I keep telling the advocates for green energy the same thing. If you want people to move away from fossil fuels, you'll need to produce green energy in sufficient quantities and in a cost effective manner to replace the energy produced by fossil fuels. When that can be done, no one will have to cajole people to use green energy. People will do that willingly.
I would love it if I didn't have to make a payment to my power company every month. Since I live on five acres of woods, wind and solar are not an option for me. Even on the sunniest of days, my roof isn't going to get enough direct sunlight to produce sufficient energy for my home. I'd spend thousands to put up the solar panels and it wouldn't pay off in my lifetime. The trees also act as a wind break meaning even trying to get supplemental energy from a windmill would be problematic.
snjroyMaking absolute statements about the future of energy use, sources and technologies is, let's say, pretty risky.
...Of course, our energy consumption can go up globally, but not at the unit level.
The cost of producing electricity via solar panels is going down - that's a fact - and who knows how fast that reduction will be.
Third: the power grid - not at all an absolute factor. Power grids are now North America wide and complement each other depending on usage and capacity. If one produces less or consumes more, the other source can compensate.
The only absolute statement I made, I think, is about the dropping costs of producing electricity by solar panels. Here is one source:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90583426/the-price-of-solar-electricity-has-dropped-89-in-10-years
I'm not making any guesses about the future of energy, there are just so many options and experiments going on out there to see clearly where it's going.
Simon
I'm just bitter because some of the obvious things that should have been done haven't been. Widespread adoption of ground-source heat pumps for 'space conditioning' is one (with a relatively wide range of well-developed exchangers for the ground sources); assisted islanding-capable distributed generation via subsidized emergency power (e.g. using natural gas) is another. I had a great deal of fun with the enginion AG steam device that the Germans were proposing for the latter purpose... but it never went anywhere. There are so many good solutions. (Of course I still think powersats are one of the 'right answers', but that's not politically correct any more...)
Yeah, the best solutions don't always win..
We very recently installed a heat pump system for our house, above-ground. Heats and cools, depending on what's needed. It's great technology!
snjroyWe very recently installed a heat pump system for our house, above-ground. Heats and cools, depending on what's needed. It's great technology!
Instead of a big rackety compressor outside, you have two dedicated simple refrigerator-size units per zone -- without reversing valves or other compromise. Making refrigerator-size noise, with refrigerator-like longevity.
And yes, hot 95-degree air blowing on your ankles within 10 sec. of command, no matter how cold it is outside or inside...
Part of the secret 'key' is the extended long-term reliability: we can finance the system as a rider on a prequalified mortgage, for the mortgage term, and accelerate the mortgage with the savings on the energy bill...
The last time I ran numbers, this one change alone if applied consistently would reduce the United States energy consumption by over 35%. Essentially permanently; what doesn't wear out can be field-serviced, and upgraded as materials and techniques improve. You will have seen the problem; I have answers for it.
I'll take your word for it! According to the findings of our own study for the Canadian government, the biggest barrier is convincing people and businesses to make a long-term investment. It's all about short-term costs...
Cheers.
Mike, did you know that Costa Rica has produced 95% of its electricity from hydro, geothermal, solar and wind over the past four years?
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/11-countries-leading-the-charge-on-renewable-energy/
And you refer to land for windmills, but offshore windmills are gaining a lot of ground, no pun intended .
But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the use of fossil fuels will disappear. We're still burning wood in my household!
snjroyAccording to the findings of our own study for the Canadian government, the biggest barrier is convincing people and businesses to make a long-term investment. It's all about short-term costs...
Likewise if any sort of fiddly maintenance has to be done on the equipment, or it needs a 'tune-up' every few years, the perceived value isn't there. That is a reason I mentioned the reversing valves -- a common trouble spot with heat-pump installations after a few years.
When alternative energy becomes abundant and cost effective, I'll make the switch. Until then, I'll continue to derive the bulk of my energy from fossil fuels which are both abundant and cost effective.
