"All of the Above" Is No Energy Policy (and I'm fed up with hearing that it is! - k)

[kristopher]

"all of the above"
"There is no silver bullet"
"Everything should be on the table"

"All of the Above" Is No Energy Policy
William S. Becker
Energy and Climate Policy Expert, Natural Capitalism Solutions


First, while it's true there is no silver bullet to meet our energy needs, there definitely are a number of duds. If we really want energy security, economic stability and some protection against climate change, then we need to take the duds off the table as rapidly as possible.

Second, let's face it: In a rational national energy policy there will be winners and losers. The winners will be those energy technologies that allow us to thrive in a carbon-constrained, post-peak-oil economy. The losers will be the carbon-intensive fuels and energy resources whose risks in this new world outweigh their benefits.

Third, it is an insult to our intelligence to put resources such as solar and wind energy in the same risk category as coal, oil and nuclear power. The downsides of renewable technologies - for example, intermittency and the tradeoffs between solar farms and wildlife habitat -- are far less consequential and easier to avoid than the risks of oil, coal and nukes.

What risks? Those who are regular readers of this blog are well aware of them, so I won't elaborate. I'll just use some key words:

Nuclear power: radioactive contamination...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-s-becker/all-of-the-above-is-no-en_b_841659.html

It is time to choose.

[midnight]

1. Our Energy policy needs to move forward..... Oil, nuclear power

are old technologies.

[kristopher]

2. It isn't moving anywhere under thie administration, that's for sure.

I'd love to hear what Al Gore has to say about his endorsement of Obama now...

[kristopher]

10. Obama still wants nukes/ DOE - "we're not going to pick winners and losers

Daniel Poneman of the U.S. Energy Department talks about why the president is committed to nuclear power.
...

Q: What role does the administration see nuclear playing in our energy portfolio after the disaster in Japan?

A: You have to put this in the context of the President's clear call in the State of the Union address for a new energy policy that will end our dangerous over-dependence on foreign oil and include a significant movement to renewables. We're very focused on nuclear power in that context as a component of the mix. But we're not going to pick winners and losers.

Q: If it's a question of a cost-effective clean-energy mix, why not invest more in renewables in the hope of making them more competitive?

A: The problem, to begin with, is we don't now have a price on carbon. The efforts we've undertaken through CAFÉ standards and other mechanisms put an emphasis on getting to a cleaner mix. We need to see how it plays out and which cost curves come out the lowest. There have been a lot of innovations, and the American economy has always done best leaving those decisions to investors.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/30/obama-still-wants-nukes/

WTF? Since when do normative decisions become the province of the market and investors? Are you telling me that the Obama administration has no sense of the difference between the decisions in areas appropriate to the market and those we depend on the political sphere to decide for the well being of the public?

Are you F&*^#ing kidding me?

No wonder we ended up with that shitty health care bill.

Define: normative -
Refers to value judgments as to "what ought to be," in contrast to positive which is about "what is."
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/n.html

[DCKit]

3. Where's Captain Nook-you-lur and his goon squad?

They get Sundays off?

Must be union.

[AlabamaLibrul]

4. Actually, OHSA requires "four day on, three day off" shifts to handle the cognitive dissonance n/t

[DCKit]

7. That doesn't explain full-time Republicans.

You'd think with all that stress, they'd be caught doing some wacky sexual antics or something.

[AlabamaLibrul]

8. That only happens when the love for their country goes into overdrive

and clouds their judgment temporarily.

[kristopher]

5. Shift change?

Have to give the changeover briefing, you know.

If you haven't seen this, you might want to. It links to a video interview of the country's top dog in charge of grid reliability saying - again - that "No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States… renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x285709

[DCKit]

6. Thanks for the link, but no need.

I got to give a lecture this evening (while watching "Plan B") on how the industry shills always say "No wind farm will ever replace the energy output of a coal fired power plant", "No geothermal plant has a fraction of the output of a nuclear plant" and "The sun sets, what do you do then with your solar panels?"... but they never attack all forms of renewables (or biomass, tidal, wave, etc...) together. Because, as many here know, we need to do it all to have a reliable, distributable electricity supply.

