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Ban Household Natural Gas?

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.

Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby FLAMEOUT » Fri 18 Dec 2020, 08:59:10

Natural gas under fire in the UK also.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/13726 ... ate-change

Hydrogen as a replacement to methane being touted - where will this come from electrolysis using electricity ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -time.html

The UK currently generates up to half of our electricity with Natural Gas - bit windy here today so lots of wind generation

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?_k=xo2xsl

Cold dark years ahead - unless you live in China, India etc who seemingly could not care less.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 18 Dec 2020, 11:02:36

Good point. 2.5 billion people eager to close the Prosperoty Gap in just those 2 countries. Throw in Bangladesh and Pakistan and it closer to 4 billion, almost half the worlds population.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby JuanP » Fri 18 Dec 2020, 12:13:15

Newfie wrote:Good point. 2.5 billion people eager to close the Prosperoty Gap in just those 2 countries. Throw in Bangladesh and Pakistan and it closer to 4 billion, almost half the worlds population.


I know it's hard to keep track of things like this, but China and India have 1.4 billion people each today, for a total of 2.8 billion between them. We are just about at the point where India's population will become larger than China's because of its faster growth. I don't expect India or Bangladesh to ever close the prosperity gap. China most likely will, and Pakistan may with China's help, but it is not likely to.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 18 Dec 2020, 15:36:46

FLAMEOUT wrote:Natural gas under fire in the UK also.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/13726 ... ate-change

Hydrogen as a replacement to methane being touted - where will this come from electrolysis using electricity ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -time.html

The UK currently generates up to half of our electricity with Natural Gas - bit windy here today so lots of wind generation

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?_k=xo2xsl

Cold dark years ahead - unless you live in China, India etc who seemingly could not care less.


Have you seen this thread?
Hydrogen in place of Natural Gas thread.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby REAL Green » Sat 26 Dec 2020, 15:23:06

“Gas and renewables combined hold the key to a faster energy transition”
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/20 ... ransition/
“Accelerated and strategic deployment of renewables and gas power can change the trajectory for climate change, enabling quick and substantive reductions in emissions, while in parallel continuing to advance the technologies for low or near zero-carbon power generation. This is according to the latest white paper release by GE, entitled Accelerated Growth of Renewables and Gas Power Can Rapidly Change the Trajectory on Climate Change. GE states that the power industry has a responsibility, and the technical capability to take significant steps to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help address climate change at scale. The solution for the power sector is not an either/or proposition between renewables and natural gas, but rather a multi-pronged approach to decarbonisation with renewables and natural gas power at its core.”

https://www.ge.com/content/dam/gepower/ ... -paper.pdf
“On a global scale, replacing coal with a combination of variable renewables and batteries plus dispatchable gas yields greater carbon reduction than renewables alone…Replacing the coal plant with a complementary mix of wind and solar plus natural gas, however, enables the wind and solar to provide zero-carbon energy whenever they are available, with combined cycle gas turbine plants making up any remaining energy needs. This results in approximately a 62–78 percent reduction in overall system CO2. Replacing the coal plant with a complementary mix of wind, solar, and 4-hour batteries, plus natural gas enables the wind and solar to provide zero-carbon energy for 35–50 percent of the time, with combined cycle gas turbine plants making up any remaining energy needs. This maximizes the energy from the renewables sources and results in approximately a 68–80 percent reduction in overall system CO2.”
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sat 26 Dec 2020, 15:30:14

FLAMEOUT wrote:Natural gas under fire in the UK also.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/13726 ... ate-change

Hydrogen as a replacement to methane being touted - where will this come from electrolysis using electricity ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -time.html

The UK currently generates up to half of our electricity with Natural Gas - bit windy here today so lots of wind generation

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?_k=xo2xsl

Cold dark years ahead - unless you live in China, India etc who seemingly could not care less.

