Discussion on:

Coming soon: 100% renewable power

I have solar panels at my home. I am not 100% self sufficient yet but that is the ultimate goal. If every individual took the initiative to power their own needs, we could end the stalemate. I contend that the stalemate is caused because big business is trying to figure out how to make the huge profit margins they are used to making before they take the plunge.

I'm under 250kWh almost every month, including winter - how many can reduce their footprint, not just cover it?

We use less than 60kWh a month.......! No BS... and we export 300kWh a month to the grid.

http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/more-power-of-energy-efficiency/
http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/?s=powering+up+collapse

I have a traditional sized suburban home and keep my electric usage under 500 kWh six or months of the year...and that is in AZ. I still need to insulate my attic better, but I have dual pane LowE windows, CF bulbs and a gas stove/hot water heater. I haven't developed good habits for reducing the VAMPIRE appliances that use current all the time. When I have two other people living here, I don't really anticipate the need for more than 750 kWh's, so it is definitely possible. My JULY and AUGUST and SEPTEMBER bills are still approximately 1000, 2000 and 1000 kWh's respectively but I am working on getting those down too by using an evaporative cooler as much as possible. If I were to put solar panels on my large south facing roof, I would be producing much more than I use, but I can't afford the panels yet.

I can't afford to buy the panels or the VAWTs for the heavily insulated home I'm building (probably because all of my money is sunk into the house building). But I found I could get Grade A solar cells for $200 for 100 cells. That will make a nice panel, some assembly required. And a couple of DC motors, each for about $50, some wood and some PVC pipe and I'll eventually also have a pair of VAWTs.

It makes me sad to see this conversation and the responses. Renewables in my opinion are an incredible waste of time and resources and will not solve dangerous climate change but make it inevitable. Most people do not live in their own houses or have the means to invest in renewables. This inane drive into renewables will prolong global poverty and prevent fossil fuels from being phased out. Take a look in the future lets say a hundred years from now, do you see the Space Ship Enterprise being powered by solar collectors? The key to human existence and prosperity is a very high density energy source. Only small nuclear reactors powered by Thorium or Uranium can resolve the climate and world poverty problem. All the energy used to launch the space shuttle can be generated with a few gram of Thorium or Uranium.

It could well turn out in 50years time that "renewables" are frowned upon, due to the large environmental impact. The old saying no free lunch stays true. Extracting that amount of energy from the forces of nature could turn out to be bad for the climate. Less energy to heat the earth, less wind power to change the seasons, less tidal power to drive the cyclic changes in the sea.........who knows?

Please, run to you local grocery store and grab a large paper bag and stick you head in it while you run back home. Let us know how that works for you.

@johnbowers - Oh, I really like your debating skills. Please don't misunderstand me, fossil fuels are even worse. As Roland said a longer term solution would probably be some type of nuclear reaction. The by products are more easily controlled than all the CO2 and possible other side effects of even renewables. We can at least put it in a barrel and blast it into space if need be. Bottom line is we should not stop investing in nuclear fusion research.

Did you see where enough solar energy falls on the world in ONE MINUTE to power the entire world for a YEAR? I understand unintended consequences can sometimes cause problems, but I fail to see how harvesting energy from the sun will cause any more problems than planting enough trees to use that energy for photosynthesis. TIDAL energy, and possibly geothermal and wind energy might disrupt things, but not solar IMO. FUSION energy might solve a lot of problems, since the byproducts are essentially HELIUM, but we still haven't been able to access that power yet.

I am baffled by your response. The topic was renewable energy and you went to a process that produces a waist product that we can't control and kills
us faster than air or water pollution.

The byproducts of FUSION are HELIUM and ENERGY...not radioactive energy either!

Read up on Wikipedia how various fusion designs actually work.

The waste product of the immediate reaction could well be helium but the easier fusion processes D-T all involve massive production of energetic neutrons that will convert the surrounding containment vessel into highly radioactive material which could well have to be replaced every year or so. Then there is the issue with tritium, it is radioactive with 12 yr half life, very little of it. To power a working fusion D-T plant you would need many conventional nuclear plants to supply the tritium. Or you use up lithium to make tritium on the fly. The D-D reaction is even harder. The version of fusion that makes no neutrons is even harder.

