Post: #26

Is there an image resizing function on this board? posting huge gifs on this board stretches the text width out so much it's difficult to read.

Post: #27

(06-08-2017 03:56 PM)911 Wrote:  Is there an image resizing function on this board? posting huge gifs on this board stretches the text width out so much it's difficult to read.

Word.

Thankfully we're on a new page so the people can get it write. It's a huge pain in the ass to scroll up down, left and right for every single word.

This thread is about technology, so let's use our own copy and pasting technology right first.

I've been guilty of this myself once in the past.

Post: #28

The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

Post: #29

(06-08-2017 05:43 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

In order to accomplish that task, we must completely redesign our lifestyles and even then it is against our inner biological clocks. Your idea may be viable for smart homes that require very little human intervention. 99.99% of human population won't be able to afford those types of homes in our lifetimes. You can power single family homes but what about hospitals, office buildings, and airports? Small or even very big batteries won't be enough. That's why we keep huge diesel-powered generators for emergencies not solar panels or windmills.

Post: #30

Honestly, this entire thread's been a bit of a waste. Besides the lack of real cohesion in the thread title, many of the issues brought up here by the OP have already been discussed elsewhere. Additionally, I wonder if you're a bit of a rookie because a lot of things you're saying are rehashed criticisms of renewable energies.

Duck curve? A VP of a California utility has admitted publically they can now have 100% renewable grids.

http://inewsource.org/2017/05/26/sempra-...les-pxise/

Quote:“I am speaking with confidence now. We have a solution now to adjust the intermittency of solar and wind energy that is no longer a technology challenge. Now it is an economic decision,” said Patrick Lee, Sempra Energy vice president for major project controls. “So installing a base load power plant is no longer your only option. You can now look at solar, wind and storage as alternatives, and still be able to manage the reliability of the grid. So that is the takeaway I would like you to have.”

Quote:In those three years, not only have wind, solar and battery prices plunged. The software to control storage and the grid has also advanced.

Suddenly, there is software that can make grid adjustments and bring battery power online much, much faster. “We now have the ability to control the grid twenty times faster than you can blink your eye,” Lee said.

An assumption almost everyone makes is that you need baseload power sources to run the electric grid. I don't know if that assumption is valid. It was for historical reasons, but storage really does change the equation fundamentally.

Though amusingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the VP had to backtrack his comments since his employer is heavily invested in natural gas.

Regardless, although I generally disagree with Arado (see the Indian Politics thread), I do agree with him that solar and battery costs are dropping at a jaw-breaking rate. Though I'm not willing to concede it's a 100% guaranteed bet. I do find the lack of nuance on both sides of the argument in this thread a bit enervating. Too much black and white thinking.

Green Tech Media is biased in favor of renewables. Yet I trust this particular news article since it'd be hard to make stuff like this up and get away with it:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/...-18-months

Quote:According to Larsh Johnson, the chief technology officer of Stem, the company is paying 70 percent less for lithium-ion batteries than it was 18 months ago.

As for OP:

(06-09-2017 04:06 PM)speculator Wrote:  In order to accomplish that task, we must completely redesign our lifestyles and even then it is against our inner biological clocks. Your idea may be viable for smart homes that require very little human intervention. 99.99% of human population won't be able to afford those types of homes in our lifetimes. You can power single family homes but what about hospitals, office buildings, and airports? Small or even very big batteries won't be enough. That's why we keep huge diesel-powered generators for emergencies not solar panels or windmills.

I've bolded a particular sentence of yours considering how bold, and dare I say arrogant, it is. In our lifetimes? Look around you and see how much technology has moved forward in the past 10, 20, 50 years. Not so long ago, 99% of the human population would not have been able to afford all the technologies that come within a smartphone.

Solar comes in many forms, not just photovoltaics. CSP has some promise towards converting solar directly into stored energy. Flow batteries and some other ideas are being heavily researched. It really is not inconceivable that large-scale affordable storage may one day become viable. Not to mention the possibilities of microgrids, demand-side management, and perhaps a host of new technologies that may come about in the next decade or two.

Weak thread. For someone who has been lurking for a long time, perhaps you should read the countless of threads on environmentalists, Tesla, energy, etc etc that have already been made. Your declaration that Elon Musk is the modern day Ponzi is a few years behind the forum.

