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Originally Posted by LeAnn
The gas prices are terrible. Especially since I had to 1. Gas up my car then drop it off at the dealership, 2. get a rental which had only 1/4 of a tank, so I had to gas it up, then 3. return in the next day and take a loaner from the dealership which had 1/8 tank so I had to fuel it up before I could even go home.  |
I am paying up to around $3.10 for regular now. Perhaps it will be $3.50 by summer. Got to wonder what the high fuel prices will do to the economy.
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As of 11 December 08, I'm paying $1.77 a gallon.
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This is what I wrote when I started the
Peak Oil post. How things have changed since then.
Alternative Energy
"I want to believe in innovation and its possibilities, but I am more thoroughly convinced of entropy. Most of what we do merely creates local upticks in organization in an overall downward sloping curve. In that regard, technology is a bag of tricks that allows us to slow and even reverse the trend, sometimes globally, sometimes only locally, but always only temporarily and at increasing aggregate energy cost." (Heinberg & Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed)
“My own efforts have focused on the science of alternative energy. The deeper you go into this area, the less sanguine you become that there is any effective mitigation possible… The bottom line is that there is no thermodynamic match for petroleum.” -
(TOD).
"What's needed is a true accounting of energy costs before we can even start down the right path. How much does Middle Eastern oil cost when millitary protection is factored in? What do ethanol subsidies really cost? Can solar power (or cellulosic ethanol) follow a Moore's Law cost-improvement curve or is that a fantasy" (Rich Karlgaard, Forbes, 8 February 2010)
To get renewables to contribute more then limit of 20% under the old electrical system, we are going to have to construct a smart grid the can deal with the intermittent power of wind and solar. Currently renewables produce 0.5 terawatt, far short of the 15 terawatts the world now consumes.
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[Contibutions] For wind + solar (pv) + geothermal that has been 2007/2008:
- 0.97 exajoule in 2007
- 1.2 exajoule in 2008
- 1.51 exajoule in 2009
- 1.87 exajoule in 2010
Rembrandt, TOD, 16 February 2012
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The Power Grid
News
The Electron in Motion.
Solar
Solar cells convert photons of light that are at the right wave-length directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect which is when electrically charged particles are released from a material when it absorbs electromagnetic radiation. Solar got its start in 1953 at ATA&T Bell Labs in New Jersy using selenium with a conversion efficiency of 0.05%. A year later 1954, silicon increased that to a useful 6% and found its first use providing power for orbiting satellites and spacecraft. Today the share for crystalline silicone is 85%. This is made up of atoms having 14 protons and 14 electrons. There is space for 4 more in the high energy outer shell, so every atom is attached to 4 other atoms sharing electons with eachother to form a crystal lattice. A single wafer of silicon is doped very carefully with impurties to create the p and n-type sides and the p-n junction. This is diffrent from the way a DVD is made where two discreet physical layers are bonded together. The N-type contains 5 electron phosphorus with having one extra electron, and the p-type contains 3 electron boron having one fewer electron that create holes. Neather have an electric charge.
Photons from the sun striking the N-side knock off electrons that are picked up by the conduction grid on the surface to be passed through an electrical circuit. If there is a load in the circuit, useful work is done. When an N-type electron fills a P-type hole, a negative charge is created on the P-side and a positive charge forms on the N-side. The electrons return to the N-type of the cell, and the process begins anew. A solar cell is like a diode, letting current flow in only one direction from the P-side back to the N-side.
As of 2009 most production solar have conversion efficiencies of about 15%, 15 electrons for every 100 photons. Efficencies of up to 40% have been achieved in the laboratory. If you are going to get solar, CK the independent efficiency rating and not 'nameplate output'. Also, inverters can be expectd to last only about 10 -15 years. The burning question is can solar cells be manufactured with no carbon inputs, that is, on electricity alone? Regardless, the sun's energy that reaches earth is impressive: About 1.353 kW/m2. (it actually varies about 6% a year. 1.308 kW/m2 to 1.398 kW/m2 because of the changing changing earth-sun distance). Power density also varies with the 11-year cycle of sunspots. Total power reaching the ground is 101,000 terawatts.
Power from the sun
Wind
It powered sailing ships and was used in Europe 900 years ago to grind grain. It came to rural America in the 1860s to pump water. By 1890, there were 100+ manufacturers with sales over 8,000,000. It went into deline with the 1937 Rural Electrification program. Most were out of business by the 1950s. Wind power made a comeback in the 70s after the duel oil shocks only to have interest ebb again as fuel became plentiful. In the 90s, oil prices were on the rise, interest picked up and continues to this day.