Fusion is so far off it likely still won't work for another 50 years forever, or at least a few hundred years. It is worth doing though because when we crack it, we will have enough deuterium in the oceans to last several billion years.

We might also hope that Prof Bussard's Polywell and Dr Lerner's Focus Fusion are onto something.

In the mean time we have nuclear power which could move over to breeders to burn up waste or depleted uranium and we have thorium which is relatively a 1000 times cleaner than current once through designs. Fission power U/Th could last for several thousand years.

So the ideal would be to fission uranium then thorium then fusion.

No, the future of civilisation lies in powering down. 200 years ago, EVERYTHING was powered by renewables, fossil fuels hadn't been discovered yet..... Today we are much smarter than then, and 90% of all the energy we consume is wasted on trivial crap nobody needs.

I recently saw plans for a DIRIGIBLE using HELIUM instead of HYDROGEN. It could take off and land anywhere, and used much much less energy to travel, and could travel about 120 miles per hour. The use of DC power instead of AC would greatly reduce our footprint too, and well insulated homes or the ability to get away from the SEVENTY TWO DEGREE mentality and accept temperatures from 62 to 83 degrees (I call it the 21 degree mentality) will reduce consumption tremendously. I believe it is at least 2% reduction for every degree change.

Before 200 years ago most of our lifestyle was based on slavery, both people and animals plus hunting to near extinction of whales for their oils and many other species. Hard work was backbreaking, most people lived on subsistence levels.

Fossil power has allowed the world population to increase 7 fold and for the richer countries to have about 15 to 30 times more energy. Overall world energy use is up 28 fold but it isn't evenly spread around at 4 times for everybody, so many are stuck at the same level as before.

There simply isn't enough biomass to go back to 200 years ago with 7x the population unless we mostly die off.

Once fossil fuels go and the AGW works its way along we get to live in a very different world.

this is the truth we don't want to see.

And this sounds like for the PJM interchange that we would also decommission all nuclear plants by that time. If we keep a bit of nuclear in the mix and really focus on energy efficiency, then this is even easier for us to do. One thing is for sure, we need leadership to force the utilities to do this and to stop adding non renewable capacity. Why add a coal or even natural gas fired plant which is justified by a 30 year life span if we are going to be close to 100% renewable in 20 years? Also, let's do a carbon tax so private enterprise will choose the renewable solution and we won't have to have government forcing us to do this.

Doing a carbon tax, is the same as government forcing private enterprise towards renewable solutions. Taxes are government tools, used to collect funds for government functions, and they could be used to punish companies and individuals, and what you're suggesting is using taxation for punishment.

The Government collects taxes to pay the cost of Government services. How and from whom these taxes are collected necessarily has policy implications. Collecting taxes on cigaretts for instance discourages smoking. Collecting taxes on capital gains arguably discourages investment. And, collecting taxes on CO2 producing industries will discourage inefficient use of resources and pollution of the environment. So, what would you prefer to discourage, investment or pollution?

punitive taxation.

Government needs taxes and fees in order to fund "necessary" spending.

Collecting taxes on capital gains, does not "arguably" discourage investment; it "for certain", discourage investment.

Collecting taxes on smoking might discourage "some" from smoking, but, has there really been a reduction in the total number of people smoking? Raising taxes on smokers, just makes their habit a lot more expensive. If they really want to do something about smoking, then government should forbid smoking via laws, but, it's still legal to do so, so, why should it be punished? Driving causes many thousands of lives to be lost on a yearly basis, and it also causes many thousands (perhaps millions) of injuries on a yearly basis, thereby making driving a very expensive and deadly proposition. So, why not ban driving, or discourage it by raising the price of gas to "punishment" type levels, like they did with smoking?

CO2 is a byproduct of driving and other energy uses. Raising taxes on oil or CO2 producing fuels, creates a burden for personal and business use, which translates to a big burden to the economy, which means that, if people and businesses have to spend more on fuel, there will be less personal and business funds to spend elsewhere in the economy, which will and has, caused many businesses to close shop and millions of people to lose jobs.

