Your video, Kickstarting A Hydroelectric Turbine, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

No Netflix for me, and no luck on a quick search of torrents, but I'll keep my eye out for that show/series.

Many metrics to compare. Ecologically, that system sounds great for static locations with enough of an elevation gradient and reservoir areas to make it work. On the other hand it seems like the ecological damage done by constructing batteries, factories, and disposing of them is likely quite small compared to many other alternatives, particularly fossil fuels (which also have long-term scarcity concerns on top of plenty of other issues).

A major advantage of battery tech over hydro storage would be mobility. If the thing consuming energy doesn't sit in one place, hydro storage won't work. Another somewhat less significant advantage is the ability to install anywhere -- a battery farm recharged by mains and/or a solar/wind farm could be installed in places where hydro storage couldn't. And for one more item in favor of batteries, I'd wager that the land area footprint required for batteries is much smaller per kWH stored, although that might be wrong for extremely large reservoirs (ie. a hydroelectric dam, pretty much). But by the time you're getting to that large scale, the location requirements and ecological disruption are also much more extreme.

Anyway, I don't mean to pooh-pooh the idea of hydro storage -- it really does seem like a very good and ingenious idea where it would be applicable. But there's certainly room for improved battery tech, too. I don't think that we're going to get fully or even significantly weaned off of fossil fuels quite as fast as the video would have us hope for, either. Fossil fuels were the primary tool in our toolbox for a LONG time. And as the saying goes, since all we've had is that "hammer", we've started to think of everything as a nail.

I'm intrigued by the different strategies they seem to have taken with regards to different markets.

The US market has been covered here already. Living off the grid, buffer for power outages, etc.

But they appear to market the Powerwall as a decentralized buffer system for our regional/national grid, as a means to shave off the spikes in power usage at times when both wind and solar fail to meet expectations. Seems like a virtual power plant of Powerwalls would be an alternative to gas turbine plants. Add some pumped-storage hydroelectricity in Norway and the Alps, and the need for standby power plants would be vastly reduced.

Additionally, they are probably aiming at the time when diminishing feed-in tariffs for PV panels make it more attractive to charge batteries instead of feeding into the grid.

However, even if they manage to sell only a handful of Powerwalls, it'll force all the other players to get off their fat asses for once. Politics managed to kill the local solar industry and the big players came up with fuck all in terms of meaningful innovation over the last years.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Siemens!

@RedSky

I'd like to know how you expect to quintuple the availability of every vital resource in the next 50-100 years while somehow reducing the environmental impact of that necessary increase to what you acknowledge needs to be less than the present level. This is supernatural thinking. Corporations don't pollute, incidentally, the fundamental structure of our global society pollutes; which would be no problem whatsoever if there were fewer of us.

It's fine if you'd prefer to just keep the majority of the world in mediaeval poverty, or alternatively impoverish everyone equally; colossally immoral, but by contrast actually physically possible.

Our success as an organism has been implicitly tied to energy availability for our entire history. The bubble of economic and technological advancement we've ridden since the industrial revolution is driven by unprecedented access to energy in the form of irreplaceable fossil fuels. It requires continual investment of energy to maintain. The practical exploitability of wind, solar, wave, geothermal and hydroelectric sources combined doesn't come close, not even close to the demand we'll place on them with population on the scale you're quite comfortable to allow. Fissile materials are limited and similarly irreplaceable; we've been steadily failing to develop fusion power for sixty years.

The innovation of new sources of energy is not guaranteed, unless you have some new breakthrough in physics you'd like to share? Efficiency gains are strictly limited.

If you think we'll have the ability to support billions of people on a sustainable basis at some time in the future, well great, LET'S WAIT UNTIL WE HAVE THAT ABILITY BEFORE WE BET EVERYTHING ON IT.

>> ^direpickle:

@GeeSussFreeK: The idea isn't that you run the entire country off of batteries at night. The grid will be a mix of nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc. etc. power. When demand spikes above what the renewables are currently producing, that's when the stored energy has to make up the difference. There's never going to be a time when the batteries are supplying all of the power.
I don't necessarily think batteries are the answer, but you're still attacking straw men.


There no meaningful difference from what you are saying they will be used for and what I am saying they will be used for. If 20% of your grid is alternative, and as a result, unreliable, you need to be able to A) store 20% of the grid at all times or B) Have 120% capacity in the reliable sources. 20% of the empire state building for an hour of power is still pretty unreasonable.

I never suggested that your running the country on batteries at night, that is your own straw man back at me. Besides, renewables are fully incapable at providing their own max power in the day time as well. Power is about reliability, but I digress.

@GeeSussFreeK: The idea isn't that you run the entire country off of batteries at night. The grid will be a mix of nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc. etc. power. When demand spikes above what the renewables are currently producing, that's when the stored energy has to make up the difference. There's never going to be a time when the batteries are supplying all of the power.

I don't necessarily think batteries are the answer, but you're still attacking straw men.

Another thermodynamic possibility for reducing global mean temperature is using wind/solar power to shoot giant lasers into space. But it may be a wash due to solar power's effect on albedo and wind power's effect on convection. Hydroelectric power would be legit for that but not available in sufficient quantity to make a difference.

It's probably just an inlet for a hydroelectric plant or something of the sort. It's like nature finds the path of least resistance and starts a vortex or something.

You drive that car up here in the Northwest, good chance that you are getting your energy from hydroelectric sources in the first place, making a truly electric car very enticing to those who live in this region.

