Why is energy so expensive?

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Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

That'll never make enough money or taxes for our leaders.
Besides,the greens will never approve of stabbing the heart of Mother Earth.

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Paradox said..

There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference.

You better tell the people who have been studying the subject that they have it all wrong

theconversation.com/want-energy-storage-here-are-22-000-sites-for-pumped-hydro-across-australia-84275

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Mr Milk said..

You better tell the people who have been studying the subject that they have it all wrong

theconversation.com/want-energy-storage-here-are-22-000-sites-for-pumped-hydro-across-australia-84275

Plenty of people who actually work in the industry have commented on that study for what it is worth. It was done by computer GIS people on a computer, in a university. Identifyng terrain that fits a plugged in profile inputted into a model, is very different to assessing it's suitability for actually storing water, let alone suitability for actually building a dam you can generate electricity from, let alone enough electricity to make it worthwhile.

Small things like suitable geological features, environmental impacts and current land useage were all a non parameter, let alone the fact that most turned out to be either on private property or in a National Park.

The big kicker though was where was the water coming from to fill them? and more importantly were was the water coming from to replace the significant evaporation loss Australia tend to have....

There is a reason nothing has happened to any of it in the last 5 years since it was released.

e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change

Bit of a slap in the face for net zero .

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Rango said..
e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change

Bit of a slap in the face for net zero .

That is one of the best written pieces on the topic I have seen for some time.

A dose of reality. That first chart talkes in spades. The west has made massive changes to CO2 emissions. Anything further we do now is peanuts in the overall global perspective. Australia is part of the little purple Ociania band near the top.... Tell me again why spending massive amounts of money that could go to healthcare and education is worth it again?

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Mark _australia said..
^^ Yes

and the biggest - international transport on ships etc.
We can make cars here but don't. They get shipped in
Everyone has to have a new phone every year and AV system worth $10K and god-knows what else.... all sent here in sea containers. The frothing over the latest phone that essentially does the same thing as the last one is just nuts. We could list hundreds of examples of that excess if we put out minds to it.

Yes. Keep the same car for 10 - 15 yrs. Problem solved.

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Harrow said..

Paradox said..
There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference. Batteries currently are just too expensive, like 5-10 times more expensive than nuclear if you want to try to compare storage against generation.

You say "investing in storage" and many criticise governments for lack of policy planning, but the reality is that we have very few options for energy at the level we demand it. You can't invest and policy your way out of hard reality.

Coal / Gas / Nuclear. The elephant in the room is that irrespective of how much money we burn on wind and solar we still need at least 2 of those 3 to supply at least 60% of our power generation needs. Hard facts, ignored by most.

You've made no mention of hydrogen. I've no idea how the value chain works out, but Twiggy is happy enough to be placing a large bet on it.

Hydrogen seems to be scam.
What is the point to involve hydrogen in energy cycle and loose 75% efficiency in process ?
Which means that 3/4 of your electricity is lost
battery storage - ok
water pumping - ok
but my favorite is transmit ion without the need to storage.
If we imagine limitless tramsmition spannig the world we may not need much storage at all.
Cost of transmition cable is cheaper then massive battery storage

the only problem is overland transmit ion tower,
we need technology, even cheap trenching or tunneling instead

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Rango said..

Macroscien said..

Mr Milk said..

Macroscien said..

Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

Fusion tech is set to unlock near-limitless ultra-deep geothermal energy (newatlas.com)

newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/

lovely article !

So why would you need to bother drilling the holes if nuclear fusion was available which is needed to drill.
Lots of "could" in that article which is science terms for"probably not" or "maybe".

Interesting is that geothermal do increase surface temperature,
Balance of energy heating Earth surface increase.I wonder if theoretically all energy humans use is geothermal based - how that may effect global temperature? If taht is negligent ( small im comparison to all solar irradiation) or make significant change to climate ?

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Rango said..

So why would you need to bother drilling the holes if nuclear fusion was available which is needed to drill.
Lots of "could" in that article which is science terms for"probably not" or "maybe".

Where do you get the idea that nuclear fusion powers the drill? It uses a mm wavelength laser to fuse the rock is how I read it.

Maybe we should harness the energy from the electrical brain synapses of everyone in parliament house in Canberra a la Matrix style ?

Would be a better use for them than whatever they do now. Although if brain output power is a function of brain activity then it probably wouldn't be a very efficient system.

Especially from the members for the Greens.

What surprises me is I don't hear much talk of the other "colors" of hydrogen.


www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrogen-colour-spectrum#:~:text=Turquoise%20hydrogen%20is%20made%20using,being%20permanently%20stored%20or%20used.

fsr.eui.eu/between-green-and-blue-a-debate-on-turquoise-hydrogen/


I think the turquoise one using methane and solar power to split out the hydrogen and solid carbon.

Solid carbon usable and stable.

If its biomethane such as landfill or piggery waste used to supply the methane its actually carbon positive. But coal seam gas or lng could be the feedstock instead. Avoids having to supply good pure water to split as well.

Not sure of the use of the word green attached to the word hydrogen about 30x in that article.

Anyone wanna do the math on the amount of rare earths needed to build 25mil solar panels and the mass resources to build a windfarm of that size? Whats the lifespan on the stuff? Do we spend 10yrs destroying the environment to build the generating capacity to get 10yrs of 'free' and 'green' hydrogen?

Its a nice big BP advertisement but I'd like to hear the net effect, not grandiose statements about how we make green hydrogen for free renewable renewable free green renewable free blah blah

^^^
Solar PV doesn't use rare earth metals. They go into magnets and touch screen displays. Refining them does create nasty waste, but, luckily,

www.newscientist.com/article/2307608-rare-earth-elements-for-smartphones-can-be-extracted-from-coal-waste/