The problem with democrats/liberals is that, they don't understand repercussions. In physics, we understand that, to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In economics, every action creates repercussions that reverberate throughout the economy. Punishment economics not only hurts people and businesses with higher prices, but it also sends many of those businesses to foreign lands, which means millions of jobs lost. We are witnessing those repercussions on a daily basis, and we are digging an even deeper hole with higher taxation (or punishment taxation) and with the massive number of regulations, many of which are also intended as punitive actions against the sectors which democrats deem "out of line".

Every one of your hypotheses are based on flawed assumptions. The current adaptation to circumstances has built in benefits to BIG PHARMA, BIG AGRICULTURE, BIG OIL, BIG INSURANCE and BIG FINANCE by way of tax incentives and subsidies that HIDE the TRUE COST of things. The 9 billion dollars in subsidies to the oil companies LAST YEAR ALONE...could better have been spent developing renewable energy, and people would have reduced their travel because of the high HONEST cost of gasoline. There could easily be REBATES to people for temporary needs to use existing technology to get back and forth to work, but many people would find ways to BANK THE REBATES and REDUCE THEIR USE (carpools, work at home, four day work weeks are just a few adaptations that become WIN/WIN)

adornoe, I am sure you are used to thinking yourself superior intellectually to bleeding hearts, but I WAS ONE OF YOU until I started doing RESEARCH that shows FOLLOWING THE MONEY has to be TRANSPARENT, and using taxes to support corporations at the expense of individuals leads to TRICKLE UP, not TRICKLE DOWN. I can go on forever about how corporations WRITE THE REGULATIONS they later ***** about...and they are written to make it harder for smaller companies to compete with their teams of lawyers and accountants.

1. 4.5B of those "subsidies" didn't go to Big Oil, they went to find the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program (LIHEAP). This provides discounted heating and cooling to low income families.
2. Only 1.5% of Big Oil are owned by executive big wigs, the other 98.5% are owned by the public through personal brokerage accounts, mutual funds and pension funds. The money is not "trickling up".
3. $1B of the Big Oil subsidies go to farmers as a fuel tax exemption because their equipment doesn't use the roads (which the tax goes to pay for).
4. Part of the Big Oil subsidies are tax credits for manufacturing in the US, which provides an incentive for those companies not to move their operations overseas. The subsidies not only apply to oil companies but any US corporations (including Microsoft and Apple). The subsidies result in a direct positive effect on the US economy and jobs.
5. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to work from home, or carpool (think construction workers, teachers, fire fighters, police, retail service staff, maintenance jobs, cleaners, delivery staff etc).

So it is important to first understand what those $9B in subsidies are, and why they can't just be dropped and spent on renewal programs instead. Just look at what happened with Solyndra, a $850M loss to the taxpayers, who funded this experiment in green technology.

That said, I am not a raging Republican, and have no affiliation to the oil industry. I do agree that we need to actively invest in renewable energy sources but I think there are better ways to go about it, then cutting these subsidies.

Did you stop to consider the current US military budget ($680B in 2011)? That's 2 orders of magnitude more money than any subsidies. Why not cut this budget, or better yet eliminate it entirely (as in the case of Costa Rica)?

Small, remote towns in Alaska have little hope of affording the means to generate power by renewable sources, and therefore, must pay a penalty (tax) for the inability - thus being twice fined - first, by extremely high-cost high fossil fuel generation, then by the government's if you don't make it, you still pay for it (renewable-source power generated elsewhere). The State of Alaska helps in some areas, where wind is reliable, with funding that will never be repaid because of economies of scale. Maybe we should be studying the efficiencies of igloos and sod houses. . .

The LAND OF THE THE MIDNIGHT SUN I deduce from you statement is in the dark 24/7, so solar is out.

Let's face it..... the only reason ANYONE can live in Alaska is because of fossil fuels. With fossil fuels, you can do ANYTHING....

Americans are used to CONTROLLING their environment rather than ADAPTING or TEMPERING MICRO-ENVIRONMENTS. With fossil fuels you can only do anything until the fuel runs out or you choke on the byproducts.

A: Mostly because of oil. If we don't need it, we can give Alaska back to the natives, and they can return to the neolithic lifestyle they love so much.

n/t

The native Alaskans have incredible mechanical abilities. They could keep engines running with duct tape and baling wire during blizzards. Do NOT degrade their abilities. They also managed a lifestyle with CACHES of food and supplies stored in advance that relied on interdependence for their survival. Their metabolism is able to thrive on a life with few vegetables and fruits where we would likely starve.

