Post: #176

Ya good information there, and I'm a fan of this tech.

If everything goes as planned, I'll be moving into an off-grid house this year. It's already got solar, but it's not enough power so I'll have to put more money into it. The Powerwall would be a big deal. Unfortunately, it's not quite available here yet. I might have to go to Germany and buy it there.

Post: #177

(01-14-2017 04:43 AM)Arado Wrote:  

(01-14-2017 04:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  This is where those lovely batteries come from:

China's Toxic Lake

There's nothing renewable or "green" about lithium ion batteries PERIOD.

Not to mention the fact that China is the sole producer of the batteries powering this so called "renewable" revolution. You think China's going to play ball with Trump calling them out for poor trade deals?

Tesla Powerwall will be produced in Nevada. Plus Tesla's lithium ion batteries are recyclable so mining lithium is a one off.

Curious where you got this info, because the cost of recycling lithium ion batteries is far more expensive than making them new.

Not to mention, the lithium components are still coming from somewhere (China) and being ASSEMBLED in Nevada. Tesla is claiming they will begin to mass produce actual battery cells in 2017 but color me skeptical. I've been burned by vaporware before and talk is cheap even from a billionaire.

They're still being made in China and the environmental damage has already been done.

Here's a great article on the subject: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-ele...een-think/

And a quote about the damages of lithium mining:

Quote:Rare metals only exist in tiny quantities and inconvenient places—so you have to move a lot of earth to get just a little bit. In the Jiangxi rare earth mine in China, Abraham writes, workers dig eight-foot holes and pour ammonium sulfate into them to dissolve the sandy clay. Then they haul out bags of muck and pass it through several acid baths; what’s left is baked in a kiln, leaving behind the rare earths required by everything from our phones to our Teslas.

How is any part of this "green" or ecological (it's not)?

I'm all for technological advancement and alternative means to power our societies, but let's dispell of this bullshit about these products saving the environment. There's nothing green about these technologies or the process of making them.

The real argument to be made is what's truly worse: small particulates in the air spread evenly all around the world or a couple toxic lakes of chemicals in a faraway place?

I'd argue the particulates are better because plants and the environment are better able to sequestor these items into the soil. These heavy metals not so much.

Post: #178

Hmmm, I guess those are fair points about lithium, but

a) there is no guarantee that lithium ion batteries will always be the standard battery - there is lots of research going on looking at alternative forms of energy storage.

b) it primarily affects the country selling and mining the lithium, not the country buying it. If I'm China and I don't want my people to be choking on coal anymore or hesitant about the risks of nuclear post-Fukushima, or not interested in a gas deal with Russia, then mass buying the batteries in order to make alternatives feasible on a 24 hour cycle seems pretty reasonable. I wouldn't care too much about some desert in Chile being polluted.

Point being, that solar and wind are now undercutting hydrocarbons on unsubsidized price. This is a radically different situation then a decade ago, and in 5 years or so I don't see how hydrocarbons will even be able to compete if the cost curve continues to decrease at the rate it is going on now.

I still think mining lithium is still overall better than releasing carbon into the air but frankly I don't really care that much about the environmental impact either way. I'm more interested in thinking about the impact this has on countries/regions/islands that are low on hydrocarbons, and on countries whose economies are based off of exporting hydrocarbons. If it is in a country's interest to pursue renewables and battery storage then they'll do it as long as they can resist the oil/coal/gas lobbyists.

The battery + solar system is now being used by the first adapters, but as it gets cheaper then it will migrate to the masses and then even expand to areas that aren't even super sunny - for some of those areas wind can be pumped in to supplement the grid when it is cloudy.

Like I said, leave ideology out of this. It's purely an economic question now and I'm hoping Trump is at least giving Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt. The Gigafactory has already begun producing batteries.

Post: #179

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  I wanted to bump this thread. First, I'm not a strong believer in man-made global warming, so I'm not doing this out of ideology.

Just want to show the following videos to people to demonstrate that the economics of renewables is now making sense. I don't know why our forum has to have an instinctive dislike for it just because SJWs are for it. I saw this video and it made me completely rethink my skepticism of Electric Vehicles and renewable energy. If this is the future, then why shouldn't we seize it?

I don't think anyone has a problem with it - if these promises come true. So far, all clean energy is hugely cost prohibitive and only exists at all due to government subsidies...which also means cronyism.