Once most electricity generation is via truly green energy, then EV's, not using as much NG, etc. will make far more sense. Until then, it's kind of a mess, though NG is better than coal, as far as CO2 production and pollution IF there aren't too many large leaks being ignored.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby kublikhan » Sun 27 Dec 2020, 21:38:20

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Once most electricity generation is via truly green energy, then EV's, not using as much NG, etc. will make far more sense. Until then, it's kind of a mess, though NG is better than coal, as far as CO2 production and pollution IF there aren't too many large leaks being ignored.
I agree. This whole banning of household natural gas seems really stupid to me when most of the electricity comes from fossil fuels. Two scenarios:
1. Use fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to generate electricity. Lose over 2/3rds of the energy as waste heat.
2. Burn the natural gas directly at the household. Close to no waste heat.
Why would you ever choose option 1? It is not only more expensive for consumers it also wastes more fossil fuels. This is a counter productive bad policy.

Electric resistance heating is 100% energy efficient in the sense that all the incoming electric energy is converted to heat. However, most electricity is produced from coal, gas, or oil generators that convert only about 30% of the fuel's energy into electricity. Because of electricity generation and transmission losses, electric heat is often more expensive than heat produced in homes or businesses that use combustion appliances, such as natural gas, propane, and oil furnaces.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 14:11:23

As far as I can tell this is just one more "virtue signalling" stunt that is a major inconvenience for Joe6P while doing little or nothing for the environment.

I am willing to sacrifice quite a bit to be a good steward of creation, but doing something symbolic but ultimately ineffective does not count for beans.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Pops » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 15:57:32

CA is attempting to eliminate carbon by 2045, ICE cars by 2035. By every measure of the nominal thrust of this board you would think that would be a praiseworthy exercise.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. (a) This act shall be known as The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018.
(b) The Legislature finds and declares that the Public Utilities Commission, State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, and State Air Resources Board should plan for 100 percent of total retail sales of electricity in California to come from eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources by December 31, 2045.


But instead, dramatic efforts at mitigating GW (and tangentially, PO) are now deemed by the remaining former peak oilers as "virtue signaling" and the benefits of burning carbon extolled:
Yeahbut it is cheap
yeahbut the flame is even and controllable when simmering my favorite lemon meringue to perfection
And even Kub thinks eliminating carbon wherever and whenever is silly because... most electricity is generated from carbon.

When of course that is the point of trying to eliminate it. CA is attempting to do away with all carbon generation by 2045.

Has this board simply gone over to echoing whatever blather is spouted by the Murdocks? Maybe someone can direct me to the 10 gal Every Flush and Liberate The Showerheads thread? In the enviro subforum probably? You know those Bangladeshis are flushing 10-20-30 gallons at a time, why should WE have to flush twice!? It's not FAIR!

Pretty sad this place still has the same name.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 17:41:46

Pops wrote:CA is attempting to eliminate carbon by 2045, ICE cars by 2035. By every measure of the nominal thrust of this board you would think that would be a praiseworthy exercise.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. (a) This act shall be known as The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018.
(b) The Legislature finds and declares that the Public Utilities Commission, State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, and State Air Resources Board should plan for 100 percent of total retail sales of electricity in California to come from eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources by December 31, 2045.


But instead, dramatic efforts at mitigating GW (and tangentially, PO) are now deemed by the remaining former peak oilers as "virtue signaling" and the benefits of burning carbon extolled:
Yeahbut it is cheap
yeahbut the flame is even and controllable when simmering my favorite lemon meringue to perfection
And even Kub thinks eliminating carbon wherever and whenever is silly because... most electricity is generated from carbon.

When of course that is the point of trying to eliminate it. CA is attempting to do away with all carbon generation by 2045.

Has this board simply gone over to echoing whatever blather is spouted by the Murdocks? Maybe someone can direct me to the 10 gal Every Flush and Liberate The Showerheads thread? In the enviro subforum probably? You know those Bangladeshis are flushing 10-20-30 gallons at a time, why should WE have to flush twice!? It's not FAIR!

Pretty sad this place still has the same name.


Now you are being a bit over the top Pops. If California is serious about going zero carbon why sis they just close their last fission power station which was quite good at producing zero carbon electricity and could have continued doing so for another couple decades?

I know some folks on here think I am nutty on the subject, but France has the lowest carbon electric grid in the world and California could quite easily follow in their foot steps. Why don't they?
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby kublikhan » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 17:58:49

CA's strategy seems to be to steam forward with blind hope and political mandates in lieu of informed planning. That has not worked out so well for them Pops. I think this natural gas ban is just another example.

