In the Event of WW3, Oil and/or Renewables?

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 hours ago, LiamP said:

What an interesting range of topics all in one thread! My two cents...

That deagel prediction. I noticed they offered some explanation of their US model right there on their site. The gist of it is there'll be a financial system collapse followed by full on Soviet Union style collapse and breakup. Only it'll be much worse than that as the US has so much further to fall than the Soviets did. That will lead to mass death and also mass migration to Latin America and Asia, hence we arrive at their rather high population decrease!

Not sure how that applies to the UK, but apparently it does as we are down an even higher percentage than the US, leaving only 15 million!! Hmmm that might be the most compelling reason yet for me to consider ever going back to live there! They've been predicting this since at least 2014, likely longer, so they're kinda running out of time for it all to happen. I don't think even Trump getting another term will see 200 million plus move to South America or Asia! So yeah - batshit crazy is my assessment.

Astrology. Well I don't wish to offend anybody, and perhaps this isn't the place for a debate on the merits of astrology, but I will offer my thoughts on the linked video. Most of what he says was typically vague, as astrological predictions have to be - start being specific and surprise surprise the 'accuracy' goes down. Keep it vague and it's much easier to fit something that actually happens to the prediction post fact. I note a more specific prediction he made was the price of oil going up. Hmmm.

Some vague stuff about disease, especially in India, general geopolitical tensions - kinda hard to be wrong there. WW3 that didnt kick off in the timeframe given. And the timeframe coinciding with the start in China and the lifting of Wuhan lockdown? Wuhan lockdown ending is a pretty irrelevant event in the still ongoing pandemic in the grand scheme of things. There's always gonna be some event you can find correlation with - if he had said May instead you could tie that to, say, lockdowns lifting in europe, and wow he's still right!

If people could really be psychic, or the sky told us stuff, I think the worst global pandemic in 100 years is a big one to miss. I dunno, I just would have thought some clearer messages would have come from the spirit world or be written in the stars about this one! That the few 'stars' in the night sky that appear to move around would have some special meaning seems like a rational idea thousands of years ago when we knew literally almost nothing about the nature of what is out there, but it's the 21st century now - we know exactly what the planets are and also that their current positions have diddly squat to do with whether or not I should 'ask my boss about that promotion this week'. I remain unconvinced. 

AC vs DC. Some good information posted. You generally want to choose AC as it suits generation with rotating machines, and that includes most renewables except solar, it's easy to step up and down voltage for transmission and differing consumer requirements, and it's perfect for the big cheap motors that we use a hell of a lot of our energy for globally.

However, note that for a given current, the cable losses are actually higher for AC than for DC. That is because with DC you only have the resistive (I²R) losses, but for AC you also have reactive losses due to capacitance and inductance. What this means for long distance transmission is that it is a tradeoff between AC with higher cable losses but a saving as you don't need AC/DC conversion equipment, vs DC with lower cable losses but the need for conversion equipment. The result is short distances are more economical with AC, but there will be a length where DC takes over as the saving in cable losses pays for the extra equipment. That's the realm of HVDC.

I have recently finished working on a subsea cable project where the transmission length of 160 km happened to be right around the tipping point of AC vs DC being the best choice. The technical and economic discussions and calculations were extremely rigorous and interesting! In the end AC was chosen and it would be the longest AC subsea cable in the world. There had to be extraordinary scrutiny and control on the manufacturing of the cable to keep the capacitance down as if it wasnt up to spec it could have killed the economics of the project.

The actual topic of the thread! I agree with much of what has been posted. All depends on just how apocalyptic you are thinking. The war itself will depend heavily on fossil. Charge time and range makes electric pretty unfeasible for ground vehicles. At a stretch - vehicles developed with quick change batteries and the logistics to support that, but only really for light vehicles I would say. An electric aircraft with useful range and capacity not remotely feasible.

In the aftermath, depends what we're talking about. Without nuclear annihilation but just damage to energy infrastructure fossil will remain. In some places there might be more appetite to rebuild with renewable, so the inevitable transition would be hastened somewhat. If it's the apocalypse fossil could be gone forever - no extraction, no refineries, no power stations, no grid. Small scale localised renewables would be all we have.

Wow, the last HVDC break-even I saw was 600 km, but that was terrestrial.  I didn't dwell on the other losses with AC but especially underwater in a shielded conduit at high voltage the capacitance will be a bear. Did you guys use the lumped model to simulate? 