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  Check out this first video - it looks like the combination of exponentially cheaper battery storage, cheaper electric vehicles, self driving cars, and vastly cheaper solar power will disrupt every aspect of the transportation industry within 10 years. Battery storage is getting much cheaper and by 2020 it will cost just 1.2 dollars per day to have a full day of battery storage in your house.

If it gets to that price without massive taxpayer support, is cheaper than the current alternative and doesn't have a prohibitively high entry cost, I'd jump in too.

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  Now for those who say battery storage is unrealistic, look at this video - someone in the UK, which isn't even that Sun dense, is able to live off the grid for 80+% of energy needs using battery storage.





And an average guy able to do it using the Tesla Powerwall:

I've already calculated energy requirements in this thread, the Powerwall - even several - is completely inadequate for most people. You need several units if you just want to run an air conditioner and microwave together, at $5,500 a piece.

My cost per kWh is going to be about 20-25 cents higher with Tesla.

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  It is clear that renewable energy combined with battery storage, without subsidies, is getting cheaper than coal or natural gas.

It's not clear at all, really.

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  What we really need now is a willingness to build these solar plants and wind farms, as well as government help to build the transmission lines from energy source to population centers.

We have a lot of them, they all waste money. None of them produce energy cheaper than coal or nuclear.

(01-14-2017 04:20 AM)Arado Wrote:  So many benefits and very little drawbacks. Apparently Elon Musk was part of Trump's meeting with tech executives. I hope Trump realizes that coal is of the past, and natural gas and nuclear simply aren't worth it compared with the low hassle of renewables.

Why not simply go with the solution that is cheapest right now? If renewables are so great and clean energy makes so much sense, the free market will take care of their introduction without any help from Trump or taxpayer money.

Post: #180

(01-17-2017 10:15 AM)Arado Wrote:  Hmmm, I guess those are fair points about lithium, but

a) there is no guarantee that lithium ion batteries will always be the standard battery - there is lots of research going on looking at alternative forms of energy storage.

How much do you know about battery and energy storage research? I have friends doing research in this field and I'll tell you, they are not exactly that optimistic about the future of energy storage. It's a very challenging problem to get safe, useful and low-cost energy density applications - somewhat easier if you want grid-scale energy storage as you can do things like have vanadium flow batteries:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/arti...ntest.html

Quote:Vanadium flow batteries store their energy in tanks. The electrolyte — the fluid that transfers charges inside a battery — flows from one tank through the system back to the same tank. The tanks can be fish tank size or bigger than an above ground pool. As a result — and you will see this over and over again — it’s much easier to adapt flow batteries to industrial-scale applications without adding a lot of cost.

But in terms of batteries for houses, cars etc, lithium will reign. On a very simple level: energy density is based on the number of atoms you can squeeze into a certain volume - as each atom will supply one electron. The smallest atoms in size: hydrogen (reacts with everything, so useless), helium (noble gas, will not give up electron), and lithium. Lithium ion batteries are hard to beat for energy density (which is what you need for compact scenarios like Tesla cars or Powerwalls).

The Department of Energy had a $120 milion fund for battery research in 2012, with the goal of 5-5-5: 5 times denser, 5 times cheaper in 5 years. Net results: no significant progress. There aren't any low-hanging fruit in battery research left and progress will be tremendously slow.

As for flow batteries (different than regular batteries) - it's hard for me to tell how much of the research is on a path to nowhere, driven up by researchers' eagerness for funding and how much of it is real. The fact that we don't hear much about alternatives to lithium-ion batteries should tell us a lot.

Quote:Point being, that solar and wind are now undercutting hydrocarbons on unsubsidized price. This is a radically different situation then a decade ago, and in 5 years or so I don't see how hydrocarbons will even be able to compete if the cost curve continues to decrease at the rate it is going on now.

Solar and wind are competitive in some geographical areas, not all. And that too, only for electricity production. Energy at large is a bigger field, and renewable energies have made very little impact on heating and transportation, two huge consumers of energy. As for hydrocarbons - one only needs to look at the price of gas to see they're not out of the race yet. A few years back solar was making gains relative to coal. And boom, natural gas came along (thanks to fracking) and make even the historical cost curve of solar look sluggish. I wish I could find the plot, but gas has been very impressive the past few years.

