[Canuck]

If we are looking for a real technological leap forward that could make a real difference, what would it be?

I'd think it would relate to electricity storage. The problems associated with the grid revolve around peak loads, not total capacity. If we could figure out a way to save electricity, we can generate a lot more usable energy.

Are there any promising leads? Is someone working on the problem? If nothing else why aren't we using the non-peak hours to generate hydrogen?

[The_Virginian]

You can see my post on the "Solar Tower" if you want a Giggle.

I don't see one single new "Technology", or a even cluster of them that would solve the issue.

Honestly, we need to start planting wind turbines NOW to help moderate (but not solve) our future OIL/energy derth.

That way we can contemplate on the Future.[/i]

[KiddieKorral]

Wind and solar seem to have the most potential to make a difference in the post-oil world.

[gnm]

I'd have to agree with storage - if we could produce a "super battery" or such - a solution for high density, low loss and light weight electrical storage that would make wind and solar more feasible and would take care of the portability vs density problem (think electric cars)...

wind produces a lot of power - usually when and where you don't need it....

-G

[JayHMorrison]

I would agree that Nuclear, Wind and Solar with a solid method of energy storage is the key to a reasonable future.

[MarkR]

If we can't manage high quality storage, then maybe we could use new technology to manage demand.

New appliances could be equipped with a small radio receiver and microprocessor that could adjust the operation of the device according to local electricity demand.

E.g. your fridge/freezer would automatically adjust their temperatures up a couple of degrees as the late afternoon peak comes - essentially shutting those appliances off for a couple of hours. Once the peak has come and gone, the temperatures reset to normal so your food doesn't spoil.

Or you put your washing in the washing machine, and set it to have it done by the next morning. It could then automatically select the most appropriate time to start the cycle based on lowest energy cost.

[aldente]

Has any of you guys ever heard of Victor Schauberger? He was an Austrian engineer and inventor who was active up to the 1950's and claimed that the principle of generating energy through explosion was inefficient and faulty in the first place. Peakoil makes that more than obvious. Instead of explosion he focussed on implosion and developed numerous devices such as a home power plant based on implosion principles. The most extensive information about his work can be found in translations from German to English by Callum Coats, available at Amazon and elsewhere.

[Aaron]

Storage... well actually transmission, since there really is no "electrical storage", per se.

We still use the same old technology we have been using since we harnessed electricity.

Current through refined metal.

A better mousetrap for using electricity would probably save the day. Capturing and utilizing the majority of the electricity we generate would extend known resources for a very long time.

Not to mention the application in solar and other low yield sources.

[guest]

If we can't manage high quality storage, then maybe we could use new technology to manage demand.

New appliances could be equipped with a small radio receiver and microprocessor that could adjust the operation of the device according to local electricity demand.

E.g. your fridge/freezer would automatically adjust their temperatures up a couple of degrees as the late afternoon peak comes - essentially shutting those appliances off for a couple of hours. Once the peak has come and gone, the temperatures reset to normal so your food doesn't spoil.

Or you put your washing in the washing machine, and set it to have it done by the next morning. It could then automatically select the most appropriate time to start the cycle based on lowest energy cost.

In a similar vein ... I agree the demand side is the place to make the change. You don't need radio receivers, just just the power conduits themselves to distribute load changing signals, since you can use power lines to transmit information.

The scheme would work like this: The power company would transmit on the wire the current price per/KWh, which would vary depending on the amount of power available and the demand for that power. This would feed into the meter, which the homeowner could program depending on how much he or she is willing to pay per KWh. So for example, if suddenly the price spiked up to $2/KWh, and the homeowner had set the cut-off to $1, then automatically a signal would be sent via the home wiring for all the power hogs (water heater, fridge, hot tub, a/c, etc.) to go into low electricity mode. The price would keep going up and up until a certain point all appliances would be shut off except absolutely necessary appliances.

