/sci/ - Science & Math

'full capacity' is the key word. None of these green scams, these wind or solar plants, produce anywhere new their full capacity, ever.

>>5829365
thanks :)

>>5829346
>22 Gigawatts of capacity per hour.
So, their power output was changing by 6 megawatts per second? Sounds like it's fluctuating a lot.

Probably legit but on average where i live in Australia (melbourne) you get 3.7 effective hours/day of 100% sunlight (average over a year).

>>5829365
It seems to be peak capacity rather than maximum capacity looking at some graphs of German power production.

http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/daten_uebertragungsnetzbetreiber/stromerzeugung/tatsaechliche-produktion-solar

Looks like the peak today was 17-18 GW. So 22 definitely seems feasible.
That said, whoever made that pic had no idea what they were talking about. "Gigawatts per hour"? Uh huh. And I'm pretty sure the plant shown in the background is in Spain.

And, well, it's the peak power we're talking about here.

This is a minor quibble, but those would be rather small nuclear power plants.

>>5829346
>22 gigawats/h
wat the fuck does that even mean?

With 1kW/m^2 of solar flux....
0.12 for efficiency, (lower bound)
0.15 for efficiency (upper bound)

22x10^6 kW output in 1 hour lets say.

0.12 gives 50,925 square metres of panels.

uh.....That's like one twentieth of a square kilometre of pure solar panelling....
Not impossible by any means. I still question the viability of it given how much energy each panel takes to make and the fact that they have a maximum 30 year service life.

Wave power is the way to go. Look up the 'Bristol Cylinder'. It can take out 94% of a waves energy and convert it to mechanical work.

>>5829427
it means 22*10^9 Joules in one hour.

>>5829346
why is america always the center of negativity in these pictures?

>>5829380
I don't think that's right. I find 6 hours average.

Also bear in mind that isn't a bad thing. Most power capacity is only used for a few hours per day at peak times.

>>5829440
http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/how-much-energy-will-my-solar-cells-produce/
whole article
http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/Average-Daily-Production-of-Renewable-Energy.jpg
picture of table

3.6 buddy. i think you are forgetting winter.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Nuclear-Power-in-the-World-Today/#.Ubi_6m1Qo94

Using that, nuclear power plants generate on average .865GW of electricity, (simple average). So 20 GW is about 23 plant's worth.

It is legitimate, albeit oddly stated.

They did produce 22 GW of solar power as a record peak and regularly approach that record. The total capacity is actually about 32 GW.

You can easily look this up on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

>>5829429
It's already been established that there is enough installed capacity.

Solar doesn't mean cells and all power stations have limited life spans. The difference is with nuclear you then have a multidecade decommissioning project.

>>5829431
No, then it wouldn't be in watts. Watts per hour is energy per unit time per unit time, it cannot be expressed in joules. It likely means that over an hour it generated on average 22 GW.

>>5829346

Solar power plants in the US have to be located in the areas which get the most sun, and have the cheapest land. These locations automatically mean low population density, therefore larger transmission losses. These figure in.

The fact remains that fossil fuels are still just too cheap when compared to green replacements. But by the time the rise in price for fossil fuels happens, the entire economy that depends on cheap energy will deflate. This will toss so many millions of people out of work, permanently, that there won't be must effort to exploit solar power. The demand destruction associated with price hikes will continue these cycles of boom and bust, eventually stranding many Americans without the energy sources they came to expect.

Kunstler was right, in pretty much every detail. The major forms of transportation in North America in the 2100s will be the horse, the bicycle, and the Human foot. Some effort will be made to re-open canals. Life and labor will return to the historical norm of being very cheap.

>>5829457
>this guy again

here ya go

>>5829457

Holy shit. Is this violent simians guy? You still around?

>>5829457
>The major forms of transportation in North America in the 2100s will be the horse, the bicycle, and the Human foot.
Apart from the fact that we have coal reserves of 500 years and discovered another 2000 years of coal. Also, we have shit loads of natural gas.

Fossil will not 'run out' this century, or even the next.

>>5829464
lol

>>5829474
Those calculations are almost certainly based on current usage rates. Fuel usage increases almost exponentially. What's said to be 2000 years is more like 50 if you take that into account.

In any case, sauce or gtfo.

I don't know shit about energy production, so, is the statement in OP's pic true and not biased or not ?

We could easily rent massive empty land in the African desert, but how do we get the energy to Europe without too much losses?

>>5829508

>2000
>50

The only way it'd increase by 4000% is if aliens enslaved the human race.

>>5829457
>mfw it's this guy again

>>5829523

How do we prevent pirate and rebel niggers from nigging our now principal electricity source is the real question here.

>>5829542
Well, by not hijacking their countries I guess.

>>5829542

Build a wall, stupid.

>>5829492
You think that's something to laugh at? That graph shows that they're getting a very significant proportion of their energy from solar power already, and solar technology is showing a moore's-law-like accelerating rate of improvement.

>>5829492

wuz so funneh?

>>5829508
http://www.greenbang.com/how-much-coal-is-left_21367.html
>21 trillion tonnes of coal left
>enough for 3000 years
>coming from an environmental website

lel

>>5829542
>not using nigs AS your primary source of electricity

>>5829520
It is true that the solar panels produce 22 gigawatts at peak operation. I can't really comment on the reactor bit.

Coal is terrible, though. It is by far the dirtiest form of energy production.

>solar power in the US has been demonized as "Left Wing conspiracy"
>usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql has been daemonized as "etc/init.d/mysql.server"

>>5829563

dirtier than hamster wheel power?

>>5829563

agreed, IIRC its the largest contributor to Hg in the atmosphere, not to mention those coal sludge ponds they make

>>5829570
>dirtier than hamster wheel power?

I doubt it. But it's the dirtiest form we actually use.

>>5829551
I find it funny how its periodic and it only ever works during the day and works well during the summer and on warm and sunny seasons. Solar power has great potential, in certain situations and in certain places. But its not a reliable replacement.

>>5829542
Turn them into biodiesel.

>>5829574

if only we could store the energy in some sort of device and then draw energy from the device later when we needed, I dont think such a thing exists though....

>>5829573
Not as dirty as your mom

>>5829556
Also from the same site.

>>5829574
>it only ever works during the day

No shit, retard.

>>5829578
Then we'd be limited by the surplus power we produce during the day and store at night, rather than have a continuous and reliable power source that we know we can count on for decades (Nuclear power).

>>5829584
>i don't know what peak oil means

>>5829596
You mean like ... fuels?

>>5829596

I'm not anti-nuclear but dont you think we have enough fucking nuclear waste as it is? Theres already a gigantic nuclear reactor in the sky, solar technology will only get better. Also how much energy could you possbily need? Power usage drops off sharply during the night time and the surplus power would be more than enough to run what we need

>>5829574
The thing is, solar's going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper. It's a very low maintenance power source, and it can be incorporated in dual-use applications, like roofing and siding materials.

Despite the inconvenience of inconsistent and uncontrollable power output, at some point, the energy is going to get so cheap that it makes more sense to synthesize fuel from air and water rather than bothering with digging up coal or pumping oil, and having to deal with all of the property rights, environmental concerns, and inconsistent product.

