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Recent Posts
- 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”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
Category Archives: Renewables
Inage: calculate storage for short-term wind variation
Inage, S. 2009. Prospects for Large-Scale Energy Storage in Decarbonized Power Grid. International Energy Agency. This paper limits itself to the issue of frequency stability in systems with increasing shares of variable renewable generation assets (wind power in Western Europe … Continue reading
Posted in Research
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What is the life span of a vehicle Lithium-ion Battery?
How long a lithium-ion battery will last depends on many factors Lithium-ion battery life is defined in studies as beyond its useful life when its capacity falls by 20 percent or more. Lithium-ion batteries start to degrade as soon as … Continue reading
Posted in Lithium-ion
Tagged battery, life span, lifetime, lithium ion, longevity
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Gail Tverberg: 8 pitfalls in evaluating green energy solutions
Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions November 18, 2014 by Gail Tverberg Does the recent climate accord between US and China mean that many countries will now forge ahead with renewables and other green solutions? I think that there are … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Gail Tverberg
Tagged alternative energy, blackouts, deforestation, electric grid, extinction, rare minerals, recycling, renewables, topsoil, water depletion
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Ivanpah Biggest solar power plant ever – $2.2 billion for only 100 MW
The $2.2 billion dollar Ivanpah Solar power plant generates 100 MW of power when you take the 25% capacity into account (not 400 MW). That’s enough power for 25,000 to 50,000 homes (not 140,000 as claimed). There are 116,700,000 households … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power
Tagged baseload, capacity, dispatchable, solar thermal
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Renewable incentives destabilize, harm electric grid
Wald, Matthew L. 7 Oct 2014. How Grid Efficiency Went South. New York times. Summary: 1) society would be better off if homeowners faced their rooftop solar panels westward, the peak time more energy is needed, but they won’t because … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Natural Gas, Nuclear Power Energy, Photovoltaic Solar
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Thorium in the news
[ When trucks stop running, civilization as we know it ends. Nuclear electricity — or anything that generates electricity — doesn’t matter a rat’s ass if trucks can’t be electrified to run on batteries or overhead wires — especially tractors … Continue reading
Out of time: 50 years to make a transition, 210 years at the current rate
If transportation is to be electrified, then electric generation and the electric grid must be doubled, or even tripled. So by Cobb’s calculation, that would push back the transition time to renewables 420 to 630 years. Alice Friedemann. By Kurt … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Peak Oil
Tagged alternative energy, peak oil, renewable energy, transition time
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Navy claims that fuel can be made from seawater
It must take more energy to break the bonds of water, extract CO2, and recombine into usable fuel than you will ever get out of fuel so produced. We’ve known for a long time how to split hydrogen from water. … Continue reading
Posted in Far Out, Nuclear Power Energy
Tagged fuel from seawater, navy
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Revolutionary understanding of phsics needed to improve batteries – don’t hold your breath
What this Department of Energy document shows is that we can’t make the necessary REVOLUTIONARY breakthroughs to electrify cars until we understand the physics of batteries, and points out that “battery technology has not changed substantially in nearly 200 years.” … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries
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American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?
Aug/Sep 2012. Has the Battery Bubble Burst? Fred Schlachter. American Physical Society. APS News Vol 21, number 8. Phys.org Three years ago at a symposium on lithium-air batteries at IBM Almaden there was great optimism. The symposium “Scalable Energy Storage: … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Transportation Infrastructure
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