Wind is free but harvesting it's power is not and is currently a more expensive alternative to coal and oil, and the economy does not run on electricity alone. Nerverthless, it is the fastest and lowest cost source of renewable electricity. The turbines are impressive with blades from 27 to 45 meters and can produce up to 5 megawatts of electricity - each, at least during opmimal wind conditions. There is 20 terawatts that can be put to use out of a theoretical 190.
Global Winde Energy Capacity: 1981 - 10 Megawatts, 2009 - 121.6 gigawatts. That capacity is expected to reach 400 gigawatts by 2014, 1,000 gigawatts by 2020.
Could we build a wind farm and have only the power generated by the turbines provied all that is needed to produce other wind farms...Wind is variable and can not be counted upond to be producing energy 24/7... Compensating for the uncertainty of supply will require a huge amount of over-engineering. 25GW of wind power, it reckons, would be worth only abount 5GW of fossil-fired generation" (The Economist, Aug 8, p50). "Name-plate capacity is not actual generation. Wind turbines are only 25% efficent or lower" (ntrnews)
Wind energy is more variable than electricity produced by fossil fuels and by nuclear energy (Gail, TOD)
"Because of its relatively low “capacity value” (a result of usually not blowing very regularly during peak load hours), wind largely competes as a “fuel saver” resource, and can generally be compared against the fuel cost of what ever mix of fuel it is displacing (whether from existing capacity or from alternative investments in future capacity). In the U.S., this is typically some mix of relatively inexpensive coal and somewhat expensive natural gas, depending on the location of the wind plant, and the resulting seasonal/daily wind and load profiles . . ." (Namoviz, EIA)
Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills (TOD)
Wind Power (Wiki)
Wind's wild side
Hydrogen
Water former, Lavoisier and Henry Cavandish, 1766. Hydeogen is not an energy source, but an energy carrier. The lightest atom must come from a feedstock material. 96% comes from
hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas because it is the cheapest way of getting it. Using methane and steam: CH4 (g) + H2O + e > 3H2(g) + CO(g). The other 4% is from water feedstock via electrolysis, the breaking of H2O into it's hydrogen and oxygen atoms - a process that is still fossil based because that is where the world gets 78% of its energy from. These methods deliver less energy then is put into the system; having an EROI that less then 1.1 which is also called an energy sink. Another problem is storing, as it evaporates form a sealed containner at a rate 1.7% per day because of the smallness of
The Hydrogen atom. As a gas, it has a volume of 238,000 litres to 20 gallons of gasoline. As a liquid, it requires four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Also is the expense of transportation and delivery. The entire system is estimated to be about 30 - 40x over the cost of producing and delivering gasoline. Dismal numbers where some caculate mass starvation in some poor countries when gas climbs over US $10 a gallon. See
The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy. On the other hand, it could be a great way to store energy that would otherwise be lost when using veriable sources such as wind and solar.
The Lightest Element
Quote:
Let's explore a typical calculation of the EROI of the hydrogen fuel cycle for cars:
■Suppose we generate the hydrogen by the electrolysis of water. First we must "rectify" the grid's AC electricity into DC, at a cost of about 2% to 3% of the energy contained in the hydrogen.
■Now we can electrolyze the water, but that process is only about 70% efficient, so we lose another 30% there.
■Now we have hydrogen gas, but it takes up a lot of space. We could compress it to around 10,000 psi to make it fit in reasonably sized tank, which costs another 15%. But even then, it would only have about one-fifth of the energy density of gasoline, and the pressurized tank needed to store it is very heavy, large and expensive. So if we wanted to use it in a vehicle, we would have to liquefy the hydrogen by cooling it down to about -253°C and keep it in a pressurized, insulated container instead. This process would cost another 30% to 40% of the energy in the hydrogen.
■We lose some more during storage because hydrogen boils off above -253°C, so it's very difficult to keep it from escaping its container. In vehicles, about 3% to 4% of the hydrogen boils off every day. And at least 10% of the hydrogen will boil off during delivery and storage.
■Then we burn the hydrogen in a vehicle's fuel cell at an efficiency of about 50% (for a proton membrane fuel cell stack).
■And finally, we lose another 10% of the energy that makes it to the electric motors driving the wheels, because they are only about 90% efficient.
In the end, about 80% of the original energy generated in order to produce the hydrogen is lost, for an EROI of 0.25. Since it doesn't pay to have an energy regime with an EROI of less than one, hydrogen cars seems a permanent improbability. (Chris Nelder,Energy & Capital, 27 July 2007)
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Ethanol.