>>5829429

Nobody said solar power is supposed to be the sole energy source. Renewable energies are supposed to compliment existing energies, not replace them, although Solar power will rise dramatically when we can beam it from space.

>>5829556
>>5829584

>...enough, in theory anyway, to keep meeting 2009-level demand for more than 3,000 years.
>2009-level demand

So, exactly as I had assumed, their calculations are based entirely on a static usage level, when in fact total power usage doubles about every 100 years.

>>5829603
Did you look at the graph?

You know, the one with all of the combined oil production methods adding up to continuously increasing output for the foreseeable future?

>>5829618
in the "related posts" to that article:

http://www.greenbang.com/low-carbon-future-ha-coal-demand-to-grow-by-600000-tons-a-day_20879.html

>>5829618
Yes, but we actually use less fuel now than before thanks to more efficient reactors etc.

>>5829629
Coal reactors?

>>5829619
>Did you look at the graph?

Did you? "New discoveries" are assumed on faith. And the green and yellow sections are a lot more expensive. And the 2030s are not the distant future! That's ridiculously shortsighted to say "pfft, we'll be fine for 20 years, don't worry about it."

Peak oil is not running out of oil. It's when production can't keep up with demand.

>>5829596
Now if only we had a device that stored energy longer than 12 hours...

>>5829629
Show me proof.
Who is "we"?

>>5829607
>>5829606
>>5829612
Lolno, as the saying goes (with a few alterations) "Fission, baby, Fission!

>>5829631
Combustion is a reaction.
Idiot.

>>5829641
You want proof that efficiency has improved since the victorian era?

the problem with nuclear is its not very cost effective, billions of dollars in start up costs, billions in waste removal and storage, lifetime maintenance, etc.

if anything everyone will switch over to solar just for the economic benefits, not to mention the environmental

>>5829637
>Peak oil is not running out of oil. It's when production can't keep up with demand.
Jesus, you peak oil kooks are stupid.

"Peak oil", by definition, is peak oil production. It has nothing to do with demand.

You can't just go around making claims, and change the fucking definitions of words when you're proven wrong so you can pretend you were right.

>"New discoveries" are assumed on faith.
New discoveries are projected based on reasonable understanding of geography and economics, things alien to peak oil kooks.

The only "peak oil" we're ever going to see is when people stop bothering with oil because superior energy sources have come along.

>>5829653
We still don't call furnaces "reactors".

Did you think we were talking about nuclear fuel, or are you just terrible at English?

Gee, it's too bad nobody is working on ways to store solar energy in a chemical state, for use in transportation and during off-peak hours.

Oh wait.

>>5829671
>we
Who is 'we'?

Combustion is a reaction.
When we burn Biomass, we (meaning those of us in the engineering design industry) burn it in a Biomass reactor.

>>5829668
>Jesus, you peak oil kooks are stupid.

I'm not a "peak oil kook." I don't think it's going to be the end of the world. In fact I think it COULD go totally smoothly, IF we start taking it more seriously than we are now.

But it definitely is going to happen. There is a finite amount of oil, and we're using it up very rapidly. Whether it happens in 10 years or 100 years, that's still a huge deal.

>>5829688
I find some comfort in the fact that almost everything done to reduce carbon emissions is also effective in dealing with peak oil. Nobody's talking about peak oil, but everybody's talking about climate change, and if you solve one you almost wholly solve the other.

>>5829679
>Who is 'we'?
Native speakers of the English language.

And your very questionable claim is irrelevant to the proper term for a coal furnace.

Your angry response to a request for clarification shows that you're aware that you made a mistake, and are lashing out in your embarassment. Now you're making excuses.

Which was it: you thought we were talking about nuclear fuel, or you have trouble with English?

>>5829467

Yep. VSG. Obviously there's a lot wrong with Humanity that a bunch of nerds sitting around commiserating can't solve. And it's not like the nerds are really any different; they sling their feces at each other like the alpha males do. It's really all the same. Humans are too competitive. We have an obsessive need to control each other, to place others into subjection so that we can validate ourselves, no matter how pointless it is in reality. That's truly pointless competition.

>>5829700

>>>/lit/

>>5829474

Your coal like your nat-gas reserves will be tapped faster and faster when you have to deal with petroleum depletion. For a time, this will work. Opening up Alaska and the North Sea worked for a while, too, past the 1970 Western production peak (the cause of the Oil Shock).

But ultimately your voracious appetite for energy will be your undoing, and in the 2100s you'll still be walking. I don't expect you to understand. You're punch-drunk on petroleum. But your grandkids and great-grandkids will pay the ultimate price: War. War. War.

>>5829696
>tfw from England
>tfw you're a fucking pedant.

>Which was it: you thought we were talking about nuclear fuel, or you have trouble with English?
Neither, dickhead. Reactors = an all encompassing word for a place where fuel reacts. As both coal furnaces, biomass reactors, Nuclear reactors etc. are all 'reactors' and I was talking about efficiency it seems apt to call a fucking reactor a reactor.

How, bugger off to your dictionary corner and go wank over the definition of moron.

Inb4:
>hurr durr I'm so retarded
>fuck off retard
>jokes on you I was only pretending

>>5829523

You can't avoid the loss problem. Electrical transmission is lossy. Transformation into a liquid fuel, which is then pipelined, is lossy. Period.

A lot of you folks need to gb2college and learn Physics again. For some reason, you keep believing in limits, but not limits for energy exploitation.

>>5829705
>2100s you'll still be walking
If I'm walking at 110 years + I'll be doing pretty well for myself.

>>5829346

22 GW in summer on a super sunny day and for a few hours. Now average it for the whole year and it sucks huge dicks.

>>5829575
>>5829558

Germany already has the structures and the knowledge about that so with minor investment it could be done !

>>5829676
Based Nocera. He'll save us all in the end.

>>5829705
Yeah nah, humanity is not retarded. Big powers will not go on a full scale war with each other ever since the end of World War II.
I thought MAD and nukes made this perfectly clear.
Besides, big powers already have nuclear for their power needs, the only ones I see grabbing the losing stick are corporates and third world countries with no infrastructure.

>>5829563

When the brownouts hit in the United States, all this environmentalism will wither on the vine. People will ALWAYS choose to keep their lights on, and their fridges going, over any other concern. So anything that inhibits coal burning will simply, even magically, be lifted. Burn baby burn!

And the coal will deplete even faster.

>>5829718

Did you somehow not notice what's happening in the Middle East? The Western Empire has invaded and occupied two nations, and thus flanking, will then invade and occupy Iran, the third. WW3 started in October 2001. You're too close to the history to even see it.

>>5829702

I'm not writing fiction. This is what's going to happen. Western economies are crashing already due to "peak capital formation" which by no coincidence happened just about the world petroleum production peak (2005/6, with a blip in 2008).

Your culture, like all problems, has a lifespan. It's coming to an end. And I'm gonna laugh and laugh at you, until my power goes off too.