(06-07-2017 01:26 AM)MidJack Wrote:  These discussions always get blurry because of how arbitrary energy measurement can be, but if you're going to count dammed water as stored energy then you also have to count refined fissile materials and petroleum products that have been extracted but not yet consumed.

Hydro is not free. You have to build and maintain a dam just like a nuclear reactor or oil rig. One technology may be cleaner or return more on energy invested, but none are zero-cost.

Since OP went immediately to the extreme case of exclusive nuclear, even though no one suggested it, it sounds like he or his super world famous professor are vulnerable to the black-and-white thinking that often dominates academic discussions on environment and energy.

The point of having nuclear and natural gas and coal and "green energy" (onerous as it is) is to have a diversity of energy sources and technologies so failure of one won't collapse an economy or civilization. Periodically some energy industries dominate others. For example, coal is out of favor right now, but in a global emergency Fischer-Tropsch could save the United States.

Either OP is fresh off some intense academics, in which case all of this can be forgiven, or we're about to learn that he actually has Q clearance and knows every secret behind US energy policy. Please be Little Dark NASA Test Pilot reincarnate.

(On the relative utility of nuclear power: If any base load denialists emerge in this thread I will laugh out loud.)

I did like this post a lot - perhaps the only useful contribution. Though feel free to laugh at me for "base load denialism" . I'm actually quite ambivalent about the need for base load generators (in new forms of "the electric grid", but not in the current setup). I'm looking forward to seeing what the microgrid experiments turn out. I've had a bit too much engineering experience in my life to ever count out a new approach. Granted, the notion of base load may turn out to be an immutable foundation of a functioning electrical grid. Yet in my experience, I've never seen a clear argument for why you absolutely need a base load the way we currently envision it. It isn't a fundamental law of physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

Quote:According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday in 2015, baseload is "outdated", as microgrids would become the primary means of production, and large powerplants relegated to supply the remainder.

But again, I'm ambivalent. And more so, excited to see what the future brings.

Post: #31

(06-09-2017 09:55 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  Regardless, although I generally disagree with Arado (see the Indian Politics thread), I do agree with him that solar and battery costs are dropping at a jaw-breaking rate. Though I'm not willing to concede it's a 100% guaranteed bet. I do find the lack of nuance on both sides of the argument in this thread a bit enervating. Too much black and white thinking.

Green Tech Media is biased in favor of renewables. Yet I trust this particular news article since it'd be hard to make stuff like this up and get away with it:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/...-18-months


As for OP:

(06-09-2017 04:06 PM)speculator Wrote:  In order to accomplish that task, we must completely redesign our lifestyles and even then it is against our inner biological clocks. Your idea may be viable for smart homes that require very little human intervention. 99.99% of human population won't be able to afford those types of homes in our lifetimes. You can power single family homes but what about hospitals, office buildings, and airports? Small or even very big batteries won't be enough. That's why we keep huge diesel-powered generators for emergencies not solar panels or windmills.

I've bolded a particular sentence of yours considering how bold, and dare I say arrogant, it is. In our lifetimes? Look around you and see how much technology has moved forward in the past 10, 20, 50 years. Not so long ago, 99% of the human population would not have been able to afford all the technologies that come within a smartphone.

Solar comes in many forms, not just photovoltaics. CSP has some promise towards converting solar directly into stored energy. Flow batteries and some other ideas are being heavily researched. It really is not inconceivable that large-scale affordable storage may one day become viable. Not to mention the possibilities of microgrids, demand-side management, and perhaps a host of new technologies that may come about in the next decade or two.

Weak thread. For someone who has been lurking for a long time, perhaps you should read the countless of threads on environmentalists, Tesla, energy, etc etc that have already been made. Your declaration that Elon Musk is the modern day Ponzi is a few years behind the forum.

Agree with the post above. I think during the transition period between hydrocarbons and widespread alternatives + batteries we're going to start seeing some interesting political alliances among those pushing alternative energy. Though the alt-right currently is skeptical of these new technologies, once they become more mainstream I'm curious to see how the politics plays out.

Like I keep saying above, our civilization's dependence on hydrocarbons has led to a shit ton of geopolitical bullshit, useless conflict and disproportionate influence of oil/gas producing nations. We really should account for this when thinking of whether or not it's worth it for governments to invest a bit of money to help renewable energy producers make the final push to become cheaper than hydrocarbons in many situations and scalable.

