.

[Symmetry + 109]

8 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Nobody is starving in America that I know of. I contribute to food aid groups and help my own kids and grandkids. America has all sorts of food aid.

Almost nobody completely starves to death in north America but under-nutrition is rampant.  There are poor areas with essentially no real grocery stores (just convenience or dollar stores).  

The homeless, when forced onto the medical community, are often given vitamin injections so they don't come back as quickly.

Locally the food bank has been under pressure and they are pleading for money instead of the unwanted canned food / dry pasta people normally donate.  They claim they can not properly feed people with the types of food donations they typically get. 

They also say it becomes very degrading to expect people to eat pasta with genetic plain tomato sauce and a can of plain tuna everyday.  They showed a typical basket and asked if you could make a single decent meal from it... the answer from me was no.

Lastly, things like tampons, soap, deodorant, etc. are rarely donated and can be expensive.

Poverty is real in north America.

[turbguy + 1,543]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

After that he became a senior exec at the company building the world's largest power plants. Even though they had all the permits, once Obama got elected they were never allowed to build the coal plant they'd already begun. When Obama said, "We're going to kill coal" he wasn't whistling Dixie. They were able to salvage some of their effort and convert that plant to natural gas. Some simple math for you. A 1GW coal fired power plant can produce how much power using natural gas as the fuel? Hint, much less than 1GW.

 

 

Strange.  The fuel should not make a difference in plant output if the "modifications" were designed and installed properly (fuel controls, burners, combustion air mods, significant boiler mods from a coal design.

There should be lower "house loads" as well (no conveyers, no pulverizers, no ESP's no ash-handling, scrubbers). Perhaps larger fan loads?   BOP should remain the same...

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by turbguy

[El Gato + 254]

9 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Or bury them underground where it is warmer? Insulate them? How does heat effect them, they can explode right?

Depends on the Battery. Good old Ni-cads handle heat pretty well. L-ion, not as well.

[surrept33 + 609]

http://www.ercot.com/

This is really the fault of Texan 'go-it-alone'-ness. If Ercot was joined to the 'national' grid, they'd be subject to federal cold weather rules regulated usually by FERC:

https://www.ferc.gov/

Most people don't understand the complexity of the grid, especially at the nexus of climate change derisking (this requires much more assessments and insurance of what 'worst case' scenarios one could expect - keep in mind the weather is largely regulated by chaotic dynamics (chaos theory), so you'd need to large amounts of compute to compute a large amount of statistical ensembles of models with a bunch of assumptions.

From what I saw of ERCOT, it is years (decades?) behind in certain ways (SCADA systems. I'd say CA and Puerto Rico are the most modern due to natural disasters), and years ahead in other ways (virtual power purchase agreements, but this is a pure financial derisking mechanism over a longer time scale. Keep in mind that ERCOT is kind of a 'closed system' so not much energy flows from non-Texas. It gives some flexibility, but in the worst case, Texas isn't able to draw on its neighbors. Not a 'smart grid' at all, it's more like treating Texas like a island (like Hawaii), not a general flow problem. 

If you look at most of the outages, it looks like a lack of winterization of a vast amount of plants (this is the supply side, this is the 'sell side'). This is over large amount of different types of power types.  Usually every <5 min there is a power 'auction'. 

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

4 hours ago, NickW said:

Any linkys please and what cycle is this related to? 

We are basically at the solar minimum of the solar magnetic cycle (11 year periodicity) which drives sunspots - it will start increasing now for a peak mid decade. This has a minor effect on the climate between max and minimum. 

Although for kids quite good for a quick read

What Is the Solar Cycle? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

More detailed

Solar Cycle | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Physics

Nick, your material is out of date, new models are on the scene.

