Energy Armageddon

[notsonice + 1,255]

2 hours ago, RichieRich216 said:

Do they even have a towing range, LMFAO!

I see you are babbling BS again

LMFAO at the tards who think that only ICE vehicles can run out of gas and then get roadside assistance...

Enjoy dwelling in your BS babble

 

PS have you heard of AAA?

 

1. AAA Roadside Assistance

The American Automobile Association, or AAA, is a membership-based service that offers roadside assistance and mobile charging solution for electric vehicles. It's one of the largest roadside services, with a fleet of 63,000 towing and service trucks across the US and Canada.

Last year, AAA started adding the SparkCharge Roadie to its fleet as a portable charging solution for EVs. SparkCharge is the first company that offers a "charging-as-a-service" solution to EV owners. It uses a modular unit built up of battery modules with lithium-Ion cells. When stacked, the battery modules can deliver a battery charge of about a mile per minute.

[RichieRich216 + 454]

I'll be sure to get “ Spark Charge Rodie..... How funny! We can't even supply houses with enough heat, and fucking greenies are still pushing EV!

[notsonice + 1,255]

11 minutes ago, RichieRich216 said:

I'll be sure to get “ Spark Charge Rodie..... How funny! We can't even supply houses with enough heat, and fucking greenies are still pushing EV!

I see your babbling again.....guess your whole comment....Do they even have a towing range, LMFAO! was just a comment made in ignorance.......

Then you resort to more babble.......fucking greenies are still pushing EV

 

boy it must suck to be you........crying about how you are a victim all the time

[RichieRich216 + 454]

The only “victim” is you and the sad life you must lead, So you read the BOLD headline but failed to read the text of the Bill!

If you want to discuss a topic, have some knowledge about it, or have your mom read you the text instead of Bambi when putting you to bed, speaking of which, it is after 10 PM EST, so I am guessing your mother already turned off your double wide home bedroom light, but by your postings, you're probably jerking off to a national geographic magazine under the covers.

[RichieRich216 + 454]

On 8/30/2022 at 9:16 PM, markslawson said:

Green energy zealots have been so busy trying to avoid a projected (and probably illusory) climate Armageddon by promoting renewable energy and relentlessly demonising fossil fuels to the point where investment in such projects in advanced countries is drying up, that they have brought on a very real energy Armageddon. The activists are not to blame for the trigger point, of course, the Russian-Ukraine war and Russian weaponising of gas on top of a surge in demand and wind droughts in Europe. The problem is that they have pushed energy supply systems to the point where large shocks can turn into energy disasters. Gas and coal prices go through the roof, and renewable energy fails miserably as a substitute for renewable energy.

This is particularly evident in Britain. Here is a sample of some recent articles. They are mostly behind paywalls so I can't link them, but you should get the idea from the excerpts.

Sunday Times, August 28

Business leaders have warned of a jobs bloodbath as soaring energy bills threaten to force hotels to close for the winter, pubs to slash their opening hours and factories to shut down.

The starkest estimates put the number of jobs at risk in hospitality at 500,000, while thousands more are under threat in industry and agriculture as employers increasingly find that it costs more to stay open than it does to close.

The Times, 29 August 2022

After 20 years of government-promoted eco-socialism half of Tory voters want energy to be nationalised

Nearly half of Conservative voters support the renationalisation of Britain’s energy industry, a poll has found, putting pressure on the incoming prime minister to embrace radical solutions to the cost of living crisis.
 
Forty-seven per cent of Tory voters favour returning the energy companies to public ownership, with 28 per cent opposed to such a move and 25 per cent unsure. Among those who voted for the Conservatives in 2019, including many in the red wall seats of the northeast and the Midlands, the figure rises to 53 per cent in favour of renationalisation.

The figures, from a YouGov poll conducted for The Times, provide a stark illustration of the choices facing squeezed households after it was announced that energy bills will rise to an average of £3,549 a year from October. Economists and energy experts urged the government to take action to avoid widespread blackouts this winter.

The Independent, 27 August 2022
UK faces ‘catastrophe’ after energy bills soar 80% amid warning price cap could hit £7,000
The government has been warned that lives will be put at risk unless it takes urgent action

The scale of the squeeze Britons face on their incomes has been laid bare, with the energy price cap confirmed to increase average bills by more than 80 per cent in October – and forecasts predicting annual costs of £7,000 by April.

Regulator Ofgem has revealed that the price cap, which is supposed to protect consumers from unfair energy bill increases, will rise to £3,549 per year for an average household – more than three times last winter’s level. That is expected to leave some 8.9 million households in fuel poverty, charity bosses have said, with a “real risk” that children will go hungry as Britain’s poorest see almost half of their income taken up by gas and electricity.

