World energy question

[BD]

Dave, it's related to a new religion, "earth worshiping."

It has everything to do with politics and it is your side of the isle that is preventing us from tapping into it.

I was trained at Fluor Corp. for two years on refinery piping design/construction and they flat out said it is our government's doing.

Whether you believe in man made global warming or not, it has being hijacked by politicians and special interest group as a tool for us to move away from fossil fuel in the name of green energy in the name of saving the planet, the reality is, it is just another power grab because by controlling the energy, they get tax carbon for more revenue and they have control of certain aspect of the economy. The government is doing everything right now to adjust the value of US dollars to make green energy more sensible, and pushing the green agenda is making certain demographic of people very rich. In my opinion, it is another artificially generated bubble that will burst.

The current discovery of shale oil within the US territory is estimated at 2 trillion barrels and yet we're not allow to tap into. We actually have more but they don't want people to know.

Think about this, without crude, we can't pave the road, there will be a plastic shortage, and flight ticket will sky rocket. The EU is implementing all US flights to Europe with a carbon tax, and is raising the cost of travel even more. Simply put, it is just another way to transfer the wealth, mainly from the middle class of the world to third world country, while the broker of the money strike rich.

At the end of the day, it is about control of its population through the limitation of energy, healthcare, and in the US, guns.

 

[TURBO2GO]

Sahtt thank you for the actual engineering explanation instead if a political rant.

Can you tell me why this works easier to do individual homes and business and what the actual mechanism is? Or point me to a good link?

 

[jond]

What we energy engineers/geoscientists call 'distributed solar' is indeed exciting. The reason is it's almost economical - we are not a factor of 10 off anymore, closer to 1.33-2x. Many companies (NRG is an example) are aggressively pursuing a way to make it work.

Great info sahtt.
Do you know where the cost is in making solar panels?
Do they use a rare material, or can they not be automated, or what?

 

[HIJACKER]

A lot of smart people in this thread, so I'm going to ask a dumb question I've had for years about possible energy to see why it wouldn't work.

When a compound molecule is split, energy is produced. Would it be possible to take H20 and split H2 from O, and use the energy created from the split and the remaining hydrogen for power, and have the oxygen as exhaust?

How about running on natural air? There is plenty of C02 in the air, how about the same as I stated above but replacing with carbon, allowing the oxygen as exhaust?

 

[sahtt]

Sahtt thank you for the actual engineering explanation instead if a political rant.

Can you tell me why this works easier to do individual homes and business and what the actual mechanism is? Or point me to a good link?

I am not sure if it is 'easier' to do distributed solar versus a solar 100+ megawatt facilities (it is certainly less efficient), but it allows for consumers and economics to dictate the energy mix.

Typically these decisions are not made by consumers - they are made by City Councils in regulated areas (such as Austin) or in the board rooms of major energy providers in a deregulated markest (like Houston, where it is usually a decision of coal vs natural gas). If you think about it, you as an individual have very little control outside of using diesel instead of gas, or perhaps buying an electric car. At best your larger community has some influence. In the end, the city council/power provider has many complex variables to consider for their 50 year+ investment.

With distributed solar, the consumer is in total control. Solar "works" nationwide, but it only works well from Texas to the Pacific Coast and about as far north as southern Utah. Efficiencies drop dramatically outside of these areas. That being said, Germany, which is in a horrendous location for solar, has many billions in solar infrastructure and they are fairly content with the investment. Wext Texas through southern California has some of the best solar 'resources' in the world.

For about $12,500 you can get a solar system that can power the majority of a small/medium sized home's electrical needs when sun light is optimal. Home design and the efficiency of your air conditioner cause significant variances. The good part for home owners and businesses in the regions where solar works best is it coincides almost perfectly to electrical demand. This is quite spectacular from an engineering standpoint because we are utterly deficient in energy storage. Solar is not, however, going to charge anyone's cars while they are asleep at night anytime soon. It can offset significant amounts of electrical demand from AC usage. Selling excess energy back into the grid sounds good but is not realistic in most areas; the grid is not always two way.

Wind power, which is a meaningful component of my state's energy supply (more than any other state in the union, even more than the hippy states), is sporadic and best at night - almost useless for us during peak demand where problems occur. It would be ideal, however, for charging electric cars at night and I have friends that are already in the late stages of designing software to optimize this. For instance, you could pre program your Tesla (or washing machine, etc.) to only charge when electricity rates are <10 cents kWh. There are tons of interesting externalities when software meets live data useage.

For the record, my specific focus is in Enhanced Oil Recovery so I don't think I have any real bias for or against 'green' energy.

- 2013 M.S. Energy and Earth Resources, Geosciences, UT Austin.

 

[sahtt]

Great info sahtt.
Do you know where the cost is in making solar panels?
Do they use a rare material, or can they not be automated, or what?

Solar panels can be made out of a variety of materials. The most common systems are made of silicon. Fortunately, silicon is the second most common element in the entire earth's crust! Not all of these resources are economical to mine but between silicon and various organic materials we can make plenty of solar panels. Lower grade materials do result in lower efficiencies. Panels created for the international space station probably have an efficiency of ~40% (raw energy into electrical power, which is better than a combustion engine FWIW) while commercial units are in the 20-35% range depending on cost/materials/construction.

Solar panels are already becoming a commodity; companies in China went from an empty lot to a state of the art facility producing thousands of panels a month in less than a year's time. The cost is partially dependent on the materials but it has come down immensely in the just the last 2-3 years (think 40-60% reduction in price). I can get into levelized costs and KWh technical terms but the best way (IMO) to think about it is if you are in an area where your bill is >14c kWh, you are already at solar parity if you could finance the project with very low interest rates. Having to dump $10-20k into a system up front totally screws up the economics. The worst thing to happen to solar is the shale natural gas boom, it keeps sending electricity rates down every time solar manages to make economic parity.

 

[sicarius82]

I have a similar question, on natrual gas. We have tons of this stuff but why can't we do something to utilize it as a more important energy source?

Please look up "Bloom Energy". We make fuel cells, currently only available for the private sector, which uses natural gas (or equivalent) and covert it into electricity.

 

[Hard Five]

A lot of smart people in this thread, so I'm going to ask a dumb question I've had for years about possible energy to see why it wouldn't work.

When a compound molecule is split, energy is produced. Would it be possible to take H2O and split H2 from O, and use the energy created from the split and the remaining hydrogen for power, and have the oxygen as exhaust?

How about running on natural air? There is plenty of CO2 in the air, how about the same as I stated above but replacing with carbon, allowing the oxygen as exhaust?

Splitting H2O molecules does not produce energy (H2O + energy = H2 + O). The fusion of H2 and O into H2O results in excess energy, but you would need extreme heat (nuclear) to fuse the two and the ability to contain/store the excess energy. This is how the sun works.

The energy from splitting water comes from using H as a fuel, as it is a good energy carrier. Heat (energy) and water are the byproducts of using H as a fuel. Unfortunately, it takes more energy to split H20 into H2 and O then you get out of it. The most efficient process for obtaining hydrogen is steam reforming, which is only 80% efficient. The % of energy lost needs to be made up somewhere else.

This is the same issue with CO2.