tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2156536327610779049.post6255164220098460674..comments2024-02-23T11:23:45.971-05:00Comments on Lost Motorcyclist: Do We Really Have to Pay the US to Take Our Electricity?Lost Motorcyclisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08873504561959138792noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2156536327610779049.post-11895599768189912572012-02-17T09:09:27.280-05:002012-02-17T09:09:27.280-05:00Once upon a time, electricity generation was relat...Once upon a time, electricity generation was relatively simple. We opened the sluices, the turbines spun and electricity came out. When demand began to exceed the output from those hydroelectric sources, we simply burned some coal.<br /><br />Nuclear power, of course, was going to be so cheap that we wouldn't even need to meter it. But then bad things happened. No one seemed to be able build a nuclear plant without going 50%, or 100% or even more, over budget. And it turned out that nuclear power, per Kwh, was more expensive than other sources.<br /><br />And then even worse things happened ... Windscale, Kyshtym, Three Mile Island, Tsuruga, Chernobyl, Tomsk-7, Fukushima-Daiichi. And even Tom Adams was a long-time opponent of nuclear energy.<br /><br />There is no longer any simple solution to electricity production. Our grid will become more complicated as the proportion of power generated by 'variable' sources such as wind and solar increases. That's just the 'reality' of the thing.<br /><br />Demand reduction through conservation has not yet been thoroughly exploited, although the most obvious approach, adjusting rates to 'real cost,' is unpopular with consumers (and, thus, an easy political football for the anti-renewable crowd). <br /><br />But the most significant technical hurdle is bulk energy storage. As long as the grid provides no buffering capabilities, generation must track demand in real time - something 'variable' sources have a problem with.<br /><br />However, although there is a broad range of emerging technologies for grid storage, these have yet to scaled up (or even demonstrated to be capable of upscaling). Sodium-sulfur (and other) battery technologies have shown promise. Hydrogen, pumped water and dam uprating offer some solutions. Thermal solutions, such as molten salt, have been demonstrated to be very efficient. As electric vehicles become more common, <b>V2G</b> (vehicle to grid) offers possibilities. <br /><br />But the answer is not to <i>throw the baby out with the bathwater</i> as Adams appears to propose. But to invest in technology that allows us to make effective use of those, unfortunately variable, renewable energy source.Madeyehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02593933575568389288noreply@blogger.com