>>5829688
You are a peak oil kook, because you think this is a problem we need to deal with urgently, and because you're defending the peak oil concept, and trying to redefine it to make it relevant in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Technological advancement is going to outrun any potential problem. It's happening now with fracking and tar sand exploitation, which are driving natural gas costs down as a byproduct of oil. And solar power is set to cross a line within the next couple of years where, in southern climates, it'll be the cheapest source of electrical energy, in raw joules/$. In a few more years, it'll cross that line in northern climates. And it will keep getting cheaper.

In 20 years, solar power is going to be so cheap and overabundant that any chemical fuels we need will be much cheaper to just synthesize, rather than deal with the complexity of refining oil or digging up coal, and transporting either.

We don't need to "start taking it seriously". It's a non-issue. We're dealing with it through side-effects of general technological advancement, without even trying to.

>>5829712
So you're just terrible at English, and touchy about it.

>>5829427

it's a measure of acceleration clearly since the time is squared

>>5829731
You can't have faith that technology will solve EVERY problem. There's an extent to which you have to be willing to modify your lifestyle. Make tradeoffs. Live more efficiently.

>>5829729

what a load of shit

>>5829723

>Irak
>Big power
>That whole troll post
>MFW

>>5829729
>"Your culture"
>browses 4chan
Kill yourself.

>>5829735
hurrrrrrr

136 billion kwh from green energy sources

22% of our total energy consumption.

Solar is responsible for 4,5% of the total.

I like nuclear power, but why not use solar as much as possible. /sci/ and rednecks seem to hate solar power just because it´s green.

What is it with Muricans hating everything that´s green? And why is /sci/ acting like rednecks.

>>5829742
I don't "have faith". I have a rational expectation based on observed trends and knowledge of chemistry and physics. I expect solar panels to be cheaper next year, and much cheaper five years from now, based on the exact same sort of thinking that has led people to expect computers to keep getting better for the last 20 years. I know what it takes to make hydrogen from water and how efficient it is, and the prospects for improving that efficiency. I know what it takes to make ammonia, methane, alcohol, and other fuels from that hydrogen, and from air and water, and the efficiency and prospects for improvement.

The only unpredictable thing is whether someone will make unexpected leaps forward. Incremental progress can be taken for granted, and with what is foreseeable, all of our worries about energy just go away.

You apparently have faith in this looming disaster fantasy. I have the knowledge that it is a fantasy.

>>5829613
Yeah except that ROI is shit on wind and solar. Niggaz made a plant in US that would pay back in 30 years. Projected lifetime? 25 years. Wasting money just to please people who pussy out when presented with newest generation nuclear plants.

>>5829760
>What is it with Muricans hating everything that´s green? And why is /sci/ acting like rednecks.

most people aren't scientifically literate, including most of /sci/, not to mention there are lobby groups intent on spreading deceit (koch brothers being the most famous example)

>>5829800
I just don´t see why so many people have such extreme opinions.

It´s either "green energy only" or "green energy is horrible".

>>5829715
We just need to get rid of these annoying Social Justice faggots who will cry if that happens. I say we should turn them into biodiesel too.

>>5829346
Taking the figure of 18 TWh per year, the average output is about 2 GW,or 2 nuclear plants.

>>5829816

VSG here. I never said gree nenergy is horrible. I've said instead that you can't maintain your energy-gulping society on that sort of thing. It's less energy or more expensive energy or both. Your society runs nearly exclusively on cheap and abundant energy. One or both of those specifications is changing, and you must have both in order to have what you do now. In fact, you don't even have what you do now, per se, since all that economic opportunity has vanished. You're already in what Kunstler calls the "Long Emergency". The Long Emergency has already started.

And it's only going to get worse for you. For everyone, including the elite.

>>5829742

Kunstler point this out aptly in his latest book. Americans particulary are totally confused, in that they believe technology and energy supplies are interchangeable. Technology doesn't create energy. But a fucked people like Americans can't understand that, since in understanding it, they'd know their lifestyles are doomed.

America has very low scientific literacy and also suffers from massively derisive politics.

They have a very us or them stance on everything. Same with guns and religion, and god help us evolution.

>>5829731

And you're a cornucopian. You falsely believe technology creates energy. Your historical petroleum input is starting to fail, and it shows, since your economy started to fail about the same time that petroleum production peaked (2005/6, with a single month of peak in 2008). This is the Long Plateau where you sickheads will talk and talk and talk... and you know what happens after that? You still won't have cheap oil.

Your civilization runs on CHEAP energy, and that sort of thing is over, FOREVER. So's your economy. So's your culture. You didn't have what it took to survive into the long term, culturally. And so you won't. The future will be darker skinned and walking. The Human future by the time the next millennium hits will look fairly African, all said and done. And that's IT for the Human race, since the African mode of living is totally incapable for stuff like science and technology.

>>5829850
Illiteracy about political topics, like identifying certain lobbies if their agenda are helpful or just pervasive happens in the entire world.

>>5829850

Correction: America has high education but low comprehension. There's a word for that:

PROPAGANDA

What passes for education in the USA is merely the propaganda needed to support its position as the world's leading petro-empire.

>>5829855
Oh for sure, pre-industrial society was so uncivilized. Oh wait.
I'm all for cultural enrichment but your claim the future will somehow be taken by Africa is patent nonsense.
Besides,
>All of western society is America
10/10

>>5829855
You're really a strange person, being so obsessed with this stuff, and yet so ignorant.

You only need to look out the window and find something green to see how cheap converting sunlight to chemical energy can be.

This is what we're headed to, in the long term: solar collectors and fuel producers, no maintenance, cheap as leaves.

>>5829859

I think Chomsky more or less uses the word indoctrination which I think is more appropriate

allegedly Rockefeller once said "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers"

>>5829859

I think Chomsky more or less uses the word indoctrination which I think is more appropriate. In general US education does not teach critical thinking or reasoning


allegedly Rockefeller once said "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers"

>>5829868
Just letting ya know that photosynthesis ain't easy. It's millions of years of specialisation and perfecting of intricate structures and yet it's still rather inefficient.

We don't have millions of years. Graphene is doing wonders with photovoltaic research and we have lots of aweinspiring prototypes and microscale tests.

Science and Engineering will get us a solution given enough time and resources, but we are giving them neither and people just keep screaming THE MARKET WILL FIX IT.

>>5829760
I take offense to that statement sir, being a redneck from west central Alberta, i'll have you know that I have been "collecting" solar PV panels for some time now. And happily announce that I've gotten 50% of my energy needs from it. Unfortunately tractors need to use diesel or they don't have enough oomph to pull plows.

>>5829882
>millions of years of specialisation [sic]
Let me remind you evolution is not the most efficient way of perfecting processes, as the mutations that win at survival can still be less efficient at the job.
>FREE MARKET!!11!
Now here is something I agree with. But last time I have checked, most people on /sci/ agree anarcho-capitalism is bullshit of the highest caliber.

>>5829882
Evolution takes a long time to do things because evolution is dumb. And I mean really dumb. Not dumb like a dumb person, or even dumb like a dog, but dumber than insects.

I wasn't suggesting that we'd incorporate solar panels and chemical processing into the same devices. We have these wonderful things which evolution never found called copper wires (and now carbon nanotube wires, which are currently expensive, but will keep getting cheaper), because we're smarter than evolution.