Less than one month after California experienced rolling blackouts, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti sent out this tweet urging his constituents to conserve power to avoid more potential outage. Many California officials, particularly Governor Gavin Newsom, brand the state as a leader in a variety of areas and take pride in lecturing others on how to best promote clean energy. While it’s true that California relies on clean energy more so than other states, it’s difficult to accept advice from a state that has accelerated renewable development absent any strategy to account for the sources’ current shortcomings.

California gets about a third of its electricity from renewables, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. However, with battery storage technology still in development, sources such as solar and wind cannot provide around-the-clock reliable energy. This becomes especially problematic when states like California are abandoning other energy sources in order to race towards its politically-driven targets of achieving 60 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045.

To be fair, some of California’s recent energy troubles can be attributed to heatwaves, which have increased air conditioning demand, and wildfires, which have led some grid systems to experience failures. But those blaming the grid instability solely on these factors are being dishonest, as California has been dealing with energy-related issues prior to these recent developments thanks to its own policies.

Specifically, California’s blind adding of solar and wind facilities has led it to frequently produce massive amounts of energy during the day, and the state often has to get rid of excess production by selling it to other states at cheap prices. However, given that solar production drops off at nightfall, California is then forced to import electricity from other states to satisfy peak demands. The problem is that with current hot temperatures throughout the west, other states are experiencing higher demand for air conditioning as well and are less apt to export their electricity production to California. This reliance on other states would not be so necessary if California was not shutting down other types of power facilities and forcing utility companies to purchase lithium ion batteries that aren’t even online yet. It’s astonishing that the same government officials who demand that we “believe science” choose to pursue energy policies that blatantly disregard science.

To be clear, pursuing renewable energy development is good policy and forward-looking. However, when advanced blindly for the sake of political optics, energy grid complications are inevitable. Presently, current technology makes renewable power on its own insufficient, and these limitations are not overcome through aggressive mandates or politically-motivated decisions. Rather, we can lead a smoother transition to renewables with policies like an all-of-the-above energy approach. As opposed to a mandate driven approach, an all-of-the-above strategy will ensure continued grid stability and reduced emissions, all without the California-style blackouts in the meantime.
Don’t Blame Renewables for California’s Energy Woes

When rolling blackouts darkened parts of California this month, Frank Wolak, an economics professor and energy-markets expert at Stanford University, had a painful sense of déjà vu. Mr. Wolak was among the people who helped California chart a course out of crisis in 2001, when a poorly conceived state electricity-deregulation law resulted in frequent power shortages, sporadic blackouts, astronomical wholesale prices and market manipulation. As Californians again experience rolling blackouts, and millions more are threatened with losing power, a warning that continues through Monday, Mr. Wolak said it was clear that “California policy makers completely forgot the lessons from the crisis…in their rush to go green.”

Once again, a big part of the problem is that California regulators have left the state dangerously exposed to buying large amounts of imported electricity on the spot market during peak periods on days when there is extreme energy demand—what Mr. Wolak likened to going to the airport on Thanksgiving and expecting to fly standby. Only this time, the crunchtime for the state’s grid operator isn’t the actual power demand peak in late afternoon—it is when the sun starts to fall in early evening, and the renewable energy the state is increasingly dependent on begins to wane. On many days, California’s grid operator now has to find 10,000 to 15,000 megawatts of replacement power—sometimes 25% to 50% of what it needs to keep the lights on—during a three-hour period as solar, and to a lesser degree, wind power, falls off.

California regulators have known since at least 2017 that the state could face a power capacity shortfall, although the state grid operator thought it would squeak by this summer. In 2018, the state utility commission asked the grid operator, as well as utilities and power generators, to weigh in on whether additional resources were needed.

The California Independent System Operator and Southern California Edison said they felt the state could be short at least 2,000 megawatts of capacity by 2021. Experts at the utility commission flagged reliance on imports from other states as dicey, noting that many coal- and gas-fired power plants in those states were closing.

Last year, the commission ordered utilities and retail power suppliers to procure 3,300 megawatts of additional capacity between 2021 and 2023, calling it a “ ‘least regrets’ strategy, since electricity shortages would most certainly lead to regrets.” It also recommended to the state’s water agency that coastal gas-fired power plants—heavy users of water for cooling—be allowed to run beyond mandated retirement dates.
Why California Keeps Having Blackouts
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Pops » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 19:38:22

Informed planning is how we got to the point of mass extinction, Kub.