I'm not the least bit worried about the future of the planet. The planet managed to get along without me for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so long after I am gone.
i just saw a brief news story about battery powered aircraft. it said the energy density of batteries is 1/16 that of current fuel and this restricts the distance of commercial airliners
and it highlighted inovators working on electric aircraft at less used airports. but it seems to me that any break-thru in battery powered aviation is going to take place in a battery lab, not an airport
we need "astrophage"
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
My home heating system is great. It makes no noise, and costs me exactly zero to run.
Perfect!
-Kevin
Living the dream.
gregcand it highlighted innovators working on electric aircraft at less used airports. but it seems to me that any break-thru in battery powered aviation is going to take place in a battery lab, not an airport
Lastspikemike John-NYBW When alternative energy becomes abundant and cost effective, I'll make the switch. Until then, I'll continue to derive the bulk of my energy from fossil fuels which are both abundant and cost effective. I'm not the least bit worried about the future of the planet. The planet managed to get along without me for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so long after I am gone. One thing nobody seems to notice is that current burning of fossil fuels simply returns CO2 to the atmosphere that was sequestered millions of years ago by photosynthesis and burying under great weight of overburden. That's the solar energy we are now releasing and exploiting. Therefore, at some point in Earth's history the available CO2 in the atmosphere for photosynthesis was much, much higher than it is today. Yet we are still here. Eventually, we will have recovered and released pretty much all of that stored solar energy. Then we may have something to worry about. Maybe.
John-NYBW When alternative energy becomes abundant and cost effective, I'll make the switch. Until then, I'll continue to derive the bulk of my energy from fossil fuels which are both abundant and cost effective. I'm not the least bit worried about the future of the planet. The planet managed to get along without me for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so long after I am gone.
One thing nobody seems to notice is that current burning of fossil fuels simply returns CO2 to the atmosphere that was sequestered millions of years ago by photosynthesis and burying under great weight of overburden. That's the solar energy we are now releasing and exploiting. Therefore, at some point in Earth's history the available CO2 in the atmosphere for photosynthesis was much, much higher than it is today. Yet we are still here.
Eventually, we will have recovered and released pretty much all of that stored solar energy. Then we may have something to worry about. Maybe.
I have made the same point in other forums I have participated in. Burning fossil fuels is a form of recycling. While current CO2 levels are above what they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution, those were historically low levels. Atmospheric CO2 levels have been more than ten times higher than they are now. Even with currently raised CO2 levels, the earth's atmosphere is in a CO2 famine as compared with past levels. There is one theory that CO2 levels could fall so low that they could not sustain life on earth. I'm not losing sleep over that possibility.
Another thing a lot of people fail to appreciate is that the earth is in an ice age NOW. What people usually think of as THE Ice Age was simply the most recent glaciation of the Quaternary Ice Age which began 2.58 million years ago. This one is likely to be around a while because previous ice ages lasted hundreds of millions of years. Between these mega-ice ages the earth is a very warm place with no permanent land ice anywhere in the world. Sea levels naturally are much higher than they are now, hundreds of meters higher. The Florida peninsula has been complete submerged at least four times in the past.
We are very fortunate to be living in an interglacial warming period within the Quaternary Ice Age which began about 12,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have gradually risen as have sea levels. There have been fluctuations during that warming with the warmest period, the Holocene Maximum, occuring about 8000 years ago. After that global temperatures began dipping culminating with the Little Ice Age which lasted for about 500 years. About 150 years ago temeratures started rising again but still below the Holocene Maximum. How much humans have contributed to the rise is up for debate but either way I don't see it as a looming disaster. It is the natural order for earth's tempatures as well as sea levels to rise and fall both in the short term and long term. Life has always adapted to these changes and I have no doubt it will continue to do so. We cannot prevent climate change. We can only adapt to it.