In the not-so-distant future, you'll put up solar siding and roof shingles and window blinds and walkway tiles, and they won't cost noticeably more than non-solar siding and roof shingles and window blinds and walkway tiles, and you'll have a little box in your garage hooked up to a tank, and it will just seem completely normal to your kids that if you take all of the fuel out of the tank, the box will fill it back up after a few sunny afternoons, the same way it seems completely normal to you that you have to find somewhere to put all of the unwanted additional grass that appears in your yard every week, out of thin air and water.

>>5829930
>tractors need to use diesel or they don't have enough oomph to pull plows.
For all the difficulties of designing an electric vehicle, one thing electric motors have never had trouble with is torque.

An electric tractor is easier to design than an electric car.

>>5829933
>most people on /sci/ agree
Firstly, it's a /pol/ topic. Secondly, the only thing /sci/ agrees on are forced memes like science is a girl thing.

>>5829954
I haven't seen many electric tractors around.. have you?

>>5830088
Only little lawn tractors. Bigger electric tractors do exist, as after-market conversions. Electric tractors are good: reliable, powerful, and the extra weight of the batteries gives them extra traction.

But that "extra weight" bit should give you a hint that you'd be buying more tractor, for more money. And for what? So you can have something you're not familiar with maintaining? Something you can't refuel in the field with a jerrycan?

Electric tractors are easier to do than electric cars. That doesn't mean they make a lot more sense.

With a large enough interconnected grid of power sources, it doesn't matter if one part of the grid isn't producing power.

>>5830126
Yeah.. I don't see them being able to plow 40 acres in less than a day though. I'll probably convert them to natural gas long before huge battery packs

>>5830171
>I don't see them being able to plow 40 acres in less than a day though.
Do you mean "on one charge", or do you mean they wouldn't be able to plow fast enough?

Because you can easily match the power of a diesel tractor, and you can also swap batteries out, the same way you'd refuel a conventional tractor.

>>5830178
I know there are ridiculous powered electric motors out there, but their power consumption would drain battery packs long before reasonable work was done out there. And switching battery packs sound a hell more time consuming than filling a liquid tank.

Yes. Good use of tax-money. http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/cost-of-german-solar-is-four-times-finnish-nuclear/

>>5829881

And that's exactly what we are, for the most part. A nation of worker drones placated by pop culture, sports, religion, and cheap beer.

>>5830195
>their power consumption would drain battery packs long before reasonable work was done out there
Tractors generally use less power than road vehicles of comparable size. Have you ever sat down and compared what you spend on fuel in a day of plowing compared to a day of highway travel?

There are some big tractors with big engines on them, but the standard size small farm tractor has got quite a small engine on it, and doesn't burn a lot of fuel.

>switching battery packs sound a hell more time consuming than filling a liquid tank.
No reason it has to be. How long does it take you to change a battery pack on an electric drill, compared to refilling a gas lawnmower?

I'm not saying electric tractors are a good idea, I'm saying that it's easier to make a good electric tractor than a good electric car. Electric motors are good at this kind of high-torque work, not so great at highway speed, and the weight of batteries isn't a disadvantage for a tractor, where it is for a car.

>>5830199
>Comparing reactor cost to solar plant.
Yes because they both have compatible life-cycle and decommissioning costs.

> gigawatts of electricty per hour
Do you even SI units?

Uggggghhhhhhhh. Why do I feel like I'm the only one who can instantly differentiate between a conspiracy theory and a scientific one, and then ignore the conspiracy theorist until they go away? You can't convince these people with evidence, because they didn't need any conclusive evidence to come by their views in the first place. Just let it die.

>>5830199
I'm not inclined to take that too seriously.

For one thing, it's making claims about projections vs. projections, and all the numbers on the solar power side are sourced from an article which isn't on the internet for its reasoning to be examined.

Anyway, the point of doing stuff with solar and wind today is not that they are currently a good deal, but that they are getting to be better deals as we work on them. Germany is subsidizing development of solar technology.

>>5830221
>Power bills

>>5830207
Ha, your comparing apples to pumpkins. A battery pack for a DeWalt drill is one thing, a battery pack for a fifteen ton tractor capable of pulling a 6 bottom plow is another.

>>5829729

can you make a trip so i can filter you

>>5830225
I believe you're confusing kW hours (note multiplication => units of energy) vs. kW/hour which does not really relate to energy efficiency/output but a strange rate.

>>5830241
They're not different in principal. You bring out a fuel truck, and pump fuel across, or you bring out a battery truck, and swap out battery packs with a little crane. Either way, this step is not going to take much time out of your tractor's working day.

I don't understand why you're arguing this. It's obviously possible to make electric tractors work if you have a reason you need them to, and I haven't tried to claim that there is any reason to do so.

>>5829573
some countries use wood, where it's subsidized

>>5829760
and how much does solar cost? probably too much for most people right now

there's this idea that everyone in the US is
1. reactionary
2. conservative
3. anti-solar

this is something you can say without evidence, because it's part of the 'green' pop cult

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCjM2leF5F8

>>5830305
C'mon, solar power isn't worth it: How can you have power supply in a cloudy day, or during the night? There's also no way of storing the energy, since the power grid is interconected and made for immediate use.

>>5830369
>How can you have power supply in a cloudy day
Reduced solar flux =! no solar flux
Photons energise the photovoltaics, they don't just STOP producing when it's cloudy, they just reduce in output.

>There's also no way of storing the energy, since the power grid is interconected and made for immediate use.
PV panels export energy INTO the grid. The entire point is to decentralise power infrastructure.

Photovoltaics are not worth it, but not for the reasons you just stated.

>>5830369
you use something else when you can't get the sunlight you want

you'll never get everything from anything

>>5830436
>you'll never get everything from anything

Except nuclear.

>>5830452
>implying nuclear reactors are 100% efficient
>implying you don't lose energy to the moderator slowing down fast fission neutrons

m8, do you even nuclear?

>>5830436
inb4 heat death

>>5830453
>thinking that's what he meant
Dude, you just nucular pretty badly.

>>5829365
they did produce 22 gigawatts last year or the year before.

the full capacity refers to the NUCLEAR plants. that is how much electricity 20 nuclear power plants would produce in the same amount of time.

your reading comprehension is pretty poor.

>>5830566
These green scammers play around with words to fool people. Electricity needs to be constant. This is not. There's only a couple hours, on a sunny day, that these solar plants can produce any substantial energy at all. It is basic common sense. And don't forget the cost of building and maintaining these turkeys.

Use you brain. Do not believe their lies and distortions.

>>5830589
>Electricity needs to be constant. This is not. There's only a couple hours, on a sunny day, that these solar plants can produce any substantial energy at all.

You're a fucking retard.

It's just amazing how solar plants has this achilles' heel so simple and so bad at the same time.

>>5829713
You can REDUCE loss though.

The question was "Without too much losses", not "Perfectly without any loss whatsoever".

>>5829742

This.

Maybe technology will find an answer in time, maybe not. Until it does, tho, you might want to be thinking about your backup plan.

>>5829800

As an American, I'm forced to agree with you. It's really sad ;_;

>picture of a german solar farm

fucking expensive looking, if you ask me, and covers A LOT of potential farmland

>>5830694
fuck, forgot pic

>>5830589
You're a massive dumbarse.