With a system like this perhaps solar/wind powered grids would be possible. For hospitals, glass factories/refineries/etc. that cannot lose power, they could have ethanol powered backup generators.

It's not a perfect system, but it seems like it has the possibility making renewables work.

[lowem]

Giant ultra-capacitors, huge banks of lead-acid batteries, some breakthrough in Li-Ion, or NiMH, compressed air under the ground, electrolysis to split water into H2 and O2 ... what's best?

World's largest battery can backup a portion of the grid for 7 minutes, what a laugh :
http://www.jroller.com/page/lowem/20030 ... st_battery

We're at least two (!!) orders of magnitude away from approaching really usable energy density levels.

[Geology_Guy]

Most high grade ores are mined out. We could get some lead for batteries etc. from recycling I guess, but it is something to think about.

Most nickel, iron, silver mines etc. are low grade nowdays and the mining consists of very large open pits or deep underground tunnels with large amounts of machinery and huge trucks to haul and process the low grade ore-very energy intensive.

Modern ore metal mining faces the same problems as oil- new fields are smaller, deeper, and lower in grade.

[Devil]

The only technological miracle would be to persuade people that technology does not have an ideal answer or really any answer at all. In the short term, conservation (e.g., maximum recycling, replacing all current vehicles with low-consumption ones etc.) is a must. In the medium term, persuading the people that nuclear fission is a necessity as a back-up for renewable energy. In the long term, exploring new manners of generating, conserving and exploiting energy.

It is the people, not the technology, that holds back progress. This is where democracy cannot work because there are always powerful lobbying groups and elected representatives do not wish to be seen making unpopular decisions against how the populace's pea-brained mind conceives what the lobbyists say.

[Licho]

I think it wil be next generation of fission reactors. And later, nuclear fusion (either hot or cold) hitting market..
I don't see other advances (renewables, storage, fuel cells) as a true "miracle".

[OilBurner]

I apologise for diverting from the spirit of the original post but forget technological breakthroughs.
What we need are sociological breakthroughs. For people to accept wind turbines rather than whinge about them, for people to willingly chose more efficient lightbulbs, car and applicancies.
For offices to employ teleworking rather than forcing hundreds of employess to drive hundreds of miles each day.

If we can make these things happen (and more), then any vorsprung durch technik will be a bonus, not a requirement.

However, back to the original idea, I think fast breeder nuclear programs hold the most promise for the future. Not that I am a fan of nuclear technology, but it's just what I feel has the most real world future, that is in 20-30 years time. Can we wait that long?

[gg3]

All of the above. But don't put fridges on a cutout circuit, you're asking for a dysentery epidemic. The fridge should be the last thing to cut out, as a simple matter of public health & disease prevention. The first thing to cut out should be entertainment devices of all kinds, followed by nonessential lighting, non-health-critical appliances, (etc...).

Here's a sociological breakthrough for you: to get the financial and political axes of decision to willingly subordinate themselves to the engineering axis. We can build safe and reliable nuclear reactors, multi-megawatt wind turbines, and utility-scale PV installations, but the only reason these things aren't happening is a) citizens are irrationally scared, and b) investors are irrationally scared.

Get rid of the irrational fear and much will be solved.

[Devil]

Fridges and freezers should be able to withstand power outages of up to 24 hours with zero food spoilage. This is a matter of design (adequate insulation and automatic locks that prevent opening during outages).

This is very possible, in fact easy, at little extra cost and, at the same time, will reduce power consumption.

That having been said, I grew up in the 1930s without a fridge and never suffered from dysentery. They are luxuries and not essentials.

[gg3]

My mom grew up with an "ice box" that depended on ice delivery, which in turn used water and required transportation. There was also a milkman who delivered milk daily (in returnable bottles), and a grocery store one block away.

Simplest thing to do about reducing the energy consumption needed for refrigeration is to build a super-insulated unit with its door on the top, so the cold air doesn't slosh out on the floor when opened. Then you don't need to have the doors lock up during a power outage.