LastspikemikeOne thing nobody seems to notice is that current burning of fossil fuels simply returns CO2 to the atmosphere that was sequestered millions of years ago by photosynthesis and burying under great weight of overburden. That's the solar energy we are now releasing and exploiting. Therefore, at some point in Earth's history the available CO2 in the atmosphere for photosynthesis was much, much higher than it is today. Yet we are still here.
At that point I remembered the tales from the encyclopedia, Time-Life Books, and other usual sources about how in the prehistoric age there was much more CO2 in the atmosphere, fostering giant plants and insects, and how this excess carbon came to be sequestered in coal beds, limestone, etc. to get us "where we are today". It did not require a feat of 12-year-old reasoning to deduce that if All That Carbon were to be reintroduced to the atmosphere, we might expect to reproduce the same heating and growth conditions -- as I recall this was right about the time the atmosphere on Venus, which is due in part to CO2 runaway, was properly documented.
Of course when you look more analytically, more complications and complexity come with how the CO2 is released, where it goes, and whether the rate of change has its own consequences. We'll ignore issues of academic manipulation and greed on a family-friendly forum; there's enough objective science to make sense.
It's the chemical, not the thermodynamic 'residue' of the quads and quads of fossil 'energy' contained in fossil sources that are of interest.
Lastspikemikehow the heat balance of the Earth is maintained is both very interesting and not known, the best hypothesis I've seen is it's tropical thunderstorms what does it
The frankly ancient understanding I had was that the thunderstorms drove mechanisms of increased global circulation with the heat-engine exchange but not the actual transfer of heat for radiation (this was in the discussion of MCTEX a couple of decades ago).
See this sample reference:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2001JD001431
Here is a somewhat more modern reference that contains (as fig. 2.3) a rather simplistic chart that ... I think... accounts for both the incident and 'earth-generated' heat (the 116%) and where it goes.
https://www.montana.edu/hansenlab/documents/bio491/Chpt2EarthsClimateSystem.pdf
For those of you with great patience and tolerance for even more pedantic language than mine, here is more:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261436/#__ffn_sectitle
Lastspikemikealthough how the heat balance of the Earth is maintained is both very interesting and not known
heat radiates from the atmosphere into space. CO2 (and other gases) impedes this
Lastspikemikewhen we do "burn it all" because because the CO2 produced has been here before.
as C? (hydrocarbons, not CO2) in coal, oil, methane, ...
Lastspikemikewe should know whether adding CO2 to our atmosphere at the rate we currently are
i believe it is the amount of CO2 (among other gases) in the atmosphere that is the problem. the rate has moved that timeframe forward
LastspikemikeIn about five years time by my reckoning the answer will be obvious.
but at that time, there may not be enough time to develop a solution
presumably, even if the rate is modulated, natural effects were increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which would inevitabley increase global temperature. does this imply that in the future we will or would have the need for something to reduce the amount of CO2 (and other gases) from the atmosphere?
gregcDoes this imply that in the future we will or would have the need for something to reduce the amount of CO2 (and other gases) from the atmosphere?
CO2 levels, like global temperatures, have fluctuated dramatically during the history of the earth and most of those fluctuations occurred long before humans became part of the equation. All life forms, not just humans, have evolved to adapt to these fluctuations and I have no doubt they will continue to do so. It's not as if there is a choice in the matter. Early humans had to deal with a far more dramatic change with the onset of the last glacial period. The earth became a very inhospitable place throughout much of the land masses, yet these early humans figured out how to survive. The next glaciation is going to be far more problematic whenever it occurs. During the last glaciation, the earth's population numbered in the millions. It is now about 7.7 billion and who knows what it will be when the next glaciation comes. That's going to be a lot of hungry mouths to feed with much of the agriculatural regions of the earth under thick sheets of ice. The good news is that is going to be somebody else's problem. We only have to deal with what is happening now. A 1.5 degree uptick on the thermometer since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and a 2-3mm rise in sea level per annum doesn't seem like a looming crisis to me. The alarmists keep telling us we are reaching a tipping point beyond which we will be unable to reverse the warming trend. So what? We've seen plenty of tipping points come and go without a climate disaster occurring. The good thing about these tipping points is that when we pass one, they just create another one. How many times are they going to cry wolf and expect us to heed their warnings?