By my calculation, based on the family farm being powered by solar for the past ten years, the current cost of solar panels and the fact that we used <$30 worth of gasoline last winter (in the VA mountains) to keep the batteries topped off, solar IS affordable. And wind is even less expensive. Further, neither pollutes our air and water with soot,mercury oxides, plutonium, uranium, radioactive cesium, iodine or strontium.

[kristopher]

9. I'm aiming for a major remodel in the not too distant future.

I'm hoping to emulate your efforts. I'm going to explore how much advantage I can get in the heating and cooling area with two large stone heat sinks and a basic heat exchange system.

[DCKit]

11. The earthship concept is excellent, but water holds a lot more heat than nearly everything else....

with the exception of phase-change materials. Mostly salts are used. Not that I've done it yet, but I've got a hell of system planned for my own house - namely, a string of water tanks, pumps and flat-plate heat exchangers. I don't want to pay for anything but cooking fuel and supplemental hot water (with an on-demand system).

The "family" house has a 50' greenhouse that provides an immense amount of heating in the winter. While it's oriented SE and not directly south, as long as it's kept clear of snow, LP consumption is drastically reduced. However, other than the simple slab floor throughout the house (which is an abomination of poor design), there is no way to store that heat overnight.

There was an excellent article in (I believe) Home Power magazine sometime last year. The family built a huge house in CO and the planning that went into it was exceptional. They claim they pay only about $900/year in supplemental fuel costs for a house well over 4K sq. feet.

Good Luck!

[kristopher]

12. A large deep pit of crushed stone and an insulated 3' bed of lg stones under planned addition

The first for exchange cooling, the second for solar thermal heat storage for the collectors that will be designed into the addition. I'm going to have to give some thought to the idea of adding a (smaller) greenhouse though, it sounds like it could be worth it.

[DCKit]

13. You could use your pits for both heating and cooling.

When I was a kid, we had a huge old brick house. We left the windows open at night (in the summer, obviously) then closed up the house in the am, and it stayed tolerably cool for most of the summer. Same concept, if you can figure out how to circulate the alternating heat and cool from the pits to the solar panels. Do note that cooling the pits would work better with a coil on top, also better for picking up the heat for the house in the winter.

A simple temperature (or human) activated pump, pipe coils, like those used in geothermal heat pump systems, would do the trick and a couple/few solar hot water panels. If you want to heat hot water, as well, a single tube-in-shell or flat-plate heat exchanger would allow you to fill the system with antifreeze while keeping the potable water separate.

No sense building two pits with different uses if you're basically going to be using them both as heat sinks.

Additionally, if you're going to bother with the greenhouse (or just a trombe wall), make sure you've got the circulating in from the bottom and back into the house at the top. We don't get full advantage because other family members don't understand the concept "heat rises" and won't let me punch a couple of holes for vents at the top of the greenhouse.

Further, I've always wanted to cover the back of the greenhouse with cement board, painted black. It would be shaded by the overhang in the summer, but pick up massive amounts of heat in the winter. Again, I'm dealing with alt-energy ignorant siblings and a parent who knows everything about everything and won't be told what to do.

Alternatively, some people are using simple, shallow hot-boxes bolted to the side of the house with vents in the top and bottom and painted black. Cheap, cheap, cheap, especially if home-made. An active greenhouse can pump an amazing amount of humidity in to the house year-round, so a hot-box might be a better alternative.

[kristopher]

14. I'm planning on forced air for the heating

I don't want to try and store the heat in an underground repository I've designed for heat dissipation. I have the space and most of the materials at hand, so it is largely just design and execution during planned renovation.

I was intending to use a south facing, double-wall as a collector, but the idea of a greenhouse as part of it is very appealing. Thanks for the tip on humidity.

