Renewables are great - for powering fantasies

The Dallas Morning News ^ | 3-24-02 | James Glassman

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The US Senate continues debate on an Energy bill this week. There will surely be much talk about spending billions on renewables.

[backhoe]

Bttt^

I wish I had saved a link to article here a few months ago where some wind power proponents were argueing that new advances in wind turbines had finally made wind power turn the corner and become competitive with conventional power plants. Guess that was more vaporware....

[HHFi]

I always say that if you could just allocate enough land to erect at least 1,000 wind turbines, you might be able to generate enough power to run a wind farm.

Personally, I think the only serious power that ever got generated from wind is political power.

[FreedomPoster]

Idiots who write copy for newspapers, think their journalism degrees qualify them to write on topics requiring a strong technical and business background for anything close to a decent understanding. They are sadly mistaken, and mislead John Q. Public.

[Rubber Ducky]

I notice the article completely left out nuclear which, while not renewable, is far more efficient than fossil fuels. Then there is fuel cell technology. It is already powering experimental cars in Japan and the cost, once it becomes economically viable, will make fossil fuels obsolete.

The Saudis know this and are pumping oil like mad. We delude ourselves into thinking their oil pumping is a favor from an ally-- it is not. It is a means to extract as much cash as possible from a technology soon to be made obsolete by fuel cell technology. Oil has, at most, two more decades to be king. Were the U.S., Japan and the E.C. to fund fuel cell technology with a Manhattan Project-like priority, that time could be cut into 10 years or less.

We've all heard the saying that the next Middle Eastern war will be over water, not oil. It is probably true.

[Tuor]

That was the gist of a series of passionate editorials in The Dallas Morning News during the past several weeks. Read them, and you might wonder what is wrong with those blockhead politicians and energy executives.

One of the reasons no strong alternative to the current power generation/allocation system is that the Powers That Be have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Big Money is invested in the current setup, not to mention the lobbying that they fund. No one wants to be the odd man out after a shake-up caused by some alternative energy source made viable.

Tuor

[arthurus]

The Saudis know this and are pumping oil like mad

They are so worried about it that they recently cut production, along with the rest of OPEC, and gas prices jumped up again. Perhaps you don't drive and have not noticed?

[snopercod]

Finally, someone tells the truth about all these feel-good fantasies.

Being an engineer who passed through my "Mother Earth News" days in the 70's, I have tried much of this stuff on a small scale. The only one of these schemes that actually has some benefit is solar hot water, and then only in the right climate.

This latest "hydrogen economy" is probably the biggest hoax yet. Until three years ago, I was involved in filling the space shuttle external tank with a few million gallons of liquid hydrogen, so I have some knowledge in that area, too.

I can only begin to list all the safety hazards of dealing with LH2.

• It must be stored at -423 degrees in order to keep it liquid (That takes energy, whether your "hydrogen-powered-vehicle" is running or not.)
• And where do you vent off the hydrogen gas, into your garage? Hydrogen becomes explosive at a 4% concentration in air. At KSC, we had flare stacks where the gaseous hydrogen was burned off. I guess you could tow one of those on a trailer behind your "green" car.
• It also burns with an invisible flame - you can walk right into a raging hydrogen fire and not even see it. That's why technicians used to carry brooms in front of them when they had to walk into the hydrogen farm area at the Cape. That's why the space shuttle has little pieces of butcher paper glued on the orbiter-ET disconnect - if they catch fire, the folks in the firing room know they have a hydrogen fire.
• Hydrogen expands 600 times when it changes from a liquid to a gas. A small leak can cause big problems.
• You must use cryogenic transfer lines and dewars to move the LH2 around. These are very expensive, vacuum jacked lines and tanks which must be serviced on a routine basis to keep the vacuum down or you will soon experience that 600-times-expansion in a very explosive way.

I can't wait to see the first auto accident involving a "clean-burning" hydrogen-powered vehicle. It will make those car bombs in Israel look like childs toys. Then the feds will mandate that all drivers wear flame-retardent coveralls, leather gloves, and non-sparking footwear, I'd guess.

[Tripleplay]

The US Senate continues debate on an Energy bill this week. There will surely be much talk about spending billions on renewables.

