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- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- The staggering cost of Net Zero in Britain
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
- Why did everyone stop talking about Population & Immigration?
- What would happen if trucks stopped running?
- How to survive a nuclear winter
Author Archives: energyskeptic
The potential role of concentrating solar power
Preface. The word “water” appears nowhere in this document, even though that’s a major limiting factor for CSP with thermal storage. Dry cooling is possible, but it lowers the EROI and raises the already way-too-high capital cost. An electric grid … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power, Renewable Integration
Tagged concentrated solar power, CSP, electric grid, thermal energy storage
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Vernon VG&E AB 2514 Energy storage report
STAFF REPORT: VERNON GAS & ELECTRIC DEPARTMENT September 2, 2014 [some of the 25-page report is shown below as I attempted to get up to speed on energy storage. Since California is the first state to mandate this, and … Continue reading
Posted in Battery - Utility Scale
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Stop wasting food
[Clearly at the point when food rationing begins due to limited amounts of transportation oil, not wasting food will be important, and composting can expected to be the main way of disposal since garbage trucks will run less frequently. Below … Continue reading
Expanding rail infrastructure to accommodate growth in agriculture and other sectors
Excerpts from 103 page: Keith, K. Jan 2013. Maintaining a track record of success. Expanding rail infrastructure to accommodate growth in agriculture and other sectors. TRC Consulting. [I’m working on a book about the distribution of food when declining oil … Continue reading
Posted in Railroads
Tagged agriculture, food, rail
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Reducing fuel consumption of medium & heavy-duty vehicles 2014 National Research Council
Look at the enormous waste of fuel when JIT supply chain trucks ramped up in the late 70s (page 63). Excerpts from the 117 page: NRC. 2014. Reducing the Fuel Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, … Continue reading
Posted in Efficiency
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Commercial scale cellulosic ethanol still not happening in 2016 – why?
Here’s Rapier’s latest column on cellulosic ethanol explaining why it still isn’t commercial yet, despite attempts since the 1900’s. He points out that we have been able to create cellulosic ethanol since 1900, but not economically. February 13, 2016. Cellulosic … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels
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Wind, solar, and storage impact on the California grid
California Energy commission. June 2010. Research evaluation of wind generation, solar generation, and storage impact on the California Grid. 131 pages. Excerpts: This report analyzes the effect of increasing renewable energy generation on California’s electricity system and assesses and quantifies … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Storage, Renewable Integration
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Sacramento SMUD AB 2514 Energy storage report
[The state of California has realized that it’s unlikely a larger or national transmission grid will be built to share and balance variable renewable power, and is going to Plan B, energy storage. The problem is, all of the utilities … Continue reading
Posted in Battery - Utility Scale
Tagged AB2514, SMUD
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Wind and Solar diurnal and seasonal variations require energy storage
Preface. Currently energy storage is accomplished with the 67% of fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) used to generate electricity, especially natural gas which can kick in within microseconds to make up for failing wind, or run all the time … Continue reading
Posted in Seasonal, Seasonal Variation
Tagged seasonal, solar
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Eastern Wind Integration & Transmission study 2011 National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Excerpts from the 242 page Eastern Wind Integration & Transmission study, 2011, EnerNex corporation for National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Key Findings Building transmission capacity takes much longer than installing wind plants. It is already starting to limit wind growth in … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable Integration, Wind
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