Don't know how many here read The Prize which is extremely clear how at least for the past several wars, oil was critical. People forget Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because they were busy stealing oil from the Dutch Indies and didn't want us taking it back. What they weren't counting on was the oil workers sabotaging the wells, and it took them the rest of the war to try to bring them back online. No expertise hurts, or as Red Adair said, "If you think I'm expensive, wait till you hire an amateur". Germany needed oil from Romania but there wasn't enough so the went for Russian oil. We all saw how that worked out. They had the good sense to try and grab North Africa oil with Rommel but didn't know exactly where it was (we did and so did the Brits). Again expertise counts.   

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

12 hours ago, LiamP said:

What an interesting range of topics all in one thread!

I had a feeling that the topic touched on so many discussions, and had the potential of tying them together, at least loosely.  Glad people are enjoying the debate.    

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

8 hours ago, Hotone said:

I played badminton and used to play hockey during school days.  It's interesting that you found too many times players were standing around and waiting in soccer games.  It must be due to injuries or fouls. The game doesn't pause for commercials.  It pauses for half time, but that is rule preceding advent of television broadcasting.

 

Oh yeah, I remember what you say is true, that they pretty much keep the clock running and the game playing continuously.  Must have been some injuries or something that I missed.  I'll admit I may have been more interested in the company conversations, food and drinks than the game.  Sorry for the miss.

[LiamP + 168]

10 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Wow, the last HVDC break-even I saw was 600 km, but that was terrestrial.  I didn't dwell on the other losses with AC but especially underwater in a shielded conduit at high voltage the capacitance will be a bear. Did you guys use the lumped model to simulate?

I wasnt involved back in the system design phase but saw and talked about much of it. I was brought on after contract award to the installation ctr and cable supplier to follow up the cable type testing, manufacture, installation and commissioning. Lumped element modeling used for certain aspects but the cable needed transmission line theory as the length is so significant. Cant be modeled as a single element as you have voltage current and phase all varying as you go along the cable. E.g. even with no load at the platform there would still be hundreds of A at the onshore end just energizing cable reactance.

It was a three phase cable bundled together and armoured. Each core with lead screen for water blocking mainly, so yeah significant capacitance. I think probably voltage was a factor too - for various reasons like the modest total MW demand, wanting to keep insulation diameter, and hence cable overall diameter, down so it isn't too big to install (180mm diameter cable as is), space and therefore cost concerns on the platform for the switchgear and TFs, plus safety, the voltage was 'only' 100 kV. So compared to 400 kV over land you have relatively higher current, lower voltage, plus the cable properties themselves as above, then cable loss is a bigger factor hence 160 km was pushing it for being an AC transmission. That's my guess anyway.

Edited June 8, 2020 by LiamP

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

3 hours ago, LiamP said:

I wasnt involved back in the system design phase but saw and talked about much of it. I was brought on after contract award to the installation ctr and cable supplier to follow up the cable type testing, manufacture, installation and commissioning. Lumped element modeling used for certain aspects but the cable needed transmission line theory as the length is so significant. Cant be modeled as a single element as you have voltage current and phase all varying as you go along the cable. E.g. even with no load at the platform there would still be hundreds of A at the onshore end just energizing cable reactance.

It was a three phase cable bundled together and armoured. Each core with lead screen for water blocking mainly, so yeah significant capacitance. I think probably voltage was a factor too - for various reasons like the modest total MW demand, wanting to keep insulation diameter, and hence cable overall diameter, down so it isn't too big to install (180mm diameter cable as is), space and therefore cost concerns on the platform for the switchgear and TFs, plus safety, the voltage was 'only' 100 kV. So compared to 400 kV over land you have relatively higher current, lower voltage, plus the cable properties themselves as above, then cable loss is a bigger factor hence 160 km was pushing it for being an AC transmission. That's my guess anyway.

Lol, I guess it's just how you young'uns look at the same world different than us old fogeys 

When I was talking about lumped elements I meant transmission line model. I worked with a company called Habia on an offshore design, they made an excellent (albeit expensive) cable.

[LiamP + 168]

4 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Lol, I guess it's just how you young'uns look at the same world different than us old fogeys 

When I was talking about lumped elements I meant transmission line model. I worked with a company called Habia on an offshore design, they made an excellent (albeit expensive) cable.

Lol. Yeah something like that! In my head a lumped-element model was where you'd lump the whole cable properties into a single 'component' (with R, L, C) so you wouldn't model any variation within the cable. A transmission line model is a distributed-element model where you model the cable with essentially infinite tiny elements to fully model what's happening along the cable, as in your link. We used both approaches depending on the type of analysis being done.

