Renewables, the Grid, and Blackouts

[ronwagn + 6,290]

6 hours ago, NickW said:

One for Ron😁

Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA (carbonbrief.org)

The "unprecedented effort" statement is a genuine clue as to the motivation of the article. Note also in "most" countries. We are well north of the equator, as is Europe and Russia.

Claims are very easy to make and far harder to prove! Wind seems to be the American and European way to go. America, especially, should use its abundant natural gas right here at home and naturally build out wind (and solar in the South). That makes sense IF your claims are true. I am all for it If it is true. Show me. No "unprecedented effort" is needed. To say it is, is laughable. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

30 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

Hi @ronwagn

Do you have a VPN?

I just clicked over to a Sydney server and signed into my Netflix account.  Instant access to the Australia Netflix library.  Works for other services, public broadcasting, etc. too.  I can click on a New Zealand server, or just about anywhere else in the world for that matter.  2 clicks and you're there.

Thanks, I will give it a try! I would think they would go by my address though. 

[NickW + 2,714]

17 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

The "unprecedented effort" statement is a genuine clue as to the motivation of the article. Note also in "most" countries. We are well north of the equator, as is Europe and Russia.

Claims are very easy to make and far harder to prove! Wind seems to be the American and European way to go. America, especially, should use its abundant natural gas right here at home and naturally build out wind (and solar in the South). That makes sense IF your claims are true. I am all for it If it is true. Show me. No "unprecedented effort" is needed. To say it is, is laughable. 

For solar this is a good guide to what output you would get in different locations per KW of panel per year

A few examples in low wind locations

Florida  /Georgia - 1600kwh

Coastal Texas / Louisiana - 1500 kwh

New Mexico - 1950 kwh

Colorado 1970 kwh

 

Global Solar Atlas

 

Edited February 7, 2021 by NickW

[NickW + 2,714]

15 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

The "unprecedented effort" statement is a genuine clue as to the motivation of the article. Note also in "most" countries. We are well north of the equator, as is Europe and Russia.

Claims are very easy to make and far harder to prove! Wind seems to be the American and European way to go. America, especially, should use its abundant natural gas right here at home and naturally build out wind (and solar in the South). That makes sense IF your claims are true. I am all for it If it is true. Show me. No "unprecedented effort" is needed. To say it is, is laughable. 

The best locations for solar are not on the equator - too much cloud and too hot in the tropics. 

Best locations are high altitude locations. the best above the cloud base were its cool with very high rates of insolation  - The Chilean Andes, Tibet / Himalayas, 

[NickW + 2,714]

18 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

The "unprecedented effort" statement is a genuine clue as to the motivation of the article. Note also in "most" countries. We are well north of the equator, as is Europe and Russia.

Claims are very easy to make and far harder to prove! Wind seems to be the American and European way to go. America, especially, should use its abundant natural gas right here at home and naturally build out wind (and solar in the South). That makes sense IF your claims are true. I am all for it If it is true. Show me. No "unprecedented effort" is needed. To say it is, is laughable. 

Using wind and solar where its available and natural gas as a fill in preserves the use of this fuel for many generations. This is more equitable use of the resources for future generations. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

8 minutes ago, NickW said:

The best locations for solar are not on the equator - too much cloud and too hot in the tropics. 

Best locations are high altitude locations. the best above the cloud base were its cool with very high rates of insolation  - The Chilean Andes, Tibet / Himalayas, 

Thank you. I was thinking of our Southwest. 

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/09/the-best-place-for-harvesting-solar-energy-is-not-where-i-expected-it-to-be/

Edited February 7, 2021 by ronwagn

[NickW + 2,714]

1 minute ago, ronwagn said:

Thank you. I was thinking of our Southewst. 

High altitude bits of Southern Calif / New Mexico

[NickW + 2,714]

6 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Thank you. I was thinking of our Southewst. 

One of the best spots in the USA is just to the North of LA - look on Google maps and there are some pretty massive solar farms. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, NickW said:

One of the best spots in the USA is just to the North of LA - look on Google maps and there are some pretty massive solar farms. 

