Category Archives: Energy

the posts in this category used to be in “Energy in A Nutshell” at my former web site.

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

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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

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Can wind power be scaled up to 24 TW by 2050?

[Below are excerpts from this 22 page paper. Alice Friedemann] Davidsson, S., et al. (2014) Growth curves and sustained commissioning modelling of renewable energy: Investigating resource constraints for wind energy. Energy Policy. Although the wind itself is a type of … Continue reading

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Demand reduction of electricity to balance the electric grid

Demand reduction of electricity to balance the electric grid by Alice Friedemann By the time a smart grid is integrated into all the existing computer systems, wasting electricity with each round-trip of information, (rolling) blackouts are likely to be occurring … Continue reading

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Jacobson and Delucchi energy dreams are irresponsible fairy tales

Jacobson and Delucchi energy dreams are irresponsible fairy tales by Alice Friedemann Jacobson & Delucchi are like religious preachers who tell people what they want to hear.  Energyskeptic has hundreds of articles from peer-reviewed sources that explain why their ideas … Continue reading

Posted in Alternative Energy, Vaclav Smil | 3 Comments

Peak Coal in China likely to be around 2024

Mohr, S. H., et al. February 1, 2015. Projection of world fossil fuels by country. Fuel volume 141: 120-135. We model world fossil fuel production by country including unconventional sources. Scenarios suggest coal production peaks before 2025 due to China. … Continue reading

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DOE 2014 Wind vision a new era for wind power in the United States

DOE 2014 Wind vision a new era for wind power in the United States Many potential sites with high quality wind energy resources have minimal or no access to electrical transmission facilities. From the perspective of planning reserves, wind power’s … Continue reading

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Mined Oil sands EROI 5, in-situ 2.9, or 1 if refinement, transportation, & environmental costs included

Nuwer, R. Feb 19, 2013. Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces. InsideClimate News. EROI SURFACE MINED oil sands (20% of reserves) EROI 5  according to J. David Hughes research released Tuesday. EROI 5.5 to  … Continue reading

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New Threat to Oil sand Projects

Newfound Threat to Oilsand Projects Researchers discover ancient salt formation key factor in Alberta steam fracking disasters. By Andrew Nikiforuk, 28 Jul 2014, TheTyee.ca Also See: Next Oil sands Threat: Cracking Caprock A new study suggests that naturally occurring upward flow … Continue reading

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Natural Gas limits: 20-40% of recoverable resources are low EROI Sour Gas

SBC. October 2014. Factbook Natural Gas Factbook. SBC Energy Institute                           There are 855 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of technically recoverable resources, which means that regardless of cost … Continue reading

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