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Post by vegemeister on Mar 14, 2017 10:33:19 GMT
I don't want any kind of power plant in my house. Not even lemon power? Science projects are okay. But no sheds full of lemons powering appliances.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 14, 2017 17:24:15 GMT
I would be ok with a backyard nuclear plant
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Post by Pttg on Mar 25, 2017 21:58:13 GMT
Finally bothered too look up the data. Current levelized costs put wind as the cheapest per kWh. Solar is next. Then natural gas, then coal, then biomass, community solar, and rooftop solar, and then it's nuclear power. www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdfGood thing we don't make policy from internet polls. Before you ask, that doesn't include subsidies or a carbon tax.
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Post by acrosome on Mar 26, 2017 7:38:06 GMT
Perhaps I misunderstand the question, but it's already the 21st century, and we're clearly going to be majority dependent upon fossil fuels for many decades to come... unfortunately.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 26, 2017 14:57:20 GMT
Perhaps I misunderstand the question, but it's already the 21st century, and we're clearly going to be majority dependent upon fossil fuels for many decades to come... unfortunately. atompunk al la fallout would be nice
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Post by The Astronomer on Mar 26, 2017 15:59:44 GMT
Perhaps I misunderstand the question, but it's already the 21st century, and we're clearly going to be majority dependent upon fossil fuels for many decades to come... unfortunately. The entire 21 th century, preferably, the middle 21 th century. MISSION: DESTROY THE ANTI-INTELLECTUALS.
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utilitas
Junior Member
I can do this all day.
Posts: 59
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Post by utilitas on Mar 31, 2017 15:05:09 GMT
Finally bothered too look up the data. Current levelized costs put wind as the cheapest per kWh. Solar is next. Then natural gas, then coal, then biomass, community solar, and rooftop solar, and then it's nuclear power. www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdfGood thing we don't make policy from internet polls. Before you ask, that doesn't include subsidies or a carbon tax. Cost isn't all. Consider, please, how much space one individual wind plant or solar panel plant takes up. Enormous amounts of land are used for wind, solar and biomass. ESPECIALLY biomass. Going off of data from power plants from western and central Europe, (source: go look at a few) the density of electricity produced (gigawatthours per square kilometer) is around 3000 for third and third and a half generation nuclear power plants. Compared to the worst wholesale source of energy, biomass harvest and combustion (which has a very low efficiency, and therefore has about 1 GWh/km 2. Even then, I'm taking into account the EXTREMELY optimistic variables for biomass, including perfect environment, climate, drying and the absolute best plant for amount of energy produced per square kilometer (that would be miscanthus sinensis)) is 3000 times less space efficient. Solar and wind is around a few hundred times less efficient. And note especially that currently, our pressurized water reactors are working below 5% fuel efficiency. That is, they get less than 5% of the energy out of an amount of enriched fission fuel. This technology will improve dramatically, as the first fourth generation reactors are coming online, including sodium-cooled fast reactors. Last time I checked, nuclear was roughly on par with plain old coal burning in the terms of MW produced per cost of building the power plant. And in that analysis by lazard, it's a cumulative cost based on maintenance alone, not on manufacture cost. Solar, wind and biomass have poultry returns relative to nuclear or combustion. Then, of course, is the fact that solars don't work at night, and wind doesn't blow all the time. The best application of solar is in individual amounts; on residential housing with dedicated power management systems (including accumulators), on specialized systems and vehicles and in otherwise inaccessible locations. It is a colossally stupid decision from a grid-level perspective. Solar panels lose efficiency with higher temperatures, have costly maintenance and horribly environmentally unfriendly manufacture and, worst of all, without subsidies and push from environmentalists, it would be economically unfeasible to create any non-experimental solar farms. The age of solar power will come with the advent of orbital industry, but we haven't gone that far yet. Solar power is the thing of dyson swarms and space manufacture out in the vastness of space. There's plenty of space in, well, space, where the solar panels won't take up agricultural land and cast shades. TL;DR: It may be cheap to produce power, but it takes a damn lot of space, and everything costs a lot to build. Solar and wind are also horrible for the power grid.
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Post by Pttg on Mar 31, 2017 23:55:46 GMT
I don't really have the time or the inclination to explain why you're wrong, but suffice it to say that everything you've written is either wrong or irrelevant. More importantly, you aren't arguing with me; you're arguing with Lazard.
I wish, just once, that someone on the internet would read the citations instead of repeating the unfounded assumptions they heard from their redneck grandfather.
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Post by The Astronomer on Apr 1, 2017 2:11:44 GMT
Is this turning into a fight? I must do something...
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utilitas
Junior Member
I can do this all day.
Posts: 59
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Post by utilitas on Apr 1, 2017 13:41:48 GMT
Is this turning into a fight? I must do something... A fight requires two (2) opponents, not one opponent and one guy being vaguely passive aggressive.
