# DESERTEC - major transcontinental renewable energy plan



## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

This thread follows on from discussions on this thread around Concentrated  Solar Thermal Power, but I think the publication of the DESERTEC White Book merited it's own thread being as it looks to be the most ambitious, and well thought out plan I've seen to date to take a serious stab at solving the clean energy / energy security / climate change issues for a significant proportion of the world.


*Overview*

DESERTEC is a project developed by TREC (Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation), a group established by The Club of Rome in 2003, and charged with the task of developing a realistic sustainable energy plan for Europe. This is an organisation with a reasonable amount of political clout behind it, enough to have Jordans Prince Hassal bin Talal presenting the report to the European Parliament last week, so I'm hoping that this report could form the starting basis for the start of some serious action to back up the last 15 years of talk on climate change.

Essentially as I understand it from reading through all the published documents and articles I've found so far, the scheme is based around the following key components:-


A transcontinental High Voltage Direct Current electricity grid connecting European countries national AC grids with countries in North Africa and the Middle East.
A network of largescale (200 mw+) Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) power stations located in desert / semi desert areas of North Africa, the Middle East, and Spain.
Power from this network of CST power stations envisaged to be capable of supplying 2/3 of North African and Middle Eastern predicted electricity requirements, and 15-25% of EU electricity requirements by 2050. CST plants to store heat during the day to faciliate nighttime power generation, meaning CST plants can operate as base load generators.
Fossil Fuel generated electricity to fall to roughly 25% in the EU and 10% in Africa & the Middle East, with Nuclear Power dropping to pretty much zero in both areas by 2050. The remaining power to be sourced from the full range of proven renewable energy sources.
Distribution of power via HVDC network to enable greater reliance on renewables (as the wind is virtually always blowing somewhere / sun shining / tide coming in etc).
CST power stations also to use the waste steam to produce clean drinking water through desalination of sea water. Thereby solving the major looming water problem in the north africa and middle east region.
*
Map of proposed transcontinental HVDC grid, and major renewable power sources.*








*Outline of predicted capacity, land requirements, capital costs, price per kwh etc*








***

more info

TREC
TREC UK
Desert Power Article (pdf)
Environmental Scientist Article (pdf)
business article (pdf)


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## jonH (Dec 3, 2007)

less energy use is the answer


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## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

no - less energy use is only part of the answer.

noway at all that we're ever going to reduce our energy usuge to the point where it's anywhere even close to our current level of energy production from sustainable sources. Therefore we have to make a serious effort to dramatically increase the amount of electricity we produce from the full range of renewable sources, while at the same time doing everything possible to be as energy efficient as possible.

The report makes a fairly realistic prediction of continued increases in electricity consumption til 2040, then consumption levels begining to drop off. It does also say somewhere that this drop off depends on how much electricity starts to be used for additional uses such as transport (electric cars / hydrogen cars) and heating.


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## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

> *Our offer to EUMENA:
> 
> **If you put 10 bn € on the table, then we know how to put you on a road leading EUMENA out of the energy, water and climate crisis,
> by means of the 7 measures and within 7 years !*



outline strategy document


obviously the entire project's going to cost a lot more than 10 billion euros (50 billion euros by 2020, and 400 billion euros by 2050 eastimates) but they're saying that 10 billion euros committed now by the EU would be enough to leverage in the investment needed from other investors, and to get the ball rolling to make this happen.

10 billion euros is roughly 1.3% of the EU budget for the next 6 years, a level that's surely managable for a project of this magnitude that has a realistic chance of actually stopping CO2 levels rising too far. Bearing in mind that once the technologies been demonstrated, it should then hopefully be picked up rapidly by other regions of the world. there's fuck all reason why the US and china at least shouldn't be able to implement similar schemes linking their desert areas with the main areas of electricity consumption.


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## spacemonkey (Dec 3, 2007)

Very interesting, will be reading this today.


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## Crispy (Dec 3, 2007)

They should have got this proofed by english speaking people.


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## Crispy (Dec 3, 2007)




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## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

Crispy said:
			
		

> They should have got this proofed by english speaking people.


lol - yeah, it's not the easiest read is it


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## kyser_soze (Dec 3, 2007)

Estimated cost of Trident replacement = £50bn (inbetween the £10bn the govt says, and £75bn CND say)=€70bn.

French nuclear spend = €17bn approx

The cost of building this is piss in the wind for even national budgets, even the investment budgets of the largest global corporations...


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## stavros (Dec 3, 2007)

> no - less energy use is only part of the answer.


I agree. This problem is so multifaceted, all-encompassing, that there cannot be a singular Holy Grail.


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## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Estimated cost of Trident replacement = £50bn (inbetween the £10bn the govt says, and £75bn CND say)=€70bn.
> 
> French nuclear spend = €17bn approx
> 
> The cost of building this is piss in the wind for even national budgets, even the investment budgets of the largest global corporations...



I'd be interested to see a much more detailed cost analysis of this option, including the cost of building the full scale EU wide renewable's mix that TREC envisage happening but don't actually elaborate on in this document.

We could then compare the costs to the costs of a nuclear / fossil fuel option, and I've got a sneaky suspicion that over the lifetime of this generation of new power generators (ie replacement of existing nuclear, coal and gas as they come to the end of their planned working lifespans) that the renewable option plus desertec scheme would be more cost effective. I'm sure this is particularly true if you accept the fact that a new generation of nuclear would only be a one generation stop gap solution, with nuclear material rapidly becoming more expensive and scarcer as stocks become depleted, and that some version of this renewable technology and new international HVDC grid would be needed at the end of the next generation of nuclear anyway. Basically new nuclear is throwing good money after bad building in obscelecence, whereas the renewable desertec option is investing in a power infrastructure that should form the backbone of sustainable electricity generation and distribution system for the forseeable future.


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## kyser_soze (Dec 3, 2007)

I would think that over the long term any renewable will be cheaper than having to dig stuff out of the ground - you just have to look at 25 and 50 years costing.

What would really be mad is if one of the big oil companies got in bed with this.


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## Hocus Eye. (Dec 3, 2007)

The oil companies will get involved with this or similar schemes.  To them energy is just a market.  If there is less furure money to be made in oil because it is becoming scarcer and harder to extract then they will move to other energy sources.  They will remain in oil while the current level of shortages causes prices to rise but only until their own costs outrun the extra margin they have been making from those price rises.  The oil companies and energy companies will explore the whole range of old and new sources for energy.

The oil companies or other investors will only go over to nuclear power while governments subsidise the disposal of waste and this cannot last for long.  The complicating factor with nuclear power is that its real raison d'être is to provide  plutonium and other materials for nuclear weapons.  This puts it into a different category of energy supply, and it is to be hoped, limited in volume.


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## free spirit (Dec 3, 2007)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> I would think that over the long term any renewable will be cheaper than having to dig stuff out of the ground - you just have to look at 25 and 50 years costing.
> 
> What would really be mad is if one of the big oil companies got in bed with this.


ay - they're the ones with the cash at the moment, but I'd be really wary about that as they already bought up the main solar pv companies then basically sat on them, failed to invest properly in them and essentially slowed the solar pv market right down in a way that cynics like me would think to be a deliberate attempt to keep making as much cash as possible from their oil interests for as long as possible, while hedging their bets.

I'd be looking more at the cash rich gulf oil states to make the investment, particularly as they're looking for projects to invest in outside of the US, could flog more of their oil to europe in euros, invest in the scheme in euros, and build the huge solar power plants in their deserts. It'd then guarantee their place as energy power houses for when the oil eventually starts to run out.


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## Falcon (Dec 7, 2007)

> The oil companies will get involved with this or similar schemes. To them energy is just a market


I think this argument is: _"Oil provides energy. Renewables provide energy. So oil companies will become renewable companies."_

Compare with: _"Oil provides fertilizer. Cows provide fertilizer. So oil companies will become farmers."_

Oil companies core competence is finding subsurface fluids, accessing them through wellbores and transporting them to markets. 

Renewables core competence include silicon refining, turbine manufacture and wave power transducer construction.

I can see oil companies getting into the water business. 

But they are no more qualified to get into the renewables business than farmers are - unless you consider having lots of cash as being both a necessary and sufficient qualification. BP became one of the the world's largest manufacturer of dog food in the 80's on that principle- and were crap at it.


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## free spirit (Dec 10, 2007)

shell and bp have owned 2 of the biggest solar pv manufacturers since the mid 90's, though some (including me) would argue that they've deliberately sat on them to keep solar as a minor energy source, and enable them to maximise their profits from the oil fields that are their core business. Not sure why else at a time when they're making record profits, they'd have underinvested in their solar pv arms so badly that there was a global under supply problem with PV.

the oil companies do have the potential make the swith to renewable happen though as they have both the cash and the expertise to do it, and could easily use the cash generated from the next few decades high oil prices to invest in renewables on a huge scale in order to position their companies as global leaders in the renewable energy market - a market that will be much bigger than oil by the end of this century.

to say they don't have the expertise is just plain wrong. As I've stated, 2 of the main players already own and run solar pv businesses. 2 of the other big renewables sectors, off shore wind, and large scale wave power fall fully within their areas of expertise in terms of installing and operating off shore installations. It's quite possible as well that the existing oil platform infrastructure could be used as a centre point for largescale wafe power farms.

The scary thing is that I really can't see how renewables can take off on the scale that they need to without the oil giants, and oil producing nations funding it. I just don't see any other industry that's going to have the guaranteed huge cash surplusses over the next few decades that will be needed to invest in the step change to a renewables based energy economy.


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## Falcon (Dec 10, 2007)

> to say they don't have the expertise is just plain wrong


Thanks, but I work for one of the companies you mention. We are painfully aware that "ownership" and "expertise" are quite different. 

At one level, our incompetence is just technological and operational. For example, we totally failed to anticipate the supply/demand gap that emerged in 2004/5 in refined silicon and persists - the people who understand their business did and locked in supplies. Now our plants stand at reduced output and we are laying off staff. (Not building the plants would have been your conspiracy. Building them and fucking up the supply chain is not). We don't hire the best people (they left to go and work for businesses that do understand renewables), so we can't make the right decisions about which technologies to develop and back.

At a more fundamental level, we fail to understand the logic and economics of the renewables business itself. The logic and economics of the hydrocarbon business (which we understand very well) is founded on massive capital intensity coupled with hydrocarbon's energy return of 20-80 units of energy out for every unit in, and a dependence on centralised production and a grid based distribution system. That creates businesses that are incredibly inefficient, but exhibit very high internal rates of return. All of our systems, from how we hire and train our people to how we relate to investors and governments, are hardwired to that principle.

Renewables businesses are capitally intensive but return about 1-2 units of energy for every unit in. If you are producing 0.5 units of surplus energy after manufacturing energy requirement, and losing 0.5 units of energy in your distribution system, then you have no business. These are the economies of off grid supply and demand and "long tail", low margin/high volume customer relationships. 