Post: #32

(06-08-2017 05:13 PM)Robert High Hawk Wrote:  

(06-08-2017 03:56 PM)911 Wrote:  Is there an image resizing function on this board? posting huge gifs on this board stretches the text width out so much it's difficult to read.

Word.

Thankfully we're on a new page so the people can get it write. It's a huge pain in the ass to scroll up down, left and right for every single word.

This thread is about technology, so let's use our own copy and pasting technology right first.

I've been guilty of this myself once in the past.

My bad - is there a post somewhere explaining this?

Post: #33

Look Arado - what you are missing here and what is blatantly obvious is this:

1) We agree that if alternative tech become better and cheaper than current one, that it will replace oil, gas and coal, but this is not the case - not even close.

2) Wind-mills are shit - they are not reliable, have a life-cycle that is 7-14 years and then they become graveyards:


Another secret- behind every wind power there are huge backups that are providing power via diesel generators:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...ndals.html

Quote:The dirty secret of Britain's power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there's no wind for turbines - and other insane but true eco-scandals
Moving to wind power is expected to cost £1 billion a year by 2015
Official figures on the size of the green economy are extremely misleading
They exaggerate the worth of the sector by up to 700 per cent

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z4jaeMBd5c
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

3) Solar - a bit better than wind, but it would only become useful if we could store the energy in batteries. They are still woefully inadequate for our needs.

And it does not bloody matter if the state financed big electricity companies and the green fascism supporters trump out the arguments about wind and solar.

It is not the same, because even with the investment there is the operating cost ratio of those alternatives - they are 6-7 times more expensive. In some sun-filled countries in the South solar could become a real alternative, but upkeep of those industries takes serious tech. And even there you cannot have 24/7 support.

you should check out the quotes by globalists and what they think of the scam:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot....-plan.html

And they constantly manipulate the data now so that the guys like Thunderfoot start spouting the same bullshit:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...-data.html

Contrary to nuclear or big coal energy plants you don't need billions of investment funds to "leap forward" or develop those. The best solar panel producer is a small company in Switzerland worth a few million $. There is no need to subsidize those leeches at billions of $.

Post: #34

(06-09-2017 10:37 PM)Arado Wrote:  

(06-08-2017 03:56 PM)911 Wrote:  Is there an image resizing function on this board? posting huge gifs on this board stretches the text width out so much it's difficult to read.

My bad - is there a post somewhere explaining this?

You can size your images in the HTML tags:

So when you have your normal image tags of [img] url [/img], you can for example change it to [img=600x400] url [/img] if you want to set the dimensions to 600x400 pixels.

It's a bit clunky, so you'll have to check out the preview of your post and adjust to see if you've got the proportions right, but it's the only viable method as far as I know.

Post: #35

(06-08-2017 05:43 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

Ever thought about how Europe is at high latitudes in winter? Dark at 5pm.

Also, you propose that people cool only at daytime but believe me I leave my fridge on at night.

Post: #36

(06-10-2017 06:37 AM)Lime Wrote:  

(06-08-2017 05:43 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

Ever thought about how Europe is at high latitudes in winter? Dark at 5pm.

Also, you propose that people cool only at daytime but believe me I leave my fridge on at night.

Adapt energy expenditure to it? Why? Fuck those assholes - I know that they won't be adapting jack shit.

I read Agenda 21 - they plan to have you adapt by eating peas and potatoes, get electricity for several hours a day while they dine on steak and burn 1000 times more energy than you do.

Austerity and bullshit for you - even better life for them - that is Agenda 21 in a nutshell.

Post: #37

I'm pro PV and Wind where it makes sense. I worked in PV in Chile and there it is in some regions cheaper than any other energy source. No subsidies needed. Granted the solar radiation there is crazy.

What most people forget in the entire discussion is that many industrial processes require very high temperatures (steel-, aluminum-, polymerproduction) which you can't reach without burning something. For an industrialized nation it is hence impossible to completely go without fossils.

Post: #38

(06-09-2017 09:55 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  Honestly, this entire thread's been a bit of a waste. Besides the lack of real cohesion in the thread title, many of the issues brought up here by the OP have already been discussed elsewhere. Additionally, I wonder if you're a bit of a rookie because a lot of things you're saying are rehashed criticisms of renewable energies.