As for solar and wind, they're not immune to supply and demand concerns: return on investment is calculated by looking at upfront cost (which is dropping very rapidly) and what price you can sell/buy electricty at. Right now targets for solar are for 5 cents per kWh. But as more people install solar, there is going to be a much larger supply of electricity. Suddenly the spot price for electricity is 2 or 3 cents per kWh and the time to get your up-front cost back is prolonged by a factor of two. This could potentially make solar and wind unappealing as you would now get lower prices and thus the initial front-up cost may not be worth the investment. In fact, Germany has had issues with negative spot prices: utilities paying YOU to consume electricity because there's just too much on the grid. See: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factshee...n-negative

You want me to pay money to buy a solar panel when I can get paid to consume the excess electricity my neighbors' solar panels produce? <-- a real possibility.

Oh and that doesn't the fact that electricity at night-time is still going to cost money considering the sun doesn't shine at night.

Quote:The battery + solar system is now being used by the first adapters, but as it gets cheaper then it will migrate to the masses and then even expand to areas that aren't even super sunny - for some of those areas wind can be pumped in to supplement the grid when it is cloudy.

Battery + solar is not competitive with hydrocarbons. And in fact, the tremendous cost of batteries + more sluggish decline in cost for batteries may make the combination uncompetitive for a very long time.

Wind too has the issue of intermittency. What happens when you have no sun and there's no wind to pump into the grid? In this aspect, natural gas turbines absolutely kill. Not only do they produce half the carbon coal and oil does, thus being cleaner by default, the start-up time for a natural gas turbine is 30 minutes. No other base power source comes even close.

And then we have to take into account that the US has several distinct and separated electric grids. This is a GOOD thing. You don't want the entire US having a black-out because one plant unexpectedly shut down in the Midwest. Here's an image showing the separate electric grids:

   

Most of the wind resources we have are in the dead middle of the country. Not all grids are going to have access to this wind - so just pumping in wind from other areas isn't that trivial.

Don't get me wrong, I love renewables a lot. And I wish them the best, but I also do my best to be realistic about them (and all technologies). Their ascent to absolute domination is by no means guaranteed. There are many more hurdles to overcome and quite a few are not insignificant. One prime example is the issue of how much renewable energy can a grid take. Doofus researchers from Stanford that don't include start-up times for power plants say every US state can be 100% renewable by 2050. But when you include start-up times, grids experience weekly blackouts past 30% renewable. Heck considering renewables only contribute 1% of the electricity in the United States, even 30% would amount to tremendous growth in the renewables industry.

Can batteries mitigate that issue? Maybe. But the grid itself is very complex. It's an absolutely beast and hard to understand even for electrical engineers. Right now energy storage is only useful for frequency modulation in the grid (i.e. keeping the grid electricity frequency at 60Hz in the US). In other words, all batteries are doing right now is keeping the grid slightly more stable. It is not storing energy during the day and then dispersing it at night-time.

Post: #181

Someone with more knowledge than me - is pumping water into a tower with solar or wind, etc. (potential energy) and using the water pressure to drive a generator (when power is needed) at all efficient or cost effective as a means of storage?

I'd imagine it has lower upfront costs, but also lower efficiency.

Post: #182

(01-17-2017 04:02 PM)polar Wrote:  Someone with more knowledge than me - is pumping water into a tower with solar or wind, etc. (potential energy) and using the water pressure to drive a generator (when power is needed) at all efficient or cost effective as a means of storage?

I'd imagine it has lower upfront costs, but also lower efficiency.

You have to account for the loss in efficiency from pumping the water up, and letting it come back down through the turbines to generate electricity. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm going to estimate that it takes 3 times more electricity to pump it up than it can generate coming down. This is probably a good ball park estimate.

So, if there is excess electricity available at night when rates are low, and the pent up water can be released during peak rates the next day, then money can made.

Post: #183

Sounds like a manual battery to me. Charge it by pumping water up, store the energy until you need it.

Post: #184

You're talking about pumped-storage hydroelectric, it's definitely a practical thing to do when you have spare generation capacity. You have to do something with that extra capacity anyway, since you can't just run a bunch of power plants with not-enough load.

I don't know if it's practical with "renewable" generators. My gut says it's not cost effective, but I see no reason you couldn't do it out of principle to avoid using evil fossil fuel plants.

Wikipedia:

Quote:Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost surplus off-peak electric power is typically used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process makes the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand, when electricity prices are highest. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity allows energy from intermittent sources (such as solar, wind) and other renewables, or excess electricity from continuous base-load sources (such as coal or nuclear) to be saved for periods of higher demand.[1][2] The reservoirs used with pumped storage are quite small when compared to conventional hydroelectric dams of similar power capacity, and generating periods are often less than half a day.