I have never seen any there, but would like to find a map of existing solar and wind maps worldwide. I just added a reference to a statement I made. https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/09/the-best-place-for-harvesting-solar-energy-is-not-where-i-expected-it-to-be/

Edited February 7, 2021 by ronwagn

[NickW + 2,714]

1 minute ago, ronwagn said:

I have never seen any there, but would like to find a map of existing solar and wind maps worldwide. I just added a reference to a statement I made. https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/09/the-best-place-for-harvesting-solar-energy-is-not-where-i-expected-it-to-be/

Go to Google maps and look to the NW of Lancaster (north of LA). Its a high altitude desert plateau

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

26 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Thanks, I will give it a try! I would think they would go by my address though. 

Netflix lets you do it, and my address and account are my Thai ones.  I switch regularly between 4 or 5 countries and go to the odd one when they are the only ones that are running a certain program I want to see.  I use ExpressVPN and it works a charm.  Been doing it all the time for the last 3 or 4 years.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

On 2/4/2021 at 2:08 AM, NickW said:

Those Volcanic eruptions (Laki, Tambora) are  orders of magnitude higher than anything that has happened in the last 200 years. The climate effect is a short term cooling caused by ash and sulphur aerosols

We know Pinatubo had a short term cooling effect in 91/92. 

As far as CO2 emissions from volcanoes go the emissions are minimal (<300 mt per year) 

Here is some data from Mt St Helens

Volcanic Pollution | (cuny.edu)

At peak its SO2 emissions were about 3500 tons a day. Even if that continued for a year it would be less than 5% of anthropogenic emissions in that same period. 

 

Not saying you are wrong, but your explanation is baldly incomplete.  Different volcano have completely different emissions.  Strato volcanoes generally speaking have lots of gas... but what type?  Also, some give off very little SO2, but are high in H2O etc but some can be just as potent as Cinder volcanoes etc.  Vast majority of all volcanoes are on the ocean floor for which we have no information on.  Very few active volcanoes are on land.  Vast majority of the CO2 in our system is in the ocean and we keep finding more of it and density of it keeps increasing within said ocean compared to the assumptions made for global warming by CO2 uptake, exhaling of the oceans. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

I have never seen any there, but would like to find a map of existing solar and wind maps worldwide. I just added a reference to a statement I made. https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/09/the-best-place-for-harvesting-solar-energy-is-not-where-i-expected-it-to-be/

Ron, farmers are going to intercropping(slowly but it is picking up steam instead of moncoulture) which gives the shade benefits, gives grazing cover crops, improves soil, drops needed insecticides, herbicides, decreases minerals needed, less water as well and allows the C3 type plants like corn/Hemp to get more sunlight and higher yields per plant.  What this means is less acerage required to be farmed, increased soil health, decreased input costs and frankly this would already be ~100M acres less if we were not wasting our crops in the USA for Ethanol.   If you did shading with solar panels instead you would not get the increased soil health, decreased input costs.  Now I have seen solar arrays placed on the edges of fields where  there is shading/weed problems, animal predation problems, but what many are starting to do is plant VERY thick stands of Hemp/Sudan Grass in these areas which does weed control, stop animal ingress, and is more suited for that partial shade environment. 

Every farmer will do the above and NOT solar.  Will they turn their VERY large sheds/barns/silos into solar arrays?  Sure, why not.  Cover their parking areas is what they will do LONG before shading their croplands.  Want shade?  They will just start planing more Pecan, Walnut, Olive, Avacado, Orange, Apple, Pear etc trees to provide intercropping shade.

