by KaiserJeep » Mon 06 Mar 2017, 14:27:55
It seems to me that large scale energy storage is another of those obsolete ideas. We don't know any good way of doing so, aside from pumped storage associated with hydropower facilities, and all the really good hydropower has already been built.
I believe distributed wind and solar are a better answer. We abandon a business model that requires large central power plants and a power grid, in favor of distributed power generation and distributed power storage. You can easily power a single family residence with $10,000 in solar panels or a wind turbine, and a Powerwall battery increases that tab another 50%. After that, no monthly power bills for 20-30 years. When we do this, we give each and every homeowner a very good reason to conserve energy, a motive he feels in his pocketbook.
After this change is made, the homeowner remodels to save energy, not just for cosmetics. He selects appliances and windows for energy efficiency, and he probably incorporates passive or active thermal solar into his HVAC plans. It beats the heck out of online bill paying, where you don't feel much pain from being an energy hog.
Meanwhile, we keep only the high power capacity part of the grid, and we use it to power cities and manufacturing and offices. We abandon the costliest part of the power grid, all of our least efficient power plants, and the very idea that we have to pay for power every month, unless you are an urbanite or live in high density housing. Likewise you replace gas furnaces and oil-fired boilers with electric power that does not require that anything be burned or any carbon be spewed into the air.
Give everybody a real and continuous motive to conserve energy, and energy will be conserved. Then we renew our buildings and other infrastructure to conserve power, and we ourselves willingly alter our lifestyles to minimize energy usage. Over a period of just a few decades, we gradually go from where we are today to a new lifestyle where suburban and rural occupants begin living in residences with integrated power generation, and HVAC systems that don't require burning FF's or even wood. Make the new paradigm of "Home Economics" include energy for HVAC, lighting, cooking, and entertainment.
The power grid and the energy companies just don't make financial sense any more. Burning FF's is not any kind of a plan when you know that you are running out of FF's.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0