Pumped storage is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of March 2012, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk production capacity worldwide, representing around 127 GW,[3] with storage capacity at 740 TWh.[citation needed] Typically, the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies in practice between 70% and 80%,[3][4][5][6] with some claiming up to 87%.[7] The main disadvantage of PHS is the specialist nature of the site required, needing both geographical height and water availability. Suitable sites are therefore likely to be in hilly or mountainous regions, and potentially in areas of outstanding natural beauty, and therefore there are also social and ecological issues to overcome.[8]

There are lots of similar ways of storing energy. A fun one I heard of recently is using trains on slopes. Drive them up when you have excess energy, then get a big chunk of the energy back when you need it by regenerative braking on the way back down the slope.

https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elo...rain-hill/

Post: #185

In terms of pumped storage hydroelectric, my gut feeling is that the amount of water you would need is really the biggest problem. Potential energy as m*g*h just isn't that much. Any energy storage based on potential energy had to contend with the fact that g is not a large quantity and you need either an enormous amount of mass or a very large height difference or both.

A ton of water raised a 100m would give 1000*10*100 = 1e6 Joules

A kWh = 1000*3600 J = 3.6e6 Joules. Or 3.6 tons of water. Would be slightly less since I used 10 instead of 9.81 for g.

A Tesla Powerfully is 10 kWh. So the equivalent of a Power wall would be 36 tons of water raised a 100m? If you have large reservoirs of water nearby, do-able. But I don't think we have enough water reservoirs to manage the enormous amount of energy storage that would be needed for renewables (I need to look this up to confirm, but doubtful). And at least on a home-unit scale, nobody is going to buy a setup that pumps the equivalent of 36 tons of water up 100m to get the same energy as a Power wall.

Post: #186

And of course my favorite part in all these discussions is the fact that we could in theory go 100% nuclear and we'd be good to go in terms of electricity generation. Could probably also do quite a bit of heat generation as well. But alas for the idealogical stubbornness of environmentalists who more often than not have no real scientific or engineering background. They don't seem to appreciate the irony in dooming all of mankind through climate change by refusing nuclear power plants out of an irrational fear of its danger (not saying meltdowns and contaminations aren't concerned, but compared to the annihilation of mankind they're risks worth taking in my opinion).

Fusion is the real holy grail though. But topic for another thread.

Post: #187

Bumping this thread.

There are a lot of theories floating around as to why Trump has bombed Syria - he lost to the globalists, he is under threat, he needs to gain political capital to implement his domestic agenda, 4d chess, he's betrayed us, etc.

There were two other theories out there that perked my interest -
1) He wants to seize the oil
2) Someone high up wants to build a gas pipeline in Syria and Assad won't let them so he needs to go.

Are people not sick and tired of us having to constantly get involved in the middle east because of the hydrocarbons there? When will people get sick of oil companies bribing our politicians to start wars? Shouldn't people get tired about worrying what bombing will do to gas prices? Panicking if Iran closes off the strait of Hormuz? Being hostage to Russia because of their ability to shut off the gas tap? And have you all forgotten the instagram whores thread? I'd rather not have the 10's of my country getting shit on by oil sheiks, or south Asian child sex slaves bought by Saudi princes.

Yes, lithium pollutes some random desert in the middle of nowhere, and yes, it may run out in 50 years but by then we should be able to mine it in space. And yes, nuclear is another solution, but guess what - it's far more expensive than solar/wind, and how do you calculate the cost of Fukushima and all the construction delays?

And yes, I'm aware that the U.S. is near energy independent. But guess what - our oil and gas companies can still advocate for wars for their energy interests abroad. The longer we take to take the initiative in alternative energy and electric cars, the more wars our oil companies start and the better advantage that China has.

There will be plenty of jobs in solar/wind and battery maintenance, so no whining about people getting out of work. Mass automation is coming in 10-20 years anyway so get used to it.

The geopolitical dividends of freeing humanity from hydrocarbons are priceless. Fuck global warming, I just don't want anymore god damn wars in the Middle East, that place needs to go back to being a desert.

And now we have a type of battery - zinc plating.





Someone above was making the point about how we shouldn't have a national grid because one power station going down will crash the system. Well guess what - if everyone had battery storage then they wouldn't even rely on the grid for a good chunk of the year. Battery storage is the best way to reboot your own home internal energy grid without relying on outside help.

There are a lot of bumps in the road, but with a serious carbon tax then we can let the free market run wild and figure out the most profitable and efficient way to generate energy. If nuclear can beat alternative energy, then fine - but it's just so much more of a hassle.

