XOM Makes Breakthrough on Bio Fuel ...

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
What's free about solar?

The fuel.


So is wind and water, the latter by far, being the most efficient and longest lasting, oh, and isn't intermittent and can actually do baseload.


Fuel might be free, but you've got to use it efficiently and effectively.

SHOZ, I know that you don't care what the efficiency is (better than nothing you state), but you've got to do better than digging holes and filling them in to look busy/green.

http://www.theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/471651/catch-22-energy-storage

chart is the return on energy investment of a bunch of technologies...the 3.9 is Solar returning 3.9 times the invested energy over it's entire life...the 1.6 is buffered (with storage to even out it's fluctuations).

I KNOW that we can imagine 90% effcient solar cells with will increase that markedly...but imagining stuff is good doesn't make it so...

 

[SHOZ]

Just clarifying a point Shannow, don't take it wrong.....

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: SHOZ
Just clarifying a point Shannow, don't take it wrong.....


I could set up a peltier thermocouple array on the front and the back of my house, and generate electricity using "free" energy from the temperature differential too couldn't I ?

Why don't we do that ?

 

[nthach]

Didn't XOM demo an A380 or 747 running their biofuel mix on a major airline with the blessing of GE or Rolls-Royce on a transatlantic flight between JFK and Heathrow or that was someone else?

 

[claluja]

 

[SHOZ]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
What's free about solar?

The fuel.


So is wind and water, the latter by far, being the most efficient and longest lasting, oh, and isn't intermittent and can actually do baseload.

Yes you are right. I wonder why you asked?


I thought, given that I answered my own question in the part excepted from the post you quoted with a small tangent about hydro-electric, that it would be obvious the question was rhetorical

Far too many see "solar" as "free" because it doesn't require any fuel once installed, not considering we've had that with hydro-electric for well over 100 years. The same could be said for wind, though I find wind evangelists far less fanatical than those that are trying to Billy Mays you on the merits of solar while glossing over or completely skipping all the ancillary support expenses, something hydro-electric doesn't require.
What of all the "support" the hydros need for the reservoirs? How much land is sacrificed?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: SHOZ
What of all the "support" the hydros need for the reservoirs? How much land is sacrificed?


Depends on the type of hydro install. A run of the river install requires next to nothing, whilst something like the Hoover dam can flood quite a bit of land.

The big issue with hydro is having enough moving water. There are places where it simply isn't viable. Also, the type of install will be dictated by the demand. We have 5 small run of the river dams locally varying in size. On the opposite end of the scale Quebec has their massive James Bay project, which currently sits at over 16,500MW but could be expanded to 27,000MW, which was the total planned installed capacity. It produces 83TWh a year, or enough power to run Belgium.

To quote Wikipedia on the first part of the development:
Originally Posted By: Wikipedia
The period of construction of the first phase of the project covered about 14 years. By 1986, the largest power stations and reservoirs on the La Grande River were mostly completed, including the Robert-Bourassa (originally named La Grande-2), La Grande-3 and La Grande-4 generating stations, with an installed capacity of 10,800 MW, and five reservoirs covering an area of 11,300 km2


So yeah, it depends.

Hydro is the cheapest form of power, as Quebec and many others have proven. Quebec exports power at $0.045/kWh and makes a killing doing so.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: SHOZ
What of all the "support" the hydros need for the reservoirs? How much land is sacrificed?


Again, got to look at the big picture...


Firstly, as we'e discussed previously, hydro is dispatchable...the operators and grid decide when it delivers it's energy to the grid, not the sun/wind. They've got governors, so respond to frequency needs, largely automatically (initial response), and then can ramp up as required. Also, they add a lot of inertia to the system (crucial in riding through disturbances).

Second, life cycle...a hydro dam can be there forever. The individual turbine components can last 50+ years, and be replaced at small cost compared to the overall dam infrastructure. A solar farm will have to be torn down and replaced many times in the life of a dam.

Then there's the other factors that come with hydro
* irrigation/droughtproofing
* creating of aquatic environments
* tourism
* general public utility (boating, fishing, whatever)

That don't factor into the simplistic equation.

Didn't see too many people flocking to the solar towers in Arizona, but Hoover was packed and has tourist villages on the shoreline.