LastspikemikeThe majority of radiation from gases in the atmosphere is outwards into space.
?
infra-red is radiated from the earth (i.e. ground) not gases in the atmosphere. a wider range of light is reflected by the earth and clouds. Gases in the atmosphere absorb/reflect this radiation.
my understanding is ice covering continents reflects sunlight away from the earth preventing warming during ice ages. volcanoes spewing dust covering ice reduces reflection precipitating warming
sunlight reflecting off clouds limits warming of the earth they cover, yet traps warmth in the evening
OvermodThe 'innovations' are at the opposite end from the power source
i wonder what the absolute energy requirement (Joules) is for a cross-country train and adequate energy density. it may be less restrictive for railroad locomotives that could haul cars carrying batteries (tenders) as well as replacing the motor and generator on the locomotive. is the motor-generator 16x the size of locomotive fuel tanks?
wouldn't the extra weight increase tractive effort?
John-NYBWI still don't understand what electric cars and locos buy us. They have to be recharged. That requires electricity. Electricity has to be generated. Most of our electricity is generated buy burning fossil fuels. Solar, wind, and hydro can only produce so much.
see Percent Renewable Energy by Country. for some countries it's pretty high: Canada 65%, Germany 46%,
only 14.7% for United States.
coal is carbon, but natural gas has hydrogen. diesel fuel is 86% carbon by weight.
i'm curious how much energy come from carbon->CO2 and hydrogen->H2O in various fuels (energy from fossil fuels)
When I turn on the light switch, I really don't care how my power company is generating the electricity. I just want to know it's there when I need it and they are producing it as cost effectively as possible. If that's by burning coal, wonderful. If they can produce it more cheaply through renewable sources, that's fine too.
About a month ago I got a mailing from some company that wanted me to sign up for 100% renewable source electricity. It looked like a scam to me. I can buy my electricity from a number of sources but there is only one company that can deliver it to me. It works a little like the banking system. It's just an accounting game. Buying my electricity from a green energy company isn't going to result in them producing more electricity from renewables or less electricity being produced through fossil fuels.
Lastspikemike CO2 absorbs a small amount of infrared radiating from the Earth's surface and re-radiates it. Water vapour aborbs about ten times the amount and re-radiates accordingly. Only a small part of the re-radiation returns to the surface. It has been calculated that the amount of infrared re-radiated keeps the surface from freezing. The other factors are numerous and basically impossible to quantify but include albedo from ice and snow, from cloud cover and especially from the ocean surface. Nobody has yet calculated how it all balances out. Until they can it's all speculation.
CO2 absorbs a small amount of infrared radiating from the Earth's surface and re-radiates it. Water vapour aborbs about ten times the amount and re-radiates accordingly. Only a small part of the re-radiation returns to the surface. It has been calculated that the amount of infrared re-radiated keeps the surface from freezing. The other factors are numerous and basically impossible to quantify but include albedo from ice and snow, from cloud cover and especially from the ocean surface. Nobody has yet calculated how it all balances out. Until they can it's all speculation.
When it comes to climate, there is so much the scientific community doesn't know. They still don't fully explain why the earth goes through glacial periods and then comes out of them. There are some theories but they remain just that. Theories. There are so many diverse factors which drive climate and science has not determined how to weigh those various factors in the climate equation.
Many people want to believe that if humans quit pumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the earth would stop warming. That's simplistic thinking. It doesn't explain the current Holocene interglacial period which began long before humans began burning fossil fuels. The earth has warmed slightly over the past 150 years coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution. I have no doubt AGW has been a factor in that warming but we don't know how much of the current warming is due to humans. The fact that humans have contributed to the warming doesn't make it a bad thing. All living things affect the environment they live in. I accept that AGW is real but I remain unconvinced it has been the primary driver of our climate or that it is a looming disaster.