We have no clue.

Getting renewables to take off on the required scale without the oil giants is therefore both necessary and, fortunately, easier than teaching old dogs new tricks. 

A cup of oil currently costs about a third the cost of a cup of lemonade - effectively free (that's why you can buy devices at Walmart for airconditioning your garden). Price hydrocarbon energy properly through taxation so as to make alternative energy economically competitive, and stand back while entrepreneurs, the surplus low interest capital washing around the global financial system, and millions of customers meet.

Meanwhile, invest the tax revenue in primary research. The mantra that "government doesn't do science" survives as a statement only so long as you don't actually test it against reality. The entire discipline of Computer Science was created by US military funding of university courses and Chairs in the 70's. The US Military guaranteed Intel's first years of operation - it was the only way to ensure survival of the early semiconductor industry. Today's internet arose from public-funded ARPANET. Etc.

When they start investigating how to provide solar powered Abrams tanks, the problem will be essentially solved. Meanwhile, the world will continue to need oil and gas for our lifetime (3 billion people depend on it for fertilizer for food, for a start) and that task is only going to get harder as the supply fails. So BP and Shell needs to stick to its core competence, and we need to stop waiting for grownups to come and save us from the boogie men.


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## free spirit (Dec 12, 2007)

falcon - I'll get back to you in a bit, need to get some work done. some interesting points anyway, and it's definately interesting to hear the views on someone on the inside looking out, rather than the other way round.

have you had a look at the desrtec plan at all? be interested to get some informed opinions on it. I've got a few criticisms, as (briefly) 

it doesn't go into much detail, particularly about the UK (I get the feeling there wasn't a lot of UK involvement in it),
I think if the UK were to be convinced about it there'd need to be a direct UK HVDC link to north africa,
there's no mention of the UK - Holland or the holland - norway HVDC line that's already being installed, or the proposed UK-Norway HVDC line (currently blocked by some planning issue IIRC)... norway being important as it's something like 98% hydro, with the potential to provide some capacity to UK / Europe in the winter (which could potentially partially make up for low wind periods / winter drop off in solar thermal provision from north africa, in return for taking additional peak wind power from the Uk when it's not needed or something.
for such a major infrastructure plan, the presentation of the proposal all seems a wee bit ameteurish for my liking, but then I guess if it's mainly been drawn up by scientists with little PR support, then that's not that surprising.


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## Falcon (Dec 13, 2007)

Free spirit - my sense is that it is just the wrong thing to do. In grid based systems you lose about 40% of the original energy source in transmission losses (i.e. nearly half of all the energy available in, say, North Sea oil is used to heat up the air and ground around the transmission cables getting it to your home).

That's worked for 50 years because oil is such an incredible dense energy source we can afford to throw half of it away. After 50 years, we can only conceive of energy supply in terms of the centralized generation/grid distribution model.

But the essential problem with renewable sources is their low energy density. There is simply no process (other than problematic nuclear) that can replicate the effect of compressing thousands of years of sunlight into a cup of liquid that comes out of the ground under its own pressure. There just isn't sufficient surplus energy to absorb transmission losses and still provide useful work at the far end.

The problem gets much worse when you stop having hydrocarbon based energy sources available with which to construct all your PV arrays, wind turbines, wave transducers and transmission systems (and mine and process the raw materials from which they are constructed) and start siphoning power off from your grid to power the grid's own manufacturing energy needs.

It all stems from imagining that life as powered by hydrocarbon can go on. Substantial reduction in consumption and co-location of power generation and consumption (to reduce transmission losses) and co-location of where folk live and work (to reduce transportation losses) are about the only way I see things enduring.

Bottom line? Grid based renewable systems are cargo cult stuff (ill-considered effort and ceremony take place but go unrewarded due to flawed models of causation) - looks like a power supply, but isn't a power supply.


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## free spirit (Dec 13, 2007)

as I understand it HVDC has much lower transmission losses over long distances than HVAC, with quoted transmission losses of ~3% per 1000km. The majority of the losses are at either end of the cable  in the conversion from dc to ac (or a large component of the losses anyway)

A HVDC cable from North Africa to southern UK should be able to operate with less than 10% transmission losses.

The largescale concentrated solar thermal generating systems envisaged in the desertec proposal should be capable of generating in the 100-500mw per plant range, with the potential for plants to be clustered together to give gigawatt scale generating clusters.

Given that they are talking about being able to generate electricity from these CST plants at ~14-16 eurocents per kwh in the first generation, with a predicted drop to  below 10 eurocents per kwh as installed capacity increases, a transmission loss of 10% via the HVDC would still make this option cost effective compared to other renewables in the UK. Actually those figures don't include the costs of the HVDC cable, and associated infrastructure, but I still reckon even including these costs it makes economic sense providing that we're talking about importing a significant amount of power. The UK is currently paying around 17p / kwh for renewable generated power (scottish electric's fee paid to small scale renewables producers inclusive of ROC's), which works out at around 23-25 euros / kwh.

Obviously I've not been able to analise the figures in detail, but the figures seem to stack up very well if this is done on a suitably large scale. It's also using mostly existing proven technology.


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## david dissadent (Nov 2, 2009)

Germans power ahead with renewable link up.



> A $400bn (£240bn) plan to provide Europe with solar power from the Sahara moved a step closer to reality today with the formation of a consortium of 12 companies to carry out the work.
> 
> The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert and Mediterranean sea.
> 
> The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re, the world's biggest reinsurer, and consists of some of country's biggest engineering and power companies, including Siemens, E.ON, ABB and Deutsche Bank.


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## free spirit (Nov 2, 2009)

yep, I just saw that.

as per usual with renewables, this country is going to miss the boat entirely, and only get on board once any potential for us to become the world leaders in it and export the technology / ensure cheaper prices for ourselves has well and truely gone.


eta - but obviously it's great news that others aren't so short sighted as our politicians and business 'leaders'.


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## david dissadent (Nov 2, 2009)

Short sighted just about sums up this countries enegy policies. 

Words fail at the ability of UK politicians to miss open goals in terms of long term economicaly beneficial policies that are also eco friendly. It does not have to be HVDC to the desert, it can be going to Norwegian hydor and wind or Icelandic hydrothermal.


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## free spirit (Nov 2, 2009)

I reckon if we'd had any sort of a far sighted government, they'd have come up with a plan for Iceland to repay the money from the Icelandic banks through access to their excess hydro and geothermal resource, and us installing a high capacity HVDC cable up there smartish.

and yes, we also need one to Norway.

Both of these would then allow us to have huge amounts of extra wind, tidal, wave, tidal stream etc. without needing fossil fuel based spinning reserve to back it up.


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## MikeMcc (Nov 2, 2009)

Estimated cost of the whole project is 400billion euros, less than has been spent on saving the banks over the SINGLE calander year.  This doesn't take into account what jobs are created or sustained through the work generated over it's lifetime.  A no brainer in my mind.

ETA $400Billion dollars, so even less than I thought!


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## MikeMcc (Nov 2, 2009)

Falcon said:


> Free spirit - my sense is that it is just the wrong thing to do. In grid based systems you lose about 40% of the original energy source in transmission losses (i.e. nearly half of all the energy available in, say, North Sea oil is used to heat up the air and ground around the transmission cables getting it to your home).
> 
> That's worked for 50 years because oil is such an incredible dense energy source we can afford to throw half of it away. After 50 years, we can only conceive of energy supply in terms of the centralized generation/grid distribution model.
> 
> ...


HVDC transmission losses are less than HV-AC because there are no magnetic field variations.  They loose efficiency at each end in the conversion to/from DC.  For major links this is less of an issue compared to trying to do a national grid using the same system.


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## xenon (Nov 4, 2009)

I was reading that Trek.uk site yesterday. Must have heard something about it on the news. There's a good FAQ and loads of other info there. IIRC, transmitting solar energy to say the UK from the Sahara, on an optimumly designed system would only incur 8% losses. 

I only hope the political will is found so it can commence post haste.


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## xenon (Nov 4, 2009)

Falcon.

What do you mean by grid renewable systems are Cargo Cult?

Is not the key advantage of a modern grid, (assuming one can be developed in a timely fashion.) The ability to manage power peaks and troffs. Transmitting power from a variety of sauces in a wide geographical region. If all your off shaw turbines are operating at maximum and the output exceids the local demand. Unless you can store that energy, why not put it into the system for somewhere that needs it. Does such a system not have annalogus advantages to the internet. Is your skeptisism based on the technical difficulties or what.
?

A layman asks.


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## kyser_soze (Nov 5, 2009)

Why not just convert the supertanker fleet into the 'super battery' fleet, plug them into a big fuck off plug in Alhambra, sail off to whereever they're going, then plug them in again? Or similar.


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## david dissadent (Nov 5, 2009)

kyser_soze said:


> Why not just convert the supertanker fleet into the 'super battery' fleet, plug them into a big fuck off plug in Alhambra, sail off to whereever they're going, then plug them in again? Or similar.


That would be like getting a load of trucks full of batties and using them to truck electricity to remote towns rather than by cable. 

Batteries are nowhere near as energy dense as oil (or LNG\CNG). You would have to pay the cost of either the lithium or the lead acid batteries for the ships then take the loss on pumping the energy into and out of the ships and transporting that mass. 

A cable is a one of capital investment with a low maintenance cost.


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## free spirit (Nov 8, 2009)

kyser_soze said:


> Why not just convert the supertanker fleet into the 'super battery' fleet, plug them into a big fuck off plug in Alhambra, sail off to whereever they're going, then plug them in again? Or similar.


because it's way more efficient to run a HVDC cable instead, and we'll need all the batteries we can get to power cars etc on land.


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## david dissadent (Jan 5, 2010)

Not quite DESERTEC but similar so I thought Id tack it on here.

Eurosuper grid for the NW European\ Atlantic states to share wind and other renewables under discussion.

For once the dozy slow kid at the back of the class is involved with this one.... (yes us).


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## Bernie Gunther (Jan 6, 2010)

Interesting, bet they don't do it. Nuclear lobby is too strong and on too dodgy ground to tolerate workable alternatives.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

david dissadent said:


> Not quite DESERTEC but similar so I thought Id tack it on here.
> 
> Eurosuper grid for the NW European\ Atlantic states to share wind and other renewables under discussion.
> 
> For once the dozy slow kid at the back of the class is involved with this one.... (yes us).





Bernie Gunther said:


> Interesting, bet they don't do it. Nuclear lobby is too strong and on too dodgy ground to tolerate workable alternatives.



I bet they do - look at the engineering firms involved in DESERTEC and the Supergrid, they're also nuke plant builders hedging their bets on what'll win. Plus in large parts of continental Europe there _is_ no real nuclear lobby to speak of.