CA strategy is to mandate change away from what is causing the mass extinction and perhaps our own. Why you ask? Because citizens and especially corporations do not protect the commons without mandates. See my sig...

If you recall, CA political mandates helped drive CAFE standards. CA Title 24 single handedly established building energy conservation standards when there were none, likewise energy efficient appliances, air and water protection and on and on.

Every time there were howls of outrage and dire repercussions from the right. Your link to a Murdock rag and some conservative blogger are good examples. In other words, howls of protest at no longer having unlimited access to the commons.

And of course they have trouble getting the kinks out. Not surprising, when you cut against the grain and try to change a huge, integral part of the economy, it is hard—no matter how destructive. I seem to remember some guy, back when we were great, saying that we Americans choose to do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby kublikhan » Mon 28 Dec 2020, 21:01:35

You cannot mandate away reality Pops. Just because they passed a law to be 100% renewable by 2045 doesn't mean it will be so. If you don't like my earlier sources on some of the past planning failures how about listening to the evaluation of California's own relevant agencies on the problem:

California suffered its first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years because energy planners didn’t take climate change into account and didn’t line up the right power sources to keep the lights on after sundown, according to a damning self-evaluation released Tuesday by three state agencies. But officials should have been prepared for the climate-driven extreme heat that caused electricity demand to soar and briefly left the nation’s largest state without sufficient power supplies, the state’s Energy Commission, Independent System Operator and Public Utilities Commission acknowledged in a preliminary “root cause analysis.”

State agencies failed to adequately plan for that type of heat event despite knowing how quickly the world is heating up, the report concluded. They also failed to direct electricity providers to buy sufficient power supplies to cover the evening hours when solar panels go offline. And they created complex energy market mechanisms that masked the inadequacies. “The combination of these factors was an extraordinary event. But it is our responsibility and intent to plan for such events, which are becoming increasingly common in a world rapidly being impacted by climate change,” wrote Independent System Operator President Elliot Mainzer, Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer and Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild.

Careful planning to ensure adequate power supplies will become even more important as California phases out fossil fuels and moves toward 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% climate-friendly energy by 2045, as required by state law. “Our planning processes may have been a year or two off on when we needed to have the resources available,” said Ed Randolph, director of the Public Utilities Commission’s energy division. “We’ll absolutely need more steel in the ground.”

The root cause analysis also faults market mechanisms put in place by the Independent System Operator, a nonprofit corporation that oversees the power grid for most of the state. A program known as convergence bidding, in particular, is meant to help keep electricity prices steady but instead “masked tight supply conditions” during the August heat wave, the analysis concluded.
What caused California’s rolling blackouts? Climate change and poor planning

Dear Governor Newsom:
In response to your August 17, 2020 letter, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and California Energy Commission (CEC) have jointly prepared the attached Preliminary Root Cause Analysis (Preliminary Analysis) of the two rotating outages in the CAISO footprint on August 14 and 15, 2020. In our response, we also recognized our shared responsibility for the power outages many Californians unnecessarily endured.

In Transitioning to a Reliable, Clean, and Affordable Resource Mix, Resource Planning Targets Have Not Kept Pace to Lead to Sufficient Resources That Can Be Relied Upon to Meet Demand in the Early Evening Hours.

Preliminary Recommendations
1. Update the resource and reliability planning targets to better account for a transitioning electricity resource mix to meet the clean energy goals of the state during critical hours of grid need.
Preliminary Root Cause Analysis

I've seen this pattern play out too many times Pops. Politicans pass lofty mandates to score browning points with their constituents without looking into the plan to see if it is feasible. Then reality comes to bite in the form of high costs, lack of storage, grid stability issues, etc. And then the lofty mandates have to be re-evaluated.

Is it really asking too much to have a new system in place before we dismantle the old one? California is dismantling it's old power plants faster than it is building new capacity and storage to replace them. And it's not like this is all a big surprise. Experts warned this would be a problem but the leaders were drunk on hopium and ignored these calls.