>> ^joedirt:
"Not a single drop of gasoline"
WHAT A DUMB CUNT!
You know how much more petroleum is wasted by converting to AC, transmitting to your house, then charing your car, then storing in DC batteries.
What an ignorant fuck, compared to refining oil, shipping gasoline to gas station, then filling up a car. Even with a horrible burn ratio in a combustion engine (most of the energy goes into heat and friction), your petroleum goes a ton further.
(Now if Tom Hanks had a video about his solar power plant in his backyard, this would be a different story, but CA steals all its power from other states like a big welfare mom.. and that power is mostly coal and oil.


Here's the difference though...you have a petroleum based car and that is your only option...petroleum. You have an electric car and then your options are wide open...coal and oil? Sure...but your not limited to just that..solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric, hydrogen, manure, geothermal, etc... Some of these things such as wind or solar are things that you could conceivably generate yourself.

No, I just believe that if you are going to take the time to do something, it should be done the best way possible.

All around the world people turned off their lights for an hour, but completely neglected the fact that power plants don't just turn off when people hit a light switch.

Nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, coal...these sources of power are constantly running according to peak demand, and cannot be turned off at 8:30 and then instantly brought back online at 9:30. Electricity is not stored, so when people don't use it...it just gets wasted. Thus, even if electricity demand slightly decreased during "Earth Hour"...electricity production, and thus emissions, stayed exactly the same -- and all the electricity which could have been spent on useful work lighting peoples rooms was just wasted as millions of people stared at computer screens in the dark. Add to that fact the millions of candles that were likely burned in the process.

If we are to raise awareness, how about we raise awareness about how electricity production works? Or if you really want to save the planet how about a "ride your bike to work day" or "form a carpool day" which would raise environmental awareness and make a real difference.

>> ^rougy

You're just being a contrarian.

^Plenty of hydroelectric possibilities with cows pissing in the wind. Think outside of the box, hippie.

"Some blame deregulation for the rolling blackouts, soaring spot market prices, and utility bankruptcies that sprang from the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. But this anger is misplaced. California has never experienced true deregulation. The "deregulation" implemented in 1996 left price controls in place and created "artificial" markets ripe for manipulation and disparities between supply and demand.

By setting price caps below market prices, California limited the profitability of the industry. When wholesale energy costs increased, the price caps prevented energy producers from passing them on to consumers. Wholesale prices rose dramatically for a number of reasons: natural gas prices rose, hot weather in the Southwest increased demand, a relative lack of water in the Northwest minimized the production of hydroelectric energy, and pollution-control permits, which allow industrial companies that produce less pollution than allowed by regulations to sell the difference as "credits" to higher-pollution-producing companies, rose ten-fold, from $4 to $40.

The price caps additionally discouraged potential producers from entering the market and increasing competition, and they discouraged existing producers from investing profits in adding capacity, of which Californians were (and continue to be) in dire need. As a result of the price caps and pressure from politicians and environmentalists, the building of plants and transmission lines slowed dramatically and energy producers were not able to keep up with demand, particularly in the Silicon Valley, where the booming computer and "dot-com" industries led to even sharper increases in electricity demand."

Source: http://mises.org/story/1954

>> ^schmawy:
Do you know who the "golden business boy" line is referring to, Calvados? Mayor or the like I'd assume.
Great as always.


Your great taste in music never ceases to amaze, my schmaws And indeed I do know, as would any Winnipeggian:

The Golden Boy, a magnificently gilded 5.25M (17.2-foot) figure, is probably Manitoba's best known symbol. Embodying the spirit of enterprise and eternal youth, he is poised atop the dome of the [Manitoba Legislature] building. He faces the north, with its mineral resources, fish, forest, furs, hydroelectric power and seaport, where his province's future lies. -- http://www.gov.mb.ca/legtour/golden.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Boy_(Manitoba)

By the way, another WT song -- a poignant one -- that heavily references the Peg and which you ought to like is "Night Windows". So far there's no good vid for it, but here is the audio and the lyrics, do tell me how you dig:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a-NQ8QZhfM
http://lyricwiki.org/The_Weakerthans:Night_Windows

First of all, that eye tick is really freakin me out. Mine ticks at times as well and it really bugs the heck out of me. I can't imagine how bad that one must be driving her nuts.

Second, it's really not worth going into all of this guys arguments in a forum like this but I have to pick a few out.

1) "To call it global warming is correct, but almost a misnomer. What we are really doing is adding immense amounts of energy to a system..." Interesting attempt an an explanation here. I think he was attempting to say something along the lines of "... adding CO2 to the atmosphere means that more solar energy is retained by the system." I think it is important not to give approximations or short answers in a discussion like this.

2) 80% reduction in CO2 emissions? Good luck with that. Good of him to start with an easily attainable goal. I don't care that he does mean by 2050. It's not likely to happen without a dramatic new discovery in energy production.

3) I went to the web site he is pimping. Nowhere on it does it explain how we are to achieve these goals in a realistic manner. It has fluff like "More biofeuls, hydropower, solar, and wind" but it also says "eliminate current generation of nuclear plants and do not license new ones." Energy demands in the US and worldwide are steadily increasing. Even with conservation, the rate of increase will only slow not reverse. There isn't enough fresh water on the planet to replace fossil fuels with biofeuls, nor is there enough arable land to grow all these miracle fuels. Hydroelectric power has been under attack for decades because of the damage it does to natural systems and neither solar nor wind are realistically economical or practical to replace a substantial portion of fossil fuels. Demands to "fix the planet now" are all well and good, but you need to provide realistic solutions rather than pie-in-the-sky platitudes.

In my opinion, the best hope for a major shift in the production of energy will be development of a practical cellulosic ethanol production system. Until that happens, we are going to need to invest in energy sources that have at least the potential of meeting our needs.