If you knew anything about STONE TOOL CULTURES, you would have more respect for their tremendous skills. Surgeons today are reverting to the stone age by using OBSIDIAN BLADES that are many times sharper than METAL BLADES.

P.S. I lived in Alaska many years ago and studied anthropology too. My comments are not just pulled out of thin air.

I lived in Fairbanks in 1954-1957, and remember the adaptations of tunnels and basements, but also remember the SOLAR ENERGY during the summer months was awesome! 20 hours of sunlight a day...yeah it was dark for the winter months, but transferring some of that power means storage of summer surplus, not total lack of renewable energy. You need to adapt to the situation, and perhaps a reduction or rebate for energy would be needed, but don't just complain...come up with solutions.

No, a C Tax is an incentive.. we have a C Tax in Australia, and I NEVER PAY any of it.

...and had we bothered to build the infrastructure, we could, today, power the USA at any rate, solely from that source.

Instead, our 'leaders' have chosen to believe that our ancient standard of 'scarce' resources, imbedded in our economic and political realities, still apply in a universe of abundance..and abundant power is abundance in everything, given the tiny fraction of even the Earth's tiny fraction of the Solar System's resources we bother to include in our calculations.

Not only is Earth NOT the sole source for resources we have available, but it is the LEAST of such resources.

We did not pursue space-based solar 35 years ago because compared with other generation methods (coal, oil, gas, nuclear)--none of which paid their full ecological costs, SPS appeared more expensive. But when the true costs of obtaining, processing and waste disposal of 'burnable' fuels is calculated, SPS is on par or cheaper as well as a climate-friendly source for energy.

We are as ants, struggling for control of a crumb amidst an immense warehouse full of bread. Too focused on our belief to bother checking reality.

...and even Mr. Obama did not re-install the solar collectors Reagan took off...

I have to put something here to get it to post...

The economics of space based solar is silly because it is so expensive to get anything into space, and it uses fossil fuels and the most expensive technology man has produced.

It is actually far cheaper to microwave energy from the ground to space than the reverse by a very long shot even though the insolation up there is much better.

Every solar panel has an embedded footprint of energy cost that gets paid back when the panel is used. If a panel lasts 25 years, the first few years are for payback, the rest is the bonus.

Now add the rocket and fuel energy into the cost of getting the panels up there and the payback is long after the panel is dead, its a negative payback.

Only in lala land where everything is free are these schemes interesting.

still, the "free" energy won't do anything but reduce pollution. Believe me the political and business organizations will make sure that everyone pays more and more money for the 'free green' energy, as a means to retain control over the people and keep them focused on their day to day minutiae and little job and money worries instead of upon larger matters, like who's running things.

There are three SALVATION INNOVATIONS that I hope will prove you wrong. The internet, 3D printing and renewable energy. The thing that concerns me is that we may end up paying outrageous amounts for AIR and WATER and FOOD if the power that be continue to pollute the environment. Energy alone is not enough. We need SELF-SUFFICIENCY as much as possible. If we don't fight to get it, we will be doomed to be servants to the corporations and plutocrats.

It sounds nice to hear all this, but who exactly will be paying for these million plus power plants and billions of home units? Oh right, me again.

The study says the barriers are primarily social and political, not technological or even economic. I'm calling shenanigans. I get my power from the grid because I can't get it any cheaper elsewhere (I've researched other sources too). The grid is running primarily off of fossil fuels. That's cheapest, and I can't afford more.
The barrier is cost, plain and simple. And if you political types run up the cost of gas and electric by taxing it I swear to God I'll start voting for republicans.

And I'm not cutting back on usage, you go be Amish if you want but leave me alone.

Two things you may have missed. First, solar is on track to be the cheapest source of electricity. In Hawaii, it already is (even unsubsidized). In the southwest US, solar will be the cheapest electricity, at the retail level, by 2016 even without subsidies.

Second, if the full environmental cost of fossil fuel (the open pit mining, franking, ground water contamination, air pollution, global warming) was included in your electric bill rather than just dumped on your fellow citizens, you would be screaming for renewable power because its true cost is so much less.

There has not been a single study that proves that, the "renewable" resources are cheaper than the "naturally occurring" resources we have now, like oil/natural gas/coal, which are, today easily accessible and quite cheap to access and harness.