California faced the prospect of rolling power blackouts for the first time in almost 20 years, and stakeholders are pinning the blame on regulators' failure to heed warnings that shortages could occur unless steps were taken to ensure adequate resources were on call to cover peak demand periods. "We told the CPUC 4,700 MW was needed through 2022 and that the gap started in 2020," ISO CEO Steve Berberich said during an Aug. 17 briefing. "Despite all that, only 3,300 MW was authorized for procurement, but that's not starting [until] 2021."

The ISO in August 2019 warned of a looming system resource adequacy deficiency and urged the PUC to develop a procurement plan for 2020-2022 to meet reliability needs. In addition, concerned that the rise of community choice aggregators had splintered the state's central resource planning capabilities, former PUC President Michael Picker has repeatedly warned lawmakers and commissioners that California risked another energy crisis without a plan to ensure that all load-serving entities met resource adequacy requirements.

During the Aug. 17 briefing, which was held to address rolling Aug. 14-15 blackouts in California and the prospect of more to come, Berberich said the state's resource adequacy program was broken and must be fixed because it does not address load requirements after the sun goes down and solar generation is gone. And he suggested that much of the problem stems from the PUC's failure to act on ISO warnings.

Gas-fired resource commitments
Former Western Power Trading Forum Executive Director Gary Ackerman in an interview said battery storage installations in California have nowhere near enough capacity or duration to ensure the electricity generated by existing solar facilities is available at night. Grid-connected solar accounts for about 12,000 MW of capacity in California, while wind generation now supplies only about 4,000 MW in the state, Ackerman said. And Berberich said California currently has only about 200 MW of storage.

But the amount of generation that is not already committed under contracts in or outside the state is diminishing because owners cannot stay in business selling energy during peak periods alone when solar is no longer available. "They've retired plants outside California, too, so power imports are off."
California power shortages stem from lack of firm generation capacity: experts
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Pops » Tue 29 Dec 2020, 08:45:28

Kub, CA is building something entirely new, mostly on the cutting edge, do you think it should come off without a hitch? Of course a mandate doesn't make reality conform, however, demanding nothing is it's own mandate. And we have examples of that everywhere, don't we? How is that going?

CA needs storage and is proceeding with it's build out—
CAISO approves hybrid storage policies as California preps to add 1.5 GW by 2022
Nov. 24, 2020
The system operator moved quickly to approve the proposal in light of the more than 1,500 MW of storage capacity expected to come online in California by the end of next year. This is part of around 3,300 MW of new procurement that the state is seeking to replace retiring fossil fuel plants by 2023.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/caiso- ... of/589609/


And nukes in a heat wave have their own problems—
The first nuclear power plants reduce their output
Because of the heat wave, several nuclear power plants have to reduce their electricity production. The transport of coal on the water is also restricted.
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/sozia ... 20916.html


As for pace, GW has been described as The Greatest Threat To Human Health In History so I'm thinking "scoring brownie points" "hopium" etc are sort of weak tea political jabs, along the line of the low-flow toilet catastrophe.

Generally it seems to me mandating high and perhaps missing low is a good plan. I'm surprised at the lack of concern about things that used to animate this board. And besides, how much planning is the central committee supposed to do? Establishing a goal and expecting the market to do its magic worked in many other areas (fuel, building, appliance efficiency/emissions) why would this be different?
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby kublikhan » Tue 29 Dec 2020, 10:47:55

Look at that date: Nov. 24, 2020. Why did it take so long to finally start moving on the storage front? Did it really take rolling blackouts for them to figure out that after the sun goes down solar panels don't generate electricity? If the storage technologies were not ready yet then just leave the old generation in place until it is. Don't just throw up solar panels with no storage or backup for when the sun goes down. Then at the same time tear down your existing power plants. You don't need to be on the cutting edge to figure this stuff out.

During the grid operator’s board meeting Monday, Berberich faulted the commission for failing to ensure adequate power capacity on hot summer evenings, when electricity from the state’s growing fleet of rooftop solar panels and sprawling solar farms rapidly drops to zero but demand for air conditioning remains high. It’s a challenge that will only intensify as California adds more solar panels and wind turbines to meet its targets of 60% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% emissions-free power by 2045.