Duck curve? A VP of a California utility has admitted publically they can now have 100% renewable grids.

http://inewsource.org/2017/05/26/sempra-...les-pxise/

Quote:“I am speaking with confidence now. We have a solution now to adjust the intermittency of solar and wind energy that is no longer a technology challenge. Now it is an economic decision,” said Patrick Lee, Sempra Energy vice president for major project controls. “So installing a base load power plant is no longer your only option. You can now look at solar, wind and storage as alternatives, and still be able to manage the reliability of the grid. So that is the takeaway I would like you to have.”

Quote:In those three years, not only have wind, solar and battery prices plunged. The software to control storage and the grid has also advanced.

Suddenly, there is software that can make grid adjustments and bring battery power online much, much faster. “We now have the ability to control the grid twenty times faster than you can blink your eye,” Lee said.

An assumption almost everyone makes is that you need baseload power sources to run the electric grid. I don't know if that assumption is valid. It was for historical reasons, but storage really does change the equation fundamentally.

Though amusingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the VP had to backtrack his comments since his employer is heavily invested in natural gas.

Regardless, although I generally disagree with Arado (see the Indian Politics thread), I do agree with him that solar and battery costs are dropping at a jaw-breaking rate. Though I'm not willing to concede it's a 100% guaranteed bet. I do find the lack of nuance on both sides of the argument in this thread a bit enervating. Too much black and white thinking.

Green Tech Media is biased in favor of renewables. Yet I trust this particular news article since it'd be hard to make stuff like this up and get away with it:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/...-18-months

Quote:According to Larsh Johnson, the chief technology officer of Stem, the company is paying 70 percent less for lithium-ion batteries than it was 18 months ago.

As for OP:

(06-09-2017 04:06 PM)speculator Wrote:  In order to accomplish that task, we must completely redesign our lifestyles and even then it is against our inner biological clocks. Your idea may be viable for smart homes that require very little human intervention. 99.99% of human population won't be able to afford those types of homes in our lifetimes. You can power single family homes but what about hospitals, office buildings, and airports? Small or even very big batteries won't be enough. That's why we keep huge diesel-powered generators for emergencies not solar panels or windmills.

I've bolded a particular sentence of yours considering how bold, and dare I say arrogant, it is. In our lifetimes? Look around you and see how much technology has moved forward in the past 10, 20, 50 years. Not so long ago, 99% of the human population would not have been able to afford all the technologies that come within a smartphone.

Solar comes in many forms, not just photovoltaics. CSP has some promise towards converting solar directly into stored energy. Flow batteries and some other ideas are being heavily researched. It really is not inconceivable that large-scale affordable storage may one day become viable. Not to mention the possibilities of microgrids, demand-side management, and perhaps a host of new technologies that may come about in the next decade or two.

Weak thread. For someone who has been lurking for a long time, perhaps you should read the countless of threads on environmentalists, Tesla, energy, etc etc that have already been made. Your declaration that Elon Musk is the modern day Ponzi is a few years behind the forum.

(06-07-2017 01:26 AM)MidJack Wrote:  These discussions always get blurry because of how arbitrary energy measurement can be, but if you're going to count dammed water as stored energy then you also have to count refined fissile materials and petroleum products that have been extracted but not yet consumed.

Hydro is not free. You have to build and maintain a dam just like a nuclear reactor or oil rig. One technology may be cleaner or return more on energy invested, but none are zero-cost.

Since OP went immediately to the extreme case of exclusive nuclear, even though no one suggested it, it sounds like he or his super world famous professor are vulnerable to the black-and-white thinking that often dominates academic discussions on environment and energy.

The point of having nuclear and natural gas and coal and "green energy" (onerous as it is) is to have a diversity of energy sources and technologies so failure of one won't collapse an economy or civilization. Periodically some energy industries dominate others. For example, coal is out of favor right now, but in a global emergency Fischer-Tropsch could save the United States.

Either OP is fresh off some intense academics, in which case all of this can be forgiven, or we're about to learn that he actually has Q clearance and knows every secret behind US energy policy. Please be Little Dark NASA Test Pilot reincarnate.

(On the relative utility of nuclear power: If any base load denialists emerge in this thread I will laugh out loud.)