There's lots more where that came from but you get the idea. The ruling Tory party is said to face a wipe out at the next election unless it does something about all of this, starting with ending all support for green projects. In the UK energy bills include some sort of impost for renewable energy, I suspect that's not going to last. This Armageddon has yet to reach Australia, at least not in force, but another huge coal powered plant is due to close next year and already the grid is showing signs of major strain. The worst may be yet to come. 

The text and claim you make are all valid; the greenies are in such denial that any headlines that push there hallucinated fantasy on this subject is beyond their comprehension! 

[RichieRich216 + 454]

Though this platform is on the WWW, the greenies seem to navigate to it to get some personal satisfaction they lack in knowledge, education, and ability to see the forest from the trees.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

18 hours ago, RichieRich216 said:

Though this platform is on the WWW, the greenies seem to navigate to it to get some personal satisfaction they lack in knowledge, education, and ability to see the forest from the trees.

Watching you make a fool of yourself is funny!

[RichieRich216 + 454]

So you're saying that you don't have the balls to put money where your mouth is!

See I am confident that this bill like many other in the past will die on the vine, especially since its been indicated to Congress that between 30-40% current IRS agents own back taxes.

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

On 11/18/2022 at 5:33 PM, RichieRich216 said:

Do they even have a towing range, LMFAO!

Have you heard of the Rivian?

faster than a Dodge Viper in a drag race too!

Capability at a glance¹

• Drivetrain

  All-Wheel Drive

• 0-60 mph

  3 secs

• Towing capacity

  Up to 11,000 lbs

• Wading depth

  3+ ft

• https://rivian.com/r1t

Edited November 21, 2022 by Rob Plant

[RichieRich216 + 454]

Politicians praise electric cars. If everyone buys them, they say, solar and wind power will replace our need for oil.

But that’s absurd.

Here is the rest of my list of “inconvenient facts” about electric cars.

“The future of the auto industry is electric,” says President Biden. He assumes a vast improvement in batteries. Better batteries are crucial because both power plants and cars need to store lots of electric power.

But here’s inconvenient Fact 3: Batteries are lousy at storing large amounts of energy.

“Batteries leak, and they don’t hold a lot,”says physicist Mark Mills.

Mills thinks electric cars are great but explains that “oil begins with a huge advantage: 5,000% more energy in it per pound. Electric car batteries weigh 1,000 pounds. Those 1,000 pounds replace just 80 pounds of gasoline.”

But future batteries will be better, I point out.

“Engineers are really good at making things better,” Mills responds, “but they can’t make them better than the laws of physics permit.”

That’s inconvenient Fact 4. Miracle batteries powerful enough to replace fossil fuels are a fantasy.

“Because nature is not nice to humans,” explains Mills, “we store energy for when it’s cold or really hot. People who imagine an energy transition want to build windmills and solar panels and store all that energy in batteries. But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.”

Politicians don’t mention that when they promise every car will be electric. They also don’t mention that the electric grid is limited.

This summer, California officials were so worried about blackouts, they asked electric vehicle owners to stop charging cars!

Yet today, few of California’s cars are electric. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that all new cars must be electric by 2035! Where does he think he’ll get the electricity to power them?

“Roughly speaking, you have to double your electric grid to move the energy out of gasoline into the electric sector,” says Mills. “No one is planning to double the electric grid, so they’ll be rationing.”

Rationing. That means some places will simply turn off some of the power. That’s our final inconvenient fact: We just don’t have enough electricity for all electric cars.

Worse, if (as many activists and politicians propose) we try to get that electricity from 100% renewable sources, the rationing would be deadly.

Even if you added “Washington Monument-sized wind turbines spread over an area six times greater than the state of New York, that wouldn’t be enough.”

This is just math and physics. It’s amazing that supposedly responsible people promote impossible fantasies.

“It’s been an extraordinary accomplishment of propaganda,” complains Mills, “almost infantile … distressing because it’s so silly.”

Even if people invent much better cars, wind turbines, solar panels, power lines and batteries, explains Mills, “you’re still drilling things, digging up stuff. You’re still building machines that wear out … It’s not magical transformation.”

Even worse, today politicians make us pay more for energy while forcing us to do things that hurt the environment. Their restrictions on fossil fuels drive people to use fuels that pollute more.

In Europe, “They’re going back to burning coal! What we’ve done is have our energy systems designed by bureaucrats instead of engineers,” complains Mills. “We get worse energy, more expensive energy and higher environmental impacts!