Here is one, showing a cooling phase of several decades starting now. This is currently the best explanatory model with a 94% success rate, far above the outdated models which the Biden folks are relying on.

https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

5 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

http://www.ercot.com/

This is really the fault of Texan 'go-it-alone'-ness. If Ercot was joined to the 'national' grid, they'd be subject to federal cold weather rules regulated usually by FERC:

https://www.ferc.gov/

Most people don't understand the complexity of the grid, especially at the nexus of climate change derisking (this requires much more assessments and insurance of what 'worst case' scenarios one could expect - keep in mind the weather is largely regulated by chaotic dynamics (chaos theory), so you'd need to large amounts of compute to compute a large amount of statistical ensembles of models with a bunch of assumptions.

From what I saw of ERCOT, it is years (decades?) behind in certain ways (SCADA systems. I'd say CA and Puerto Rico are the most modern due to natural disasters), and years ahead in other ways (virtual power purchase agreements, but this is a pure financial derisking mechanism over a longer time scale. Keep in mind that ERCOT is kind of a 'closed system' so not much energy flows from non-Texas. It gives some flexibility, but in the worst case, Texas isn't able to draw on its neighbors. Not a 'smart grid' at all, it's more like treating Texas like a island (like Hawaii), not a general flow problem. 

If you look at most of the outages, it looks like a lack of winterization of a vast amount of plants (this is the supply side, this is the 'sell side'). This is over large amount of different types of power types.  Usually every <5 min there is a power 'auction'. 

Texas is on its own FERC island, that's true. It also has the added benefit of allowing Texas to be the test bed for a lot of New ideas, such as 25% wind power, which no other FERC can touch. Texas has as many or more utilities than other FERC districts. It is a very big state with a widely dispersed variety of customers and producers. It's no accident Enron was headquartered there, they grew up and thrived on the "test bed" nature of the Texas FERC. How they died should have been a cautionary tale, and the very reason you don't let a bunch of Mckinsey MBA's design a system. That's the fundamental problem with technocracy, you get ostensibly smart people who bugger everything up because they don't really understand the systems they're screwing with. I was at Enron and told a room full of McKinsey idiots that they were idiots. Clearly I was right, but at the time I just made them angry with me. Like I cared. When the meltdown happened they scattered to the winds, so I couldn't rub their noses in it.  

[surrept33 + 609]

7 minutes ago, El Gato said:

Depends on the Battery. Good old Ni-cads handle heat pretty well. L-ion, not as well.

also there are tradeoffs between thee number of cycles. i'd say li-ion is really a large amount of different types of batteries with different tradeoffs as well:

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/

Of course, there is a lot of other choices as well:

http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-factsheet

All you need is to convert between different types of 'potential' and connect them together. of course, there is inefficiencies and all sorts of sensitivities to different types of physical shocks as well as different types of economies of scale. I think flow batteries are pretty promising since essentially the same technology as electroplating (= proven), and as long as you don't care about moving the battery (they are extremely dense), it will go through a lot of grid-scale cycles if you were to plop these even in for example, the middle of death valley or some other harsh desert. 

[surrept33 + 609]

26 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

Nick, your material is out of date, new models are on the scene.

Here is one, showing a cooling phase of several decades starting now. This is currently the best explanatory model with a 94% success rate, far above the outdated models which the Biden folks are relying on.

https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/

 

I think milankovitch theory is only one part of a bigger puzzle. 

https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/

I think the framing of the issue is best worded as 'change that turns into more intense changes' -  especially if you look at a long enough timeline (so it's important to plan ahead and diversify and look at the big picture and build in resilience everywhere) rather than warming or cooling - obviously it depends on where on the planet and what natural system breaks down and what they influence (which if you look at the interlinking at planet scale, is probably the whole planet), how do you convince China and India and other developing countries of 'that'?