I did like this post a lot - perhaps the only useful contribution. Though feel free to laugh at me for "base load denialism" . I'm actually quite ambivalent about the need for base load generators (in new forms of "the electric grid", but not in the current setup). I'm looking forward to seeing what the microgrid experiments turn out. I've had a bit too much engineering experience in my life to ever count out a new approach. Granted, the notion of base load may turn out to be an immutable foundation of a functioning electrical grid. Yet in my experience, I've never seen a clear argument for why you absolutely need a base load the way we currently envision it. It isn't a fundamental law of physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

Quote:According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday in 2015, baseload is "outdated", as microgrids would become the primary means of production, and large powerplants relegated to supply the remainder.

But again, I'm ambivalent. And more so, excited to see what the future brings.

I know that Genghis Khan liked horses but it is sometimes helpful to get off your high horse and be more constructive in criticisms. The only waste in this thread is your reply and now I will explain why.

First of all, the inewsource.com that you referenced shares the same room as PBS and NPR in San Diego. It is a major red flag that their journalism is as left leaning as it can possibly be. The guy you quoted, namely Patrick Lee, is the president of PXiSE Energy Solutions which supposedly devised a program that can manage the grid in a way that makes renewable energy sources viable. Any sane person can see that there is a conflict of interest and this guy is simply trying to sell his product. That's why Sempra quickly backtracked on his comments.

Second, nobody is denying that battery and solar panel costs are declining. The problem is with STORING CAPACITY that is inadequate to meet the current and projected demands. Even if you produce millions of new batteries, you still can't match hydrocarbons in their efficiency. Batteries need maintenance, have replacement costs, are fire hazards, and are detrimental to the environment. Even Samsung can't produce a safe battery for a phone and you claim that batteries can replace hydrocarbons?

Third, greentechmedia.com is owned by Verisk Analytics which business model is based on compliance with government standards. The more rigorous the government standards, the higher is the compliance cost (i.e. the profits for Verisk). This company craves renewables because they require more regulation and compliance.

Fourth, if you don't see a difference between owning a smart home and a smart phone, I can't help you. You can buy a smartphone for less than $100 today. Buying a home was not, is not, and will not be easy. My claim that 99.9% of human population can't afford smart homes is not arrogant. I have traveled around the world and nobody can persuade me that cities like Mumbai, Jakarta, or Dhaka can build smart homes in my lifetime. Maybe for some billionaires but not for general population. Plus all your claims about batteries are assumptions that may or may not come true. We live in a real world that requires some real solutions not some bullshit fantasies.

My declaration that Elon Musk is a fraud is as actual as ever cause many people on this forum still believe in this master manipulator. It is not a coincidence that Tesla's stock is the most overvalued piece of paper right now.

And finally, quoting Wikipedia article is something that people do in high school. Good try but come up with a more constructive response next time instead of blowing hot air.

Post: #39

Interesting developments in the energy sector. Today Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced that "nuclear energy is on the front burner of White House's energy strategy." Currently, we get about 20% of our energy from nuclear power plants and that number is projected to drop to 11% by 2050 if nothing is changed in the current policy according to the EIA. Taking into consideration that Perry basically represents big oil companies (he was the Governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015), this announcement is a game changer.

I think Perry understands that we need to preserve hydrocarbons as long as we can and instead of financing wasteful and inefficient renewable sources, government funds will be redirected to building new but smaller nuclear power plants. Logically treehuggers and their handlers should be celebrating this announcement but instead they are labeling him as a climate change denier. It is not surprising because renewables have been their cash cow for the last 15-20 years and they are in a panic mode. This shows that they don't give a flying fuck about the environment but only care about their green dollars. The nuclear energy is the "cleanest" in terms of CO2 emissions. But it doesn't fill the pockets of Greenpeace anarchists.

Perry's Announcement about Nuclear Energy

Attacks on Perry Intensified. Not Surprisingly

Post: #40

Very interesting developments in Mecca of renewables aka Commiefornia. As I mentioned in my previous posts in this thread, when the share of renewables in overall energy production exceeds 25%, the disruption of a grid becomes inevitable.

Californians have installed so many solar panels during the last two years that this number is about 27% in the state. In order to deal with this problem, grid operators paid millions of dollars to neighboring states to take the excess energy that CANNOT be stored. In other words, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon not only get FREE energy but they also get paid for it. This is a result of delusional policy that local lawmakers have adopted a decade ago.

