might offer.

Yes people choose to rent, I wasn't intending to suggest all tennants are on the brink of financial collapse. I was trying to say that the financially vulnerable tend either to be renting or are barely making the mortgage and don't have the disposable income to fund the up front cost.

Hopefully that has made more sense than my previous effort.

Artme:

I will bet London to a brick that if a group of owners were to approch the various suppliers of PV they would do better than each acting individually. For owners of investment properties this would provide extra incentive to invest in PV.

Precisely this happened in queensland a few years back. A residents group got the price of bulk bought standard 1.5 kw systems down from about $3500 to $1500 as I recall. Shortly afterwards Bligher "announced" a similar state government scheme. They stuffed the admin, a few people got cheap systems then the whole shebang fell over. Meanwhile the resident organised scheme had sunk without trace.

Sometimes I want to find the queenslanders who voted labour and one by one smack them some sense. I am not suggesting the coalition are perfect, or even good, but it seems labour really manage to make a hash of everything they touch.

[woodbe]

Hm. I should restate my point.

Energy prices will rise anyway because of infrastructure underinvestment. IMO a seperate issue.

Energy prices will be pushed up more by carbon taxes etc. Whether the energy comes from taxed (and thus artificially expensive coal etc) or "renewables" which aren't used now because they are necessarily more expensive doesn't matter. If you penalise the cheapest option the cost rises. (This is a purely economic argument, I'm not interested in the enviromental aspect, we've already done that elsewhere).

Solar may or may not get cheaper and the payback time may or may not shorten. Either way there is an upfront cost and supposedly savings ongoing to recover that.

Scenerio 1: We continue as we have exploiting the cheapest options. People pay more for electricity.

Scenerio 2: We artificially inflate energy costs above the necessary increases and many of the least able to cope with energy price increases will not be able to access any potential savings solar might offer.

Yes people choose to rent, I wasn't intending to suggest all tennants are on the brink of financial collapse. I was trying to say that the financially vulnerable tend either to be renting or are barely making the mortgage and don't have the disposable income to fund the up front cost.

Hopefully that has made more sense than my previous effort.

Yes.

In Australia, there is much evidence that as a country and as individual citizens we generally tend to go for the smallest short term costs regardless of the benefits of paying a little more in the short term for a better long term result. Energy and Public Transport are cases in point. There are exceptions: Snowy Scheme, public buildings (esp. Federal Parliament)

We are convinced that alternative energy will not work. We know this because we cannot show resulting short term energy costs as cheap or cheaper than fossil fuels; therefore we discard it. So we never really try it. That's our lowest short term cost thinking in action. Regardless of the climate issue, we know there are finite resources and we know we have to do something about pollution and environment. We can choose to start early, or we can wait until we must do something. Wait = Pay through the nose to overseas entrepreneurs who got on board early.

Sometimes having 3-4 year terms for parliament is both a blessing and a curse. It's one of the reasons we have little or no genuine long term planning.

If we are going to plan an entire country's energy infrastructure around the ability of the most financially needy to pay for it, we are never going to make the necessary investments to get ahead of the game. It's that simple. If we don't make those investments, market forces will drive prices up anyway. We have a tax system and a welfare system capable of insulating the financially needy from these pressures.

We also have government incentives and handouts to the fossil fuel industry of over $10Bn per year. The fossil fuel industry seems to be doing just fine, maybe we could spend some of that to help the financially needy pay their power bills instead.

meh.

woodbe.

[Bushmiller]

We also have government incentives and handouts to the fossil fuel industry of over $10Bn per year. The fossil fuel industry seems to be doing just fine, maybe we could spend some of that to help the financially needy pay their power bills instead.

If that is true, I just canot understand the reason behind such a level of help.

Regards
Paul