Typical government solution........throw money at it.......make speeches pandering to emotions.........But never determine the facts and debate the options rationally

[Wonder Warthog]

"The problem with wind and solar power is that they cannot meet power requirements on demand. Even if they produced power cheaper than fossil fuel plants electric power would cost more because, in addition to the solar and wind plants necessary to produce maximum peak load you would STILL have to have fossil fuel plants in sufficient quantity to provide power ON DEMAND for those times when solar and wind are not generating."

Which is exactly why the "hydrogen economy" is an important feature of the total energy package--STORAGE and transmission of energy with hydrogen solves your "demand" problem. "Load-balancing" then becomes an inherent part of the transmission system. It also is more efficient for transmission over long distances, and works for nuclear as well (no more need for load-balancing gas turbines--just design the nuke plant with a larger capacity factor).

[FreedomPoster]

Then there is fuel cell technology. It is already powering experimental cars in Japan and the cost, once it becomes economically viable, will make fossil fuels obsolete.

And just what, exactly, is powering the fuel cell? Fuel cells do require "fuel".

[arielb]

but nuclear is even worse than fossil fuels. It's evil! EVIL!

[FreedomPoster]

Suggest you closely read Mr. cod's post #9 above. Do you have knowledge or experience with which to convince the skeptical that your statements are anything more than a pipe dream? Most of these alternate energy sources belong in that category.

[Stirner]

As I understand how fuel cells operate, they require fuel. That is, they require organic chemicals that can undergo oxidation and release energy. It's true that fuel cells can process a wide variety of hydro-carbons, but the most convenient fuels to use will remain gas and liquid ones. The cheapest source of such fuels will remain extracted petroleum and gas for quite a while because biomass and coal gassification require more energy input per energy unit yielded than drilling does. Fuel cells are neat ways to burn fuel, but they do not lessen the demand for fuel.

[arthurus]

the Powers That Be have a vested interest

The Powers behind The Powers That Be, to wit- the bankers and venture capitalists, will put their money into renewables or into anything else the moment they figure out that they can make more profit with the new thing than with the old thing. It's like that Super Carburetor, that TPTB have Kept Hidden. If there were such a thing the company that had access to it would make tremendous amounts of money, would own the market for cars, at least for a while. No group of Industrialists can successfully agree to sit on such an invention because that implies that it is not patented (or it would be public knowledge) and some nonmember of that cartel could learn about it and put the cartel out of business.

This world runs with a market driven economy; it is not a mercantile system with government enforced monopolies.

Learn some economics.

[Budge]

I don't remember the article you mentioned, Backhoe, but I'll wager it was filled with "could, might, possibly, and if."

[DugwayDuke]

The one thing this fellow fails to mention is that the hardcore environmentalists who propose these renewables do not believe we can provide all our current energy from these sources. These environmentalists believe that we should be able to live only on the energy provided from renewables. IOW, if we can only provide half our current energy from renewables then we should live on that half alone.

[Arkie2]

Actually I've read that one of the major problems for wind and solar is storage. The battery technology isn't available to allow the wind and solar power generated to be stored efficiently for later use. They've also spent large sums in this area with no clear results yet.

[Charliehorse]

How do we create the hydrogen? Hydrogen does not exist in a pure form in nature. Therefore it must be separated from other elements such as oxygen and carbon. One can produce hydrogen from water by using electricity. Where does the electricity come from? You use more energy than you proguce in this process. Not a solution is it.

Fuel cells require hydrogen which can be either in the form of pure hydrogen or "reformers" can be attached to separate hydrogen from carbon. The carbon and hydrogen combinations that are feasible to use in the reformer are natural gas and crude oil derivatives such as gasoline.

The fuel cell is more efficient than the the internal combustion engine The coming widespread use of the hybrid power source in automobiles (such as Toyoto's Prius which now gets more than 50 miles per gallon in town and on the open road) is more efficient than fuel cells and will be cheaper. Therefore, I don't see widespread use of fuel cells in automobiles.

New turbines are very efficient. Modern power plant design uses steam turbines to produce electricity. The leftover heat is recovered and used to generate by thermal turbines in two stages. The resultant efficiency qppraches 80% Therefore, I don't see fuel cells breaking into that market. Neat technology but no viable application except as power in isolated places or as backup benerators.