Anyone know how the math of solar thermal planets works in terms of sqm of mirrors to X amount of energy? I'm moving to Oz in 3 years, and have a plan of building a house with a mini solar thermal thing on the roof, possibly in some kind of bowl shape but have no idea what the area/power numbers are...


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## Crispy (Jan 6, 2010)

Depends on your collection method. if you're trying for electricity, high pressure steam turbines will be a little out of your price range, so a Stirling engine would be your only sensible method, I think. I don't know how small they can be sensibly made. A bowl-shaped collector would have to be steered to the sun at all times. Parabolic, with linear collector would be easier to make, requiring just one steering axis.

Personally, I'd go for off the shelf solar water heaters and a starter PV setup that you can add to as money allows (prices are droppping all the time). Mass market solar will be cheaper than some fancy custom solution, and you'll have support.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

Dammit, I'm going to have to learn some engineering, how much power daily a house would use etc. And probably some complex math. GRRR. 



> I don't know how small they can be sensibly made.



Less than a 160cm3 (how do you do superscript?) from the looks of this:

http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/Solar/EuroDish_System_Description.pdf

I have a vision...


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

Yowser! The whole house revolves to face the sun:


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## Crispy (Jan 6, 2010)

Alt 0185 ¹
Alt 0178 ²
Alt 0179 ³

That's as big as they go before you need tricky formatting that vbulletin doesn't have


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

[alt0179]3[/alt0179]


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

Crispy said:


> Alt 0185 ¹
> Alt 0178 ²
> Alt 0179 ³
> 
> That's as big as they go before you need tricky formatting that vbulletin doesn't have



OK, do you stick the nnumber in tags?


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## Crispy (Jan 6, 2010)

Hold down the Alt key and type the number

Start > Run > "Charmap" > Return
(Windows Key + R > "Charmap" > Return

And you can look up the shortcuts to every glyph in the font (or, rather, the first 256, cos it's a hangover from dos)


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2010)

OOO, just tested that, 

Apols for the thick moment too...


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## Crispy (Jun 22, 2010)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65J1ZO20100620

More news


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## kyser_soze (Jun 22, 2010)

UK-based fans of DESERTEC here...

http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/

This is such a no-brainer of a project it makes me want to bang my head against a wall that 

1. It's not moving any faster

2. The UK seems, at most, to have a peripheral interest in it.


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## Chester Copperpot (Jun 22, 2010)

Agreed. The only thing that I don't understand is why they're not scaling up the project! It's a win win for everybody, especially any North African country jumping on board with with huge future revenue streams (I take it we'll be paying the producing country for energy generated by them).


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## Quartz (Jun 25, 2010)

Isn't the big problem for Britain that we'd be significantly dependent on other countries for our energy?


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## Crispy (Jun 25, 2010)

Quartz said:


> Isn't the big problem for Britain that we'd be significantly dependent on other countries for our energy?


That'd be a change....


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## Santino (Jun 25, 2010)

I'm sure we'll find a way to funnel the profits into European and American pockets somehow.


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## Quartz (Jun 25, 2010)

Crispy said:


> That'd be a change....



The alternative is to build nuclear power stations here. Which looks to be a much better option for the security-aware.


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## kyser_soze (Jun 25, 2010)

Quartz said:


> The alternative is to build nuclear power stations here. Which looks to be a much better option for the security-aware.



Greater liability long term (economic and environmental), huge security hazard, and - and this is the real clincher - runs on a limited fuel resource.

In contrast, the North African/European super-grid, combining DESERTEC, north sea/north atlantic wind & wave power and several other big natural-tap resources are essentially unlimited.


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## free spirit (Jun 25, 2010)

Quartz said:


> Isn't the big problem for Britain that we'd be significantly dependent on other countries for our energy?


well, yes and no.

we'd be relying on lots of other countries for part of our power, with lots of other countries also being partially reliant on us for part of their power. A bit like the internet, so if one node goes down / country goes rogue, it shouldn't really affect us too badly. Any country playing silly buggers would probably be shooting themselves in the foot anyway as even in morocco the sun doesn't shine every single day of the year, and they need some night time power that won't be coming from CST even with it's heat storage capacity for night time generation.

Done properly, with the UK doing it's bit and building tens  / hundreds of gigawatts (peak) of offshore wind, wave, tidal, tidal stream etc. we'd be as reliant on the likes of norway, and Iceland using their hydro capacity to buffer us when our generation was peaking at the wrong time (plus give us extra back when we need it) as we would on north africa to supply us with CST when the wind wasn't blowing... although the CST with thermal storage also gives the ability to buffer wind etc as well.

IMO we missed a major trick by not negotiating this with Iceland when they owed us all that dosh... actually maybe it's not too late for that

erm, anyway, back to the point... we'd not be relying on one country to supply us with a large proportion of our energy requirements, as is likely to be the case with gas and russia if we don't go down the desertec route (although this is less of a problem for us as it is for most of Europe as we've been developing LNG terminal facilities to allow us to bring significant quantities of gas in by boat from the gulf etc to ensure diversity of supply)


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## Quartz (Jun 26, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> Greater liability long term (economic and environmental), huge security hazard,



The French experience suggests otherwise. And Chernobyl killed far fewer people than the coal industry does. It would be interesting to compare the radiation and fallout released by Chernobyl with the radiation and fallout released by the burning of coal.



> and - and this is the real clincher - runs on a limited fuel resource.



Supplies of uranium are vast.



free spirit said:


> well, yes and no.
> 
> we'd be relying on lots of other countries for part of our power, with lots of other countries also being partially reliant on us for part of their power. A bit like the internet, so if one node goes down / country goes rogue,



It's not really a single country going rogue that bothers me, for much the reasons you point out. And this system will need to be resilient to generators going down for maintenance anyway. It's more lack of maintenance, which is more likely in politically unstable areas, having a cascade effect, which we've seen in both the U.K. and America.

Colour me cautious, but I think the U.K. needs to invest in its own power system, and right now that means nuclear fission. Power stations of whatever hue take time to build, and we should start sooner rather than later. And if they ever crack fusion, building the generators will still take years but then we'll be able to decommission the fission reactors early.


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## spacemonkey (Jun 28, 2010)

Another article in the Guardian today. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/27/solar-power-sahara-europe-alok-jha


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## kyser_soze (Jun 29, 2010)

> Supplies of uranium are vast.



They won't be so vast if everyone suddenly switches to nukes and starts burning it. Not to mention the wide array of health and economic issues surrounding extraction. At present, uranium is still subject to Huberts Peak laws:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium



> The French experience suggests otherwise.



That's because there's no public debate about it. There was a great article in Le Monde about 3 years ago that discussed how the French public basically bury their heads in the sand when it comes to fuel disposal, and more interestingly, how despite having all this carbon free leccy, still have carbon footprints comparable with other EU & G7 nations.


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## i_got_poison (Jul 9, 2010)

Falcon said:


> Free spirit - my sense is that it is just the wrong thing to do. In grid based systems you lose about 40% of the original energy source in transmission losses (i.e. nearly half of all the energy available in, say, North Sea oil is used to heat up the air and ground around the transmission cables getting it to your home).
> 
> That's worked for 50 years because oil is such an incredible dense energy source we can afford to throw half of it away. After 50 years, we can only conceive of energy supply in terms of the centralized generation/grid distribution model.
> 
> ...



theres alot of talk about solar energy but as mentioned here the problem is it's energy density. also any electricity generated can't be stored for long, til it's used. the figures quoted for solar effiency are never replicated in practice.
from what i've read the best available solution is to use the electricity from this venture to produce hydrogen, then convert to ammonia. ammonia has a greater energy density and can be transported and stored alot easier than hydrogen. it's also been demonstration to run in cars (with modifications).


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## Crispy (Jul 9, 2010)

The benefit of this plan is that it would use solar thermal electricity generation. This means you can store heat on-site (using eg. salt as the working fluid) and maintain a constant baseline output during the night/cloudy weather. Transmission losses (on the way to existing grids) are minimal due to the use of HVDC.


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## Quartz (Jul 9, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> They won't be so vast if everyone suddenly switches to nukes and starts burning it.



I disagree: you can use breeder reactors to produce plutonium from the useless U-238. Or you can use thorium-based reactors. There are plenty of options.



> Not to mention the wide array of health and economic issues surrounding extraction.



Given that it is economically extractable from seawater, I'm not so sure about that.



> That's because there's no public debate about it. There was a great article in Le Monde about 3 years ago that discussed how the French public basically bury their heads in the sand when it comes to fuel disposal,



So? Evidently they feel that there is no need for a debate; it still does not seem to be a problem for them. And how many of their reactors have done a Chernobyl?

Fission power is the way forward for baseline load for the medium (20-70 years) term. There is, as yet, no alternative, but it will give us time to develop one.


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## free spirit (Jul 20, 2010)

Quartz said:


> I disagree: you can use breeder reactors to produce plutonium from the useless U-238. Or you can use thorium-based reactors. There are plenty of options.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


as I've discussed before many times on this topic though, the french have spent 2 generations setting up their entire energy infrastructure to cope with the problems associated with high levels of nuclear - namely that it can't cope with high levels of variation between peak daytime and low night-time usage levels. A large proportion of french household and business heating is therefore done via storage heaters, with high levels of economy 7 usage to dramatically flatten out day time and night time demand levels, and reduce the morning and evening peaks. 

This is not something that can be achieved overnight, particularly not when we as a country have (rightly) spent the last 20 years persuading as many people as possible to upgrade their heating systems to condensing gas boilers, meaning they're not likely to want to upgrade again en masse for quite a while. The government (or at least the previous one) over the last couple of years did develop a huge fixation with heat pumps, due largely to prof mackay's influence, as he'd convinced himself and others via some highly dubious back of the envelope calcs using manufacturers performance data rather than real world figures that heatpumps were gods gift to mankind. Unfortunately due to utter incompetence in government and industry, they're being installed without buffer tanks, which means basically that they will increase the morning and evening peak demand rather than flattening out that demand, so the main useful function they could have supplied is negated.

The french also have the ability to export their excess nuclear power to other countries around them who have the ability to absorb that extra power by switching off their fossil fuel based generators / using pump storage. If we had the same level of nuclear as france then both us and france would need to invest seriously in additional HVDC interconnects with several other countries as we couldn't export to each other. If the whole of Europe went down this route, well basically we'd be fucked / have to export it to africa via HVDC lines... therefore arguing against desertec, and for nuclear is basically an arguement based on a false prospectus.