John-NYBWThey still don't fully explain why the earth goes through glacial periods and then comes out of them.
For completeness here's a reference for Eschenbach's 'Thunderstorm Thermostat' hypothesis.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Willis-Eschenbach-2/publication/249883480_The_Thunderstorm_Thermostat_Hypothesis_How_Clouds_and_Thunderstorms_Control_the_Earth%27s_Temperature/links/56eb335408aec6b500169d73/The-Thunderstorm-Thermostat-Hypothesis-How-Clouds-and-Thunderstorms-Control-the-Earths-Temperature.pdf?origin=publication_detail
Keeping the discussion on "battery" locomotives: it was pretty clear to me that the FLXdrive has its primary use as noted above: a constituent of a hybrid consist that works more effectively than GE's hybrid locomotive a decade or so ago. That the 'battery locomotive' can operate on its own is potentially useful in the same sorts of ways that plug-in hybrid road vehicles can be operated as BEVs, but in modern practice on railroads that's only useful for limited range in limited service and likely of benefit only in 'subsidized' or mandated environments. Used as energy recovery for regenerative braking, on the other hand, it is both a meaningful contributor to flexible operation and a saver of expense: as noted earlier, "11% is huge" in an industry that finds meaningful return in fractional-percent improvement of associated operating parameters. RPS in Fullerton is working on a number of comparable uses.
A better understanding of practical railroad running should be understood. In the real world trains aren't set to a speed step and go around; they are frequently accelerating and decelerating, complicated when their mass needs to be slowed by friction braking or other conversion to irrecoverable heat. As a further point, the quirks of cheap one-pipe braking complicated by pressure maintaining and quick-release make train-handling that does not require automatic-brake application a benefit (at least until ECP becomes utilized or (shudder from the gallery!) mandated.
Putting what is determined as a flexibly cost-effective amount of energy storage on a MATE-like chassis that can be equipped with a road-slug-like control cab has been a desirable solution since the 1970s; having it equipped for dual-mode-lite desirable since the early 1980s; optimizing the solutions to take advantage of practical AC-synthesis drive since at least the mid-1990s. We are just now getting to hardware that figures it all out... and where to put the components of the system. It is sad we won't see the extended crew-dorm of the MATEs implemented for longer run-throughs, and there's much work involved in rollout of fractional catenary/'third rail' coverage toward cost-effective levels and types of electrification... but as cost-effective pieces, this FLXdrive initiative makes great sense in context.
In case anyone has not figured it out yet, part of the FLXdrive approach is to make the "battery" unit chassis useful for use in a cabs-out 2-unit consist where desired rather than a three-unit 'battery-tender' sandwich. I'm sure there are still battery-tender proponents out there (and in fact RPS can make a good case for them in particular dedicated services, q.v.) but it seems obvious to me that adding batteries and transversion to road slugs remains as good an idea as it was decades ago... just now becoming effective to build, maintain, and promote.
gregcI'm curious how much energy come from carbon->CO2 and hydrogen->H2O in various fuels
Your rubber bible will give you all you need to know about stoich for various fuels (you may want to cross-correlate heats of formation and some of the structural loss involved with use of certain fuels with pollution-control equipment).
Traditionally, increasing carbon content in a given mass of fuel increases its potential heat release; this is a reason diesel (centered around 20 or so carbons in the alkane equivalent) has more heat content than, say, one of the isooctanes. On the other hand it is more complicated to assure that full oxidation of the carbon occurs in a practical engine once time inside a practical IC engine cylinder is involved. The rather fascinating science of combustion promoters comes into this, but it will put 95% or more here to sleep just starting to think of the implications...
LastspikemikeFor trains surely the challenge of regenerative braking is effective and efficient recovery of the kinetic energy from the payload?