>>5830954
Not that guy, but he's right. The German greenboner has become a massive problem not only to them but to their neighbors as well:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/52618

There are also other problems:
http://world.time.com/2013/05/28/the-cost-of-green-germany-tussles-over-the-bill-for-its-energy-revolution/

http://junkscience.com/2012/02/23/green-germany-half-a-million-families-sitting-in-the-dark/

>>5831021
Its not whether he's right or wrong that makes him a dumbarse, its his method of reasoning. Read his posts and tell me you don't think he's stupid. Fails amazingly at reading comprehension, then

>its basic common sense

Its not like he's out gathering data and forming opinions.

>>5829558
is this like the matrix for black people here?

>>5831067
Sorry you may be right, just got up after a bad night and my brain's just not in the game yet, nor do I think it will be the rest of the day.

>>5831067
I don't think so. The image is comparing the max measured generating capacity of the solar plants, a world record, without telling us how many solar plants there are, to the full generating capacity of 20 nuke plants.

The problem is, it doesn't happen often. Electricity has to be constant and have the ability to be ramped up and lower with demand.

>>5829365
It's saying they produce more energy than full capacity NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.
>>5829372
No, OP, you're just hearing what you want to hear.

>>5829850
>Same with guns

What do inanimate objects have to with anything?

>>5831351
>Electricity has to be constant and have the ability to be ramped up and lower with demand.

And for the zillionth time, it's just supposed to complement other technologies.

My primary concern with green energy is that we're heading towards an eradiction of nature. Every inch covered in tarmac and glass and homegenous grasses.

ITT: Ideological battles, fallacies, and attempts to poke at postulates which are adhered to by faith.

At least nobody's brought up agriculture yet.

>>5831598
So, what is the problem about that? It's about our survival.

>>5831624

edgy

>>5831598
Humanity is nature. The manipulation of electricity is obviously a natural aspect of this universe.
(Green) energy is not inorganic.

>>5831624
If you believe this then I wish nothing but the most painful death upon you.
Fuck you, I love nature, I love living with a myriad of lifeforms of all sorts.
I don't want to live in a world sterile of life because "muh SUV", "muh unemployment rate", "muh profit margin"

>>5831351
The point of the image is not that Germany's solar power is sufficient to replace 20 nuclear power plants, but that it's making a very substantial contribution to that country's power needs, that solar power is real and does real work.

Like "football fields" or "libraries of congress", they're just trying to explain the power output in terms of familiar things, rather than units which the average layman has difficulty conceptualizing.

I personally don't think Germany's plan is a good idea. We should be funding research on solar technology, we should encourage the enthusiast market, we should not be doing mass deployments of this immature technology.

Comparing solar power to computers, right now we're in the 70s. Solar power is important for some specialized applications, such as satellites, and useful in an obscure way for others, like camping, but for most people it's rather distant and unfamiliar, and that's the way it should be. It'll still be a few years before solar power is ready for the mainstream on its own merits, and then there will be further years where its value is questionable and it's not clear whether people are overspending on it for too little return, like computers in the early 80s. In a few years after that, a decade or two from now, the value will be obvious, and everyone will be using them. Then it will just be matter-of-fact, and only a few starry-eyed bloggers will be talking about what a big deal it is, while for everyone else it's the new normal that electricity is so cheap while the sun is shining that it makes more sense to synthesize fuel from air than to search around for places you can get it out of the ground, and the energy/pollution/climate scares at the dawn of the new millennium were silly and ignorant.

>>5831648
You're anti-human. You betrayed your family, your friends, because you want nature.

>>5831689
>solar power is real and does real work
It sure is and it sure does, as seen here >>5831021

For sure, solar and wind have their uses, but main grid power isn't it.

>>5831632
Nature is everything. In a sense, the Universe and Nature is the same thing. I don't think of it like that. It's enough to have one word for Universe. Nature as opposed to culture, as wrought by or cultivated by human enterprise.

In that sense there is very little that is still natural. Depending on where you are on the planet this is more or less clear. For me moreso.

>>5831689
Give us a viable power source, and we'll consume the shit out of it.

>>5831689

No, right now solar is in the 80s. 3D printers are in the 70s at this juncture. The 2030s will have all the kinks with baseload solar worked out and it'll be a real shitty future after that.

>>5831648
Not that guy, but the Earth and life on it can very well take care of themselves.

We try to preserve the environment because the environment preserves us.

No country in the world has enough stockpiles to outlast a decade of droughts or other food production failures without outside assistance.

This is why I hate the hipster greenies. They want to save furry little animals or other 'graceful' things because of their visual appeal, or even worse, because it's a 'spiritual imperative'.

Fuck all that. The slacking fuckers do almost nothing to save the bees or any one of a thousand insect species that are fuckload more important than some ball of fur that you might consider cute.

Nature is a lot more cruel than we could ever be.

>>5831722
Our supposed lack of cruelty or capacity for compassion is a lot more self-serving than we'd like to believe. Let them pandas die already.

I would rather have had these.

>>5830694

Too right. Germany's doing it all wrong, by catering to what we Americans call "tree-hugging Liberals". You find that productive land being covered with solar installations only because there's as government subsidy or tax break that heavily distorts rational allocation.

The tax cost to Germany is high and is only growing bigger. So they appeased the treehuggers today by exchange for big economic problems in the future. Typical politician behavior. People are going to die for this.

>>5830396
> The entire point is to decentralise power infrastructure.

Centralization is what made the power infrastructure affordable for nearly all users. Decentralization will eventually make it unaffordable. Predictably, people are making use of government subsidy and tax breaks to cover that up. That just extends the pain. So a reckoning is coming.

>>5831703
The articles linked are heavily-biased and intentionally deceptive sensationalism. Look around the sites they're hosted on: one is about how global warming is junk science, another's tagline is "without America, there is no free world".

The "Half A Million Families Sitting In The Dark" is a plain lie: Germany has long been a rather strict country, so unpaid power bills mean the power is cut off, unless there is reason to believe this will endanger someone's life. This certainly does not mean that the power *stays* off, it means that people rush to scrape together money to get it turned back on. Many of that "estimated 600,000" would be the same flakes having their power shut off and turned back on repeatedly because they keep spending their welfare money on drugs.

The cost issue was fully expected. Germany is a democratic country. Most of the population wants to be spending this extra money to subsidize the transition away from fossil fuels and especially nuclear power. Fukushima was a wake-up call that nuclear disasters can really happen, and they don't want to take a chance on having one of their own. So they have protested and voted and agreed to spend this money to force the changeover as soon as possible.

The power overproduction issue is part of the reason why they're getting a jump on this, when solar and wind still aren't cheap: to be able to adapt gradually to the kind of secondary issues that could be forced on them very suddenly when solar becomes cheap, or when Russia starts withholding gas and the Middle East becomes too chaotic for regular exports, or they have a nuclear disaster of their own. The grid has to adapt to absorb production that fluctuates independent of demand, so they can have options.

>>5831759
Actually, if you check the sources, the numbers have been updated and you will find out that the latest count is 800,000 homes.

In general, even if an article is from a dubious source, you should check the represented sources/data yourself before going off about how un/trustworthy the article itself is.