“For many years, we have pointed out to the [Public Utilities Commission] that there was inadequate power available during the net peak,” Berberich said, referring to the evening period when solar production dries up but cooling demand remains high. “The situation we are in could have been avoided.”
California blackouts are Public Utilities Commission’s fault, grid operator says
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 29 Dec 2020, 11:08:21

Pops wrote:And nukes in a heat wave have their own problems—
The first nuclear power plants reduce their output
Because of the heat wave, several nuclear power plants have to reduce their electricity production. The transport of coal on the water is also restricted.
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/sozia ... 20916.html


Really Pops is that the best you can do? Power plants in upland Germany which are effectively isolated to using mountain rivers have problems in a heatwave and we should throw away all their potential as a result?

Before I get too far into this theme I will point out that Phoenix, AZ never has a water shortage for their cooling towers in the middle of the freaking desert. How is this possible you ask? Simple, the design engineers opted to use filtered waste water gathered from the cities sewage system as their cooling water. The more people shower off after a swim in the intense desert heat the more cooling water they have available. There is certainly no reason other power stations within say 50 miles of a large city could not do the same thing by running the filtered sewage pipeline backwards along the same land set aside for the high tension lines carrying the power to the city in question. Phoenix Nuclear cooling

Failing that In Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin and Ohio the first large stations were all placed where they could draw cooling water from the Great Lakes. In California Diablo Canyon which they just closed used cooling pipes sunk into the Pacific Ocean. The plant did not take water from the Pacific, instead it just used the ocean as its heat sink to cool its water down and endlessly recycle the same loop of purified fresh water. Diablo Canyon Cooling system Systems like that work even in places like the Great Salt Lake in Utah or potentially at Lake Tahoe and other large mountain lakes. Reservoir Cooling You do need a certain size body of water to avoid excess heating when this method is used to avoid fish kills and such, but the big coal fired plant in Monroe Michigan does use direct water exchange with Lake Erie to generate 3000 MWe and the place where the water which by law is only raised in temperature a few degrees before being ejected into the lake is a rather popular fishing and swimming spot all summer every summer because the water is people and fish friendly from May to September, something not so true of the nearby public beaches that don't get warm enough for sustained swimming until June and are cooling off by mid August because of the northern location of the plant.
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And every one of those examples was designed in the 1960's-1970's and built in the 1970's-1980's and have been cranking out carbon free electricity for 40+ years. Yes sighting a nuclear plant should be carefully done, but pretending poorly sighted plants in Germany are exemplification of the general condition of nuclear power is cherry picking of the worst sort. Especially given that the German federal government has been unrelentingly hostile to nuclear power for almost a decade at this point.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Pops » Thu 31 Dec 2020, 13:18:18

kublikhan wrote:Look at that date: Nov. 24, 2020. Why did it take so long to finally start moving on the storage front? Did it really take rolling blackouts for them to figure out that after the sun goes down solar panels don't generate electricity? If the storage technologies were not ready yet then just leave the old generation in place until it is. Don't just throw up solar panels with no storage or backup for when the sun goes down. Then at the same time tear down your existing power plants. You don't need to be on the cutting edge to figure this stuff out.


To achieve the carbon reduction needed to address GW (and mitigate possible PO) requires a massive build of RE, ~40GW/yr over the next 10 years according to this.. This year, with the last of the subsidies we'll get 37GW, pretty good.

But leaving coal plants running, especially if/when federal incentives expire, would cause a glut and crash the wholesale price of electricity. RE may be cheaper over total life but it won't be installed in a surplus market will it? Ditto transmission & storage, which now is the lagging tech and needs higher price to build out. The most important thing for PO and GW is we get as much capacity up as quickly as possible, even if, heaven forbid, some people are inconvenienced.


Generally, I'm enthused that RE is so competitive and is going online at such a clip. 10 years ago, not to mention 20, I would never have dreamed, and it made me a doomer.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Pops » Thu 31 Dec 2020, 13:44:15

Tanada wrote:Really Pops is that the best you can do? Power plants in upland Germany which are effectively isolated to using mountain rivers have problems in a heatwave and we should throw away all their potential as a result?

Kub mentioned a heatwave that caused some temporary blackouts and said nukes are the answer, I pointed to nukes that had a problem in a heatwave, apples to apples.