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Post by argonbalt on Apr 2, 2017 17:20:02 GMT
TL;DR: It may be cheap to produce power, but it takes a damn lot of space, and everything costs a lot to build. Solar and wind are also horrible for the power grid. You make allot of good points, but i do have one major counter argument. That is mainly that as most structures and societies exist now, much like with the materialism and consumerism we express in product consumption, we like wise are hilariously wasteful in energy consumption as well. Many people simply forget to turn their lights off or unpower appliances and items all the time, burning many more watts than necessary. Additionally even if the families are over all conscientious about their consumption, the simple design of many homes and apartments that are old/designed cheaply/designed replaceable put a much smaller emphasis on energy efficiency in regards to heating. Now when the thread talks about 21+ power, that in my opinion might cover secondary colonies as well. In that regard efficiency is utmost important. Likewise the precious room needed for power production is not so limited on exo bodies. So yes Nuclear is indeed the best bang for sqaure buck, but secondary supplies should not simply be written off.
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utilitas
Junior Member
I can do this all day.
Posts: 59
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Post by utilitas on Apr 2, 2017 19:11:56 GMT
TL;DR: It may be cheap to produce power, but it takes a damn lot of spaaace, and everything costs a lot to build. Solar and wind are also horrible for the power grid. You make allot of good points, but i do have one major counter argument. That is mainly that as most structures and societies exist now, much like with the materialism and consumerism we express in product consumption, we like wise are hilariously wasteful in energy consumption as well. Many people simply forget to turn their lights off or unpower appliances and items all the time, burning many more watts than necessary. Additionally even if the families are over all conscientious about their consumption, the simple design of many homes and apartments that are old/designed cheaply/designed replaceable put a much smaller emphasis on energy efficiency in regards to heating. Now when the thread talks about 21+ power, that in my opinion might cover secondary colonies as well. In that regard efficiency is utmost important. Likewise the precious room needed for power production is not so limited on exo bodies. So yes Nuclear is indeed the best bang for sqaure buck, but secondary supplies should not simply be written off. I'm mostly just talking about the situation we are currently in. We're running out of space, and paving it over isn't a good idea. In space, however, on any non-Earth body, you're not exactly going to be finding many pastures. So yes, it's a fine idea to pave it over with a bunch of solars, though that comes with its own problems. Although considering efficiency, we can assume that the 24 hour day is gone, and therefore there is no day and night cycle visible in the powergrid, ergo you don't need to periodically throttle power sources to match the demand. We can also assume that smaller installations can afford to have their own accumulators and batteries, and therefore don't have to rigidly monitor every input and output of the power systems. Moon, for example. The official ESA proposed moon base(s) will be polar ones, with sun tracking solar panels either suspended above the base itself or on the rims of craters. The problem is with EVA. In EVA, you're exposing your crewmembers to the elements, but repairs and maintenance in EVA is also a lot slower and more tedious than even walking around in a hazmat suit in a SCRAM'd reactor core. Heck, you'll get less radiation exposure next to a radioactive materials storage pool than out there, working on huge solar arrays, trying your damndest to find that single micrometeorite conductor fault upon millions of miles of wire. Or you could just not bother with maintenance and outright remove any deficient panels outright, which has its own inefficiency problems. Then again, a potential, highly unlikely reactor leak could kill everyone in the base, but still.
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Post by Pttg on Apr 2, 2017 22:28:57 GMT
Why do you assume that solar panels on earth will be put on pastures? There's perfectly good deserts, and hey, deserts are exactly the place you'd want to put solar panels.
Storage is cheap and getting cheaper (take pumped hydro).
And space is only a problem if you dramatically underestimate solar output. If we stick with the 22% efficiency we're currently getting with cheap panels (bilayer and more might increase that to 40%, possibly more), and we're looking at 7 work-hours a day in the Mojhave and 1kw/m, and we assume 5% growth on our 28691657770 MWh/annum current total energy use, that's a square 231km on one edge. Presuming all the panels are flat on the ground. We could do better with trackers, but generally they make things more expensive.
Let's throw in 10% more energy on top of that just to account for storage inefficiency and energy losses when producing hydrogen (or whatever) for vehicle fuel. 242.5km x 242.5km. Of course, it wouldn't be one big array, it'd probably be lots of scattered arrays from LA to Lubbock to Salt Lake City. From one array, you might be able to see a couple others on a clear day. All in the driest, sunniest, most god-forsaken land in the west.
I'm not saying it'd be small, but I am saying that it's not taking up anyone's farmlands.
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Post by Enderminion on Apr 3, 2017 2:05:32 GMT
ahhh, but for equal ground coverage you could get more power with nuclear, and you also don't want nuclear anywhere near cities
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Post by darthroach on Apr 3, 2017 2:06:37 GMT
you also don't want nuclear anywhere near cities Speak for yourself, matey
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