There's also the fact that by some of the comments in your post, I can deduce that you didn't read the whole articles.

I approve of environmentalism, but unnecessary vilification of nuclear power is shooting germany in their own balls, with an assault shotgun.

>>5831722
I agree so much. My views are left-wing by my country's standard, but I hate the "libruls" of America. Those idiots used the sun as a symbol of their anti-nuclear movement. The SUN.

>>5831776
I hear you. It's fun when the liberal left blames you for being a fascistic conservative and the republican conservatives blames you for being a communist liberal.

And the ones usually calling themselves centrists are so busy bowing to every direction to actually make sense.

>>5829868

The belief that useful industrial production will be "as cheap as leaves" has no example in modern or older history to back it up.

The only things that became industrially cheap were things that were cheap to begin with: Data, bad food, plastic. Things which delivered real value, like fuels, capital equipment and so on, remained solidly priced or expensive.

>>5831776

Yes, that is pretty funny, since the sun is a nuclear-fusion reactor. And when push comes to shove, Liberals don't want windmills and solar panels where they can see them. More so for the turbines.

A Liberal is a guy who lives in a condition of constant hypocrisy.

>>5831781
>The only things that became industrially cheap were things that were cheap to begin with: computers, aluminum, air shipping
Are you trying to show off how stupid a person can possibly be?

>>5831772
>Actually, if you check the sources, the numbers have been updated and you will find out that the latest count is 800,000 homes.
And those numbers are still an extrapolation cooked up by a biased political group and deliberately misrepresented.

>unnecessary vilification of nuclear power
Nuclear weapons proliferation and the potential for large-scale disasters are not trivial or imaginary concerns. Nuclear power is dangerous, and "so far we've managed to get away with it" is not a good argument for continuing to let the hazard build up.

>ctrl+f "organic"
>no results

Quit calling solar power "too expensive"

>>5831799

All forms of power are dangerous, you're talking about electric generation. If nuclear is somehow more dangerous than the shit we went through with hydro I'll find a hat and eat it.

>>5831818
How about you find some nuclear waste and eat it?

Having done stupid things with one form of power is not a good reason to repeat those mistakes with another form of power.

And no, hydroelectric power is not a representative example of the disaster potential of non-nuclear power. It's the most disaster-prone alternative to nuclear there is.

>>5831799
>Nuclear weapons proliferation and the potential for large-scale disasters are not trivial or imaginary concerns
Which is why we put so much effort and research into making it safer.

>Nuclear power is dangerous
LIFE is dangerous. Energy production is dangerous. Every time you dally with enough force, you're in mortal danger.

And people still fly, walk, drive cars, smoke, hunt, hike, blow stuff up, build dams, farm the land on the slopes of volcanoes and all that good stuff.

You can't wall yourself up in your home and cover yourself with mattresses to ward off danger and we as a species can't return to driving horse-drawn carriages(even if they were anywhere near as safe as cars) and chopping wood for our heating and lighting needs.

We can't make danger go away completely, we can only ever engineer the systems to an acceptable level.

But if you're so concerned about the safety of nuclear power, you must be dozens, hundreds of times more concerned about the dangers caused by oil and coal power.

No? Then you're talking out your ass.

>>5831823

I'd wager that natural gas plants and coal plants still kill more people because they are "less disaster-prone." The point I'm trying to make is that all forms of electric generation have risks and drawbacks and we are not yet advanced enough to have a grid that doesn't kill people.

Given that electricity makes peoples lives infinitely better, more power is better than less power, and nuclear power plants provide more energy over its lifespan over solar and wind.

>>5831823
>hydroelectric power is the most disaster-prone alternative to nuclear there is.
Thats a funny way of writing coal, but what ever

I hope you do realize that nuclear energy has casused least amount of deaths relative to power produced out of all major power sources?
Just because something could go wrong in the worst possible scenario imaginable doesn't make it sensible argument against it's good history or against the other power production methods that actually casue dfeaths daily.

If you are agains nuclear on that basis, then you must be against smoking, driving and pretty much anything humans do, as those activities are actually dangerous.

I mean there are valid concerns to be had with nuclear like laws, waste disposal, mining operations and positioning of the plants. Hell you might be against nuclear becasue you would like to see more solar and thats a fine argument, but dangerous is something that's just not true.

>>5831825
>if you're so concerned about the safety of nuclear power, you must be dozens, hundreds of times more concerned about the dangers caused by oil and coal power.
Nobody is going to sneak a few kg of material out of an oil refinery or coal power plant and use it to wipe out the core of a city.

No oil refinery or coal power plant, or deposit for their waste, has the potential to break down in a way, by accident, sabotage, or open attack, that renders a whole state uninhabitable for a hundred years.

Nuclear power poses a unique threat, unlike anything else.

>>5831834
i dont think you understand how nuclear weapons work

>>5831834
>Nobody is going to sneak a few kg of material out of an oil refinery or coal power plant and use it to wipe out the core of a city.

Well good thing you can't do that on a nuclear power plant either, unless you are some kind of comic super villain or major world power, in withc case it could be argued in equal basis that all coal powerplants should be torn down casue the smoke pipes can be used as missile lauch bays.

>

No oil refinery or coal power plant, or deposit for their waste, has the potential to break down in a way, by accident, sabotage, or open attack, that renders a whole state uninhabitable for a hundred years.

Same thing with nuclear, what coal power does it makes states unihabitable while they are actively working like they should.

You see I can make uneducated arguments too.

>>5831829
>>5831831
Part of why coal and natural gas kill more people is because they are less dangerous.

When things are dangerous, we are very careful with them. This is why so few people are killed by sharks, tigers, and lightning.

Nuclear power's good safety record comes from extreme caution to prevent the kind of large-scale disasters that nuclear power constantly threatens to produce.

The problem with extrapolating from that is that in any way history could have played out, nuclear power would have had a very good safety record right up until the point that there was a major catastrophe, after which it would have been abandoned. If the wind had not blown Fukushima's radioactive cloud out to sea, but toward a city, everyone would be dropping nuclear, not just Japan and Germany. And nuclear power's low death rate would be a high death rate.

Any sequence of events leading up to a major nuclear disaster, bad nuclear safety statistics, and the end of nuclear power would have a period of excellent safety, just as you could go swimming with sharks every day, and collect more and more data showing that it's perfectly safe until you get eaten. You might like to watch Grizzly Man to see where that kind of reasoning gets you.

With other forms of power, we get a lot of little accidents that remind us what the risks are, and give us a fair sample of what our level of concern should be. With nuclear, everything's fine until suddenly it's the worst idea ever, and -- oh god why did we ever think this was a good idea? -- everyone is dead, and the earth is salted.

>>5831838
I understand *exactly* how nuclear weapons work, and that once you have the required nuclear material, they are tremendously easier to make now than they were during WW II.

And I wasn't talking about someone sneaking in and grabbing something that's just lying around. I meant what can be done with a few people working on the inside.

>>5831700
do you really think the human species can exist in isolation? we are one apex of a gigantic food pyramid. if we destroy or even reduce the biosphere, we have cooked our own goose. You'd better believe we must treat nature right!