One may think that electricity should be very cheap in California but state residents pay 50 percent more than the national average. The absurdity of this situation is incomprehensible. Californians provide free energy and cash to neighboring states and at the same time pay 50 percent more. Go figure out.

Interestingly, LA Slimes posted a good article about this issue yesterday. There is no hope for Californians because local radicals want to produce 100% of energy from renewable sources by 2045. These morons don't understand basic physics or economics but magically get reelected many times.

LADWP, the largest municipal utility in the States, will cut the rebates for solar panels starting June 30, 2017. It seems like the fantasy bubble is bursting in front of our eyes.

Make sure to read this semi-decent piece of journalism from LA Slimes.

The Biggest Problem of Renewables.

Post: #41

(06-23-2017 08:08 PM)speculator Wrote:  Very interesting developments in Mecca of renewables aka Commiefornia. As I mentioned in my previous posts in this thread, when the share of renewables in overall energy production exceeds 25%, the disruption of a grid becomes inevitable.

Californians have installed so many solar panels during the last two years that this number is about 27% in the state. In order to deal with this problem, grid operators paid millions of dollars to neighboring states to take the excess energy that CANNOT be stored. In other words, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon not only get FREE energy but they also get paid for it. This is a result of delusional policy that local lawmakers have adopted a decade ago.

One may think that electricity should be very cheap in California but state residents pay 50 percent more than the national average. The absurdity of this situation is incomprehensible. Californians provide free energy and cash to neighboring states and at the same time pay 50 percent more. Go figure out.

Interestingly, LA Slimes posted a good article about this issue yesterday. There is no hope for Californians because local radicals want to produce 100% of energy from renewable sources by 2045. These morons don't understand basic physics or economics but magically get reelected many times.

LADWP, the largest municipal utility in the States, will cut the rebates for solar panels starting June 30, 2017. It seems like the fantasy bubble is bursting in front of our eyes.

Make sure to read this semi-decent piece of journalism from LA Slimes.

The Biggest Problem of Renewables.

I know you are a storage skeptic but once Tesla's Gigafactories start pumping out powerwalls the renewable supply/grid capacity issue will gradually go away.

Any technology when it's in the first stages of mass adoption is going to have hiccups and tons of inefficiencies. As I mentioned in my previous posts, it's really all about storage - once the next 50% cost reduction comes (likely by around 2021) and factories can start mass producing then it's pretty much game over.

Have you been paying attention to the complete cluster that the Middle East is in, with Saudi trying to get us to go to war with Iran? Don't you think complete independence from the Middle East is a small price to pay for a few years of regulation and higher energy prices (even though renewables will be cheaper in the long run)? Yes, I know that the U.S. is energy independent but if we can take the lead on renewables that will help the rest of the world move ahead and say screw you to the Saudis/Qataris/etc...unless of course you would rather cede the entire battery and renewable energy industry to the Chinese.

Post: #42

(06-09-2017 04:06 PM)speculator Wrote:  

(06-08-2017 05:43 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

In order to accomplish that task, we must completely redesign our lifestyles and even then it is against our inner biological clocks. Your idea may be viable for smart homes that require very little human intervention. 99.99% of human population won't be able to afford those types of homes in our lifetimes. You can power single family homes but what about hospitals, office buildings, and airports? Small or even very big batteries won't be enough. That's why we keep huge diesel-powered generators for emergencies not solar panels or windmills.

Not such a big overhaul to run the pool pump, washing machine, and charge the car during daylight really.

Not much against the biological clock to chill out by led lamps with a TV or laptop at night... that's what most people do each night, they don't need much power for that.

Its not expensive, 10K for solar, 5K for battery, ROI is < ten years and you are off grid. If government passes on savings from having to maintain baseline power and burn non renewables, it's a 5 year ROI, and then a lifetime of free energy.

People are living like this now off grid, all over the world. Right now. It works.

Hospitals and 24 hour essential plants can run of Hydro/Nuke/battery banks, since no one else needs it, there will be plenty.

A low pop, high tech society can effortlessly convert to renewable, using todays tech. And its getting better each year.