I'd not hang a whole argument on one small blackout whose proximate cause was the heat wave.
The rotating power outages didn’t last long and affected only a small fraction of the state’s 40 million people. Just under half a million homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2½ hours on Aug. 14, with another 321,000 utility customers going dark for anywhere from eight to 90 minutes the following evening.
Same story Kub linked

High wind safety curtailments have affected many many times more people, millions in fact and for days on end.

Tanada wrote:And every one of those examples was designed in the 1960's-1970's and built in the 1970's-1980's and have been cranking out carbon free electricity for 40+ years.

Well that's kind of the point isn't it? Nukes are old, carbon free tech that have been around for 40+ years.
So where is the massive build out of nukes in the US that would save us the messy inconvenience of boiling in our own skins?

Blame whomever but as we should have learned the last couple of years, politicians do what they must to get reelected. If there were popular will to build out nuke we'd be doing it by now. I don't like old fashion nukes and don't know enough about newer versions but it is obvious there is no market for them in any event.
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby Tanada » Thu 31 Dec 2020, 15:45:31

Pops wrote:
Tanada wrote:And every one of those examples was designed in the 1960's-1970's and built in the 1970's-1980's and have been cranking out carbon free electricity for 40+ years.

Well that's kind of the point isn't it? Nukes are old, carbon free tech that have been around for 40+ years.
So where is the massive build out of nukes in the US that would save us the messy inconvenience of boiling in our own skins?

Blame whomever but as we should have learned the last couple of years, politicians do what they must to get reelected. If there were popular will to build out nuke we'd be doing it by now. I don't like old fashion nukes and don't know enough about newer versions but it is obvious there is no market for them in any event.


Sure the USA has absolutely dropped the ball on building new nuclear fission plants to help fight global warming, but the USA is not the whole world no matter how full of ourselves we may be. As of April 2020 there were 59 new fission power stations under construction and another 109 planned but not yet under construction. China is the vast leader in this with 11 currently building and 44 more planned with Russia second with 4 building and 24 planned and India third with 7 building and 14 planned.

A big part of the disconnect in the USA is the faction of the green movement that opposes all nuclear power no matter how safe or efficient due to overblown panic that comes with the word "radiation". Here is just one reason I say overblown. American regulations are written to so carefully prevent radiation that even very long lived very weak emission sources like Thorium and Depleted Uranium are a major hassle. This expanded so that to use in any product is regulated to the point that the classic Coleman gas lantern no longer uses the super bright efficient Thorium mantles they were famous for for nearly a century. At the same time lumber companies routinely treat lumber with a chemical cocktail that includes permanently deadly materials like Arsenic on a routine basis. People exposed to treated wood smoke like anyone down wind from a modern structure fire are at hundreds of times more risk from the arsenic contaminated smoke released than they would be in ten lifetimes of using only Thorium gas lantern mantels as their only lighting source from the radiation given off by Thorium. The way the American and most EU radiation regulations are written has no scientific basis whatsoever by any reasonable standard of relative risk.

Everything in life has a relative risk from taking a shower to crossing the street to breathing the fumes given off by other vehicles in a rush hour slow down. Trying to regulate away all risk from radiation is not only an impossible goal, it is rather insane given the other routine daily risks that are never given a moments thought. You are quite literally at more risk of accidental death from 1 GWe of Solar PV generate power than you are from a same size power supply from fission mostly because there are so many solar panels needed and so many connection that inevitably people get electrocuted or otherwise killed in producing that power. At Fukushima Daichi Japan has classified two radiation injuries and one related death from heart failure after that 6 station complex generated around 3.5 GWe for 35-40 years. "Boy that nuclear power sure is scary ain't it? I hear they got radiation...."
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Re: Ban Household Natural Gas?

Unread postby yellowcanoe » Thu 31 Dec 2020, 16:19:26

Tanada wrote:
A big part of the disconnect in the USA is the faction of the green movement that opposes all nuclear power no matter how safe or efficient due to overblown panic that comes with the word "radiation".


Yes, it is pretty damn frustrating. Here in Ontario, Canada 60% of our electricity comes from our 16 operating nuclear reactors and no deaths can be attributed to that power generation. Six of those reactors are scheduled to be shutdown by the end of 2025 and there are no plans to build new reactors to replace them. The green movement thinks we can manage with wind and solar power, but the reality is that we will be burning a lot more natural gas to generate power.
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