There’ll be lots more electric cars in the future,” concludes Mills. “There should be, because that’ll reduce demand for oil, which is a good thing. But when you do the math, to operate a society with 5 or 6 billion people who are living in poverty we can’t imagine, when you want to give them a little of what we have, the energy demands are off-the-charts big. We’re going to need everything.”

That includes fossil fuels!

 

 / 

The largest automaker in North America is laying down a marker for itself to sell 1 million EVs annually by 2025. But it won’t be easy.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

1 hour ago, RichieRich216 said:

Politicians praise electric cars. If everyone buys them, they say, solar and wind power will replace our need for oil.

But that’s absurd.

Here is the rest of my list of “inconvenient facts” about electric cars.

“The future of the auto industry is electric,” says President Biden. He assumes a vast improvement in batteries. Better batteries are crucial because both power plants and cars need to store lots of electric power.

But here’s inconvenient Fact 3: Batteries are lousy at storing large amounts of energy.

“Batteries leak, and they don’t hold a lot,”says physicist Mark Mills.

Mills thinks electric cars are great but explains that “oil begins with a huge advantage: 5,000% more energy in it per pound. Electric car batteries weigh 1,000 pounds. Those 1,000 pounds replace just 80 pounds of gasoline.”

But future batteries will be better, I point out.

“Engineers are really good at making things better,” Mills responds, “but they can’t make them better than the laws of physics permit.”

That’s inconvenient Fact 4. Miracle batteries powerful enough to replace fossil fuels are a fantasy.

“Because nature is not nice to humans,” explains Mills, “we store energy for when it’s cold or really hot. People who imagine an energy transition want to build windmills and solar panels and store all that energy in batteries. But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.”

Politicians don’t mention that when they promise every car will be electric. They also don’t mention that the electric grid is limited.

This summer, California officials were so worried about blackouts, they asked electric vehicle owners to stop charging cars!

Yet today, few of California’s cars are electric. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that all new cars must be electric by 2035! Where does he think he’ll get the electricity to power them?

“Roughly speaking, you have to double your electric grid to move the energy out of gasoline into the electric sector,” says Mills. “No one is planning to double the electric grid, so they’ll be rationing.”

Rationing. That means some places will simply turn off some of the power. That’s our final inconvenient fact: We just don’t have enough electricity for all electric cars.

Worse, if (as many activists and politicians propose) we try to get that electricity from 100% renewable sources, the rationing would be deadly.

Even if you added “Washington Monument-sized wind turbines spread over an area six times greater than the state of New York, that wouldn’t be enough.”

This is just math and physics. It’s amazing that supposedly responsible people promote impossible fantasies.

“It’s been an extraordinary accomplishment of propaganda,” complains Mills, “almost infantile … distressing because it’s so silly.”

Even if people invent much better cars, wind turbines, solar panels, power lines and batteries, explains Mills, “you’re still drilling things, digging up stuff. You’re still building machines that wear out … It’s not magical transformation.”

Even worse, today politicians make us pay more for energy while forcing us to do things that hurt the environment. Their restrictions on fossil fuels drive people to use fuels that pollute more.

In Europe, “They’re going back to burning coal! What we’ve done is have our energy systems designed by bureaucrats instead of engineers,” complains Mills. “We get worse energy, more expensive energy and higher environmental impacts!

There’ll be lots more electric cars in the future,” concludes Mills. “There should be, because that’ll reduce demand for oil, which is a good thing. But when you do the math, to operate a society with 5 or 6 billion people who are living in poverty we can’t imagine, when you want to give them a little of what we have, the energy demands are off-the-charts big. We’re going to need everything.”

That includes fossil fuels!

 

 / 

The largest automaker in North America is laying down a marker for itself to sell 1 million EVs annually by 2025. But it won’t be easy.

The battery doesn't replace 80lbs of fuel it replaces 80lbs a week for the life of the vehicle. You bozos keep forgetting that batteries aren't consumables like fuel and that they can be recycled unlike fuel.

People in CA were asked not to charge their cars between 4pm and 9pm for a few days. It was a complete and total non issue.

Tesla already sells 1 million EVs annually as does BYD. Others will be there soon. 

If you actually understood how batteries work you would be amazed at how rapidly they are advancing.

[notsonice + 1,255]

1 hour ago, RichieRich216 said:

Politicians praise electric cars. If everyone buys them, they say, solar and wind power will replace our need for oil.

But that’s absurd.

Here is the rest of my list of “inconvenient facts” about electric cars.

“The future of the auto industry is electric,” says President Biden. He assumes a vast improvement in batteries. Better batteries are crucial because both power plants and cars need to store lots of electric power.