The lack of control over the supply is constantly used as a stick to beat the renewables lobby with, yet this major problem with high levels of nuclear is rarely even mentioned. The biggest civil engineering project the UK had ever seen was the building of the UK's 3GW of pump storage facilities that was only required to offset nuclear's always on problem, yet still the nuclear lobby has the barefaced cheek to spread bullshit about the need for spinning fossil fuel reserve to back up renewables etc.

basically, unless you've got a nuclear power station up your sleeve that can be switched on and off in significantly less than the current 24 hour minimum shutdown time, then nuclear is a massive red herring (ignoring all it's other problems), and the only reason the politicians love it so much is that they need it to be able to maintain the pretence of an independent nuclear deterrent, simple as that.


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## free spirit (Jul 20, 2010)

Crispy said:


> The benefit of this plan is that it would use solar thermal electricity generation. This means you can store heat on-site (using eg. salt as the working fluid) and maintain a constant baseline output during the night/cloudy weather. Transmission losses (on the way to existing grids) are minimal due to the use of HVDC.


that's one benefit of it.

The main benefit of it being that it would link up so many different renewable sources across such a large area, as well as linking the buffering capabilities offered by hydro in norway, geothermal and hydro in iceland, pump storage in the UK etc (plus the buffereing capability of CST), plus bioenergy plants that can be used for peaking, and reducing amounts of high efficiency fossil fuel generation for peaking / buffering, that problems matching variability in supply and demand should cease being a problem.


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## i_got_poison (Aug 10, 2010)

didn't want to see this thread die.


dodgy soundtrack to open with and the translator seems to have taken a line or two. but otherwise a good
documentary.


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## Crispy (Nov 3, 2011)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables

Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.


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## xenon (Nov 3, 2011)

Heh, I just came to post this. Another link. Same story.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...o-for-first-piece-of-sahara-solar-development

Glad to see something will actually start being built.

e2a fixed link


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## kabbes (Nov 3, 2011)

Awesome sauce.


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## free spirit (Nov 3, 2011)

Crispy said:


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables
> 
> Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.


running costs ought to hopefully be lower though being as it's not got a fuel source to pay for. Do have to wonder how much cleaning the mirrored dishes etc.s going to cost though.


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## spacemonkey (Nov 4, 2011)

free spirit said:


> running costs ought to hopefully be lower though being as it's not got a fuel source to pay for. Do have to wonder how much cleaning the mirrored dishes etc.s going to cost though.



And the water requirements. 12sq km of glass in the desert.


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## Falcon (Nov 5, 2011)

Hilarious. These technology white elephants get bigger and bigger. Global energy consumption is about 600 Exajoules. Assuming 8.5 billion people by 2050 consuming the mean value of today's industrial society energy consumption, consumption will rise to about 2100 EJ/y. Divide by the net energy of these projects (which is far lower than the published figure because of ignored infrastructure embodied energies), and you quickly realise there just isn't enough desert on this planet. Or people to keep the dishes dust free, as free spirit points out.

Naturally, no one wants to do the back of the envelope calculation because it ruins Christmas.


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## elbows (Nov 5, 2011)

But as discussed on other threads in the past, you seem to take the position that any solution that only provides a small fraction of our energy needs is not worth bothering with. Well I'd rather have 1% of our energy needs met than 0%.


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## free spirit (Nov 8, 2011)

Falcon said:


> Naturally, no one wants to do the back of the envelope calculation because it ruins Christmas.


been there, done it, don't agree with you.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 8, 2011)

> 500MW solar farm scheduled to start next year.


 


> The 12 square kilometre




The global total is 1.504×10^13 W so one of these plants is about 5*10^8W. It would take 30 000 of these plants to make up current global consumption That is to say 3.6*10^5km^2 or about 1/30th of the Sahara, hardly the worlds only desert.

Sorry I seem to have missed the bit of the envelope where 'not enough deserts in the world' thing happens.


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## Falcon (Nov 10, 2011)

ferrelhadley said:


> It would take 30 000 of these plants to make up current global consumption ...
> Sorry I seem to have missed the bit of the envelope where 'not enough deserts in the world' thing happens.


The bit of the envelope you missed is that these 30,000 plants do not emerge fully formed from nowhere, and not one of the 30,000 plants of that scale has never been observed functioning to understand the non-linear parasitic energy consumption sinks.

Add up the quantity of desert you need to power the manufacturing capability for the factories that built the vehicles that mined the material from which the arrays and subassemblies were fabricated, the desert you need to power the construction and operation of those vehicles, the desert you need to power the manufacturing process of the arrays, subassemblies and transmission systems, the desert you need to build the infrastructure with which roads systems the size of continental US necessary to access and maintain the arrays are built, and the desert required to power all of the other parts of the global, industrialised manufacturing process without which such plants cannot be constructed, and 90% of which you cannot even comprehend such is the extent to which it is so deeply embedded in the current structure of the economy, and the desert necessary to power the process by which you decommission the existing hydrocarbon energy system and expand its electricity based replacement.

That is the *incremental* desert resource necessary to manufacture and utilise your 30 000 plants.

Now you need the incremental desert resource necessary to manufacture the resource necessary to manufacture your 30 000 plants. Then you need the incremental resource necessary to manufacture *that* incremental resource.

Say that took you 30 years. Double whatever quantity you came up with above, because demand has doubled in that period. Double it again for the next 30 year period, because that is what 2% per annum growth rate global energy demand increase actually means.

As you boggle at that recursive, geometric problem, expand your sunny land resource requirement through the dimensions of capital, material and labour.

More succinctly, the bit you are missing is the absurdity of imagining you can replicate the attributes of a dense, instantly available source of energy using a diffuse, intermittent one mediated by a technology which itself is extraordinarily power, material and capital hungry.


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## Dr Jon (Nov 10, 2011)

Also see:

Answer not blowing in the wind


> The problem is that catching its rays in a practical way requires high-tech devices, and these depend on transition elements and rare-earth minerals. They are well named indeed - most being much scarcer than oil.


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## Crispy (Nov 10, 2011)

The vehicles that mine the materials for the factories already exist, even if they do run on oil. Can the new not be built while the old diminishes? Even if it requires a bigger and bigger slice of the remaining energy, it's still economic activity, right? I'm under no illusion that the economic game cannot continue for ever, but is there really not enough energy in our current system to build the replacement?


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 10, 2011)

Falcon said:


> The bit of the envelope you missed is that these 30,000 plants do not emerge fully formed from nowhere, and not one of the 30,000 plants of that scale has never been observed functioning to understand the non-linear parasitic energy consumption sinks.


 So your 'not enough desert' quip was pulled out of your arse. Now you are fantisizing as to how to make it work, here by claiming it would take 30 times as much energy to produce a solar thermal plant as to operate it.


> you cannot even comprehend such is the extent to which it is so deeply embedded in the current structure of the economy,


Yes I can.



> Say that took you 30 years. Double whatever quantity you came up with above, because demand has doubled in that period. Double it again for the next 30 year period,


Yeah right. So we have gone from not enough desert to trying to make wild predictions about energy in 60 years time.



> More succinctly, the bit you are missing is the absurdity of imagining you can replicate the attributes of a dense, instantly available source of energy using a diffuse, intermittent one


Other than transport, denisty is of little matter. As for intermitancy, you should check out nuclear. We have relied on intermittant energy for years. For many types of factories you simply set the shift pattern to meet the energy availability. Heavy electric users simply have their shifts to fit when the sun is shining in Africa. Not as cost effective as today, but Mad Max it aint.


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## Crispy (Nov 10, 2011)

Besides, with solar thermal, you can build up sufficient heat in your working fluid (anyone know which this new plant is using?) to continue generating after sunset.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 10, 2011)

Dr Jon said:


> Also see:
> 
> Answer not blowing in the wind


Rare earths are pretty common. Its that China manufactures them cheaply not that they are rare.



> Rare earth cerium is actually the 25th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, having 68 parts per million (about as common as copper). Only the highly unstable and radioactive promethium "rare earth" is quite scarce.
> The rare earth elements are often found together. The longest-lived isotope of promethium has a half life of 17.7 years, so the element only exists in nature in negligible amounts (approximately 572 g in the entire Earth's crust).[7] Promethium is one of the two elements that do not have stable (non-radioactive) isotopes and are followed by (i.e. with higher atomic number) stable elements.





> China now produces over 97% of the world's rare earth supply, mostly in Inner Mongolia,[10][11] even though it has only 37% of proven reserves.[12] All of the world's heavy rare earths (such as dysprosium) come from Chinese rare earth sources such as the polymetallic Bayan Obo deposit.[11][13] In 2010, the USGS released a study which found that the United States had 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements.[14]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_distribution


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## Falcon (Nov 10, 2011)

ferrelhadley said:


> So your 'not enough desert' quip was pulled out of your arse.



?? Err no. It was "pulled out" of whatever place you store the engineering observation that, in a zero or negative EROIE process, there isn't enough desert.



ferrelhadley said:


> Now you are fantisizing as to how to make it work



I don't follow. In what way is articulating the necessary operations fantasising, and in what way is imagining your goal can be achieved without those operations *not* fantasising? Are you claiming that, as the product of a global technical industrial manufacturing process, solar at that scale does *not* require those component steps?



ferrelhadley said:


> So we have gone from not enough desert to trying to make wild predictions about energy in 60 years time.



Help me understand how taking the UN's global population forecast, and combining it with the straightforward assumption that the rest of the world will aspire to the per-capita energy consumption that enables our standard of living,  a "wild prediction"? Do you consider it to be wild because it is huge ? Which is wilder - making that estimate, or investing what little surplus energy we have left in an enterprise without working out to a couple of orders of magnitude how big it needs to be ? Or imagining that  brown-skinned poor people in far away place will put up with the idea that only they need to live low energy life styles?



ferrelhadley said:


> Other than transport, denisty is of little matter.



Oh dear. You appear to be a stranger to thermodynamics.


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## Dr Jon (Nov 10, 2011)

ferrelhadley said:


> Rare earths are pretty common. Its that China manufactures them cheaply not that they are rare.





> The study Critical Metals in Strategic Energy Technologies reveals that five metals commonly used in these technologies – neodymium, dysprosium, indium, tellurium and gallium – show a high risk of shortage. Europe depends on imports for many of these, for which there is rapidly increasing global demand and limited supply, often concentrated in a few countries with associated political risks. Furthermore, they are not easily recyclable or substitutable.
> A large-scale deployment of solar energy technologies, for example, will require half the current world supply of tellurium and 25% of the supply of indium. At the same time, the envisaged deployment of wind energy technology in Europe will require large amounts of neodymium and dysprosium, (about 4% of the current global supply each) for permanent magnet generators, which could only be eased if the supply of such metals in the future is increased, which may not be simple. Virtually the whole European supply of these metals comes from China.



link


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## rich! (Nov 10, 2011)

minor throwin points:
cleaning solar panels in Europe costs 1800Eur per megawatt. It produces an immediate yield improvement of 5% maximum, which obviously decays over time again.
In China, they went from zero to several gigawatts of solar PV in about 2-3 years, by the old "first, build lots of factories, then the cost of the output tends to zero".
The more interesting questions come in areas like - will the cost per GW of installed plant keep decreasing as fast as it has? when will we get a decent global grid? when will the first bauxite smelter move to a desert?