Post: #43

(06-10-2017 06:37 AM)Lime Wrote:  

(06-08-2017 05:43 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  The storage issue with Solar goes away when you adapt your usage to fit in.

You use all your electricity during the day, heating, cooling, washing, cooking, pool pump, charge your car and batteries.

Just need house insulation to keep the daytimes cooling/heating in (or other thermal storage options)

At night it's just a small battery for lights, tv and a computer.

With adaption, we have the technology to make use of solar today.

Ever thought about how Europe is at high latitudes in winter? Dark at 5pm.

Also, you propose that people cool only at daytime but believe me I leave my fridge on at night.

Yes, Europe is a big problem in winter, more so because you need a ton of heating as well.

There are solutions that involve renewables and power lines, linking Europe up with solar, wind, nuke and tidal/geothermal power should greatly reduce hydrocarbon reliance.

Also, with the rest of the world using solar, there will be more life span in Hydrocarbons until the tech gets better and more viable for the frozen north.

Iceland runs on geothermal.

btw modern fridges can go overnight without power, especially if they are not being opened and closed like you do during the day. Also you have a battery.

Post: #44

(06-10-2017 07:38 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Adapt energy expenditure to it? Why? Fuck those assholes - I know that they won't be adapting jack shit.

I read Agenda 21 - they plan to have you adapt by eating peas and potatoes, get electricity for several hours a day while they dine on steak and burn 1000 times more energy than you do.

Austerity and bullshit for you - even better life for them - that is Agenda 21 in a nutshell.

I am with you comrade! Free gas guzzlers for all! Lets burn the planet!

I am all for unlimited cheap power for everyone, but you do realise we are exponentially burning a non-renewable resource to create it, right?

There are also exponentially more people trying to burn it as well.

The reality is, sooner, rather than later, we are going to have to learn to live from make renewable power, until fusion or some other breakthrough makes it happen.

Also capitalism is driving many people to go off grid and remove power bills from their lives, free choice. I am happy to do my washing at 10am instead of midnight, and forgo the aircon on and the windows open for a zero cost power bill each month!

Post: #45

@Arado -- It is not reasonable to replace one scarce resource with a resource that is even scarcer. I'm talking about lithium and spherical graphite, the main ingredients of lithium-ion batteries. As I mentioned, lithium is concentrated in South America and 100% of spherical graphite is produced in China. That's why Musk wants to shift Tesla's production to China.

Tesla's Headaches

Middle East is not going anywhere anytime soon. The whole world economy depends on that region and its importance will increase even further in near future. All eyez on Middle East and in a decade, on Siberia/North Pole.

Right now Tesla faces a huge production shortage of batteries, 40 percent below needed production levels. This bottleneck will eventually kill its mass production plans. It is not a coincidence that Goldman Sachs issued a warning to its clients that Tesla's stock is worth only half of its market price yesterday. Plus, states and the federal government are rolling back their rebates for electric vehicles and solar panels.

Tesla's Worst Bottleneck

Goldman Sach's Warning

Post: #46

(06-24-2017 12:50 AM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  

(06-10-2017 07:38 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Adapt energy expenditure to it? Why? Fuck those assholes - I know that they won't be adapting jack shit.

I read Agenda 21 - they plan to have you adapt by eating peas and potatoes, get electricity for several hours a day while they dine on steak and burn 1000 times more energy than you do.

Austerity and bullshit for you - even better life for them - that is Agenda 21 in a nutshell.

I am with you comrade! Free gas guzzlers for all! Lets burn the planet!

I am all for unlimited cheap power for everyone, but you do realise we are exponentially burning a non-renewable resource to create it, right?

There are also exponentially more people trying to burn it as well.

The reality is, sooner, rather than later, we are going to have to learn to live from make renewable power, until fusion or some other breakthrough makes it happen.

Also capitalism is driving many people to go off grid and remove power bills from their lives, free choice. I am happy to do my washing at 10am instead of midnight, and forgo the aircon on and the windows open for a zero cost power bill each month!

I am all for alternative energy technologies, but solar and wind is not it. Those are bullshit dead-ends. The same goes for the current battery technology.

Also we should be all driving mass gas guzzlers and pump out C02 en masse. The Earth would be better off with higher levels of CO2 and it does not heat the earth much (literally insignificant).