But here’s inconvenient Fact 3: Batteries are lousy at storing large amounts of energy.

“Batteries leak, and they don’t hold a lot,”says physicist Mark Mills.

Mills thinks electric cars are great but explains that “oil begins with a huge advantage: 5,000% more energy in it per pound. Electric car batteries weigh 1,000 pounds. Those 1,000 pounds replace just 80 pounds of gasoline.”

But future batteries will be better, I point out.

“Engineers are really good at making things better,” Mills responds, “but they can’t make them better than the laws of physics permit.”

That’s inconvenient Fact 4. Miracle batteries powerful enough to replace fossil fuels are a fantasy.

“Because nature is not nice to humans,” explains Mills, “we store energy for when it’s cold or really hot. People who imagine an energy transition want to build windmills and solar panels and store all that energy in batteries. But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.”

Politicians don’t mention that when they promise every car will be electric. They also don’t mention that the electric grid is limited.

This summer, California officials were so worried about blackouts, they asked electric vehicle owners to stop charging cars!

Yet today, few of California’s cars are electric. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that all new cars must be electric by 2035! Where does he think he’ll get the electricity to power them?

“Roughly speaking, you have to double your electric grid to move the energy out of gasoline into the electric sector,” says Mills. “No one is planning to double the electric grid, so they’ll be rationing.”

Rationing. That means some places will simply turn off some of the power. That’s our final inconvenient fact: We just don’t have enough electricity for all electric cars.

Worse, if (as many activists and politicians propose) we try to get that electricity from 100% renewable sources, the rationing would be deadly.

Even if you added “Washington Monument-sized wind turbines spread over an area six times greater than the state of New York, that wouldn’t be enough.”

This is just math and physics. It’s amazing that supposedly responsible people promote impossible fantasies.

“It’s been an extraordinary accomplishment of propaganda,” complains Mills, “almost infantile … distressing because it’s so silly.”

Even if people invent much better cars, wind turbines, solar panels, power lines and batteries, explains Mills, “you’re still drilling things, digging up stuff. You’re still building machines that wear out … It’s not magical transformation.”

Even worse, today politicians make us pay more for energy while forcing us to do things that hurt the environment. Their restrictions on fossil fuels drive people to use fuels that pollute more.

In Europe, “They’re going back to burning coal! What we’ve done is have our energy systems designed by bureaucrats instead of engineers,” complains Mills. “We get worse energy, more expensive energy and higher environmental impacts!

There’ll be lots more electric cars in the future,” concludes Mills. “There should be, because that’ll reduce demand for oil, which is a good thing. But when you do the math, to operate a society with 5 or 6 billion people who are living in poverty we can’t imagine, when you want to give them a little of what we have, the energy demands are off-the-charts big. We’re going to need everything.”

That includes fossil fuels!

 

 / 

The largest automaker in North America is laying down a marker for itself to sell 1 million EVs annually by 2025. But it won’t be easy.

Mills thinks electric cars are great but explains that “oil begins with a huge advantage: 5,000% more energy in it per pound. Electric car batteries weigh 1,000 pounds. Those 1,000 pounds replace just 80 pounds of gasoline.”????

 

thanks for posting BS garbage from one of your babbling idiot pals

Here is what your babbling idiot pal forgot in his math.................. an ICE vehicle needs an engine/transfer case/exhaust system  that weighs over 1000 pounds compared to an EV that has an electric motor/transfer case that weighs 200 pounds

 

ICE advantage gone

[RichieRich216 + 454]

2 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

The battery doesn't replace 80lbs of fuel it replaces 80lbs a week for the life of the vehicle. You bozos keep forgetting that batteries aren't consumables like fuel and that they can be recycled unlike fuel.

People in CA were asked not to charge their cars between 4pm and 9pm for a few days. It was a complete and total non issue.

Tesla already sells 1 million EVs annually as does BYD. Others will be there soon. 

If you actually understood how batteries work you would be amazed at how rapidly they are advancing.

Find, mine, transport, separate, process, ship to next phase for building, group and set current strpicture, package, load, transport to car manufacturers, offload, stage and stoare, install.

[Jeroen Goudswaard + 61]

On 11/21/2022 at 9:06 PM, RichieRich216 said:

Find, mine, transport, separate, process, ship to next phase for building, group and set current strpicture, package, load, transport to car manufacturers, offload, stage and stoare, install.

How is that different for oil?

find, mine, separate, transport to refinery, store, refine, store, load, transport, offload, fill up. 

[Jeroen Goudswaard + 61]

On 11/21/2022 at 6:35 PM, Jay McKinsey said:

The battery doesn't replace 80lbs of fuel it replaces 80lbs a week for the life of the vehicle. You bozos keep forgetting that batteries aren't consumables like fuel and that they can be recycled unlike fuel.