>>5831860
lel

I don't think you are using a sensible definition of dangerous here, according to you thing whitch doesn't kill people is dangerous and things that kill people regularry are somehow not dangerous?

>Nuclear power's good safety record comes from extreme caution
Yes whitch is totally sensible and correct thing to do.
>kind of large-scale disasters that nuclear power constantly threatens to produce.
And there you go again..
You lack both the understanding on what is dangerous and how nuclear power works.

Also I fail to see how:
>there is a small chance that something bad would happen
is somehow better than
>shit is going down big time constaly
Your logic is retarded and you seem to favour a situation where you actually die over the one where you might die.


>The...
This is true, but only becasue people are uneducated.


The worst nucleardisaster to date, has killed along the lines of 5-10k people if you count all the not even legitimatelly related deaths into account. Nuclear power stations don't just explode and kill everyone you know if you don't pluck them in the middle of the city.

Nuclear could have 100 more disasters and it's death rate wouldn't even aproach that of the bigger power sources altough it might overtake solar at that point.

>sharks
That analogy is retarded and misguiding, a more proper analogy is that we should exterminate all sharks becasue one kid desided to go swimming in the beach that was already closed of due to a shark season, you just don't go that full retard in the real world. Instead what we do is close of dangerous beaches and inform the population, we can even use nets and to prevent the from swimming close to the shore.

>we get a lot of little accidents
Hundreds of thousands a year is not "little" at least to me
>that remind us what the risks are,
Seems to be doing poor job at that.

>everyone is dead, and the earth is salted.
>Don't go outside or lighting might strike you out from the clear sky.
The same arguments.

>>5831834
Some talebans used a common vehicle to move tonnes of gasoline into the WTC towers and the US is still reeling and whining from it.

Sure, it's tonnes instead of kilogrammes, but then, it's easier to get your hands on megatonnes of petroleum products than it is to get your hands onkilogrammes of uranium.

In other words, the threats are relative and someone has made radioactive mountains out of background-level molehills in your mind.

Stop feeling and start thinking. It's a wonderful feeling, not being led along like a slave in a collar by every old emotion, especially when the emotions have been so badly misled.

>>5831882
>Nuclear power stations don't just explode and kill everyone you know if you don't pluck them in the middle of the city.
They *haven't*. That doesn't mean they *can't*. We *know* they can. We got extremely lucky with Fukushima, due to the way the wind blew. Even with Chernobyl, there were lucky breaks with how it worked out.

With nuclear power, you're always trusting people not to fuck difficult things up, and that if they do, the wind will blow the right way, or the rain will fall at the right time, and the people we call to fix it won't fuck something even more difficult up. And if that trust is misplaced, it can kill millions of people, all at once.

Nuclear power is supremely unforgiving of ordinary human fallibility.

>>that remind us what the risks are,
>Seems to be doing poor job at that.
People die. We die in car accidents because we love convenience more than safety. We die on the job for the same reason, and this is the vast majority of power-generation-related deaths: ordinary workplace accidents.

We don't choose to live our lives pussyfooting around everything the way it is *necessary* with nuclear power for it not to kill everyone.

As for dirty coal plants causing asthma-related deaths, in the first place, this is currently more a problem with crude power generation by third-world incompetents (who would do vastly more damage if they were fiddling with nuclear power) rather than anything done to a societal standard approaching that required for the operation of a nuclear plant, and in the second place it's very hard to fairly attribute the blame. There is no real statistic for how many people die "because of coal-related pollution" as opposed to "because of inborn respiratory conditions", just various guesses promoted to serve different agendas.

The same sort of people are also on the other side, claiming that the Chernobyl disaster has killed over a quarter-million people in the long term.

>>5831950
>Sure, it's tonnes instead of kilogrammes
...and a building instead of a city.

Are you seriously equating the seriousness of the 9/11 attack with the consequences of a similar coordinated attack with nuclear weapons?

Picture this: three nuclear weapons, even crude little Hiroshima things, set off in downtown Washington DC, downtown New York, and range of the Pentagon.

>Stop feeling and start thinking.
It is to laugh.

>>5831979
>the whole post
lol'd

Special pleading in every fucking way. You'd make a great politician.

You sound like militant vegans or the people who advocate a total ban on all weapons, except that you have an even more skewed picture of reality.

>>5831979

>And if that trust is misplaced, it can kill millions of people, all at once.

top fucking lel. Here's a question I have for you: Is it worse or better for millions of people to die at once, or over a span of years? Because the oil economy kills over years and decades. Does that make oil better, in your mind?

>>5832006
Grizzly Man. Watch it.

You can mess around with something dangerous, look like an expert to laymen for years, and then have one bad day, and suddenly in retrospect it's obvious that you were being insanely reckless and didn't know what you were doing at all.

>>5831979
>vast majority of power-generation-related deaths
I lolled

>dem special pleadings
Nuclear deaths are wery difficult to point into nuclear casue, meanwhile coal related deaths are easy to relate to coal.

If I were to make posts that say directly the opposite of your posts I would be closer to truth than you.
Rest of your arguments like the rest of your posts are either misinformed or just straight up bullshit.

I'm done right about here, nothing i can say will change your mind and pointing out your mistakes isn't really worth mi time, please go to the following boards where supersticion is accepted.
>>>/x/
>>>/pol/
Go there so you don't spread cancer, this board is for science, not wordplay and your personal beliefs.

>>5832014
Yes, you're right, every nuclear power plant in the world is all the time like a bad catastrophe movie and operate on the kinfe's edge every minute.

All the operators need triple-doses of heavy tranquilizers while they're not on the job so the constant stress of inhibiting the explosion of a nuclear-bomb-going-critical.

Mayne you should read more and watch movies less.

I'm really curious as to how much space enough solar cells to produce the energy of 20 nuclear plants takes up.

>>5832010
Here's a question I have for you: Can you possibly be so severely mentally defective that you actually think you're making a point with that idiotic rhetorical question?

The downside of nuclear power is not in what happens when it's operating normally, but in the potential for large-scale disaster, including the existential threat it poses.

Historical safety statistics are irrelevant to this, for reasons I've already explained in considerable detail.

>>5832006
>>5832010
>>5832020
The samefag is strong in this one.

You could at least try not to sound like the same person when you're trying to create the illusion of people agreeing with your idiocy.

>>5832045

Maybe you just sound completely outrageous and don't actually know what the risks are of nuclear.

>>5832043

Nice ad hominem bro. Explain the existential threat if the billion-to-one shot happens and a nuclear reactor goes full critical on us.

>>5829346
>Gigawatts of electricity
You see. The people who support these renewables are either uneducated or they are gathering the subsidies. BTW, I'm an EE in the EU born and raised and we all pay the cost of Germany's insane amount of renewables and the instability issues this causes.

>>5832045
What this guy said >>5832059

You've presented religion-like pigheadedness in your blithe disregard of facts ITT.

Me and the others have discussed it relatively politely, but there comes a point in every discussion with religious people where their obstinacy grinds away the willingness of others to stay civil.

Unless you can trick someone else to fling your filth at, there will be no more discussion here, only you and people who you've convinced that you deserve nothing better than ridicule and pity.

