Climate in the 21st Century

cannabineer said:

PV = nRT

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PV=$ now, I'm a great believer in the power of greed to cause rapid change, capitalism is good for somethings. Like I said, if we use urban rooftops and lots of cheap batteries, I figure we will need less grid scale solar farms. We are only at the beginning of seriously addressing climate change caused by technology, with technology.

The price drop in solar has upset a lot of models and it is likely to drop a lot more in the near future while increasing efficiency and flexibility. The batteries are coming, and the factories are going up, though not without controversy and issues. A drop in storage costs will make solar even more feasible for more people and utilities. We are exceeding expectations in some areas, so much so it is upsetting conventional energy economics and a lot of models and projections.

DIY-HP-LED said:

PV=$ now, I'm a great believer in the power of greed to cause rapid change, capitalism is good for somethings. Like I said, if we use urban rooftops and lots of cheap batteries, I figure we will need less grid scale solar farms. We are only at the beginning of seriously addressing climate change caused by technology, with technology.

The price drop in solar has upset a lot of models and it is likely to drop a lot more in the near future while increasing efficiency and flexibility. The batteries are coming, and the factories are going up, though not without controversy and issues. A drop in storage costs will make solar even more feasible for more people and utilities. We are exceeding expectations in some areas, so much so it is upsetting conventional energy economics and a lot of models and projections.

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asking from ignorance: most every solar setup needs an inverter. Are inverters getting cheap also? Same question for controllers. Panels are nice, but iirc a significant part of a solar facility is the controller* and inverter.

*especially one that can charge vehicle batteries and use the vehicle as backup storage.

cannabineer said:

asking from ignorance: most every solar setup needs an inverter. Are inverters getting cheap also? Same question for controllers. Panels are nice, but iirc a significant part of a solar facility is the controller* and inverter.

*especially one that can charge vehicle batteries and use the vehicle as backup storage.

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I would expect parallel growth in that branch of the electronics industry too and integration into a single power management system for homes along with open-source SW to control everything from the water heater to charging the EV. There are advances in that area too and mass production always makes stuff cheaper in the end, industrial standards help a lot. Grid scale stuff will have their own specialty suppliers as they do now, and I expect some industries to take advantage of the cheap power to smelt aluminum more in the tropics and power catalytic hydrogen electrolysers of steadily increasing efficiency. No inverters are required for many industrial processes that use DC like hydrogen production or arc furnaces.

DIY-HP-LED said:

I would expect parallel growth in that branch of the electronics industry too and integration into a single power management system for homes along with open-source SW to control everything from the water heater to charging the EV. There are advances in that area too and mass production always makes stuff cheaper in the end, industrial standards help a lot. Grid scale stuff will have their own specialty suppliers as they do now, and I expect some industries to take advantage of the cheap power to smelt aluminum more in the tropics and power catalytic hydrogen electrolysers of steadily increasing efficiency. No inverters are required for many industrial processes that use DC like hydrogen production or arc furnaces.

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Does that mean “not at this time”?

cannabineer said:

Does that mean “not at this time”?

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In this business, they need to look ahead a few years, but so much is happening in R&D, much of it proprietary, that nobody can get a grip on it all. It was kind of the point about all those projections missing the mark on things like solar and perhaps batteries too, many assume a technological steady state. Technology creates new opportunities for greedy people, and they make change happen by disrupting existing technologies. Capitalism is also a grass roots thing that goes right down to the consumer who is looking to save money.

The coincidence of greed, capitalism and climate change gives me the most hope. You get rid of fossil fuels by putting them out of business and to do that you have to undercut them on price and replace their functions. Altruism is great, but greed is faster if you want fast change.

DIY-HP-LED said:

In this business, they need to look ahead a few years, but so much is happening in R&D, much of it proprietary, that nobody can get a grip on it all. It was kind of the point about all those projections missing the mark on things like solar and perhaps batteries too, many assume a technological steady state. Technology creates new opportunities for greedy people, and they make change happen by disrupting existing technologies. Capitalism is also a grass roots thing that goes right down to the consumer who is looking to save money.

The coincidence of greed, capitalism and climate change gives me the most hope. You get rid of fossil fuels by putting them out of business and to do that you have to undercut them on price and replace their functions. Altruism is great, but greed is faster if you want fast change.

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You know me; I’m not much of a looker-ahead. Catalog numbers and warranty terms give me great comfort.

cannabineer said:

You know me; I’m not much of a looker-ahead. Catalog numbers and warranty terms give me great comfort.