This in turn will either require more square footage of floor space for the same amount of storage as a present fridge; or will use the same amount of floor space as today's fridge, for a smaller amount of storage. The latter is certainly preferable to no home refrigeration.

In our community planning group discussions, what I think we may end up with is something like large central refrigeration associated with a dining commons, and then very small fridges in individual households for keeping daily essentials such as milk, butter, eggs, etc. (typically breakfast items) that can be replenished from the common supply frequently.

Can anyone comment on the current state of the art of LED lighting? Has it reached the point where it's economically reasonable and functionally acceptable?

[Devil]

In our community planning group discussions, what I think we may end up with is something like large central refrigeration associated with a dining commons, and then very small fridges in individual households for keeping daily essentials such as milk, butter, eggs, etc. (typically breakfast items) that can be replenished from the common supply frequently.

Have you thought that small fridges guzzle energy, for a given payload, much faster than big uns?

[MarkR]

Can anyone comment on the current state of the art of LED lighting? Has it reached the point where it's economically reasonable and functionally acceptable?

Current LED lighting's main selling points are size and long life. Efficiency is also important for coloured light sources.

I've got some state of the art LEDs sitting on my desk at the moment (Luxeon III), which I've been experimenting with.

They are very expensive (I paid about $US 15 each, although in bulk they go for about $8-10 for a 3W LED). For the white ones the efficiency is about the same as good quality tungsten or average quality halogen. You will therefore gain little by using them in domestic lighting, and replacing fluorescents may well be a backward step. Colour quality of the white LEDs is improving, especially with the new 'warm white' varieties - however, they still have the slightly odd colour rendition of fluorescents.

However, where coloured light is required, coloured LEDs are hugely more efficient than white lights with coloured filters. E.g there are significant energy savings in replacing lamps in traffic signals with LEDs.

However because the LEDs are very small (mine are a bit smaller than the nail on my pinky) then can be used for very precise illumination - so avoiding wasting light by directing light away from where it is not necessary.

In short, they're not a realistic replacement for bulk lighting at present. However, for certain applications like signage or task lighting there may be genuine advantages. Their unique electronic controllability also means that they are increasingly used in stage lighting (think lamps that can change to any colour at any brightness instantaneously under computer control) however the price is positively terrifying.

[gg3]

Devil, we're looking at the tradeoff between unit-efficiency and overall energy consumption.

Agreed, smaller units are generally less efficient; more surface area per unit of enclosed area necessarily makes them so, regardless of technologies deployed (that is, any technology for making a refrigerator more efficient will make a larger one more efficient than a smaller one).

However, if an individual or family only needs to store a small amount of food on a daily basis, then the overall balance may favor that approach. A family of four needs a larger fridge than a single adult or couple, etc.

Think in terms of "passenger miles per gallon," a minivan gets 20mpg but if it's got six passengers, the effective efficiency is 120 passenger miles per gallon. On the other hand, a moped gets 80, and seats one person. So if you have five or more people to carry, the minivan makes more sense; but if you have a single person, the moped makes more sense.

This is an issue that will probably have to be dealt with empirically, i.e. designing as appropriate for each household.

Mark, interesting information. For whatever reason, I had believed that LEDs were overall more efficient than even CFs. So much for that hypothesis. Seems to me there are three essentials for indoor lighting. One, most important: No Flicker!, old fluorescent flicker is a known cause of poor concentration and fatigue, since it is at the first harmonic of the normal waking brainwave frequency. Two, indirect lighting indoors is a must, to cut down on sharp contrast shadows and glare that can exacerbate various visual perception problems. Three, color balance, though less important than the first two in work areas, still has a significant impact on interpersonal interaction (old fluorescent blue makes people look downright cadaverous).

In any case, the current generation of CFs are more than adequate in all three. So, one less problem for us to research.