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 10, 2011)

Falcon said:


> It was "pulled out" of whatever place you store the engineering observation that, in a zero or negative EROIE process, there isn't enough desert.


Which is your arse. Negative EROI?



> Help me understand how taking the UN's global population forecast, and combining it with the straightforward *assumption* that the rest of the world will aspire to the per-capita energy consumption that enables our standard of living


Yeah exactly.



> Oh dear. You appear to be a stranger to thermodynamics.


The floors yours.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 10, 2011)

Dr Jon said:


> link


God you are pussy whipped.

So you have found a report saying supplies need to be increased and diversified.


> The main mining areas are in China, the United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. The reserves of neodymium are estimated at about eight million tonnes. Although it belongs to the rare earth metals, neodymium is not rare at all. Its abundance in the Earth crust is about 38 mg/kg, which is the second highest among rare-earth elements, following cerium. The world's production of neodymium was about 7,000 tonnes per year in 2004.[7] The bulk of current production is from China, whose government has recently imposed strategic materials controls on the element, raising some concerns in consuming countries.[8]


link


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## two sheds (Nov 10, 2011)

The idea for Desertec was solar thermal and steam turbines, wasn't it? Rare earth is photovoltaic?


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## Dr Jon (Nov 11, 2011)

two sheds said:


> The idea for Desertec was solar thermal and steam turbines, wasn't it? Rare earth is photovoltaic?


Yeah.  Sorry for the diversion.


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## Falcon (Nov 11, 2011)

Crispy said:


> The vehicles that mine the materials for the factories already exist, even if they do run on oil. Can the new not be built while the old diminishes?


I guess it could. But my sense of the problem is that we have a "budget" - a fixed remaining quantity of surplus energy available to us. Our task is to invest that energy in an economic and social arrangement which provides for the highest standard of living for the greatest number of people before our economy reverts to the largest size that can be sustained by an area based, real time, low conversion efficiency energy system.

Even if we could build a technical system with the hydrocarbon-built infrastructure we have in place, it will have to be maintained, expanded and, ultimately, replaced. We know now we could not maintain or replace such a system using the power output of the system. So what would be the logic (or, from the perspective of our children, the morality) of squandering that budget in this way, when to do so is to preclude the option of building a far more durable one, albeit at the expense of a considerable amount of discomfort and transition stress in our own time?


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## Falcon (Nov 11, 2011)

ferrelhadley said:


> Which is your arse. Negative EROI?


OK. You have nothing of interest to contribute, no curiosity about the possible limits of your knowledge, and no capacity for civility. Ciao.


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## Bob_the_lost (Nov 11, 2011)

Falcon said:


> OK. You have nothing of interest to contribute, no curiosity about the possible limits of your knowledge, and no capacity for civility. Ciao.


Your negative EROEI was debunked in another thread.

It's becoming clear you're just a one trick pony version of Jazzz. Able to recite numbers and occasionally make them up to fit your theory but not open minded enough to be able to engage in anything more than preaching.


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## two sheds (Nov 11, 2011)

Crispy said:


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables
> 
> Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.



Even if gas prices stay as they are now, and assuming gas for a £500 MW  power station would cost over £150,000 a year (figure given in Private Eye this week) that gives something like a 10-year repayment time? That seems bloody good to me for the first system.


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## two sheds (Nov 11, 2011)

tut 500 MW not £500 MW - have I mentioned that I can't edit posts any more?


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## Crispy (Nov 11, 2011)

That's weird, you should be able to edit recent posts. Let me see if there's anything wrong with your account.


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## two sheds (Nov 11, 2011)

Sorry for the derail (and hassle) - I'd have sent you a PM but i can't actually send PMs either. As with when I press edit, I just get the grey box with small flashing black/white rectangles to let me know that it's doing something. I thought it might be a Firefox thing so I tried in Internet Explorer but I couldn't Log in to my account using that. Ah well.


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## Crispy (Nov 11, 2011)

Very weird. Doesn't appear to be anything wrong AFAICS.
I will escalate this to the llama


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## free spirit (Nov 11, 2011)

Falcon said:


> ?? Err no. It was "pulled out" of whatever place you store the engineering observation that, in a zero or negative EROIE process, there isn't enough desert.


that may be true, but being as CST has nothing like a zero or negative EROI I fail to see what relevance this statement has to this thread.

unless you're implying that another renewable energy source has a negative EROI just weeks after having your arse handed to you when you made a similar claim about solar PV. Surely you'd not be doing that would you?


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 12, 2011)

I am having a think here. At the moment it appears that PV has become far more price competative than solar thermal.

I am not anything like an expert on solar, but I have been told that there has been a pretty dramatic change in the market. In effect there has been a huge surge in manufacturing crystalline silicon solar cells and there are a lot of bankruptcies with firms relying on very thin films of silicone as the amount of silicon on the market has surged.

Whether this surge is simply going to dry up as prices return to a more economically sustainable level or whether they will continue to fall as mass production kicks in  seems to me an open question.

An article on the subject



> Li Junfeng, Deputy Director of the Energy Research Institute of China's National Development and Reform Commission, says the industry is not as overinflated as some presume, however. Noting that capacity is different from actual production, he explained that the country used
> 30,000 tons of polysilicon in 2008 but produced only 5,000 tons. This year, China will produce some 10,000-15,000 tons, while demand could reach 40,000 tons.
> The worldwide financial crisis has affected the Chinese industry as well. As global demand for solar cells fell sharply, the price of polysilicon also plummeted, from around US$500 per kilogram last October to a low of US$50 per kilogram this year. This has affected profits in China and elsewhere.
> Meanwhile, the recent government caution has put a much-needed spotlight on potential risks in China's polysilicon industry. Most of the nation's producers do not use advanced technologies, and their production processes tend to be energy-intensive and highly polluting. Both the government warning and the current market squeeze are helping to phase out smaller producers that use less sophisticated technologies and have higher operating costs.
> ...



If PV does keep going down in price solar thermal may be a blind alley.


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## two sheds (Nov 12, 2011)

Well if it has a 10-year payback over gas - i.e. costs as much as a gas fired power station over ten years and then gives you another 10 to 15 years free energy, is gas a 'blind alley'? And that's just financial - solar thermal is operating with zero CO2 emissions. Gas isn't doing that.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 12, 2011)

two sheds said:


> Even if gas prices stay as they are now, and assuming gas for a £500 MW power station would cost over* £150,000 a year* (figure given in Private Eye this week) that gives something like a 10-year repayment time? That seems bloody good to me for the first system.


No it would be £1.5 million pounds worth of gas. You have got your numbers way wrong.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 12, 2011)

While I am at it you are not going to get 500MW out of this plant except at peak times. It will likely give you something like 250MW through the day so its would be near 45GWh through the year vs a gas facility with a maximum potential of 182GWh, although perhaps as much as a third could be lopped of that for maintenance and other down time issues. It may be producing something like a 1/4 of the energy per year as a similar maximum rated gas plant.


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## free spirit (Nov 12, 2011)

ferrelhadley said:


> While I am at it you are not going to get 500MW out of this plant except at peak times. It will likely give you something like 250MW through the day so its would be near 45GWh through the year vs a gas facility with a maximum potential of 182GWh, although perhaps as much as a third could be lopped of that for maintenance and other down time issues. It may be producing something like a 1/4 of the energy per year as a similar maximum rated gas plant.


ah, but as it will be tracking the sun, and located where it's sunny all day for long periods of the year, it will be at or around peak for much of daylight hours, and presuming it has heat storage will also be generating after daylight hours.

I'm not sure of the exact design spec, but it's my understanding that in some designs at least the idea would be that a nominally 500MW system would actually be capable of generating significantly more than the heat required to power that 500MW during the day, so at peak it will be both generating 500MW and storing significant extra heat for use later in the day / night, so it's capacity factor could well be significantly higher than you estimate depending on the design.

also, cleaning and maintenance would logically be done at night when that side of the plant wasn't operating anyway so....

not sure exactly how this particular plant's designed to operate mind.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 12, 2011)

free spirit said:


> ah, but as it will be tracking the sun, and located where it's sunny all day for long periods of the year, it will be at or around peak for much of daylight hours, and presuming it has heat storage will also be generating after daylight hours.


I was using a 50% reduction over daylight hours as a heuristic. So this should be upped. What the eventual MWh rating for this plant is will have to be seen. But the pay back will not be so simple as 10 years and its in the money compared with the gas power station. But this illustrates one of the not so obvious problems for renewables. They tend to have a high initial capital cost but can deliver in the long term as they will have much lower running costs. This means the return on capital sunk is slow. This can make finding capital willing to be tied to 30 year projects so hard. Hence the need for governments. So we need a 'society' based system of allocating resources rather than one based on the rate of return on capital. A society based more on some 'ism' associated with social or society as opposed to captial.

If only we had a name for it.


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 15, 2011)

Bloomberg claiming wind may reach price parity with gas by 2016



> “The press is reacting to the recent price drops in solar equipment as though they are the result of temporary oversupply or of a trade war. This masks what is really going on: a long-term, consistent drop in clean energy technology costs, resulting from decades of hard work by tens of thousands of researchers, engineers, technicians and people in operations and procurement. And it is not going to stop: In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on – and we are clearly talking about a whole new game," Wu added.


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## Falcon (Nov 21, 2011)

free spirit said:


> that may be true, but being as CST has nothing like a zero or negative EROI I fail to see what relevance this statement has to this thread.
> 
> unless you're implying that another renewable energy source has a negative EROI just weeks after having your arse handed to you when you made a similar claim about solar PV. Surely you'd not be doing that would you?


 Far from "handing me my arse", you steadfastly refused to acknowledge the absence of, or produce, a *single* study (despite your apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of the literature) that accounts for the energy requirement of the global industrial supply chain for *any* renewable energy technology at any level deeper than the superficial component manufacture layer.

You have absolutely no knowledge of the full-system EROEI, only that even at the partial-system ratio, it cannot cover the energy cost of the necessary infrastructure transfer and appliance stock conversion while sustaining the already energy stressed global economy upon which such a transfer depends, and that the full-system ratio is necessarily substantially lower.

Your science project needs to use up a massive fraction of our limited remaining stock of concentrated energy - the necessary industrial manufacturing processes won't work with energy of lower concentration. You are going to attempt this knowing that diverting even relatively small quantities of concentrated energy from an already energy stressed global economy will deepen its already near terminal instability. You are going to do this to build a device for concentrating a highly diffuse energy source to fossil fuel levels - a process which, due to entropy and the 2nd Law, inherently throws away more than half of the energy - simply because that is the kind of energy an industrial society used when it had surplus concentrated energy. And you already know that the *entire* project will have to be abandoned at the point when a more valuable use (diffuse heating, food production, etc.) for the scarce energy necessary to maintain its operation and maintenance emerges as the energy deficit deepens (Energy Economics 101).