Edited February 18, 2021 by surrept33

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

also there are tradeoffs between thee number of cycles. i'd say li-ion is really a large amount of different types of batteries with different tradeoffs as well:

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/

Of course, there is a lot of other choices as well:

http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-factsheet

All you need is to convert between different types of 'potential' and connect them together. of course, there is inefficiencies and all sorts of sensitivities to different types of physical shocks as well as different types of economies of scale. I think flow batteries are pretty promising since essentially the same technology as electroplating (= proven), and as long as you don't care about moving the battery (they are extremely dense), it will go through a lot of grid-scale cycles if you were to plop these even in for example, the middle of death valley or some other harsh desert. 

As is often the case, one Industry completely ignores what another industry has Already achieved. Dollars to donuts, there's no more cost effective way to implement a battery center than the way the phone companies did it. Sadly this is all going the way of the dodo bird and the land-line phone. No one ever asked themselves why they could call up the power company to say their power was out. It's because of battery rooms like this, which could run an arc welder continually for days. Good old lead acid batteries, each "box" in the picture storing 1.5 volts and ganged up to supply 48 volts times a lot of amp hours. 

I've got my brother's Leaf, all lithium batteries and it holds maybe 25% of its original rated capacity after 7 years. The companies clamoring to supply batteries to back up the grid are well aware of this limitation, for them it's the gift that keeps giving. 

[Boat + 1,324]

Amazon announced 26 new utility-scale solar and wind energy projects totaling 3.4 GW of electricity production capacity, bringing its total investment in renewable energy in 2020 to 35 projects and more than 4 GW of capacity — the largest corporate investment in renewable energy in a single year.

Amazon has now invested in 6.5 GW of solar and wind projects that will enable the company to supply its operations with more than 18 million MWh of renewable energy annually. This is enough to power 1.7 million U.S. homes for one year. These projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, fulfillment centers and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers that support millions of customers globally.

They will also help advance Amazon’s goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its business by 2040. Part of that commitment is powering Amazon’s infrastructure with 100% renewable energy.

“Amazon is helping fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “With a total of 127 solar and wind projects, Amazon is now the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy ever. We are on a path to running 100% of our business on renewable energy by 2025 — five years ahead of our original target of 2030. This is just one of the many steps we’re taking that will help us meet our ‘Climate Pledge.’ I couldn’t be more proud of all the teams

 

Cry me a river a large corporation wants non FF electricity. This ain’t China or Russia. Smart people making smart decisions. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft among other large corporations love wind. It’s interesting their energy is preferred green. Trumpism just don’t work at the top of big business. Don’t blame the government, blame the brains behind the actual US economy. 

[surrept33 + 609]

22 minutes ago, Boat said:

Amazon announced 26 new utility-scale solar and wind energy projects totaling 3.4 GW of electricity production capacity, bringing its total investment in renewable energy in 2020 to 35 projects and more than 4 GW of capacity — the largest corporate investment in renewable energy in a single year.

Amazon has now invested in 6.5 GW of solar and wind projects that will enable the company to supply its operations with more than 18 million MWh of renewable energy annually. This is enough to power 1.7 million U.S. homes for one year. These projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, fulfillment centers and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers that support millions of customers globally.

They will also help advance Amazon’s goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its business by 2040. Part of that commitment is powering Amazon’s infrastructure with 100% renewable energy.

“Amazon is helping fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “With a total of 127 solar and wind projects, Amazon is now the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy ever. We are on a path to running 100% of our business on renewable energy by 2025 — five years ahead of our original target of 2030. This is just one of the many steps we’re taking that will help us meet our ‘Climate Pledge.’ I couldn’t be more proud of all the teams

 

Cry me a river a large corporation wants non FF electricity. This ain’t China or Russia. Smart people making smart decisions. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft among other large corporations love wind. It’s interesting their energy is preferred green. Trumpism just don’t work at the top of big business. Don’t blame the government, blame the brains behind the actual US economy. 