Post: #188

Agreed. I just bought a battery pack from a salvaged Tesla Model S to do a DIY Powerwall battery storage. Guys have recently reverse engineered the battery management system (BMS) that Tesla built into their car battery packs, making it feasible (and much safer) to use these re-purposed batteries for home solar power.

Post: #189

So this post's about two years old now.

Has it changed any games yet?

Post: #190

Tesla is now worth more than GM and Ford.

Post: #191

Tesla's market cap is higher; that's not the same thing as saying Tesla is "worth more" than Ford or GM in the general sense. There's a lot more to a company than mere market capitalization.

Post: #192

(04-10-2017 11:29 AM)billbudsocket Wrote:  Agreed. I just bought a battery pack from a salvaged Tesla Model S to do a DIY Powerwall battery storage. Guys have recently reverse engineered the battery management system (BMS) that Tesla built into their car battery packs, making it feasible (and much safer) to use these re-purposed batteries for home solar power.

Why'd you choose that instead of a normal lead acid setup, out of curiosity?

Post: #193

(04-10-2017 11:30 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  So this post's about two years old now.

Has it changed any games yet?

You mean throwing some Panasonic batteries in a box and slapping a "Tesla" sticker on it isn't a "game" changer?



I would find the whole scam funny if my tax dollars were going to subsidize their products.

Post: #194

Does anybody have any thoughts on the new Tessa solar roofs? I am digging in a little now.

https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

Post: #195

(05-10-2017 05:30 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Does anybody have any thoughts on the new Tessa solar roofs? I am digging in a little now.

https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

Not necessarily a criticism, but these are less a technological breakthrough, and more an aesthetic one. They look like normal tiles, so they are a faux terra cotta or slate or whatever. The innovation is to make a roof with solar tiles that isn't ugly as sin:





They started taking orders today.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/teslas...der-today/

Post: #196

Looking at prices I saw it seems rather expensive unless you are young and are pretty sure you will never move. Millennials typically like the idea of moving around.

Post: #197

Quote:https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

Looks interesting but their test video of the hail hitting the three tiles looks rigged in favor of the Tesla tile. The Tesla tile is better supported than the two other tiles.

Post: #198

(05-10-2017 06:00 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Looking at prices I saw it seems rather expensive unless you are young and are pretty sure you will never move. Millennials typically like the idea of moving around.

I'm suspicious of this, do they state anywhere what the power output of their solar roof is? You won't be able to negate the power draw of electric heat or A/C with just panels.

I know plenty of RVers that have big panels on the roof but they're only good for charging the onboard batteries that you use for TV, water pump, lights, radio, etc. but NO A/C. A roof with a couple of those seem to work well with decent sun.

Post: #199

Listen to Chris before you get too excited about solar in general:

Post: #200

Caveats from Zerohedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-11...-elon-musk

Quote:Tesla said the typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for a Tesla solar roof. A 1700-square-foot roof in Southern California, with half the roof covered in "active" solar tiles, would cost about $34,300 after a federal tax credit, according to the website calculator. And this is where the fibbing began: the company said its solar roofs would cost between 10 and 15% less than an ordinary new roof plus traditional solar panels. However, according to Jim Petersen, CEO of PetersenDean, which installs about 30,000 new roofs plus solar a year, told Reuters that a 1700-square-foot roof with new solar panels, including the tax credit, would cost about $22,000, well below the Tesla website's estimate.

Tesla also calculates that every roof would generate an estimated $62,100 in electricity over 30 years. Over that time period, Tesla estimates, the homeowner would save $8,500. However, as explained above the breakeven period take places somewhere between 20 and 25 years into the life of the roof, by which point the original buyer is most likely long, long gone, unable to capitalize on the full IRR.

But the punchline is all the roof costs are net of, drumroll, federal tax credits, also known as subsidies to the producer in this case Elon Musk, who has made a living off capitalizing on state and government generosity. Here is the bottom line: every Tesla roof would be eligible for a roughly $15,500 federal tax credit.

The bottom line is a cost of $57,500 for a roof that is 50% covered in solar tiles, or roughly $33/square foot, double the cost of slate, oh and which would also require the purchase of a Tesla $7,000 Powerwall battery. The kicker, however, is that the entire purchase would be uneconomical over the entire life if its wasn't for the $15,800 tax credit! Only with that "freebie" is the "net earned" over 30 years positive, and even so it comes to less than the actual tax credit received!