People in CA were asked not to charge their cars between 4pm and 9pm for a few days. It was a complete and total non issue.

Tesla already sells 1 million EVs annually as does BYD. Others will be there soon. 

If you actually understood how batteries work you would be amazed at how rapidly they are advancing.

Europe does not go back to coal because of EVs, but because of a lack of natural gas. Power consumption is going down in Europe, but gas deliveries have gone down even quicker.

Also, everyone says that EV will bring the grid to a grinding halt. I can easily show that that is not the case. 

The average car in Europe drives 14,000 km/year, the average American car 14,000 mls/year. A Tesla 3 has an average consumption of 16kWh/100km, or 2200 kWh/year in EU, or 3500 kWh/year in the USA. Or between 7-10kWh/day. With 1.5 cars per household on average and about 70-80% home charging, that would be about 7-10kWh per day/household.

The average household in the USA consumes 30kWh/day: that extra 7kWh/day, built up over 15 years, is not going to break the net. Between 1950-2000 household consumption grew by about a factor of 10 (a 1000% increase), here we are looking at at 3-4% growth year-on-year.

in Europe house-hold consumption is about 10kWh/day. There we would need to look at a more sizeable increase in capacity. This can only be done by (temporary) load-balancing, i.e. most charging needs to happen during the cheap/abundant hours (daytime in summer, night-time in winter). Variable tariffs can be used to get to that desired outcome. Fortunately, cars are parked for at least 23 hours a day anyway, so charging can happen anytime. Tt would mean not only building charging infrastructure at home (which most people will have anyway) but also at work locations, like requiring car parks with solar roofs. And guess what: France has just done this.

[Ron Wagner + 706]

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/EUROPE-GAS/zdvxozxzopx/

Europe now has 92.4% of its natural gas storage filled. 

[Ron Wagner + 706]

On 11/21/2022 at 3:20 AM, Rob Plant said:

Have you heard of the Rivian?

faster than a Dodge Viper in a drag race too!

Capability at a glance¹

• Drivetrain

  All-Wheel Drive

• 0-60 mph

  3 secs

• Towing capacity

  Up to 11,000 lbs

• Wading depth

  3+ ft

• https://rivian.com/r1t

That is a low towing range for a truck. The charge is also insufficient for pulling far enough for large trailers with the current infrastructure. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

On 11/21/2022 at 10:35 AM, Jay McKinsey said:

The battery doesn't replace 80lbs of fuel it replaces 80lbs a week for the life of the vehicle. You bozos keep forgetting that batteries aren't consumables like fuel and that they can be recycled unlike fuel.

 

I do find it very disturbing that a supposed physicist does not recognize that once those "80 pounds" of fuel is consumed, you gotta replace it with another "80 pounds" of fuel, again, and again, and again...

And does not consider the regeneration potential realized during deceleration.

[Ron Wagner + 706]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-terminal-engineering-feat-germany-11670513353?mod=automatedsf_trending_now_article_pos2

 

The Five-Year Engineering Feat Germany Pulled Off in Months

Europe is racing to build natural-gas facilities to keep its economy afloat; ‘It’s a battle’

 

 

• EUROPE

The Five-Year Engineering Feat Germany Pulled Off in Months

Europe is racing to build natural-gas facilities to keep its economy afloat; ‘It’s a battle’

 

A pipeline under construction between the new Wilhelmshaven LNG terminal and Germany’s natural-gas grid.

 

By Georgi Kantchev

Follow

 

 | Photographs by Marzena Skubatz for The Wall Street Journal

Dec. 8, 2022 10:33 am ET

SAVE

SHARE

TEXT

354 RESPONSES

Listen to article

Length(10 minutes)

Queue

WILHELMSHAVEN, Germany—In March, the German government asked energy companies to weigh a seemingly impossible engineering task. Could a new liquefied natural gas import terminal, which normally takes at least five years to build, be erected in this port town by year’s end?

At the headquarters of the company asked to build the pipeline portion, technical director Thomas Hüwener posed that question to his team. “If no, then it’s a no,” he told them. “If yes, then we have to commit, with all the possible consequences for our company.”

After three days deliberations, the company concluded that if everything went perfectly the project could be done by Christmas. Since then, it has had to contend with potentially toxic soil and environmental regulations protecting frogs and bats. When workers encountered high groundwater, they had to drain trenches, then backfill them.

Another company building a jetty for the floating terminal needed to scan the seabed for unexploded World War II-era munitions and scour construction sites across Europe for supplies.