But you're probably more knowledgable than me - although my degree was electrical engineering I steered sharply away from that after graduation as I didnt feel it was for me. That was some time ago - looking at some of the mug shots here I might be a bit younger than some of the good fellows here, but I'm by no means a young'un!:) I've been more a mechanical engineer but now recently coming full circle back to electrical so it seems. But these days I'm not so much the one doing the calcs and producing the documents as the one reviewing/approving them, although my current project did require dusting off of cobwebs in parts of my brain that could do some basic electrical engineering calcs.

We're using some Habia cable in the current project but this one I've been talking about was made by the Swedes in Karlskrona that used to be ABB HV cables.

Might be enough off topic!

Edited June 8, 2020 by LiamP

[0R0 + 6,251]

On 6/7/2020 at 7:16 AM, Wombat said:

Doug, you know damn well that US shale and Canadian tar have never made a profit and will not do so until price of oil averages $70/bbl. As several articles on this site have pointed out, there is no longer any price of oil that is suitable to both producers and consumers. Most producers need that $70 bbl, but consumers can only afford up to $50. That is why oil industry is dying. It is no longer a sustainable business model, simple as that. I am sure there will be a temporary rebound in demand and prices as the global economy recovers slightly from covid, but you would be bonkers to think demand will recover completely, let alone that there will be record demand in a few years time like the International Energy Agengy predicts.

That is a very good observation just that the breakevens keep falling in the dollar points for both threshold shale values for profitable operation, and for for marginal consumer tolerance global average which is due to industrial oversupply problems that come from demographic inversion . The US breakeven in oil consumption is rising as the transition to NG goes on for displacing diesel. 

The main issue is that the global picture and the internal NAFTA picture are in opposition. Demographic inversion is the key difference. NAFTA is not inverted but has a decent balance of young adults to oldsters. Europe, Australia Japan Korea and China as well as the ASEAN Tigers (ex India Indonesia and Philippines which are only still borderline industrialized) are in terminal inversion of their demographics.

Inverted demographics means that you can only grow by exports. If the whole developed world is inverted, but for the US, then there is nowhere to export your excess. That is the basic global ex US condition. Which is excess capacity in a very big way, where demand is low relative to incomes and looking forward the incomes will fall once retirements kick in. By 2030 The Tigers, EU, Russians, Korea China retire . Japan is already an old folk's island.  Thus demand can only grow at lower prices (what happens in an oversupplied market). Thus any up blip in commodities immediately slows consumption as profitable production becomes impossible and high input costs cause higher prices with less demand followed by lower incomes (or higher unemployment) till commodities drop again.

In the US, the Millennials are a  broad long bump in population, not a dip as they are in China (all but 3 years worth of high births now centered on age 32) and worse in the rest of OECD. And after the hollowing out of US industry there is no US based excess capacity, so the US has the opposite problem. It has a demand hungry population, open vistas for investment opportunities at lower raw materials costs, and a lack of competing investment going forward due to its own boomer retirements.So it can absorb another decade's worth of investment from the savings for retirement of the OECD+China's younger boomers before they retire towards 2030.

That Millennial  demand has been stifled by high real estate costs in the big city job markets which also stunted student loan paydowns. Work from Home means that it is no longer necessary to move to silicon valley to be a programmer. Those incomes will be released to buy cheaper new housing in suburbia and small towns, an ongoing trend that has become a torrent. As pointed out elsewhere, the surveys indicate 28% of city residents can work from home away from the city, and want to do so. They are already looking for housing two and three counties further away from the city center if not across the state line.

[Hotone + 412]

On 6/7/2020 at 8:57 PM, Dan Warnick said:

Well, that's something.  I used to like to read my horoscopes when I read the newspaper.  It was like a free little pick-me-up and since it was private, it was harmless enough.  Just a nod of the head acknowledging there is hope for me (and the rest of my 1/12th of the world), and going about my day.  Nowadays, if you want your horoscope, you have to pay some yahoo to provide them.  I didn't and don't think they are that valuable.

In the case of this little guy, what if I'd have known about his prediction?  Well, I'd probably have been worried everyday about what was coming, with no idea how to prepare myself.  Not healthy, IMHO.

If you depend on income generated from America to fund your livelihood in Thailand, it's time to get a bit more serious with your financial hedging.  Things don't look good in the US, and this is not a post bashing America.  

[JoMack + 547]

On 6/6/2020 at 7:09 PM, Jay McKinsey said:

A nuke into Cushing, Henry Hub, and some of the big refinery complexes and power stations would take out fossil energy.  Solar and wind are very dispersed, what would the enemy target to nock them out?