The natural gas that comes from CHENEY's REGULATION FREE FRACKING is not so cheap when you realize the entire water supply of the country is in jeopardy...but of course the PLUTOCRATS will happily sell you WATER at prices that rival OIL when it is over. They don't care about the consequences of their actions...they just want next quarter's profits to be higher. They know that they will be able to make a profit at the expense of the rest of us no matter how much they destroy things. WELL, that is not quite true...eventually they will mess things up so badly that earth will need to start over with a round of consequences that will make the earth uninhabitable for more than a few living in bunkers deep underground.

Germany boasts about it renewables, but all that solar 25GW of capacity produces about the same no of kWh as just 3GW of base load power plants at a cost well past $130B for the first 17GW (2GW actual avg power output). That works out as $65/W for avg capacity.

Meanwhile coal and gas plants are closer to $2/W and nuclear about $5W for base load power.

Also German wind plus solar produces power all over the place, it could be anywhere between 2GW to 30GW hour by hour day to day, which of course is covered by gas plants or spare hydro.

As Germany shuts down those 17 nuclear power plants it replaces them with new coal and gas plants thanks to their Greens.

The German people pay the highest energy prices, but their manufacturers don't, they pay only at coal prices.

Also since the world runs on 15000GW of thermal power equiv to about 5000GWe, and China only makes about 17GW of new nameplate solar capacity enough to replace 3GWe power plants each year, we have a problem Houston. And that doesn't even get us into rare materials like indium for the front wiring.

And me. And everyone else. BFD.

Think about it for a moment. Existing plants wear out and have to be replaced. So, replace them with renewables.

The price of electricity (LCOE) is calculated assuming a 20 year payoff. Wind farms continue to produce electricity for 10 or more years past the payoff. Solar panels keep on producing for another 10, 20, 30, ? years. All of that is almost free electricity.

After coal, gas and nuclear plants are paid off they continue to incur fuel costs.

Over time our electricity will get cheaper and cheaper.

n/t

Coal and gas plants use fuel that is cheap right now but those don't cover their external costs to the environment as in CO2 plus the toxic content of coal fly ash and the known deaths from coal emissions.

Nuclear fuel costs are inconsequential to nuclear power, uranium prices could go up 10 fold and would not have much effect and nuclear has no CO2 emissions (save construction).

If we used thorium, a $100k ball of metal will produce about $B worth of energy and various valuable isotopes assuming 11c/kWh.

Over time electricity will get more expensive, always has always will, and with out nuclear even more so, see Germany and Denmark.

Why are you so adamant about not cutting back on usage? Are you insisting on the right to WASTE? or do you want to continue to subsidize the OIL, AGRICULTURE and PHARMACEUTICAL companies? The TRUE COST of your existing energy is much higher than you are currently paying...they have HIDDEN SUBSIDIES that make you think you are paying less than you are. The 9 BILLION dollars in tax incentives to the oil companies last year still didn't reduce your cost at the pump as much as they should, but that same money spent on reducing dependence on oil and gas would have had much better results IMO.

but, when it comes to "renewable", why are not fossil fuels also considered "renewable"? It makes no sense. The only reason would be that, it's all mostly about an agenda from the environmentalists and the "liberal" ideology which seeks to enslave the world.

Most of the fossil fuel we consume today was formed during two epochs of extreme global warming 90 and 150 million years ago. So yes, if you're willing to wait millions of years, they are "renewable."

most of that fuel is created below ground and with the help of the underground forces, which forces are also moving the tectonic plates as we speak, and creating volcanoes, and changing the weather as we speak, for the short and long terms.

But, "fossil" fuels may be a misnomer, since, there are indications that, the planet creates that fuel without there having to be dead life, or organic, material available. Science has discovered methane and other "fuel" type material on other planets, so, what created that up there? There are no cows or dead organisms out there that we know of.

Oil and natural gas may be as plentiful today as they have always been, and they many continue to be "manufactured" by the natural forces, no matter what we do, and no matter how much organic material is available on the ground. There is much more organic material being deposited on the ground than ever in the history of the planet, but, that's not to say that we need to wait 100 or 200 million years before we get to use the "energy" created from that dead material.