Most big oil companies have rebranded to 'big energy'. It's fairly easy for them to since they're more of a logistics/supply chain management companies in the end where the management is largely about about the free cash flow (much like amazon!).  Also of course there are inter-generational trends too. The largest workforce % of most of these companies are now millennials instead of baby boomers (of course, this tends on how you definite these), and driving towards net carbon zero tends to be more of an attractant for prospective employees, especially if you look at longer timelines, say 2050 on where climate change will likely be more of an issue (but also a big opportunity).

One thing to keep in mind is that 'data centers' are already very efficient (and keep in mind the "currency" that people are "graded" upon is often CO2-equiv already if you're working on such "efficiency" projects). This is also a upsell to AWS customers because Amazon's customers can also claim carbon credits if electricity usage is moved to cloud compute (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all "sell" this and thus can recoup a large amount of the initial investment, and enjoy the economies of scale these projects will probably introduce) and then ultra-low power internet is beamed everywhere (between 5g and stuff like Starlink this will probably be everywhere in the next few years, much faster than previous rollouts due to the learning curves). 

Edited February 18, 2021 by surrept33

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

26 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

As is often the case, one Industry completely ignores what another industry has Already achieved. Dollars to donuts, there's no more cost effective way to implement a battery center than the way the phone companies did it. Sadly this is all going the way of the dodo bird and the land-line phone. No one ever asked themselves why they could call up the power company to say their power was out. It's because of battery rooms like this, which could run an arc welder continually for days. Good old lead acid batteries, each "box" in the picture storing 1.5 volts and ganged up to supply 48 volts times a lot of amp hours. 

I've got my brother's Leaf, all lithium batteries and it holds maybe 25% of its original rated capacity after 7 years. The companies clamoring to supply batteries to back up the grid are well aware of this limitation, for them it's the gift that keeps giving. 

Big ass difference here: Phone company was not delivering power(sort of were, but not much power), they were delivering emergency power which gets used rarely.  Yes, lead acid can easily be used for grid power if the batteries are designed correctly.  Just need a DEEP sump to collect the sulphates from touching the plates and a supply of extra sulphate to keep the PH correct.  In fact, there used to be some lead acid batteries which would suck or move the sulphates off the bottom.  These batteries have an infinite lifetime.  Not very efficient overall, but a lifetime of use.  A far cry from the garbage lead acid or AGM lead acid in your car/truck which has a maximum life of ~7 years if you are lucky.  Just like the laughable "deep cycle" batteries.... all they are for the most part are standard lead acid batteries that have more depth on the bottom to sequester sulphation particles. 

Want another infinite battery?  Iron cadmium or lead iron cadmium.  True, their efficiency sucks(75% or so), but they last forever or nearly so. 

Yes, lithium Manganese batteries are fairly cheap and fairly easy to kill by just under/over charging them and not cooling them properly.  Naturally that is what almost everyone uses when they think about "lithium". 

PS: Your leaf probably has ~2 bad cells which will most likely be the first or last cell in the string.  Many guys open the battery up and just guess at first/last cell and replace and have an ~85% battery once again.  Old leaf's are notorious for having a piss poor battery management system which was **Fixed** on their latest model. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

The large fossil plants I am familiar with have back-up 125 V DC (AEP uses 250 V DC) power throughout, not for "black start", but for "black-stop".  Lots of lead-acid "telephone cells" in series.  Like so (a small installation).  NO SMOKING ALLOWED!

[turbguy + 1,543]

ERCOT's gotta do what it's gotta do.

If their system collapses, it may take a week or two to get back.

I don't know how many "black start" facilities they have.  Nor how reliable those black start units are.  Nor how their DC tie inverters are commutated.

To "re-boot" to grid can take quite a while. Large units need juice to start. A LOT of it...

