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Recent Posts
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- 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
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
Category Archives: Energy
Charles A. S. Hall Conventional oil peak was 2005
The global production of conventional oil began to decline in 2005, and has followed a path over the last 11 years very close to our scenarios assuming low estimates of extractable ultimate resource (1.9 Gbbl) John L. Hallock Jr., Wei … Continue reading
Posted in Charles A. S. Hall, Peak Oil
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Wind turbines hit limits to growth before 50% wind power penetration
Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth Also see: Davidsson, S., et al. 2014. Growth curves and sustained commissioning modelling of renewable energy Investigating resource constraints for wind energy. Energy Policy. Fizaine, F., et … Continue reading
Posted in Electrification, Limits To Growth, Renewable Integration, Wind
Tagged cement, concrete, copper, dysprosium, expoxy, fiberglass, iron, limits to growth, neodymium, steel, turbines, wind
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Is there enough renewable energy to replace fossil fuel electricity generation?
NREL. July 2012. U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: A GIS-Based Analysis. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This document is a thought experiment that uses GIS mapping to estimate how much renewable power could possibly be generated in each state regardless of … Continue reading
Not enough wind, solar, geothermal to replace fossil and nuclear power in the 11 western states of the WECC
California, Oregon, Utah, and Washington have already developed most (if not all) of their prime-quality in-state resources. You would think that the more wind and solar power is added over a wide area, the more fossil fuel power plants you … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable Integration
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Smart Grid Challenges
Wald, M. L. December 5, 2014. Power Savings of Smart Meters Prove Slow to Materialize. New York Times. Meter readers were supposed to be phased out by tens of millions of new “smart” meters that talk directly to the electric … Continue reading
Posted in Smart Grid
Tagged balance, demand, off-peak, smart grid, smart meter
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Spain Wind Integration
2 articles below, Pedro Prieto and National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Jan 14, 2015 Pedro Prieto [energyresources] Digest Number 8957 [altered slightly] In Spain we have this mix, as of the end of 2014: INSTALLED POWER MW % GWH … Continue reading
Posted in Pedro Prieto, Renewable Integration
Tagged intermittent, renewable integration, spain, uncertain, variable, wind
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Integrating renewable power research
Below are intermittent energy integration posts, workshops, and other research. Andrew Dodson. 2014. Issues Integrating Renewables. This is a fairly technical podcast, this link cites some of the most interesting points made, here are a couple of them: “There is … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable Integration
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Extreme Events. CEC 2011. Variable distributed generation from solar and wind increase the chance of large blackouts
Morgan, M., et al. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Electric Power Research Institute, BACV Solutions, Southern Company, CIEE, University of Alaska – Fairbanks, and KEMA). 2011. Extreme Events. California Energy Commission. Publication number: CEC-500- 2013-031. Figure 18: BLACKOUT … Continue reading
Posted in Distributed Generation, Grid instability
Tagged blackout, branching process, cascading failure, contingency, critical, critical corridors, earthquake, electric, extreme events, grid, heavy tail, outages, power, risk, WECC
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Limits to Growth
Preface. What follows are a bunch of articles on limits to growth, sometimes just a link, sometimes excerpts. Today Wall Street Journal and other neocapitalists scorn the idea, insisting that human ingenuity and substitution can overcome all obstacles, and they … Continue reading
Shale “fracked” natural gas peak by 2020: Mason Inman’s “Natural gas, the fracking fallacy”
[ In 2005 the U.S. was making desperate plans to build dozens of Liquefied Natural Gas plants for importing gas. Fracked gas changed that for the past 10 years, indeed, now the U.S. is talking about exporting natural gas. But … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Gas, Peak Natural Gas
Tagged fracking, natural gas, Patzek, peak natural gas
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