>>5832161

That's part of my criticism of the green movement in the EU's heart. It's all pushed by government, relying on government financing in effect, which gives a certain political class the ability to run what can only be called a "scam".

Manufactured oil wont be nowhere as cheap as natural oil.

Anyone saying otherwise is deluded.

>>5832161
>the instability issues this causes

Like rolling blackouts?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout

>>5829346
>Germany is the world's top photovoltaics (PV) installer, with a solar PV capacity as of December 2012 of more than 32.3 gigawatts (GW).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

The average production is only at 10-12% of capacity in germany though. So they really only produced the same power as 3-4 nuclear reactors. Which could all be colocated at an area of a small PV installatino.

>>5832186

Thank you for stating the case succinctly. I keep telling /sci/ducks this sort of thing, but it's roundly rejected, not for any sane reason. Petroleum's attaining singular status, as our primary energy source, revolves around three factors that operating TOGETHER, become unbeatable:

1. Cheap. I mean, dirt fucking cheap. All those BTUs in a single 42-gal barrel of oil, and you could pull that fucker out of the ground for about $10 to $50. That's cheap as all fuck.

2. Energy dense. Only nuclear fuel beats petroleum's energy density. Everything else just doesn't compete. Natural gas is closest, and that makes sense, since NG is pretty much a petroleum evaporate.

3. Extremely practical. Petroleum is easy to find, drill for, pump out, pump around the place anyway, refine, then pump again for however you want to transport it, all at STP... and then easy to decant. Want 10000 gallons or just 1 ounce of it? It's easy to obtain. Petroleum can be stored intact for long, long periods. Shit nigga, you just can't find a fuel that's this practical to exploit across the spectrum (find, pull, push, store, dispense).

Anything else that's done to replace this nearly magical fuel, will only be more costly, often far more costly... or less energy dense... or less practical. But mostly it's #1: More costly. And we designed this entire system on the assumption that the fuel used in it, was dirt cheap.

>tfw we can't just invade Africa and use their sand to make millions of squares miles of solar panels

>>5832186
That's completely wrong, manufactured oil will almost certainly be nowhere near as cheap as natural oil.

>>5832248

Colocation isn't such a great idea. There are still transmission losses to consider. Until Germany invests in a massive system of superconducting trunks for its electrical distribution, you're better off cutting the nation up into distribution regions and then centering generation in them. Of course, there are a host of other considerations. Access to coolant water. Access to existing distribution lines. Laws forbidding construction in certain locations. Pollution plumes. But overall you need to setup generation regions; semi-decentralization.

What if we bioengineered some form of weed (grows without much maintenance) to produce high energy density fuel? Has anyone considered this before?

>>5832263

lolwhat? you said >>5832186 is wrong?

but it sounds like your saying the same thing?

>>5832174
Maybe a bit more thoroughly about the EU. It's pushed by the EU itself. Every country in the EU must provide the subsidy scheme for there power plants and also society needs to buy of any amount that they produce. This is forced upon every state by the EU.
Germany actually gets something from it because they have a lot of industry in this. Roughly speaking, the countries that have renewable industry lobby for it. Germany is not the only one but one of the few.

>>5832272

Swtichgrass is a little promising for producing ethanol. It's not a food crop, doesn't need the same sort of land that food crops grow on, and requires less care.

But gene-engineering a denser hydrocarbon producer? Although I don't have the numbers in front of me, I bet that you still can't get the same affordability factor. After all, plants take time to grow; petroleum was just sitting there in trillions of barrels, waiting to be drilled for, cracked from shales, or baked from sands.

>>5832284

Ah, that figures. Sounds like Germany made out for a while by not only issuing the credit for buying its alt-energy products, but supporting a government structure in the EU that called for such technologies to be bought in the first place.

The larger scam of the EU is imploding. It's just going to take a long, long while before Europe disjoints again, just as nature intended.

>gigawatts per hour
what is that, energy acceleration?
After a year, that would produce about 3 sextillion joules, roughly half the total amount of energy in the world's natural gas reserves

>>5832290
now that i think of it, transportation and energy consumes much more crop than just eating. I mean probably you need a order of magnitude more corn to power a car than to fill your stomach. Do we even have enough land for these crops? Considering plants haven't evolved for our energy needs, maybe we can design some form of simple organism (something like a bacteria) with desirable properties to produce fuel more efficiently?

>>5832300
Bacteria would make more sense, we have already spliced E. Coli to produce Insulin with Recombinant DNA technology

>>5832297
Energy crisis resolved, base wind power.

>>5832314
So i have been doing research via google (not very effective, i much prefer research papers), and my question then is, why hasen't this technology gained mass following? Does it have some genuine shortcomings/cons which need to be addressed? Is it as those seemingly lunatic people say, there is a political barrier (perhaps not to the degree that they insist)?

Moreover I go into this with the assumption that low maintenance in technologies is important (assuming that cost effectiveness, economic viability, sustainability, are all satisfied), is it really that big of a deal?

>people not able to read a sentece correctly
>people not knowing what "peak production" is
>people thinking that combustion isn't a reaction
What has /sci/ become?

>>5832337
>What has /sci/ become?
Not all of sci is like that. There are some mathematicians with some sick skills here as well. Sadly, there are obviously hipsters and environmentalist threads get filled with them. I mean even OP's pic is wrong. Nothing produces Giggawats for crying out loud. Every EE knows that.

>>5829431
Actually it means 22*10^9 Joules per second per hour. Does not make sense.

>>5831871
you cant get the required material from a power plant, they only use around 3% enriched uranium. you need upwards of 70% to cause a nuclear explosion. terrorists would never ever be able to enrich stolen uranium that much because it takes months to do so for a tiny amount, and costs huge amounts. a nuke would cost so much more money to make and result in less destruction than just making a million fertilizer bombs and hoping a few of them cause damage

ass devastated murikans

>>5832936
jesus christ how expensive was that

>>5832947
who cares, shit needs to get done. how expensive will it be when our economy collapses because of crop failure and coastline loss and the prohibitively expensive price of oil?

>>5832947
less expensive than turning half the country into a set for a live action version of fallout

>>5832936
>7 nuclear Reactors
Yes because all nuke reactors put out the same amount of energy

>>5832965
see >>5832028

Best form of electricity production: split energy consumption into fourier terms.

Use nuclear power for the constant term, solar for the first order term, and use hydroelectric for all higher order terms whenever possible, otherwise fossils. Parked electric cars could be used as buffers if they are widespread.

Avoid wind at all costs unless you want rolling blackouts and major headaches. Constant power from nuclear power is always going to beat random power.

There you have it, clean energy with little human maintenance needed once set up.

>>5832978

Well, anything is better than the south currently getting some ridiculous portion of their power from oil+ coal. The north is fairly well off with a number of large hydroelectric dams left with the new deal, along with nuclear power, so less coal is used there.

The south could use solar power (and more nuclear) but don't expect them to understand why solar is a good idea when you live in the sunniest places in the US.

>>5830453
Actually if we de-regulated nuclear power we could easily make them more efficient than anything we have right now, but the NRC won't let nuclear plants superheat steam.

>>5833124
Wait what? Most nuclear plants do superheat steam.