---

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

The 10-Point.

A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.

Preview

 

 

 

 

Subscribed

---

“This project is really a race against time,” said pipeline project manager Franz-Josef Kissing. “It’s a battle.”

Cut off from most Russian natural gas, much of Europe is rushing to line up alternative energy sources and build the infrastructure needed for them. If the continent fails to shore up its energy grid, governments might have to resort to rationing fuel this winter, possibly leading to closed factories and more pain for manufacturers. Next winter could be even tougher if gas storage facilities aren’t replenished. The EU has estimated that ending its reliance on Russian fossil fuels will add at least 300 billion euros, or around $315 billion, in infrastructure costs, through 2030.

Since Russia stopped most natural gas exports to Europe this fall, gas flows from Russia to Germany have shriveled from 55% of imports last year to zero. The three German liquefied natural gas terminals slated for completion for this year could cover at least 15% of the country’s gas demand. Berlin plans to install several more terminals next year and is working on more permanent installations. It has budgeted more than €6.5 billion for such terminals in 2022.

ADVERTISEMENT

Phasing Out

Dependence on Russian natural gas has been partially offset by increased imports from other producers and of liquefied natural gas.

EU natural gas imports by source, monthly

Russia invades Ukraine

U.S.

LNG

September:

9.9 billion

cubic

meters

Qatar

Algeria

Other

Russia

Norway

U.K.

PIPELINE

18.4

Russia

Tunisia

Other

Algeria

2021

2022

Note: Through September; excludes intra-EU trade
Source: Eurostat
Andrew Barnett/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Dozens of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, facilities are slated for construction across the European Union in coming years, which would allow Europe to buy more gas from nations such as Qatar and the U.S.

Within days of taking on the job of building a 19-mile pipeline between the new Wilhelmshaven terminal and the natural gas grid, Mr. Kissing’s employer, pipeline builder Open Grid Europe GmbH, formed a team with specialists in everything from route planning and nature conservation to archaeology and law.

Cooling natural gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit turns it into a liquid that can be shipped in oceangoing tankers to terminals, where it can be converted back to gas. A floating LNG terminal is a gas facility on an enormous specialized tanker that receives liquid gas from another tanker and returns it to a gaseous state.

Select floating liquefied-natural-gas unit developments in the European Union, September 2021 to October 2022

Capacity in billions of cubic meters per year

FINLAND

ESTONIA

10

LITHUANIA

1

POLAND

GERMANY

NETHERLANDS

SLOVAKIA

FRANCE

CROATIA

ITALY

500 miles

GREECE

CYPRUS

500 km

Note: Includes announced, planned and completed projects.

Source: Bruegel

The jetty that will be home to the floating Wilhelmshaven terminal is an especially complicated project because it has to withstand the force of two large, gas-filled ships pressing against it. For Niedersachsen Ports GmbH & Co. KG, which is building the jetty, the first challenge was finding materials—quickly. Ordering them from a factory would have taken months. Mathias Lüdicke, the company’s Wilhelmshaven branch manager, said the company had to scour Europe for construction materials, including the steel piles that would be driven into the seabed.

Niedersachsen Ports called suppliers in France, the Netherlands, Finland and the Baltics. It found 165-foot steel piles on an idle construction site in Lithuania. The original plan had called for smaller ones, so the company adjusted the blueprint.

To save time, much of the 3,000 cubic meters of concrete needed for the project was brought in the form of huge, semifinished blocks, which were assembled like Lego pieces.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We needed stuff that’s ready,” Mr. Lüdicke said. “So we changed the whole planning process as we went along, based on what was available.”

The jetty under construction for the floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Wilhelmshaven. Mathias Lüdicke, right, the Wilhelmshaven branch manager for Niedersachsen Ports GmbH.

Niedersachsen Ports idled other projects to focus on the job. Employees worked through Easter weekend to get the necessary documents ready. “Nobody paid attention to overtime because we all said, this has to work,” Mr. Lüdicke said.

The German bureaucracy made adjustments, too. The parliament passed an LNG Acceleration Act, speeding up procedures for reviewing, approving and awarding contracts for LNG projects.

“If there is a chance in this really terrible situation, it is that we shake off all this sleepiness and, in some cases, grouchiness that exists in Germany,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in March about speeding up the construction of LNG terminals.

Other large construction projects have moved slowly in Germany. In 2020, Berlin opened its new airport nine years behind schedule. Stuttgart’s new railway station, under construction since 2010, is now scheduled to open in 2025, after years of delays and ballooning costs.