Motherjones is about as observant on how reality works as academians who have never farmed.  Why?  Every farmer knows that EVERY place your tractor/combine has to swing around something, this is a giant weed magnet that you now have to take care of EVERY couple months creating MORE work and more herbicides and MORE time to avoid during ploughing, planting, fertilizing, pruning, pollinating, harvesting.  Why crop farmers HATE fences as you cannot get within half a meter of them if not more like 2 meters and this strip is just used as an accessway as all farmers already know it is going to be a major pain in the ass weed patch so may as well drive on it and allows one to put a sprayer on back and just drive the WHOLE strip.  This is what these geniuses as Oregon State and Motherjones are propossing to do but to put these damned "fences" AKA Solar pole supports every ~20ft in your field!  Of course you can't even BUY new a Wheat/peas/oat/milo/bean/corn/sunflower heads that narrow. 

Ok, rant off about dumb ignorant academians who should not be let out of their mothers basement...

PS: Everyone who has EVER worked in a greenhouse( I did for 4 years paying my way through college) knows the advantages of shade.  Especially when it is hot out.  How these genius's at Oregon state even needed a "study" to pretend that they "just found out" that solar panels could be used as crude shade cloth just like how a greenhouse does.... is beyond me. 

Edited February 7, 2021 by footeab@yahoo.com

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Ron, farmers are going to intercropping(slowly but it is picking up steam instead of moncoulture) which gives the shade benefits, gives grazing cover crops, improves soil, drops needed insecticides, herbicides, decreases minerals needed, less water as well and allows the C3 type plants like corn/Hemp to get more sunlight and higher yields per plant.  What this means is less acerage required to be farmed, increased soil health, decreased input costs and frankly this would already be ~100M acres less if we were not wasting our crops in the USA for Ethanol.   If you did shading with solar panels instead you would not get the increased soil health, decreased input costs.  Now I have seen solar arrays placed on the edges of fields where  there is shading/weed problems, animal predation problems, but what many are starting to do is plant VERY thick stands of Hemp/Sudan Grass in these areas which does weed control, stop animal ingress, and is more suited for that partial shade environment. 

Every farmer will do the above and NOT solar.  Will they turn their VERY large sheds/barns/silos into solar arrays?  Sure, why not.  Cover their parking areas is what they will do LONG before shading their croplands.  Want shade?  They will just start planing more Pecan, Walnut, Olive, Avacado, Orange, Apple, Pear etc trees to provide intercropping shade.

Motherjones is about as observant on how reality works as academians who have never farmed.  Why?  Every farmer knows that EVERY place your tractor/combine has to swing around something, this is a giant weed magnet that you now have to take care of EVERY couple months creating MORE work and more herbicides and MORE time to avoid during ploughing, planting, fertilizing, pruning, pollinating, harvesting.  Why crop farmers HATE fences as you cannot get within half a meter of them if not more like 2 meters and this strip is just used as an accessway as all farmers already know it is going to be a major pain in the ass weed patch so may as well drive on it and allows one to put a sprayer on back and just drive the WHOLE strip.  This is what these geniuses as Oregon State and Motherjones are propossing to do but to put these damned "fences" AKA Solar pole supports every ~20ft in your field!  Of course you can't even BUY new a Wheat/peas/oat/milo/bean/corn/sunflower heads that narrow. 

Ok, rant off about dumb ignorant academians who should not be let out of their mothers basement...

PS: Everyone who has EVER worked in a greenhouse( I did for 4 years paying my way through college) knows the advantages of shade.  Especially when it is hot out.  How these genius's at Oregon state even needed a "study" to pretend that they "just found out" that solar panels could be used as crude shade cloth just like how a greenhouse does.... is beyond me. 

It seems like it would be fine for pature though. Why not?

[ronwagn + 6,290]

3 hours ago, NickW said:

High altitude bits of Southern Calif / New Mexico

I definitely would not want any solar farms messing up scenic views all over. Probably not as bad as wind turbines though. Inobtrusive areas that few see are fine. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

37 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

It seems like it would be fine for pature though. Why not?

Would be awesome on pasture.  Especially dry acerage pasture. 

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,245]

5 hours ago, NickW said:

Best locations are high altitude locations. the best above the cloud base were its cool with very high rates of insolation  - The Chilean Andes, Tibet / Himalayas, 

You mean to make more "Eye Pollution" in the pristine mountains in Tibet?? sacrilegious !!!!!