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

34 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Big ass difference here: Phone company was not delivering power(sort of were, but not much power), they were delivering emergency power which gets used rarely.  Yes, lead acid can easily be used for grid power if the batteries are designed correctly.  Just need a DEEP sump to collect the sulphates from touching the plates and a supply of extra sulphate to keep the PH correct.  In fact, there used to be some lead acid batteries which would suck or move the sulphates off the bottom.  These batteries have an infinite lifetime.  Not very efficient overall, but a lifetime of use.  A far cry from the garbage lead acid or AGM lead acid in your car/truck which has a maximum life of ~7 years if you are lucky.  Just like the laughable "deep cycle" batteries.... all they are for the most part are standard lead acid batteries that have more depth on the bottom to sequester sulphation particles. 

Want another infinite battery?  Iron cadmium or lead iron cadmium.  True, their efficiency sucks(75% or so), but they last forever or nearly so. 

Yes, lithium Manganese batteries are fairly cheap and fairly easy to kill by just under/over charging them and not cooling them properly.  Naturally that is what almost everyone uses when they think about "lithium". 

PS: Your leaf probably has ~2 bad cells which will most likely be the first or last cell in the string.  Many guys open the battery up and just guess at first/last cell and replace and have an ~85% battery once again.  Old leaf's are notorious for having a piss poor battery management system which was **Fixed** on their latest model. 

You'll notice the "phone" batteries are as much as 42 inches tall. Plenty of room to collect sulfates. They really could run an arc welder because in an emergency situation I saw one do exactly that. The only reason they couldn't supply more power was because of the gauge of standard telephony wire, 24 being typical. Can't carry much current with that. Telcos routinely replaced perfectly good batteries especially back when they were "regulated utilities". The rate payers coughed up the cost so what did they care?

A friend of mine built a nice cabin in the woods powered by those batteries. He got them for free and he'd charge them up and bring them to his cabin to be hooked up in series and parallel. They'd power his stuff for a year and he'd periodically bring them back to town for a good charging. I asked why he didn't use a generator and he said it was way too expensive to operate (even for recharging the batteries). He also didn't bother converting back to AC for most of it. He used standard outlets but they had DC going to them. You'd be shocked how many AC appliances work just fine with DC power. 

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

Texas is on its own FERC island, that's true. It also has the added benefit of allowing Texas to be the test bed for a lot of New ideas, such as 25% wind power, which no other FERC can touch. Texas has as many or more utilities than other FERC districts. It is a very big state with a widely dispersed variety of customers and producers. It's no accident Enron was headquartered there, they grew up and thrived on the "test bed" nature of the Texas FERC. How they died should have been a cautionary tale, and the very reason you don't let a bunch of Mckinsey MBA's design a system. That's the fundamental problem with technocracy, you get ostensibly smart people who bugger everything up because they don't really understand the systems they're screwing with. I was at Enron and told a room full of McKinsey idiots that they were idiots. Clearly I was right, but at the time I just made them angry with me. Like I cared. When the meltdown happened they scattered to the winds, so I couldn't rub their noses in it.  

Interesting - speaking of, have you heard of the Enron email dataset? https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/ (calo ~ siri 0.1)

It was probably one of the last sets released like that due to privacy issues (it was all data gathered due to prosecutorial subpoenas, the original version was mostly unredacted), but it was interesting to look at it from a (social) network point of view, and this was pre-Sarbanes–Oxley.

From what I've seen McKinsey is a very expensive way to burn $ on a 23 year old "associate". It's all brand.

[turbguy + 1,543]

Comments concerning politicians running utilities are reasonable.

One related story in my history:

As an OEM service engineer, I lived near a local muni operation, not grid-tied (due to "disagreements" with the major utility that completely surrounded their service area).

Their largest hydrogen cooled steam-turbine generator suffered a loss-of-oil incident upon a trip.  Their system collapsed and the DC emergency oil pump didn't start. I was only two miles away at the one of the "major utilities" older plants and was called in to give an initial assessment by my boss (what a guy HE was).

I get their and hunt down the Plant Manager, who leads me to the unit.  I find the shaft at each end of the generator had dropped about 1/4"+ (looking at the top of the oil seals/deflectors, it was obvious), with gas still venting from seals.

