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Recent Posts
- 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
- The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change
- The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”
- Peak crude oil did not happen in 2018. But we are running out of time
- Sheriffs have too much power
- Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”
- John Howe on one child per woman: still too high to stay under limits to growth curves
- Ted Trainer: The radical implications of a zero growth economy
- Part 5 Raven Rock. Hidey holes for government and military officials to carry on democracy after nuclear war destroys the planet
Category Archives: Energy
Would Tesla, SolarCity or SpaceX exist without $4.9 billion in government subsidies?
[ Tesla has made no new battery breakthroughs. Batteries aren’t much better today than they were 200 years ago. All Tesla did was build a better battery management system (BMS) by stringing tiny batteries together — thousands of them. But … Continue reading
Posted in Debt, Lithium-ion, Photovoltaic Solar, Subsidies
Tagged altnerative energy, debt, renewables, subsidies, tesla
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Hydrocarbon liquids, drop-in fuels, oil refining, oil distribution, GTL, CTL
Notes from 41 page: National Petroleum Council. 2012. Chapter 11: Hydrocarbon Liquids. Hydrocarbon liquids have properties that make them high-quality transportation fuels and allow the supply chain to operate … Continue reading
Posted in Coal to Liquids (CTL), GTL Gas-To-Liquids, Oil
Tagged CTL, GTL, natural gas, oil, pipelines, refinery capacity
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Turlock AB 2514 California Energy Storage
Notes from 29 page: Turlock Irrigation district Energy Storage Study. 2014. Willie G. Manuel 9/17/2014 Recommendation. The analysis performed shows that the benefits of deploying various types of storage systems fall short of the capital cost of such systems. Furthermore, … Continue reading
Posted in Battery - Utility Scale
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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology roadmap 2013 IEA
Notes from 63 page: IEA. 2013. Technology Roadmap Carbon capture and storage (CCS). International Energy Agency. A total cumulative mass of approximately 120 Gt CO2 would need to be captured and stored between 2015 and 2050, across all regions of … Continue reading
Posted in Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS)
Tagged carbon capture, CCS, coal
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Capacity value of solar is low as penetration increases which could suppress investment
Notes from 33 page: NREL. 2014. Representation of Solar Capacity Value in the ReEDS Capacity Expansion. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Technical Report NREL/TP-6A20-61182 March 2014 Comparison of Capacity Value at High Penetration. Several researchers have conducted modeling efforts to quantify … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable Integration, Solar
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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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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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