The range of rapid chemical-battery cycling is restricted in most cases where long service life is desired -- this is the origin of the 80-20 rule for lead-acid construction. In practice this requires a larger capital expense for the overall battery structure, which translates into larger proportional size with increasing nominal capacity. An implication is that the 'overhead' involve capacity for at least one full service stop in extended-range. You may know by familiarity with 'charging algorithms' for hybrid cars that they reserve some of the service capacity for this eventuality when 'charging' during engine-assisted operation... there is similar discussion of apportioning 'headroom' in hybrid commuter operations where there is more rapid cycling between acceleration and deceleration with what can be substantial changes in live load. Using the Carnegie-Mellon approach to combined GIS/GPS with knowledge of train resistance can fine-tune this 'as well as necessary' (with the retention of DB grids for 'emergency' assistance, which is assumed in the FLXdrive consist makeup)
If we assume -- as several on the Trains forum do -- that full emergency-braking time and distance are desirable for unanticipated braking, and then assume that full regenerative capture of as large a share of that braking effort, blended or not, is valuable, the rate of energy capture as well as cumulative magnitude takes on full importance. There are maximum rates of charge that should not be exceeded. It follows that simply cooling the chemical battery is not the only approach to facilitate faster charging; it should also be clear without violating NDAs what some of the proper methods will involve.
Note that proper braking involves a period of 'setting up the train' which usually involves either application of power or absorption of momentum in particular ways to get the slack consistently in, all without either shock or slip at the dynamic-brake contact patches. In some cases this may involve very high momentary/peak charge transfer, including when going rapidly from motoring to dynamic... for which the system should be designed. In a proper world this would be blended with brake modulation, but the implications there are more properly under NDA.
Incidentally, distributed magnetic track brakes became practical several years ago. There are still valid arguments against their practical use, but they are really 'no more unsafe' than the current congeries of disparate technology used to implement PTC as mandated. They will not work without very particular forms of energy charging, discharge, and control that use some of the same approaches as practical hybrid power.
LastspikemikeSo, do we design and build electric cars and hybrid locomotives and heavy goods transport or not? Do we convert our mechanized agriculture to electric power? I prefer that we leave these problems to the marketplace
I prefer that we leave these problems to the marketplace
there are other advantages to electric vehicles. it looks like the marketplace is interested in higher performance: the Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. E dragster may become a new class like the hemis
maintanance is also likely to be less for e-vehicles
as for railroads, will the energy recovered from braking possibly offset other inconveniences by reducing overall energy cost?
gregcthere are other advantages to electric vehicles. It looks like the marketplace is interested in higher performance: the Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. E dragster may become a new class like the hemis
Add in the anticipated reduction of lifetime and increased wear and maintenance from repeated heavy use of ludicrous+ acceleration, particularly if the battery operation is not correctly spot-cooled -- something I have not seen either tested or analytically discussed. Not that I don't love it, just that the game has to be worth the candle especially in a modern financier-driven PSR version of railroading.
"Electric" railroading involves somewhat less maintenance than diesel-electric, but it is far from cheap. Start cycling the batteries deep or hard and I suspect you'll see costs rise; once there are a few years on the batteries and the banks or strings start to need remanufacturing or component replacement, and we have more experience with charging infrastructure and its associated costs, we'll have a better idea of how much 'less' the cost over straight electrification 'with infrastructure' will be.
Overmod"Electric" railroading involves somewhat less maintenance than diesel-electric, but it is far from cheap.
why? cost of parts or labor?
gregcwhy? cost of parts or labor?
In practice there are issues that require locomotives, particularly those kept in regular service, to get regular shop attention. The key is to make it quick and routine as possible, just as with steam service as it evolved at the end of NYC/N&W practice.
Where the fun comes in is when your purpose-built electric needs to have purpose-built parts that aren't cheaply or easily available, let alone well-remanufactured, in the aftermarket.
Note that the dual-mode-lite completely avoids this by having the entire drivetrain fully 'in common' with AC diesel-electrics. One set of parts, one set of expertise, one expectation for hourly/instantaneous wear and stress expectation.
In practice there are