The state of Niedersachsen issued some of the necessary permits for the LNG terminal on May 1, the International Workers’ Day, a Sunday. “It’s not a day when you’d expect that to happen,” said Olaf Lies, the state’s economy minister. “We needed a new German speed.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Similar projects elsewhere in Europe have faced opposition from activists who are against building new fossil-fuel infrastructure, and those who say such projects harm the local environment.

In Italy, a floating LNG terminal in the Tuscan port of Piombino is supposed to go into service next May. But several local groups have staged protests, claiming the project poses risks for residents and the environment. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said anchoring the new vessel in Piombino is vital for Italy’s economy and for national security.

How a floating LNG terminal works

Liquefied natural

gas is delivered

by a tanker

Gas is pumped onto the

floating storage and

regasification unit

Liquefied gas is converted

into a gaseous state

1

2

3

Tanker

Floating storage and

regasification unit

Water

Land

Discharge arms allow

gas to flow ashore

Discharge arms allow

gas to flow ashore

4

Gas flow is measured

by a metering station

Gas flow is measured

by a metering station

5

Gas flows through

grid to end user

6

Source: Uniper
Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In Germany, the new pipeline would cross the path of an annual migration of frogs. To keep the creatures from plunging into a ditch in which the pipe would be buried, Mr. Kissing’s team erected frog fences. In some cases, experts had to create new caves for bats.

When they started digging, they discovered another problem. The soil in the region contains high concentrations of sulfate acid, which could become toxic under some circumstances if exposed to oxygen for too long.

Also, the groundwater level was high. The trenches had to be dry to weld the pipes together.

To solve both problems, Mr. Kissing’s 800 workers worked in 400-foot increments, draining the trenches with pumps, then backfilling them.

ADVERTISEMENT

“You may rush as much as you want, but soil is soil,” Mr. Kissing said while walking around the site on a recent rainy morning.

Pipeline project manager Franz-Josef Kissing, left. Mr. Kissing, right, inspects the link being built between the pipeline and Germany's gas grid.

The groundwater also contained more iron than the norm. So the company had to build special de-ironing facilities to filter the water before dumping it back into nearby fields.

Connecting the new pipeline to the German gas grid presented another problem. It needs to link to an existing pipeline carrying gas from Norway, which has become essential for Germany and can’t be shut down for the linkup work to occur in the coming days. A bypass device had to be built to keep the gas flowing.

Before it could start building the jetty, Niedersachsen Ports first needed to search for unexploded World War II ordnance. Wilhelmshaven, Germany’s only deep-water port, was bombed heavily during the war. The company scanned the seabed and removed some smaller ordnance.

In September, with four months to go before the deadline, a problem cropped up that threatened to make it impossible to finish on time. The Wilhelmshaven sea lock—a structure in the port used for raising and lowering boats passing between stretches of water—had a mechanical failure, prompting the port to shut down the passage. The piles needed for the jetty, which were being welded together at the harbor, were stuck there.

Mr. Lüdicke met with officials from the waterway authority and German navy and devised a workaround. The port would allow the ships carrying the piles to pass through the lock with just one gate open, but only when the tides were such that the water levels were equal.

ADVERTISEMENT

“It was a very fine balancing act, a lot of coordination,” Mr. Lüdicke said. “If we hadn’t managed to do that, we wouldn’t have been able to launch the terminal this year.”

Open Grid Europe GmbH workers at the pipeline building site, left. De-ironing facilities, right, were built to filter groundwater for disposal in nearby fields.

In September, explosions damaged the Nord Stream pipelines running under the Baltic Sea a few hundred miles east of Wilhelmshaven, in what European authorities have called an act of sabotage. That sparked concerns across Europe about the vulnerability of energy infrastructure. The local police dispatched officers along the route of the new pipeline, and boats patrolled around the jetty.

Mr. Lüdicke is hoping for good weather as his team races toward the finish line. Bad weather could force delays, and heavy wind routinely halts work. There is still work to be done and tests to be carried out before the floating terminal, the 965-foot Hoegh Esperanza, can dock in Wilhelmshaven in the coming days and the gas can start flowing.

Utility Uniper SE, which the German state recently agreed to nationalize and which will operate the terminal, said that if all goes according to plan, the first tanker carrying LNG will arrive at the start of next year.

“If we have extreme weather, that could cause problems and delay things,” Mr. Lüdicke said. “We’re so close.”

Margherita Stancati contributed to this article.

 

[specinho + 470]

📢   Party poopper     party popper   📢

Europe is the origin and popular to have transparent glass windows, floor to ceiling transparent glass panels etc. Houses are usually built to face each other and clustered closely.