Also as far as oil being scarce - yeah about that - it will likely last hundreds of years easily, because we haven't even scratched the full usage out there. Also you can use gas to power combustion engines as well. And we have far more of that. I don't want to keep the combustion engine around for that long, but we could pump it all at full capacity for 750 years even with 10 billion people.

As for overpopulation. Africa alone could feed 12-15 billion people if the agriculture was as developed as in Europe. That means that you would grow zero and have lawns and woods in the rest of the world and we could all survive!

I am advocating a different system, but trust me - the globalists want austerity for the 90%, they want to cut down the world population tremendously, they want to de-industrialize and keep you confined to the big cities - and you will all suck it all up because it will be "green" - solar and wind.

Post: #47

I made a bold prediction back in June that Tesla has 6 more months to suck on investors' heavy tits. It seems like Tesla's honeymoon is over and Musk doesn't know how to save his Ponzi scheme. Last quarter the company lost $620 million, the worst quarter so far. In Musk's words, they are in "deep production hell" right now. It's stock has lost 12% after posting its miserable results yesterday.

Trump's new tax bill will take away the $7.5k electric vehicle credit virtually putting the last nail in Tesla's coffin. This company is done and be careful with your investments in its stocks.

Post: #48

Hopefully, the markets now finally realise that Tesla is junk. There's no way the Model 3 will successfully compete against GM, Toyota, or Volkswagen in the mass market. Elon Musk should have stayed in his small niche of six figures electric sports cars. Not that Tesla ever made money in that niche, but I think the Model 3 will destroy Tesla.

I'm confident TSLA shares will continue to tank, and I bought put options. Lots of opportunities with those overvalued shares.

Post: #49

Tesla's failure doesn't mean electric cars are a pipe dream though. Apparently there was a single production failure in one battery assembly process handled by a subcontractor. Hopefully this will inject some realism into Tesla's share price. I still have one question: are there any other Tech titans there inspiring people? His ideas do sound a bit far fetched but honestly, all of our best minds have gone into e commerce, social media, and marketing/spying bs lately that hasn't really advanced our society. At least Musk has big goals like Mars, alternative energy, etc.

Post: #50

(11-02-2017 05:39 PM)speculator Wrote:  I made a bold prediction back in June that Tesla has 6 more months to suck on investors' heavy tits. It seems like Tesla's honeymoon is over and Musk doesn't know how to save his Ponzi scheme. Last quarter the company lost $620 million, the worst quarter so far. In Musk's words, they are in "deep production hell" right now. It's stock has lost 12% after posting its miserable results yesterday.

Trump's new tax bill will take away the $7.5k electric vehicle credit virtually putting the last nail in Tesla's coffin. This company is done and be careful with your investments in its stocks.

Agreed. They are our generation's Deloreans. At least Elon made a few models. Hopefully, he'll make at least one car with gull-wing doors.

They were having problems with their welding of the frames and chassis. Read it on a few automotive blogs:

http://www.autonews.com/article/20171016...1019743/-1

Quote:The Model 3's aluminum and steel body requires more welding rather than the adhesive and rivets in aluminum bodies, experts say.

Harbour described the difference between the body of the Model 3 and those of the Model S and Model X as "partly cloudy vs. partly sunny." The change in materials would require processes new to Tesla.

"There's a big difference there. They haven't been doing a lot of spot welding on the first two vehicles because they're all aluminum," Harbour said. "The learning curve is pretty steep."

After the Journal report, Musk tweeted a of the Model 3 production line, which was operating at one-tenth of its potential speed. In the video, sparks fly as two robotic arms assemble parts of the vehicle frame. He followed with another on Wednesday, Oct. 11, showing body panel stamping at full speed.

"Resistance welding should make a little smoke, but when you see stuff popping out like that, that's called expulsion," automotive manufacturing consultant Michael Tracy of Agile Group in Howell, Mich., said of the first video. "It's symptomatic of weld spots getting too hot because they're poorly planned, or in this case, the metal not being pulled all the way together."

Poor welds can increase the damage to a vehicle in an accident, and can lead to rattling and squeaking as the car ages, Tracy said.

This zerohedge article has a reference to the video in question: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-16...production

For those in the automotive know, these are amateur mistakes. In the world of heavy industry, you can't be "beta testing" with this many materials in this fashion so late in the game.

Investors will be sorely disappointed.