Ultimately I don't think any energy system or the population to use it will really survive nukes flying so the question is academic. But the best answer I think would be to have as many energy types and locations as possible so that more would survive. 

In regard to bio weapons and huge loss of life it comes down to which is more manpower intensive. I don't know which is though my guess is fossil requires more workers.

HIt Cushing and the Gulf refiners.  The end.  SPR?  HA.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

6 hours ago, Hotone said:

If you depend on income generated from America to fund your livelihood in Thailand, it's time to get a bit more serious with your financial hedging.  Things don't look good in the US, and this is not a post bashing America.  

???  So there I was, having a friendly little discourse about horoscopes....

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 6/8/2020 at 9:39 PM, LiamP said:

We're using some Habia cable in the current project but this one I've been talking about was made by the Swedes in Karlskrona that used to be ABB HV cables.

Johan Sverdrup cable I guess? 

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 6/8/2020 at 2:57 AM, Ward Smith said:

 

Umm, how to explain. @footeab@yahoo.com Is correct, we've known DC sucks for transmission since Edison fought with Tesla (the man, not the car company). The problem is I^2R losses, (I) here being current. Power measured on watts equals I times V so you could deliver 100kw by sending 10 volts times 10000 amps or more intelligently send the reverse and reduce those I^2R losses. Easy to do with alternating current, DC? Not so much. HVDC works great, better than AC for long distances, which is how to deploy it. The conversion at the ends isn't the bad part, it's that there's no good way to have a circuit breaker. Technically you can run HVDC with one wire, the other "wire" is earth ground. Now imagine telling your million volts they have to stop. There's some cool videos on YouTube showing what happens. 

This is "simple" AC on the mains

 

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-transmission/transmission-products/gas-insulated/dc-gis.html

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 6/7/2020 at 10:09 AM, Jay McKinsey said:

A nuke into Cushing, Henry Hub, and some of the big refinery complexes and power stations would take out fossil energy.  Solar and wind are very dispersed, what would the enemy target to nock them out?

Ultimately I don't think any energy system or the population to use it will really survive nukes flying so the question is academic. But the best answer I think would be to have as many energy types and locations as possible so that more would survive. 

In regard to bio weapons and huge loss of life it comes down to which is more manpower intensive. I don't know which is though my guess is fossil requires more workers.

Interesting to go back to this discussion. The CCP didn't need EMP's or highly lethal biological weapons, just one that kills 0.12% of the pop'n was enough to destroy the economy and make 10's of millions of Americans unable to afford electricity? This is like a slow-moving train wreck. Govt debt and deficits are unsustainable and unpayable now but it will play out over at least a decade?

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-transmission/transmission-products/gas-insulated/dc-gis.html

Impressive.

[LiamP + 168]

7 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Johan Sverdrup cable I guess? 

Close. Martin Linge 

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

On 6/6/2020 at 7:01 AM, Dan Warnick said:

Given current world affairs, one must ask oneself...

China, the New World Order ("The Great Reset") 

and World War 3

I want to mention that James Corbett has spent many years researching geopolitical situations.  In November 2014, Corbett put out the video "China and the New World Order" with transcript which is well worth watching.  Many people do not recognize that it was BIG OIL and Rockefeller who helped to bring China to power.  That was the goal all along.  This jives with the documentaries "How and Why Big Oil Conquered the World"  https://www.corbettreport.com/bigoil/    which covers the oil industry's powerful owners from inception to the fake Climate Crisis and now "The Great Reset" with technocratic control, all documented with source material.  TRANSCRIPT-->  https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-297-china-and-the-new-world-order/

(Recorded in 2014)

In 2017, Corbett gave a talk entitled:  Echoes of WWI: China, the US, and the Next “Great” War.    https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-320-echoes-of-wwi-china-the-us-and-the-next-great-war/  

Below is a summary aspect of that talk.  It is very relevant today, because we are seeing it played out and is part of The Great Reset.

(20 minutes)

[BradleyPNW + 282]

Hey guys, if aliens attack solar farms and offshore wind doesn't that mean fossil fuels rule? 

PWND!

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

10 hours ago, Wombat said:

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-transmission/transmission-products/gas-insulated/dc-gis.html

Yes I'd seen that. Unfortunately they're shooting for 1.5MV HVDC, and the Siemens is only good to 550kv. I'm pretty sure the Chinese have already deployed 1.5mv in fact.