I turn around, and there's the City Mayor looking over my shoulder (with several unrecognizable cronies behind him),  PUFFING AWAY ON CIGARS!!  

I never screamed so loud to "BACK AWAY, NOW!  GET OUT OF HERE!  My throat really hurt afterwards.

I told the Plant Manager the unit was f*cked, I was leaving the building, and would return only after he chased away that entourage of ignorant politicians. 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by turbguy

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 2/16/2021 at 5:09 PM, El Nikko said:

Nobody can predict that and it is idiotic to try to predict such tiny time frames on a planet that is 4.6 billion years old and has many different cycles some competing with each other.

There is also the glaring problem that if you or I get to pick our own starting point from where we compare temperatures the outcome will be completely different. 

Warm temperatures have always created explosions in life, cold has the opposite effect.

Why not read a few geology books

[turbguy + 1,543]

11 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

You need to also add that over those BILLIIONS of years, this planet has never experienced (as far as we know) such an energy-hungry and energy-demanding population of so many BILLIONS of souls, demanding , creating, and using, more concentrated sources than the solar flux provides.

Seems to me that just might make wee bit o' difference, no?

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by turbguy

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, turbguy said:

You need to also add that over those BILLIIONS of years, this planet has never experienced (as far as we know) such an energy-hungry and energy-demanding population of so many BILLIONS of souls, demanding more concentrated sources than the solar flux provides.

Seems to me that just might make wee bit o' difference, no?

Advanced countries have made a lot of advances in energy savings however. Their population has also flattened somewhat. The point of the image is that all the Global Warming predictions have been wrong. Then they had to switch to the Climate Change narrative, which is just plain stupid since the climate has Always changed. All of the claims of increased catastrophes has also proven to be wrong. 

 

 

 

[turbguy + 1,543]

1 minute ago, ronwagn said:

 

I guess we will have to wait this one out.

Let us see how the predicted sea level rise does over the next,what, 10-20 years?

 

[turbguy + 1,543]

6 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

All very true. 

The problem with some of those remedies (such as tap changes on system transformers) is that it puts the total load back up to where it strains the generator.  So although the local device on the downstream end of that buffering transformer gets that specific device back to where it was designed to run, it does so at the expense of the other customers, some of whom will end up being dropped off the grid. 

If you can't supply the watts and VARS demanded, you shed them off.  You have no other choice to avoid a collapse.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

Just now, turbguy said:

I guess we will have to wait this one out.

Let us see how the predicted sea level rise does over the next,what, 10-20 years?

 

I have watched the last 20 years and will maybe be around in twenty years from now. There is a possibility of increased speed of rise but nothing that mankind can't deal with by moving from certain areas. It would actually be a lot cheaper than trying to control the weather. I am not against renewables but insist that they not cost too much, are not subsidized, and are not built so fast that natural gas is not utilized as a comparison. I am a strong proponent of natural gas for vehicles and electrical generation. Those who want electric vehicles should be too.

Please note that all the well connected wealthy people buy up coastal properties. Barack Obama, Al Gore, Trump, etc. etc. I was glad to hear that Florida hurricane and flood insurance is skyrocketing in price. Otherwise inland folks end up paying part of their bill. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

Can you imagine what damage is being done to system switchgear by extended rotating outages?   Eventually, this switchgear will fail (perhaps some already have), or at least need accelerated maintenance.

Is SF6 traded on any exchange?

When breathed, it works the opposite on the voice than helium. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by turbguy

[turbguy + 1,543]

22 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Please note that all the well connected wealthy people buy up coastal properties. Barack Obama, Al Gore, Trump, etc. etc. I was glad to hear that Florida hurricane and flood insurance is skyrocketing in price. Otherwise inland folks end up paying part of their bill. 

Does that mean my 10 acres at 7400' will increase in value?

Got underground electric/nat gas/phone.