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Some of the things with catalog numbers are getting implemented very quickly in things like perovskites and batteries these days. Just as the birth of the mail systems a couple of centuries ago lead to a great advancement in science, the internet is doing the same to the massive global research communities in all fields. Retired scientists have to write summaries of all the journal articles so people can keep up in even narrow fields. When stuff goes from the lab to private companies much is proprietary. The pace of events is quickening, and prospective profit is the whip driving much of it ahead and into use.

A corrupt government and a corrupt industry, republicans can't govern and do the basics, what will it be, culture wars or freezing in the fucking dark? How many are gonna get hit with utility bills in the thousands and have their power cut off too, like the last time. Texas is a good place for individual solar and energy independence, more so if they keep this shit up, paradoxically Texas has deployed the most grid scale solar so far. In Maine they had a failed vote to turn their private utility into a co-op. There will be future referendums, but next time there will be a lot more prosumers, or those who supplement their grid power with renewables and increasingly with batteries and plugged in EVs.

It could be useful in transitioning to hydrogen for industrial and transport use in things like ships and even trains, it could be part of the mix. It could also start things off while better PV electrolyzers are developed. It is my belief that hydrogen should be produced close to where it is used for industrial purposes like steel making. They built steel mills close to the coal supply since it took a lot more coal than iron ore to produce steel and could transport ore much further than coal economically. Perhaps there will be enough of this geological hydrogen for our needs, and it will stifle things like electrolyzers, but I wouldn't count on it with dropping PV costs and developments in solar powered electrolyzers.

Using a high energy fuel that produces only water vapor is attractive though and a fuel cell turns it into electricity most efficiently. Using it in steel production produces water vapor and iron sponge, not CO2 like with conventional steel making.

Here is what dropping solar prices and capitalism can do, add in batteries to store the energy and you've got something sustainable. If it cost 5 cents or less to generate a watt of PV power in 5 years, it will have a big impact on grid scale utility deployment, just the cheap batteries are missing from the equation and a side effect of the EV revolution should be cheap batteries for home and grid storage. It is so disruptive a technology that many consumers will be able to make and store their own, if grid prices are high and at least supplement their grid usage to cut their power costs. You will probably save the most money by merely supplementing your grid power for most of the year with a cheap all in one system that generates a few thousand watts. One that can be expanded with a battery bank to store some power, however a plugged in EV could serve the same function.

expect more like this as the ice shelves unstitch.

Who knows where lithium prices will be in 2025 or 2030, it may get so cheap that sodium batteries never develop, or they could find a home in your home as energy storage, or on the grid, maybe even in EVs. There are a lot of promising electro chemistries in the battery world these days and the amount of R&D is massive, so are the stakes. I would look for game changers in batteries and solar too, both are volatile markets ripe for technological disruption.

When it comes to climate Greet reminds me of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke holding back the torrent. His real support comes from bigots and those opposed to immigration and multicultural societies. It's never really policy with these guys, except limiting immigration, but they are stuck in the EU, but the EU is changing too to reflect the new attitude, many in Europe feel overwhelmed. Europe has many small cultures and groups of language speakers, and they feel more threatened by globalization and particularly by immigration than in our global Anglo culture. What choice do they have in the end? Their birth rate is as low as ours and we need immigrants in Canada, but our country of immigrants is better equipped to handle them and still we and the Americans have the same issues.

They are all pissing against the wind and with each passing year that wind will grow stronger, meet Canada's version of Holland's Greet. Climate change politics is here to stay, and they are on the wrong side of history. Notice that transnationally, the issues are all lumped together the same way, by basically the same kinds of people? Climate denial, conservativism, religion, bigotry and xenophobia all seem to lump together on the right. Their leaders have similar characteristics too...

I'd deal with her by transferring all federal fossil fuel subsidies to renewables immediately with an act of parliament if required... With that kind of cash, we would be greener than the jolly green giant in no time!

Maybe not so slow from the lab to the fab for this one, it solves important problems and can be scaled.

How can we stop burning fossil fuels if we still need everything else they make?

Petroleum-based products like pharmaceuticals, electronics, fertilizers, plastics and a host of other crucial modern world commodities are all impossible to make without first producing hundreds of millions of tonnes of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel. It's just the way the process works. At least that's what the fossil fuel industry would like you to believe. Except, that is NOT TRUE. An independent petroleum industry consultant explains how it REALLY works.

Constantly changing and improving technology meets capitalism and global markets.

ERCOT you asshats, you were supposed to fix this....course like always you tell one thing and you do another......200 deaths in 21, was actually alot more higher....add another 0 to that.....

The cost to store a kilowatt of energy is important and the lower it gets the more people find a use for it. What will it be in a decade? Will it be $20/kWh? Or will it be like solar, computers and the internet and exceed expectations and be even lower? These things and sodium appear to be in competition for the home and grid renewables storage market, for now.