Loving the logic.

I'm sorry. Ducking the question, and substituting incivility for intelligent conversation may constitute "handing someone his arse" in the standard of debates you may be used to. But I don't recognise it.


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## Crispy (Nov 22, 2011)

Sorry, the published rate of what?


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## free spirit (Nov 22, 2011)

Falcon said:


> I find it hilarious that you can make such a statement. Far from "handing me my arse", you steadfastly refused to acknowledge the absence of, or produce, a *single* study (despite your apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of the literature) that accounts for the energy requirement of the supply chain at any level deeper than the superficial component manufacture layer.
> 
> You have absolutely no knowledge of the full-system EROEI, only that even the published rate cannot cover the energy cost of the necessary infrastructure transfer and appliance stock conversion while sustaining the already energy stressed global economy upon which such a transfer depends, and that the actual ration is necessarily substantially lower than the published ratio.
> 
> ...


I say again. If you want to go against the vast bulk of the published scientific research, then it is up to you to support your argument with at least some level of credible corroborative evidence.

failure to do this renders your argument as bollocks IMO. You failed to supply anything last time, and I expect will do the same this time.

btw, why is it do you think that you're the only one capable of seeing the light on this EROI side of things? What is it that makes you think you're so much better at this than anyone else who's ever attempted it? Could it not just be that you've got it badly wrong, or are you really that arrogant that you think you're the only one capable of fully understanding this stuff?

FWIW, IMO your problem is that you're trying to force lots of energy expenditure into the equation that has no business being there. The vast majority of these installations can be manufactured using already existing manufacturing capacity. It doesn't need new metal processing plants, new pipe making plants, new turbine manufacturing plants etc etc all of this manufacturing capacity already exists and there is spare capacity to cope with any level of increased demand likely to come from this sector. It therefore doesn't need to payback the carbon costs of building this infrastructure as it already exists regardless of whether or not it's now going to partly be used to manufacture kit for CST plants.

So, yes the direct energy expended through the supply chain in producing the raw materials, manufacturing the kit etc as well as the transport, and installation energy inputs and the maintenance energy requirements all need to be taken account of, which they would be as standard, but no we don't need to account for the costs of building an entire new supply chain infrastructure because the vast majority of that infrastructure already exists.


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## free spirit (Nov 22, 2011)

or in brief, please post up your sources or original calculations or it's clear that you're once again talking out of your arse.


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## free spirit (Nov 22, 2011)

As an example, the adasol 3 50MW CST plant in spain reckons it has an energy payback time of around 5 months. Now, I'd take that with a big pinch of salt, but I simply can't accept that that figure is out by a factor of 100.

Just to double check that that figure is at least in the right ball park, I've estimated the quantity of steel used for the support structure (which I'd expect to be one of the major energy inputs), and come up with a rough figure of 20GWh of embodied energy assuming a total of 2000 tonnes of galvanised steel (roughly 1 tonne per 40m of trough)at 10MWh emobodied energy per tonne*.

The plant is estimated to produce 180GWh per year, so will take around 1.5 months to payback the energy costs of it's steel infrastructure.

OK, so that's just the energy costs of one aspect of the plant prior to manufacture, but it ought to be among the highest elements of embodied energy in the plant, and it only takes 1 1/2 months to pay it's energy costs back, so I'd say this indicates that their 5 month energy payback time is far more realistic than your never paying it back in it's entire 40 years of operation.

If you were to post up some figures though then maybe you could successfully counter this.


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## Dr Jon (Nov 23, 2011)

two sheds said:


> The idea for Desertec was solar thermal and steam turbines, wasn't it? Rare earth is photovoltaic?


I was thinking of the* Sahara Solar Breeder*


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## ferrelhadley (Nov 25, 2011)

EU takes key step in solar energy project in Arab deserts 


> Europe's ambitious project to capture solar and wind energy across Arab deserts to power homes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa inched forward Thursday despite technical and political hurdles.
> Two international consortiums led by German and French industrial giants joined forces in highly complex drives to deploy solar panels and wind turbines in arid regions, and sink cables across the Mediterranean.
> The two groups, Desertec Industry Initiative and Medgrid, signed a cooperation deal in Brussels on the sidelines of an EU energy ministers' meeting, linking projects aimed at meeting 15 percent of Europe's electricity demand by 2050.
> "By joining efforts and coordinating their approaches, the two initiatives take a truly European dimension," said EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger.
> ...



Going green part of Germanys success.


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## Falcon (Dec 8, 2011)

free spirit said:


> or in brief, please post up your sources or original calculations or it's clear that you're once again talking out of your arse...Just to double check that that figure is at least in the right ball park, I've estimated the quantity of steel used for the support structure (which I'd expect to be one of the major energy inputs), and come up with a rough figure of 20GWh of embodied energy assuming a total of 2000 tonnes of galvanised steel (roughly 1 tonne per 40m of trough)at 10MWh emobodied energy per tonne*.


You expect support structure steel is the major energy input? That's just a variable energy input. The fixed energy costs of the industrial manufacturing system dwarf them, and have to be powered by your little array before we light a single bulb. Where are your estimates for the trucks that mine the ore; the factory that makes the trucks; the pumps that keep the mine operational; the factories that make those pumps; the systems that provide potable water and sewage processing for factory workers homes; the data processing centre that handles the raw material export credit insurance; the steel in the hull of the transportation ship; the GPS satellite system the ship navigates by; the refining process for the oxygen in the furnaces; the military costs of securing supplies, etc, etc, etc. I can't list them all, the industrial manufacturing system is pervasive with literally millions of Single Points of Failure - how do you build a solar plant if salary payment facilities cease to function? What are the energy requirements of maintaining salary payment facilities? Do you even *know* what the elements and interdependencies of that subsystem are before you claim solar power can cover it?

Your argument is: "assume the existence of a globally distributed industrial manufacturing system: structural steel blah blah blah". Your project works because a magic fairy drops it in the desert.

An essential element of planning for a future scenario is specifying the path by which that future is accessed. There are millions of futures which are internally consistent, but inaccessible from here. If I can drive to the next gas station, I can drive anywhere on the continent. But if I can't reach the next gas station, it is as if the continent does not exist. (This is the difference between contingent extrapolation forecasting and normative forecasting, if you are interested). It isn't good enough to argue that the global system can be reconfigured, and that the energy requirements of a reconfigured system are within the output capability of solar. That is to argue: "assume we can get to the next gas station". We are in peak oil. The global economy is already crippled and in recession. We are already in a spiral of crippling political dysfunction and stalemate. We cannot undertake a restructuring of the global energy supply infrastructure using a system that assumes the integrity of the global energy supply infrastructure after we have lost the integrity of the global energy supply infrastructure.

I don't need to show you a study itemising these elements. It is sufficient for me to observe that they exist, they are necessary, they are significant at the margin of your assumptions, and they are entirely uncounted for in your assumptions. The burden is on you to demonstrate that they are not relevant, and you can't. All you can claim is that the energy 'has no business being there' and that solar can somehow piggyback on existing infrastructure. All you do is kick the ball in the long grass: if every renewable technology believes infrastructure energy 'has no business being there', then the energy is nowhere - i.e. there is no infrastructure. A solar plan that assumes that something else will conduct the necessary maintenance and replacement of capital equipment its manufacture and operation depends on is necessarily accepting that it cannot endure longer then the service life of current manufacturing capital equipment, since there is no means to provide for its replacement.

A dead philosophy.



> On the other side of the energy spectrum, those who insist that we can power some equivalent of our present industrial system on sun, wind, and other diffuse renewable sources have been equally vocal, and those of us who raise reasonable doubts about that insistence can count on being castigated as “doomers.” It’s probably not accidental that this particular chorus seems to go up in volume with every ethanol refinery or solar panel manufacturer that goes broke and every study showing that the numbers put forth to back some renewable energy scheme simply don’t add up. It’s no more likely to be accidental that the rhetoric surrounding the latest fashionable fossil fuel play heats up steadily as production at the world’s supergiant fields slides remorselessly down the curve of depletion. The point of such rhetoric, as I suggested in *a post a while back*, isn’t to deal with the realities of our situation; it’s to pretend that those realities don’t exist, so that the party can go on and the hard choices can be postponed just a little longer. --





> Greer, "What Peak Oil Looks Like", 7 December 2011


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## Crispy (Dec 8, 2011)

The trucks, the mining, the ships, the data centers. These things already exist. During the construction of a solar power plant they will continue to exist. Fossil fuels will reduce in availability but this will not cause all their derivatives to suddenly cease to exist. Is it not even slightly conceivable that as the energy crisis actually starts to bite, the economies of the world will turn all that excess productive capacity and energy onto this sort of thing? They will not be able to return to the glory days, that much is absolutely certain. But your assertion that the other side of the peak is made of utter collapse seems crazy to me. We will not power our current society on these solar power plants. We will power a much more frugal and efficient one. Some countries may well fail to make the switch and they will suffer. It could be very messy indeed. But it is not impossible for a transition to be made in enough places that "civilization" will continue. Cheer up!


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## TruXta (Dec 8, 2011)

Collapse-porn is shit. I mean, some people even seem to think that if the Euro falls we'll be looking at some Mad Max type scenario.


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## Falcon (Dec 8, 2011)

Crispy said:


> The trucks, the mining, the ships, the data centers. These things already exist. During the construction of a solar power plant they will continue to exist. Fossil fuels will reduce in availability but this will not cause all their derivatives to suddenly cease to exist.


 Crispy, it's tempting to think that way, but you are assuming linear responses from interdependent, emergent properties of complex systems governed by system dynamics. After a stroke, your lungs, kidneys and eyes all "continue to exist", right up to the point when you stop breathing. It is not necessary for all, or even a significant fraction, of their derivatives to cease to exist. It is sufficient for only a few and, in the limit---capital---only one. And it's rather more problematic even than that because, as emergent properties (and therefore subsystems we haven't designed) we don't even know what many of them are, their interdependences, and failure modes. But the failure of any of the ones we do know are enough to cause the failure of the system. Complexity does not degrade gracefully. And a plan that only provides a solution for as long as the things the plan depends on last is not a plan.



Crispy said:


> Is it not even slightly conceivable that as the energy crisis actually starts to bite, the economies of the world will turn all that excess productive capacity and energy onto this sort of thing? They will not be able to return to the glory days, that much is absolutely certain. But your assertion that the other side of the peak is made of utter collapse seems crazy to me.