[ronwagn + 6,290]

[JoMack + 549]

As the Keystone XL pipeline media coverage begins to fade, there are other pipelines on the chopping block.  The Dakota Access has been litigation with the Standing Rock Siuox Tribe since last year and Democrats in the Senate piled on to shutter the DAPL.  Running smoothly for 3 years, the tribe decided last year that it infringed on its lands although I believe the pipeline is a mile away.  Not certain, but it's another 530,000 barrels cut off from the Bakken.  The Line 5 and Line 3 pipelines are also down so as Biden continues his zero carbon emission goals and causing crude to move by trucks and rail, the DAPL looks like it's not going to be able to continue.

This is a cut and paste piece from a site called Common Dreams.  A far left wing publication that is pretty eyeopening and terrifying if you see the world though a lens of common sense.

As DeSmog noted Thursday, DAPL is facing more than just legal trouble: Westchester Fire Insurance Co. notified pipeline owner Energy Transfer in early January that it had lost a $250,000 "bond that Iowa, one of the four states it passes through, required the pipeline to maintain."

The 1,172-mile underground pipeline, which began operating in June 2017, transports 570,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken formation in North Dakota, through South Dakota and Iowa, to a terminal in Illinois.

Attorney Carolyn Raffensperger, director of the Science and Health Network, told DeSmog it could be tricky for Energy Transfer to replace the lost insurance coverage, especially given the court-ordered review.

"It will be difficult because the bond holder will require the pipeline to comply with all legal requirements," Raffensperger said. "If it is operating without a permit, any spill would be a big, big legal problem."

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 2/6/2021 at 4:19 PM, Wombat said:

Ha Ha, let's not waste each other's breath on that one! We will have to agree to disagree

 

My topic covers both sides but does have my slant overall. 

Global Warming AKA Climate Change and Just Plain Weather

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vHU2hHXebxpvExT7srNNnX-VM7Qn9Ak_ZmdKCIcUti8/edit#

[surrept33 + 609]

13 hours ago, NickW said:

The best locations for solar are not on the equator - too much cloud and too hot in the tropics. 

Best locations are high altitude locations. the best above the cloud base were its cool with very high rates of insolation  - The Chilean Andes, Tibet / Himalayas, 

keep in mind that we can also keep track of where the sun is (and other metadata related to the sun), the other way also (inversion of the luminosity or a much more complicated geometrical flux). for example, digital photography, despite capable of filtering (hard to pull off with classical photogrammetry, aka the instagram "effect") which mucks with where "photons" are, there is also other metadata. everything from actually geographical locations: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-identifiers.html

also, of the night sky, even if "pollution" caused by modern lighting wasn't there. we can see where "standard candles" are. also the other way, this is the cosmic background noise.

the temporal information usually also exists in the mtadata. to reconstructable "point cloud"-info that can be identified as physical buildings (this is where the "motion of the sun" relative to the earth and all the "gravitry" effects and "rotation" effects corrected for, can be triangulated usually by a maximum likelyhood statistical function, or some probabilistic argument where you can usually also analyze each "error" term). this is usually how a "atlas" is created. usually chaos theory helps weather prediction get better and better as long as the "density" of the original data distribution describing the (earth) model gets better and better (and we've also learned a lot about things like magnetics for example).

this is "just" spatial intuition btw. relatively simple if you're doing calculus on ensembles of differentiable manifolds many generations of measuring people have measured (for example, looking for oil due to faint oscillations and reverberations, measuring the heights of mountains, measuring time/pitch by signing, launching satellites to also beam low power positional info to each other. etc.

in fact, we can look hyperspectrally these days. sometimes we can also do morphological analysis (think for example, all of the movies one would want to see these days. imagine 100 year old movies. try attaching colors to black and white movies. or spoken word to silent movies. there could be an array or some sort of polynomial (spline or non-linear variant) some experts (or people with preferences!) can help correct. that's the current state of technology. 

also most likely next generation systems of chips (in silico) will likely also be able to track more precisely the effect of stuff like humidity, altitude, etc. 

can characterize it as for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_computing

virtualize every human idea/place/time/relation and create an reversible "ground state"/"not ground state" defn for it. you can create mathematical "models" with stuff like usage of automorphism groups and renormalization methods (or transformations between simplicial complexes, this often just helps fix notational issues between math and physics about where a unitary group starts on any slice of weirdly contorted pie). usually this speeds up the process by eliminating redundancy so a huge infinite-size hilbert spaces doesn't have to be created (sorry for all the technical jargon) and actual computation can be delayed for a long time. 

