Bitter Debate...renewables vs traditional

[hamsamich]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-power-grid-debate-20170620-story.html

interesting...especially the part about how Jacobson's study takes credit for an extra 1000 GW of hydro power by 2050 (at times of high need only) when there is only 12 GW supposedly available in untapped dam resources across the US.  Yes it is kinda comparing apples to oranges when you call it short term, but having enough turbine generators and upgrading transmission lines to go up to 1000GW from 100GW for only short periods of time at existing dams seems cray cray and could you really spread it out evenly to different parts of the country where it belonged?   what am I missing here?

gives a nod to how important nuclear could be in the future in a realistic energy portfolio.

[Ksheed]

I'll take all the info with a grain of salt, or maybe a dump-truck load...


These credentials don't hold much weight with me:

"We thought we had to write a peer reviewed piece to highlight some of the mistakes and have a broader discussion about what we really need to fight climate change," said lead study author Christopher Clack of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory. "And we felt the only way to do it in a fair and unbiased way was to go through peer review, and have external referees vet it to make sure we're not saying anything that's untrue in our piece."


Clack is backed in the study by a number of noted colleagues including prominent climate research Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, energy researcher Dan Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, and former EPA Science Advisory Board chair Granger Morgan.

[hamsamich]

So you think the opposite...that we can go 100% renewable by 2055?  I don't thnk so.

[SloGlo]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-power-grid-debate-20170620-story.html

interesting...especially the part about how Jacobson's study takes credit for an extra 1000 GW of hydro power by 2050 (at times of high need only) when there is only 12 GW supposedly available in untapped dam resources across the US.  Yes it is kinda comparing apples to oranges when you call it short term, but having enough turbine generators and upgrading transmission lines to go up to 1000GW from 100GW for only short periods of time at existing dams seems cray cray and could you really spread it out evenly to different parts of the country where it belonged?   what am I missing here?

gives a nod to how important nuclear could be in the future in a realistic energy portfolio.

tidal turbine generation comes two mine...

[GLW]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-power-grid-debate-20170620-story.html

interesting...especially the part about how Jacobson's study takes credit for an extra 1000 GW of hydro power by 2050 (at times of high need only) when there is only 12 GW supposedly available in untapped dam resources across the US.  Yes it is kinda comparing apples to oranges when you call it short term, but having enough turbine generators and upgrading transmission lines to go up to 1000GW from 100GW for only short periods of time at existing dams seems cray cray and could you really spread it out evenly to different parts of the country where it belonged?   what am I missing here?

gives a nod to how important nuclear could be in the future in a realistic energy portfolio.

pie in the sky,...

fully 25% plus of all dams which exist in the USA are at high to significant levels of hazard potential,...

what the author of the article fails to mention is that to utilize these (or any existing dams) for electricity production, those dams will first have to be "brought up to code",...

the expectation for most of the deficient dams is to allow their return to "wild river" status as they age, not to spend billions turning into trillions to bring them up to code and then electrify them,...

the article's projections are a financial non-starter:

in the last eight years the government has plunged ten trillion dollars deeper into debt,...

as much money has been debited to the national credit card in the last 8 years as in the preceding 225+ years,...

over the last ten years for every dam refurbished under federal aid programs to non-deficient or low hazard deficient status, another two dams have slipped into a significant hazard or a high hazard deficiency status primarily due to age and regulatory standard creep as per the National Inventory of Dams (NID),...

the average age for the 84,000+ dams in the US of A is >50 years old (not all dams are listed, inspected or classified in the NID),...

and with all of this money spent, and what improvements have been made, the number of deficient dams in increasing, not decreasing,...

we simply cannot afford the author's projections,...

on a side note:

the federal government has many dams owned and/or regulated by various federal agencies,...

these total to about 37200 dams (there are  ~80,000 dams in state, local or private hands),...

of these federal dams ~4600 are deficient and pose a high hazard to downstream communities,...

~3400 are deficient and pose a significant hazard to downstream communities,...

9 of these federal dams are NRC dams, none (as in 0) of these NRC dams pose a high or significant hazard to downstream communities,...

the NRC is the ONLY federal agency to have ZERO dams in either a significant hazard or high hazard deficiency status,...

ALL dams pose at least a low hazard to downstream communities, there is no 0 hazard associated with dams,...

I could go on, but you should be getting the picture,...

it's a non-starter, we cannot afford it,...

[hamsamich]

I guess until I read this article I didn't realize these 100% renewable plans were going to try to upgrade existing hydro plants to be able to operate at 10 times normal power for short bursts to make up for high load conditions on the grid.  Sounds untenable and extremely expensive to actually make it work.  I wonder what other BS is in there besides the obvious BS.

[Ksheed]

So you think the opposite...that we can go 100% renewable by 2055?  I don't thnk so.

I didn't say that. Just saying NOAA researchers, UC of Berkeley researchers, and former EPA big shots are bought and paid for by the administration or donor group that funds their research. I feel the same about the research they are rebuffing.


Any further discussions toward this line of thinking would have someone (probably Marlin) slapping us into PolySi...


The short answer is that if they honestly believe the US grid can survive on renewables alone, someone needs to send them to FFD testing.

[GLW]

...The short answer is that if they honestly believe the US grid can survive on renewables alone,..........

There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept....

[hamsamich]

Ah I see....the inept rebuffing the inept...I still like some points they made.

[hamsamich]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-run-only-wind-water-171617037.html

more about the same but more in depth.  even if they are all crazy crack smoking liberal epa noaa guys I like how they are debunking the dream of 100% renewable by 2050.  when even the noaa epa guys are saying can't be done, says something.

mostly I don't have anything against where a person got his upbringing....it's what they have to say now that counts the most for me.

seems like they are sounding an alarm so the whole enviro-weenie herd doesn't run off the cliff with all our power producing infrastructure before it's really time, which might actually be 100 years from now, if ever.  for sure not 35 years.

[Ksheed]

Ah I see....the inept rebuffing the inept...I still like some points they made.

Exactly. I like some of the points as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-run-only-wind-water-171617037.html

more about the same but more in depth.

Yahoo news is more in depth? Now THAT says something about the initial report.


It is nice to see some of these "climate scientists" staring to speak out against the claims of how renewable energy will save the world from eminent destruction. May have something to do with the changing of the guard in Washington.

[hamsamich]

I just meant the article had more to offer, extra info, every thing I say isn't a political commentary.  Like I said, if someone has something good to say, I will listen no matter the source.

[Ksheed]

I just meant the article had more to offer, extra info, every thing I say isn't a political commentary.  Like I said, if someone has something good to say, I will listen no matter the source.

It was just a little sarcasm directed at Yahoo, not you.


http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2017/06/21-experts-debunk-radical-claim-about.html

[hamsamich]

no prob bro!  yahoo does lean left, but you can find quite a bit of good stuff in the news feed that isn't like that.  they even have fox news stuff.