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Batteries for Large Stores of Power Just Don’t Work
I am just going to say it:
Batteries are one of the most inferior ways to store large amounts of energy that we have. The best stores of energy are hydrocarbons. A gallon of gas is lighter than batteries for the power it holds. It is easier to transport than batteries are. It is less toxic to the environment when burned than to dispose of Lithium batteries. It is far easier to “Recharge” a car with this store of energy. And finally, the energy for batteries almost all comes from transfer of hydrocarbon energy into the battery, which means it is even more energy intensive to move around.
Granted, you can transmit power through existing infrastructure and gas has to be put in a truck, and that truck burns hydrocarbons to move hydrocarbons. But, batteries won’t give you power when off the grid, and trying to use solar to give you adequate power in most cases is not going to work. Hydrocarbons bring you power on the spot, anywhere, anytime.
Batteries for large stores of power just don’t work.
Published in General
Power density is where it’s at. For generating capacity per unit of space it takes up, nothing beats nuclear.
I live 25 miles down the road from Niagara Falls. The Niagara Power Project has a massive underground reservoir to run things if the river ever slows down, which is pretty unlikely with all the other Great Lakes pushing it into Ontario. It’s an operation as impressive as the Hoover Dam. And they’re running it at 60% capacity because of low demand. The state is trying to force us rural yahoos to put up 600 foot industrial wind towers along the lake, right in a major bird migratory flyway, and the wind “farms” wouldn’t generate the power on a good day that they could get from opening a few valves at the Falls. They aren’t wind farms, they’re tax farms.
Of course, a lot of the history of New York State is the city tromping all over the rest of the state. Five years ago I narrated a book, “Empire of Water,” that describes how NYC ran roughshod over the Catskills to guarantee its fresh water supply. It was easier to destroy the dairy industry in the area and flood farm towns with reservoirs than clean up Hudson River water and drink that.
No industrial wind facility generates enough power to cover its construction and maintenance costs. Even in the Rocky Mountains, where you would think they would be ideal. If it wasn’t for subsidies, industrial wind would not exist.
Boy that’s a brutal articulation. Wind seems preposterous to me. The amount of concrete and rebar is mind boggling. Then throw in the manufacturing.
Just wait 25 years…they will be broken ruins abandoned in place.
Precisely.
They already are, in Hawaii… some of the most expensive real estate in the world. No one will pay to have them removed, and it’s no simple thing since those towers rest on huge blocks of reinforced concrete.
I recently read an article directed mostly at west Texas ranchers thinking about leasing land to wind turbine farms. A major part of the article was pointing out that at the end of the lease the wind farm operator is not required to remove the windmill, so the landowner is left to deal with the residual structures.
Bingo. They are trying to lease farmland here in western NY. I’ve read one of the lease agreements. They can sell it at any time to anyone, and the only way the farmer would know is the name on the check would change. At the end of 15 years they are supposed to “remediate” the property, but if the leaseholder (who isn’t the same company that built the tower, they’re long gone) can walk away and the farmer doesn’t have the resources to sue. Then the EPA comes in on their twinkle toes and asks the farmer what he’s going to do about that big tank of lubricant and broken blades on top of the 600 foot tower that is on his property.
At one of the public meetings I asked a company rep, if these things are so great, why aren’t you buying the land to put them on rather than leasing it? He walked away.
I can’t find it right now, but one of my all-time favorite Ricochet posts was about a year and a half ago by a Ricochetti who was involved in running a municipal electric power plant that had some ancient diesel generators used rarely and only for emergency backup. But he described how during the midwest / great plains freeze of February 2021 and consequent shortage of electrical power, the plant was able to save the day by running those backup generators using the diesel fuel they had stored on-site. He said the generators were too inefficient for regular use, but for an emergency they and that many thousands of gallons of stored diesel fuel sure came in handy.
But they can be so entertaining.
I’ve been hearing about how the dams are destroying the salmon runs since I was in knee pants, but the salmon are still returning to their spawning grounds. I doubt that this year’s crop even remember where their ancestors came from. The greatest threat to the Columbia River salmon runs are the Arctic Terns at the river mouth eating the fingerlings. The Tern Lovers won’t allow the Salmon Lovers to do anything about the terns.
I suspect that depends on location and politics
As long as it is on poor peoples views it would be good.
In Florida, you could just shoot them, couldn’t you? I love those videos we see of Florida sheriffs commending homeowners for defending their property, as should be done.
Don’t run your nonsense in Polk County, Florida. Sheriff Grady Judd ain’t having it.
I’m for it. Go, Sheriff, go!
It’s been tried several times. Apparently the devil is in the details.
Not to mention the sea lions eating the returning adults. There are sea lion lovers, too.
From over at my personal blog. Complete with photos.
https://rushbabe49.com/2021/07/17/clean-energy-not-so-fast/
Very interesting, top to bottom. We won’t change anything however while Biden is in the White House, not because of energy realities, but because the Chinese are in charge of Biden and are successfully destroying our economy.
I just read this. I would be surprised if the author lives much longer. lol
It’s all terrible. What we need is clean coal and then compact nukes. Nobody needs to promote electric cars because everybody wants a perfect torque curve if they can pull it off.
I’ll say this about batteries. When electric cars make up 10% of vehicles (say 30 million), that will be a *lot* of batteries deployed across the grid. Mostly they are sucking power at the wrong time, but they could be made smarter to suck power at night and share back at peaks. Financial incentives would work.
Until the batteries reach the end of their lifespan and start filling up landfills. Most of them are not recyclable.
Local communist I follow for some reason.
Far from being panaceas, wind and solar are fit merely to provide adjunct power and will improve only incrementally for the foreseeable future.
They also come with considerable costs for the environment that are not being factored into their lifetime costs.
Hardly ever.
So true. There is a bottom line of demand that never goes away. That’s where you need nuke and coal the most, as they are most efficient economically at a steady 100% power. Gas turbine are ideal for load following during the day/night cycle; they can be brought on line quickly as needed.
However, the whackos like none of these sources of power. The people who operate the grid have to balance multiple load sources to keep the grid stable. Wind and solar are not stable.
One of the things that I learned recently from the Texas deal that is sort of obvious is, the logistics of nuke and coal are way easier. You just keep a stockpile at the plant.
Natural gas has advantages as mentioned above, but it’s a big, complicated logistical system. They didn’t have the pipes buried low enough into the ground for the big winter in Texas. Other things can go wrong, too. Wind and solar are a mess in this sense.
It sounds like their design basis was flawed. Next time, they’ll bury the pipes deeper . . .