Edited February 8, 2021 by surrept33

[Wombat + 1,028]

1 hour ago, surrept33 said:

keep in mind that we can also keep track of where the sun is (and other metadata related to the sun), the other way also (inversion of the luminosity or a much more complicated geometrical flux). for example, digital photography, despite capable of filtering (hard to pull off with classical photogrammetry, aka the instagram "effect") which mucks with where "photons" are, there is also other metadata. everything from actually geographical locations: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-identifiers.html

also, of the night sky, even if "pollution" caused by modern lighting wasn't there. we can see where "standard candles" are. also the other way, this is the cosmic background noise.

the temporal information usually also exists in the mtadata. to reconstructable "point cloud"-info that can be identified as physical buildings (this is where the "motion of the sun" relative to the earth and all the "gravitry" effects and "rotation" effects corrected for, can be triangulated usually by a maximum likelyhood statistical function, or some probabilistic argument where you can usually also analyze each "error" term). this is usually how a "atlas" is created. usually chaos theory helps weather prediction get better and better as long as the "density" of the original data distribution describing the (earth) model gets better and better (and we've also learned a lot about things like magnetics for example).

this is "just" spatial intuition btw. relatively simple if you're doing calculus on ensembles of differentiable manifolds many generations of measuring people have measured (for example, looking for oil due to faint oscillations and reverberations, measuring the heights of mountains, measuring time/pitch by signing, launching satellites to also beam low power positional info to each other. etc.

in fact, we can look hyperspectrally these days. sometimes we can also do morphological analysis (think for example, all of the movies one would want to see these days. imagine 100 year old movies. try attaching colors to black and white movies. or spoken word to silent movies. there could be an array or some sort of polynomial (spline or non-linear variant) some experts (or people with preferences!) can help correct. that's the current state of technology. 

also most likely next generation systems of chips (in silico) will likely also be able to track more precisely the effect of stuff like humidity, altitude, etc. 

can characterize it as for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_computing

virtualize every human idea/place/time/relation and create an reversible "ground state"/"not ground state" defn for it. you can create mathematical "models" with stuff like usage of automorphism groups and renormalization methods (or transformations between simplicial complexes, this often just helps fix notational issues between math and physics about where a unitary group starts on any slice of weirdly contorted pie). usually this speeds up the process by eliminating redundancy so a huge infinite-size hilbert spaces doesn't have to be created (sorry for all the technical jargon) and actual computation can be delayed for a long time. 

Are you stoned? I am still waiting for the punchline? Your point is what exactly?

 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Are you stoned? I am still waiting for the punchline? Your point is what exactly?

 

There is something Freudian to this Cosmic Back Round Noise...I do believe at some point in his linear time line a mother/father figure rang his bell a smidge. Sadly he has been caught in a time loop from which there is no escape.

Or perhaps the concepts of the Black Hole Theroy have some relevance..

[NickW + 2,714]

2 hours ago, Wombat said:

Are you stoned? I am still waiting for the punchline? Your point is what exactly?

 

I think it was typed with this in mind

(47) Hawkwind-LSD - YouTube

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,245]

11 hours ago, ronwagn said:

My topic covers both sides but does have my slant overall. 

Global Warming AKA Climate Change and Just Plain Weather

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vHU2hHXebxpvExT7srNNnX-VM7Qn9Ak_ZmdKCIcUti8/edit#

I can agree with that. Central Illinois now in deep freeze like a normal winter. How did that happen??