"Producing first generation ethanol from corn is a mistake... It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol. One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." (Gore)
"The amount of energy required to grow the crop, harvest and collect it, and distill it into nearly pure alcohol was perilously close to the amount of energy that the fuel itself would yield when burned in an engine. This meant that ethanol wasn’t really much of an energy source at all; making it was just a way of taking existing fuels (petroleum and natural gas) and using them (in the forms of tractor fuel, fertilizer, and fuel for distillation plants) to produce a different fuel that could be used for the same purposes as gasoline...a USDA study claimed a positive energy balance of 1.34:1" (Heinberg, Peak Oil)
"Biofuels are estimated by the IMF to have been responsible for 20-30% of the global food price spike in 2008" (Guardian.co.uk, 15 February 2010).
"Our initial venture into this area was the ethanol fiasco which, predictably, took more energy to make than it produced, and had disastrous effects (still does) on corn commodity prices - in effect stealing from the food supply in order to drive to the Wal Mart" (JHK, 4 April 2011)
Argriculture uses 70% of the worlds available freshwater on a land area about the size of South America. Continued deforestation for more farmland will fan global warming. Add to this a projected population of 9.5 billion by 2050, and an additional land area the size of Brazil to go under cultivation; feeding our cars by corn based ethanol looks like a trip down the wrong road. (Scientific American, November 2009)
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We are producing substitute biofuels, but 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop provides just 7 percent of our gasoline demand. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of personal cars and trucks are now at the food table, with part of their diet biofuels made from the fruit of the plant. We can attempt to make cellulose biofuels from non-food biomass like grasses and corn stover, the residue stalks and leaves left after the harvest. But nature’s law requires some residue to stay on the land, protecting the soil from erosion by wind and water. And every ton of decaying corn stover offers ten pounds of nitrogen, two pounds of phosphorous, and forty five pounds of potassium to the soil.
Rolf Westgard, Brained Dispatch, 11 March 2012
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Some questions regarding Ethanol:
1 - Are we depleting fossil aquifers as a result of the expansion of corn in areas requiring irrigation?
2 - Are we contaminating water supplies with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer run-off?
3 - What has been the impact on our oil imports?
4 - What is the effect on soil as a result of erosion and pesticide usage?
5 - What is the risk of weather impacting the corn crop?
6 - What are the risks of linking together food supplies with fuel supplies?
Rabert Rapier, TOD, 7 December 2009
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Production
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Delusional Mandates
In the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act that we would use 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2010, 250 million gallons in 2011, and then rapidly expand to 16 billion gallons per year by 2022...[Now in 2010] the EIA projects that 2011 cellulosic ethanol production will be 3.94 million gallons, less than 2% of the originally mandated amount. They suggest that the EPA, having cut the 2011 estimate from 250 million to the range of 5 to 17.1 million gallons, is still much too optimistic, and that half of the facilities that the EPA expects to produce cellulosic fuel will not. Following the EIA story, the EPA has come back and revised their 2011 numbers down to 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol.
Robert Rapier, TOD, 7 December 2010
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In the end, it is about the 'Net Energy Factor' - the requirement that energy systems 'yield more energy then is invested in their construction and operation'. It is said corn ethanol has an ERoEI of 1.3, so 20 barrels would only be equivalent to only one barrel of oil.
EROWI - Energy Return of Water Invested. Litters per Megawatt hour:
Extraction of Petroleum: 10 - 40
Oil Refining: 80 - 150
Enhanced Oil Recovery: ~7600
Corn Ethanol Irrigation: 2,270,00 - 8,670,00
Thorium Reactors
A tone of thorium fuels equals about 200 tones of uranium or 5,500,tons of coal. However, "Natural thorium contains no fissile isotopes; fissile material, generally 233U, 235U, or plutonium, must be supplemented to achieve criticality. This, along with the high sintering temperature necessary to make thorium-dioxide fuel, complicates the fuel fabrication process." -
Wiki.
The God of Thunder
Nuclear Fusion
If light nuclei are forced together, they will fuse with a yield of energy because the mass of the combination will be less than the sum of the masses of the individual nuclei. E=mc^2 (mass–energy equivalence, 1905) explaines how a small amount of mass could be transformed into energy, lots of energy, and has been the carrot we have run after despite cost and complexity. Fusion is the process by which multiple atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus. It powers the stars (Hans Bethe, 1939), and multiples exceedingly the energy a thermonuclear bomb would have over a fission only bomb. The Atomic Bomb (Hiroshima) yielded 10^14 J, the E = mc^2 of 1 gram, while a 100-megaton H-bomb, 10^17 J is the E = mc^2 of 1 kg. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, making it the holy grail in energy science - liberating us forever from the worries of powering up modern civilization with few toxic side effects. For us here on earth, the ideal situation is to use the raw material Deuterium and Tritium in a D-T-Reaction that produces Helium and a Neutron.
