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- 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”
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- “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”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
Category Archives: Renewables
Utility, large-scale battery energy storage
Hodson, H. July 25, 2015. Power to the people. NewScientist. Demand for electricity varies every second, minute, hour, day, and season. Production is easy to provide from always-ready natural gas and coal. But as we move towards a 100% renewable … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Storage
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Ohio run-of-the-river hydroelectric power 4 projects totaling 300 MW for $1.7 billion
[There are limited places on rivers to put these so this a really tiny silver bullet, and there is often opposition from environmentalists, but if you’re lucky enough to have a river nearby that flows constantly it’s more reliable than … Continue reading
Posted in Waves & Tidal
Tagged run-of-river
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Renewable subsidies in Spain, Germany, Italy, and the UK
HRG. 113-623. 2014-7-22. U.S. Security implications of international energy and climate policies and issues. U.S. Senate 113th congress MARY HUTZLER, Distinguished senior fellow, Institute for Energy Research, Berlin, MD RENEWABLE SUBSIDIES IN EUROPE Spain (Also see Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution) In … Continue reading
Posted in Subsidies
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Critique of LCA & EROI Wind research
[This paper criticizes LCA and EROI wind studies] Notes from 22 page: Davidsson, S., Höök, M., Wall, G. 2012. A review of life cycle assessments on wind energy systems. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Wind
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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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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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