 It is conceivable. Sadly all that excess energy is already spoken for in multiples as liens on existing unserviceable debt. It's worth reading 'http://steadystate.org/growth-debt-and-the-world-bank/', and I can send you the longer paper if you are interested.



Crispy said:


> We will power a much more frugal and efficient one. Some countries may well fail to make the switch and they will suffer. It could be very messy indeed. But it is not impossible for a transition to be made in enough places that "civilization" will continue.


 If you understand why submariners cannot breath less air when the oxygen generator fails, you understand the limits to that claim.



Crispy said:


> Cheer up!


I converted my hypothetical pension fund (a claim on a non-existent future store of wealth) into a real zero energy house and some arable land, so I'm pretty cheerful. What is your source of cheerfulness based on?


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## Crispy (Dec 8, 2011)

Falcon said:


> Complexity does not degrade gracefully.


Does not _always_ degrade gracefully.


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## TruXta (Dec 8, 2011)

Crispy said:


> Does not _always_ degrade gracefully.



Quite. The human body, well, pretty much any organism, is an example of graceful degradation of a complex system.


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## free spirit (Dec 8, 2011)

Falcon said:


> You expect support structure steel is the major energy input?


slight misquote there, I described it as 'one of the major energy inputs'. Do you disagree?

Please feel free to provide any figures that might remotely contradict my position, something you've failed to do over 2 threads and 2 technologies now.



Falcon said:


> That's just a variable energy input. The fixed energy costs of the industrial manufacturing system dwarf them, and have to be powered by your little array before we light a single bulb. Where are your estimates for the trucks that mine the ore; the factory that makes the trucks; the pumps that keep the mine operational; the factories that make those pumps; the systems that provide potable water and sewage processing for factory workers homes; the data processing centre that handles the raw material export credit insurance; the steel in the hull of the transportation ship; the GPS satellite system the ship navigates by; the refining process for the oxygen in the furnaces; the military costs of securing supplies, etc, etc, etc. I can't list them all, the industrial manufacturing system is pervasive with literally millions of Single Points of Failure - how do you build a solar plant if salary payment facilities cease to function? What are the energy requirements of maintaining salary payment facilities? Do you even *know* what the elements and interdependencies of that subsystem are before you claim solar power can cover it?


Virtually all the industrial manufacturing system you describe already exists, and in an accurate EROI calculation any energy costs of replacements of that infrastructure would only be allocated on a proportional basis - ie proportional to the percentage of the plant's output that was allocated for this purpose.

The rest of those energy costs fall into the other side of the equation, as part of the energy requirements of the entire economy / society that needs powering from the surplus power supplied by all power generation plants in total, not as part of the actual EROI calculation.

There is some grey area in exactly where the energy costs of eg support staffs living and travel to work costs should fall, but given that these staff would still have basic survival energy costs regardless of whether they were working at the plant or not, I understand that the standard way of accounting for this would be to account only for the additional energy costs involved eg travel to work, energy use while at work etc. rather than these people's entire energy costs of living.

This is pretty basic stuff really, and has already been pointed out to you, I'm not sure why you have such a problem understanding it. When you start including stuff like 'the military costs of securing supplies' though, I have to wonder if you're actually taking the piss.


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## Falcon (Dec 8, 2011)

free spirit said:


> slight misquote there, I described it as 'one of the major energy inputs'. Do you disagree?



Yes. Disagree. Variable energy inputs are a minor fraction of total energy inputs. They are dwarfed by the fixed energy inputs of the manufacturing system, subsidised by hydrocarbon.



free spirit said:


> Please feel free to provide any figures that might remotely contradict my position, something you've failed to do over 2 threads and 2 technologies now.


Please feel free to provide *any* figures that might remotely support yours. Yours is the extraordinary claim - that manufacturing a replacement for the hydrocarbon energy system using a hydrocarbon powered industrial manufacturing system in depletion is viable in either the short or long terms. I'm merely making the uncontroversial observation that none of the studies I've ever seen account for more than the superficial component manufacture layer. Please prove me wrong.



free spirit said:


> Virtually all the industrial manufacturing system you describe already exists, and in an accurate EROI calculation any energy costs of replacements of that infrastructure would only be allocated on a proportional basis - ie proportional to the percentage of the plant's output that was allocated for this purpose. The rest of those energy costs fall into the other side of the equation, as part of the energy requirements of the entire economy / society that needs powering from the surplus power supplied by all power generation plants in total, not as part of the actual EROI calculation.


 I warned you about this earlier. At some point in these conversations, some genius tries to magic the problem away by slicing and dicing one non-viable technology into lots of little non-viable technologies and sweep the the missing energy in the residuals under the rug.

Nope. What "other side of the equation"? What "surplus power supplied by all power generation plants in total"? Solar is being picked because it has the least atrocious EROIE of all non-fossil technologies. Therefore a basket of renewable technologies of which solar is a part is guaranteed to have lower aggregate surplus energy than a solution based entirely on solar. If solar can't power it, a mix of solar and other things can't either. What are you telling us - the industrial manufacturing system needed for solar is going to be powered by biogas?



free spirit said:


> There is some grey area in exactly where the energy costs of eg support staffs living and travel to work costs should fall, .... This is pretty basic stuff really


Oh boy.



free spirit said:


> When you start including stuff like 'the military costs of securing supplies' though, I have to wonder if you're actually taking the piss.


 Around a third of the planet's population is only here because of the ability to convert hydrocarbon into food via industrial agriculture. The natural rate of hydrocarbon depletion is passing though 9% (IEA WEO 2011). Your facilities are never going to generate sufficient surplus power to cover their manufacturing and operating costs and our needs, and the balance is going to have to come from hydrocarbon until someone figures out that electricity isn't all that useful for food and space heating and remaining supplies get switched. Get some thick crayons out and the atlas you used in primary school, mark a big 'X' next to where the major troop concentrations are (make sure you put an extra big X in for the newly established US Africa Command), and another big 'X' where the remaining oil reserves and pipelines are. Then work out what would happen to your supply chain if they were withdrawn. Have you thought through *any* of this? Why not take some time out from the forums and do some reading around your subject.


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## free spirit (Dec 8, 2011)

basically what I'm picking up from this is that you think EROI means something different to what the rest of the world thinks it means.

this being the case, it's not surprising that you come to a different conclusion to everyone else.


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## free spirit (Dec 8, 2011)

Falcon said:


> What "other side of the equation"?





>


the bit labelled EROEI in the equation above - ie the surplus energy once the actual energy expended (related to the actual production of that energy) has been allowed for.

if you don't do that then you're double accounting as you're both accounting for that energy within the existing wider economies energy usage, and attempting to account for it within each energy sources EROEI. Unless you're also removing that energy cost from the wider economies energy demand figures at the same time, but that would be a particularly odd way of looking at things IMO.


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## Falcon (Dec 10, 2011)

free spirit said:


> basically what I'm picking up from this is that you think EROI means something different to what the rest of the world thinks it means. this being the case, it's not surprising that you come to a different conclusion to everyone else.


Yup. And I'm picking up a fallacy by consensus. EROEI's estimated from arbitrary system boundaries do not become less arbitrary simply because everyone does it.


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## spacemonkey (Dec 12, 2011)

Falcon said:


> I converted my hypothetical pension fund (a claim on a non-existent future store of wealth) into a real zero energy house and some arable land, so I'm pretty cheerful. What is your source of cheerfulness based on?



Tell me more...


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## Dr Jon (Dec 12, 2011)

Just spotted the myth of renewable energy:


> Renewable technologies are often less damaging to the climate and create fewer toxic wastes than conventional energy sources. But meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That's a heckuva lot of neodymium.
> 
> Unfortunately, "renewable energy" is a meaningless term with no established standards. Like an emperor parading around without clothes, it gets a free pass, because nobody dares to confront an inconvenient truth: None of our current energy technologies are truly renewable, at least not in the way they are currently being deployed. We haven't discovered _any_ form of energy that is completely clean and recyclable, and the notion that such an energy source can ever be found is a mirage.


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## TruXta (Dec 12, 2011)

Straw-man alert!


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## free spirit (Dec 12, 2011)

Falcon said:


> Yup. And I'm picking up a fallacy by consensus. EROEI's estimated from arbitrary system boundaries do not become less arbitrary simply because everyone does it.


nope, you're just wrong.

or at the very least you're attempting to use an existing well defined, well understood term to mean something entirely different to it's existing meaning.

What I think you're trying to say is that renewables can't power the entire industrial supply chain, and that without this entire industrial supply chain they can't be manufactured. This though can not be labelled as the EROEI of any individual energy source, for numerous reasons not the least of which being how you'd assign the energy costs of the entire industrial system between any individual energy source, or at what installed capacity you're making the calculation for.

As I said earlier, the energy wider energy costs you're talking about can only logically be discussed in EROEI terms as being part of the other side of the equation - as in the entire energy requirements of the economy / society which need to be met by the total surplus of energy production over direct energy costs of all energy sources. If you want to have a discussion about that, then please do, but ffs could you stop with this negative EROEI bollocks. At best it simply serves as a distraction from those supposed energy sources that actually do have very marginal, and potentially negative EROEI such as some of the US corn based biofuels.


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## Falcon (Dec 13, 2011)

free spirit said:


> What I think you're trying to say is that renewables can't power the entire industrial supply chain, and that without this entire industrial supply chain they can't be manufactured.


Indeed, and very nicely put.

I believe you led us down the path of absolute EROEIs and the irrelevant debate about whether it is solar or some alternative which can't power the manufacturing process. I have only ever made the point that, whatever technology you pick, and whatever EROEI, it is bound to be lower and since it wasn't high enough to start with (for the reason you so succinctly summarised) your project is a white elephant.

At its best, the solar desert project is conceptually a battery which we are charging with a fraction of our remaining fund of hydrocarbon energy and which, in the absence for the reasons you summarise of an industrial system to maintain, repair and replace it, will cease to function on the occasion of the failure of the first unsubstitutable critical component.

As it happens, I sympathise with your sentiment about biofuel. I just happen to think that substituting one illusion for another is not progress, and there are better ways to spend the remaining energy we have. I think Schumacher's vision of intermediate technology, and at community scale, is closer to what may be sustainably be achieved at a scale larger than individual effort. I'm sorry the view provoked such angst.


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## Falcon (Dec 13, 2011)

Dr Jon said:


> Just spotted the myth of renewable energy:


It's a very good remainder. Enthusiasts overlook the fact that the energy may be "free" and sustainable, but without mechanisms to concentrate it into usable forms, it's just a device for getting a sun tan (where I live, in about 5 months time). Those mechanisms are most certainly not free, and financial capital (being man made) is the least constraining factor of production.