Tritium Breeding
Little tritium occurs in nature since it has a 10-12 year half-life. Only about 2.5 - 3kg exists worldwide, so it must be bread by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons from the D-T-Reaction.
"As of July 2010[update], the largest experiment was the Joint European Torus (JET). In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1 megawatts (21,600 hp) of fusion power (65% of input power), with fusion power of over 10 MW (13,000 hp) sustained for over 0.5 sec." (Wiki)
It has not been scaled up to industrial levels. It also uses helium coolants that are products of nonrenewable natural gas. Latest estimate say it will not be commercially viable untill 2050. Since the 1950's, it has remained a promise that was always 20 to 30 years into the future.
The Power of the Sun
Zero-point Energy
"Zero point energy is a minimum energy below which a thermodynamic system can never go, thus none of this energy can be withdrawn without altering the system to a different form in which the system has a lower zero point energy." (Wiki)
Free Energy?
Glossery
AC - Alternating current, cycles back and forth 60 times per second (60Hz US).
DC - Direct current, electrons that flow in one direction.
Grid-Connected Systems - connected directly to the grid.
Net Metering - two meters: one tracks consumption, the contributions to grid.
Off-Grid, Stand-Alone system.
ROI - Return on Investment.
Energy density
Feedstock
The raw material that is required for some industrial process. In the case of hydrogen, it's Water (H20), natural gas (CH4), biomass (cellulose), and fossil fuel hydro carbons.
Wind Power and Home Systems
Air in horizontal motion across the Earth's surface - a product of sunlight or solar energy. Produced by fifferences in air pressure between two regions.
Types of Wind/Breezes
- Onshore/Offshore
- Mountain-Valley
- Large-Scale Wind Currents
- Coriolis Effect
- Storms
Wind Turbines
- Rotor Blade - Fibergalss, Polypropylene. Three bladed most common.
- Generator - produces wild three-phase AC. Rectified to DC in turbine or controller.
- Swept Area - The bigger the area, the more wind energy you can capture.
- AEO - annual energy output.
- Tower Top Weight - the greater the weight, the better the build quality - durability.
- Governing Systems - overspeed controle.
- Furling: Horizontal or Vertical.
- Blade Pitch, overspeed control.
- Cut-in Speed, most are with winds at 10mph.
- Rated Power. Output in watts at rated wind speed.
Tower Types
- Freestanding: Lattice or Monopole.
- Fixed Guyed: Lattice or Tubular.
- Tilt-up: Guyed tubular or Guyed lattice. (or how to give your turbine a black eye)
Grid-Connected Wind System W/Battery Backup
- Wind turbine & Tower, produces wild AC.
- Controller, converts wild AC to DC.
- Battery bank, Gets DC power from controller.
- Transfer switch, safety disconnect.
- Inverter. Converts DC from Controller and/or Battery bank.
- Subpanel, for critical loads.
- Main breaker box, all houseload loads
- Service line.
Battery Backup Options: Deep-cycle, no car batteries.
- Deep-cycle flooded lead-acid (Trojan, Rolls, Deka).
- forklift.
- golf cart.
Quote:
Steps to Implement a Small Wind Energy Project.- Measure your electrical consumption.
- Assess your wind resource, select a turbine and tower.
- Check zoning regulations, homeowner association regulations, building permit, zoning requirements and covenants.
- Contact local utility and sign utility interconnection agreement (for grid-connected systems).
- Obtain building and electrical permits.
- Order turbine, tower and balance of system. Install system.
- Commission - require installer to verify performance of system.
- Inspect and maintain system on an annual basis.
Credit: Jim Green, Robert Preus and Dan Chiras, Wind Power Bascs, p156
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Wind Power Equation: P = 1/2d x A x V^3.
Kinetic Energy (K) = 1/2mv² where m is kg, v is m/s, and K is J.
P = Power available in the wind.
d = density of the air. A decrease of 3% per 1,000 feet(300 meters).
A = Swept area. The area of the circle(Πr²) described by the blades.
V = Wind Speed.
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:...Don't you love it? You finally get your car paid off and now it's time for a new one haha. Not really but ya. You did the timing belt so you're good there. That's the main thing to worry about getting done. Everything else should be basic maintenance. Struts, tires, clutch, exhaust etc. You may need need a new radiator in the near future. 
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