People might have little privacy, particularly at night when the lights are on. One peek could be someone's living room, bed room, kitchen, loo etc, at appropriate moments or other wise.

In order to have more privacy, many, particularly the young and not so young not supported by pension, (except the old for safety reason), would choose to dim the light or not turn it on at all...... Energy and cost saving.

There is another invention i.e. air-con fan. This is a fan but could function as an air-con if cold icy water and ice is placed in the water container. Or heater, if heated stone and moderate hot water is filled. Cost of running is 1% to 10% of electricity bills with air con and/or heater.

It might not be as critical as they try to paint it.........

[Ron Wagner + 706]

On 12/10/2022 at 10:26 AM, specinho said:

📢   Party poopper     party popper   📢

Europe is the origin and popular to have transparent glass windows, floor to ceiling transparent glass panels etc. Houses are usually built to face each other and clustered closely.

People might have little privacy, particularly at night when the lights are on. One peek could be someone's living room, bed room, kitchen, loo etc, at appropriate moments or other wise.

In order to have more privacy, many, particularly the young and not so young not supported by pension, (except the old for safety reason), would choose to dim the light or not turn it on at all...... Energy and cost saving.

There is another invention i.e. air-con fan. This is a fan but could function as an air-con if cold icy water and ice is placed in the water container. Or heater, if heated stone and moderate hot water is filled. Cost of running is 1% to 10% of electricity bills with air con and/or heater.

It might not be as critical as they try to paint it.........

In dry areas of the Southwest USA, people have often used "water coolers" which are basically a whole house fan that has a water source to cool the air. It is quite effective, but useless in humid climates. Parts of Spain and all of North Africa could benefit from them. Or just put house fans in front of fans. ICE is expensive but could be used for starters. Cool clothes, cool showers, or even laying in a cool tub or kids pool are  also options. 

I love the fifties era homes that are mostly glass. Single pane in those days but could be double or triple now. Curtains that are remote controlled, or not,  handle privacy. In some temperate areas they can supply needed heat if positioned to allow the sun to heat rock mass in walls of floors. Shady areas could be with smaller or no windows. 

[TailingsPond + 1,006]

On 12/10/2022 at 9:26 AM, specinho said:

 

There is another invention i.e. air-con fan. This is a fan but could function as an air-con if cold icy water and ice is placed in the water container. Or heater, if heated stone and moderate hot water is filled. Cost of running is 1% to 10% of electricity bills with air con and/or heater.

 

 

You are just deconstructing an air conditioner; the chiller / compressor that created the ice is just distant from the fan.

If the water is cooler than room temperature is not just evaporative cooling. Worst case you use your own fridge to make the ice, the fridge dumps the heat back into your place plus some.

 

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by TailingsPond

[specinho + 470]

On 12/13/2022 at 11:11 AM, Ron Wagner said:

In dry areas of the Southwest USA, people have often used "water coolers" which are basically a whole house fan that has a water source to cool the air. It is quite effective, but useless in humid climates. Parts of Spain and all of North Africa could benefit from them. Or just put house fans in front of fans. ICE is expensive but could be used for starters. Cool clothes, cool showers, or even laying in a cool tub or kids pool are  also options. 

I love the fifties era homes that are mostly glass. Single pane in those days but could be double or triple now. Curtains that are remote controlled, or not,  handle privacy. In some temperate areas they can supply needed heat if positioned to allow the sun to heat rock mass in walls ofloors. Shady areas could be with smaller or no windows. 

Some weeks ago, a photo showed some buildings in  the UK turned glass windows into windowless, in conjunction with the announcement of  electrical price increment or adjustment........... Extra shade without glass window, right.....? 'o'   '~'

[El Gato + 254]

On 11/21/2022 at 4:20 AM, Rob Plant said:

Have you heard of the Rivian?

faster than a Dodge Viper in a drag race too!

Capability at a glance¹

• Drivetrain

  All-Wheel Drive

• 0-60 mph

  3 secs

• Towing capacity

  Up to 11,000 lbs

• Wading depth

  3+ ft

• https://rivian.com/r1t

Range? If it don't go 500 plus mi on a charge, I don't want it! We don't' live in a country we can cross in a couple of hours,

0-60 don't do a bit of good if it dies in a 100  miles, not to mention the cold killing the batteries

[El Gato + 254]

4 minutes ago, El Gato said:

Range? If it don't go 500 plus mi on a charge, I don't want it! We don't' live in a country we can cross in a couple of hours,

0-60 don't do a bit of good if it dies in a 100  miles, not to mention the cold killing the batteries

And Price?  We are in a recession now. People can't afford electric vehicles. The ones pushing are those showing off their economic privileged. Median US income is 53k