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## Falcon (Dec 15, 2011)

> We can outline the general reasons [why we have neither the time nor the resources to substitute for oil] as follows. It is not merely that we are replacing high-quality energy surges with lower-quality ones, such as tar sands and renewables. It is not that the costs of such alternatives are generally greater than established historical sources. Nor is it that the productive base for deploying alternative energy infrastructure is small, with limited ramp-up rates, or that it competes with food. Nor even that as the global credit crisis continues with further risks ahead, ramping-up financing will remain difficult while many countries struggle with ballooning deficits and pressing immediate concerns. The main point is that once the effects of peak oil become apparent, we will lose much of what we have called the operational fabric of our civilisation. For example, any degradation and collapse of the operational fabric in the near future may mean that we already have in place a significant fraction of the renewable energy infrastructure that will ever be in place globally.
> -- David Korowicz. "Fleeing Vesuvious, p. 25". 2011 (link)



This is an excellent resource that cuts through a lot of very poor thinking and presents, to my mind, a comprehensive set of workable responses. Worth a read. Korowicz paper _"Tipping Point"_ (pdf) is very helpful for those with an interest in a systems theory perspective on the futility of complex technology as solutions to complexity, and explains the concept of "operational fabric" thoroughly.


> But, once the effects of decline become apparent, we will lose much of what we might call the operational fabric of our civilisation. The operational fabric comprises the given conditions at any time that support system wide functionality. This includes functioning markets, financing, monetary stability, operational supply-chains, transport, digital infrastructure, command & control, health service, institutions of trust, and sociopolitical stability. *It is what we casually assume does and will exist, and which provides the structural foundation for any project we wish to develop.*
> -- David Korowicz. "Tipping Point, p.6" (PDF link), my emphasis


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## spacemonkey (Dec 15, 2011)

Tell us about your zero energy house. What are you doing to prepare for this version of the future?


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## Falcon (Dec 15, 2011)

spacemonkey said:


> Tell us about your zero energy house. What are you doing to prepare for this version of the future?


Bit off topic. "Personal Preparation" (link, PDF) summarises what a lot of us are doing.


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## free spirit (Apr 12, 2012)

Iceland & Norway & spain HVDC links are a GO... well at least a maybe.

guardian

shame nobody in government was clued up enough to suggest sorting out the supposed Iceland / UK debt in renewable energy rights a few years back IMO, but good to see someone in government is finally taking this stuff seriously.


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## 2hats (Apr 14, 2012)

free spirit said:


> Iceland & Norway & spain HVDC links are a GO... well at least a maybe.


 
Finally. When the earlier link to Norway was completed it was obvious Iceland and geothermal power were now within technological reach.

This is (in part) what money that's squandered on machines of war would be far more sanely spent on.



> shame nobody in government was clued up enough to suggest sorting out the supposed Iceland / UK debt in renewable energy rights


 
Usual short-sighted fuckwittery from our politicians.


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## two sheds (Oct 20, 2014)

Desertec is dead Long live Desertec 

Cheap African solar energy could power UK homes in 2018 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29551063)

Not quite Desertec, unfortunately.


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## equationgirl (Oct 20, 2014)

Or in more words, 16 of the 19 shareholders have jumped ship and the Desertec initiative will now be 're-imagined' as a service company for the Middle East and North Africa:
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ec-solar-power-project-shareholders-jump-ship


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## gorski (Oct 20, 2014)

Well, it was always gonna be a winner, given the need that is ever growing - just the matter of when and how far reaching...

Given even more time I hope ever farther reaching... 

Btw, systems theory in social sciences is not exactly against the idea of learning/improving, not only on the level of subsytems but also on the level of the whole system...


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## equationgirl (Oct 26, 2014)

gorski said:


> Well, it was always gonna be a winner, given the need that is ever growing - just the matter of when and how far reaching...
> 
> Given even more time I hope ever farther reaching...
> 
> Btw, systems theory in social sciences is not exactly against the idea of learning/improving, not only on the level of subsytems but also on the level of the whole system...


How does DESERTEC folding mean 'it was always going to be a winner'?


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## gorski (Oct 26, 2014)

"...the Desertec initiative will now be 're-imagined'..."

That is the essential bit, when you are trying to interpret what I wrote...


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## free spirit (Oct 27, 2014)

the European depression and austerity will be what screwed desertec. Well, maybe that a small group of companies decided to go it alone in a project that obviously needed full support from across the EU and north Africa, and probably the middle east if it was ever to have the funding agreed for it.

It was doomed when siemens and Bosch left IMO, given that this left only ABB in the group with the engineering capacity to build a HVDC network, and they're swiss so have very little influence over EU funding, and the German power companies involved were left financially crippled by the german decision to close a load of nuclear plants early.


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## equationgirl (Oct 27, 2014)

gorski said:


> "...the Desertec initiative will now be 're-imagined'..."
> 
> That is the essential bit, when you are trying to interpret what I wrote...


Reimagined as a consultancy, not as a ground-breaking renewable power initiative, which, incidently, are not your words but those of the Guardian article I first quoted.


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## gorski (Oct 27, 2014)

And I said these were my words?

I said, one has to have these words in mind when one is trying to interpret what I said, i.e. I was referring to this...

Just to avoid further misunderstandings, whatever the ground for them...


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## equationgirl (Oct 31, 2014)

gorski said:


> And I said these were my words?
> 
> I said, one has to have these words in mind when one is trying to interpret what I said, i.e. I was referring to this...
> 
> Just to avoid further misunderstandings, whatever the ground for them...


Perhaps you could answer the questiono I asked nearly a week ago.

How does DESERTEC folding mean 'it was always going to be a winner'?


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## gorski (Oct 31, 2014)

All that education wasted... Swell...

THE IDEA (PROJECT) WAS GONNA BE A WINNER!!! It doesn't matter what the name, the group of corps, the states behind it... Because, there is a growing need for it, because we are creative, as a species, because.... Ach, never mind...

Blimey!


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## free spirit (Nov 1, 2014)

h





gorski said:


> All that education wasted... Swell...
> 
> THE IDEA (PROJECT) WAS GONNA BE A WINNER!!! It doesn't matter what the name, the group of corps, the states behind it... Because, there is a growing need for it, because we are creative, as a species, because.... Ach, never mind...
> 
> Blimey!


and because it required trillions of Euros of investment at a time when the EU had undertaken a sudden conversion to austerity policies?


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## coley (Nov 1, 2014)

gorski said:


> "...the Desertec initiative will now be 're-imagined'..."
> 
> That is the essential bit, when you are trying to interpret what I wrote...


Be easier to interpret Sanskrit .


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## equationgirl (Nov 1, 2014)

gorski said:


> All that education wasted... Swell...
> 
> THE IDEA (PROJECT) WAS GONNA BE A WINNER!!! It doesn't matter what the name, the group of corps, the states behind it... Because, there is a growing need for it, because we are creative, as a species, because.... Ach, never mind...
> 
> Blimey!


I do love how you sling the nasty comments around 

Again, just because you think it's a good idea it doesn't mean that an idea is always destined to succeed. 

Have you heard of the technology valley of death?


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## gorski (Nov 1, 2014)

Leave of absence of one's higher brain functions, it seems... but kinda collectively, really...

Either that or this luvely herd mentality I often encounter on forums...

And this one has plenty of usual suspects for the stampede...


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## ViolentPanda (Nov 1, 2014)

coley said:


> Be easier to interpret Sanskrit .



Or the innards of a chicken when used for haruspexy.


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## xenon (Nov 1, 2014)

gorski said:


> Leave of absence of one's higher brain functions, it seems... but kinda collectively, really...
> 
> Either that or this luvely herd mentality I often encounter on forums...
> 
> And this one has plenty of usual suspects for the stampede...


It's not you it's everyone else. 

Bouts of pessimism aside, I agree with you on the narrow point, huma,n ingenuity problem solving, possibilities. These don't build things on their own. You will notice looking around you, we are not living on Mars.


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## coley (Nov 1, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> I do love how you sling the nasty comments around
> 
> Again, just because you think it's a good idea it doesn't mean that an idea is always destined to succeed.
> 
> Have you heard of the technology valley of death?


Might be a good idea for various ' discoveries' to have proceeded , say two thirds of the way, down these valleys before being released for public consumption.
I have been waiting 40 odd years for flying cars, hover boards and a cure for the common cold amongst others!


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## gorski (Nov 1, 2014)

Priceless...


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## coley (Nov 1, 2014)

scalextric


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## ViolentPanda (Nov 2, 2014)

xenon said:


> It's not you it's everyone else.



In a nutshell.



> Bouts of pessimism aside, I agree with you on the narrow point, huma,n ingenuity problem solving, possibilities. These don't build things on their own. You will notice looking around you, we are not living on Mars.



We've always depended on the ability of human ingenuity to outrun the shit we wreak on (and off!) the planet, but given where "we" as a species are, in relation to scientific and technological knowledge (and the development of that knowledge) is it a dependence that's increasingly ill-founded?


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## gorski (Nov 2, 2014)

No, not everyone else, just about everyone in this thread - not to my great surprise, mind... 

Wouldn't be the first herd mentality in action I've seen, especially here... 

Dependency? It's who we are!!! (  )


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## HAL9000 (Oct 31, 2021)

it's an overlong, explains why the plan was doomed (who benefits), you might want to listen to the last few minutes explain what might happen in the next few years

14 min 0 seconds to 16 min 10 seconds


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## two sheds (Oct 31, 2021)

Interesting. I was disappointed it never took off. But even so Morocco alone wouldn't be enough would it? We need electricity at night, too, which means solar collectors mid Atlantic or in the US?


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## a_chap (Oct 31, 2021)

Interesting proposal from a company called Xlinks.

Can't see it happening though.


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## HAL9000 (Oct 31, 2021)

two sheds said:


> Interesting. I was disappointed it never took off. But even so Morocco alone wouldn't be enough would it? We need electricity at night, too, which means solar collectors mid Atlantic or in the US?



Only small scale not large.

Two key points from the video


Host country have to be primary beneficiaries, power for their own country and cash for exporting power.
Country stability, country like Libya no one is going invest unless its going to generate lots and lots of cash.
If Morocco is sucessful in powering its own country while making cash from power exports, that might generate investment to build solar or wind power for electricity export.   But's going to take time, the third interconnect will completed in 2026 (according to some random internet post), perhaps a few years to see if its successful and then perhaps the next power generation/interconnect.    If large scale projects take 10 years to complete??    Then the next project, etc.


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## HAL9000 (Nov 1, 2021)

two sheds said:


> Interesting. I was disappointed it never took off. But even so Morocco alone wouldn't be enough would it? We need electricity at night, too, which means solar collectors mid Atlantic or in the US?



one other point, electricity at night.   More likely solution in the short and medium term, batteries.  One of the great hopes at the moment is a flow battery, they require more space than a lithium battery but this less of a problem for grid storage..









						Flow battery - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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