baha wrote:The only advantage gas has is the ability to easily pour it from one container to another. And that's using lots of high tech piping, pumps, and filters to keep you from exploding.
Again, my electricity is free. Yes I need to buy some equipment to harvest it, but the power is free. And to compare my equipment to yours is ridiculous.
I set a few posts in the ground, build a rack, run some wires, install hardware with absolutely NO moving parts and start harvesting. If you want I can have you up and running in a week.
For your power it starts with exploration and seismic surveys. Then drill a few miles deep holes to assess and find the sweet spot. Then drill more holes with pipes and pumps. Not to mention the occasional spill and explosion. Then build hundreds of miles of pipelines and infrastructure. Oh, and then you have to buy the equipment that makes this stuff useful like a car or a generator or just a burner. Best case if you start now you could have power in 5-8 years.
Like I said in another thread...FF's will fade into the background of obsolete technology.
I have to buy a car if I want to use gasoline? I think you have that backwards. I bought the gasoline because I need it to fuel my car. I did not buy a car so I can use it to burn up this liquid stuff I have sitting in jugs around my house. That is a really poor argument to be making.
And as for accidental spills and explosions, this is a problem for the Solar PV industry as well. Silane gas, used in the manufacture of silicon, sometimes leaks out. This stuff doesn't even need a spark to ignite, it explodes on contact with air. That's why you sometimes get
explosions at facilities that manufacture the polysilicon for Solar PV.
And that's not even getting into the even bigger problem with Solar PV manufacture: Toxic Waste.
Before the proponents of solar energy can claim the moral high ground, they may need to deal with an inconvenient truth of their own: mountains of hazardous waste being created by the production of solar panels.
Sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid are among the caustic chemicals required in the manufacturing process, along with water and electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. Metals that go into solar panels are often mined in jurisdictions with low environmental standards and even poorer safety records. The biggest problem, though, is waste. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a San Francisco-based non-profit, has been tracking the waste created by solar panel manufacturers since 1982, and reports a disturbing upward trend in the amounts being generated annually.
In a sense, the problem is a byproduct of the industry's success; fueled by government incentives, production of solar panels has skyrocketed in recent years, and in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and contaminated water have also been produced. Disposing of the waste by truck is expensive, so in the absence of regulations, it gets dumped where it shouldn't. The most egregious example is, unsurprisingly, in China, where until recently solar panel makers simply dumped silicon tetrachloride on fields near their factories.
Toxic Waste Sullies Solar’s Squeaky Clean ImageThen there's the
16 different metals used in solar panels. These are mined with what you call "obsolete technology".
Of course there is also the massive electricity required for manufacturing Solar PV. That too is provided by "obsolete technology".
Calling FFs obsolete is premature, to say the least.
Tanada wrote:Take away the fossil fuels and nuclear that prop up your Solar PV dream and you dream collapses quite rapidly. Your system can not produce enough energy to reproduce itself and maintain itself and supply your needs all at once.
+1
Solar PV is several orders of magnitude away from rendering FFs & nuclear obsolete.
The oil barrel is half-full.