For others reading this that are interested in alternatives to explore, google is your friend. For example:
http://davidmdelaney.com/solar-ah-tm-he/ah-storage-wall-he.html
http://davidmdelaney.com/thermal-cs/thermal-crawl-space-1.html
http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ae/AE-89.html
http://www.inspectapedia.com/Energy/Rock_Bed_Solar_Design.htm

[DCKit]

15. I'm not going to argue, just do what feels right for your location.

And then you can tell the naysayers "sorry, but it works for me".

[kristopher]

16. Never fora second thought of it as arguing - I love hearing your thoughts.

If there is something you feel I should know, please share. I think I have my concepts lined up properly, but it wouldn't be the first time if I do not. Although I'm familiar with the literature on the topic, I haven't yet built something like this; and if the past in other areas is prologue, my failure rate for ambitious first tries inspires at least as much caution as conviction.

[DCKit]

17. Geez, I didn't mean "argue" in THAT sense, but I bet we could have a great fight.

However, I will argue that rock sinks will never be as efficient as water storage- despite the extra expense of coils, heat exchangers and all. Water is an amazing substance.

If you've got the space and that's how the house is designed, rocks it is. But I'd still put them after the hot water tank(s).

[kristopher]

20. I'll give it more thought.

About "arguing" and just so that you know - I'm always willing to settle a dispute in the traditional honorable fashion of dueling.


But be warned, books at 15 paces are my weapon of choice and I'm a deadly shot (if I do say so myself).

[DCKit]

21. Careful, or one of our self-apointed Newcuelur scientists is going to report you to the modulators..

for threats.

You know they'd do it in a heartbeat and you have to be, at least, #2 or #3 on their list of EE posters they'd most like to see tombstoned. Your postings have edumacated way too many people.

Personally, I would have to use DVDs, but am beyond anal when it comes to them being scratched or threatened by exposure to dust... blood and guts? No way. And I have as much respect for books.

We'll just have to settle it pacifically. (OMD, either I just broke spell-check, or it's now accepting my intentional misspellings by default)

[kentauros]

18. I was just reading about something related to your "hot stones"

but it was for large-scale energy storage, called Pumped Heat Electricity Storage. I don't know if you could use your system for electricity storage, too, but it might be worth investigating.

Also, when I saw this dicussion and your passive heating/cooling needs, I thought of something once read on TreeHugger.com so I went and found it, or an article that includes it: Earth Tubes (for passive air cooling.)

Cool Roofs and Earth Tube Air Conditioning in Renew Magazine

[kristopher]

19. Concrete culvert pipe, huh?

I went to the treehugger article and it's great. Thank you. I'd considered the tube cooling concept but was worried about issues with condensation because I presupposed metal or plastic as the tube. I'll revisit the idea using concrete.

I'm familiar with Isentropic, and I have a lot of hope for some version of that technology. My understanding is that with current technologies it is not economically suitable for scaling to individual homes - although neighborhood sized units seem a perfect fit since their energy storage capacity by volume is extremely large - stunningly large, in fact.

They require two storage piles, one for heated stone and the other for cooled stone. The efficiency of the process is related to the temperature differential, which IIRC is around 500F or so.

[DCKit]

22. Mold would be an issue if and when humidity is high, regardless of the material.

Anything exposed to sunlight is going to be disinfected daily, not so for pipes in the ground.

Further, and again, water is a far better storage medium for heat or cold. I don't understand why we keep defaulting to rocks (in these studies) as the end-all resource. Is it simply what our cave-man minds can comprehend? Because they're solid and tangible?

I think, also, that a lot of the benefit of geothermal heating/cooling is derived from the fact that, in summer, heat is pumped into the ground, then (whatever is left after migrating into the surrounding soil) is pulled back out for fall heating needs. Vice-versa in spring-early summer, for cooling.

Regardless, like most things alt-energy, large-scale or community based ends up being cheaper. 80% of the homes in Iceland are heated by "waste" heat (over 300F) from geothermal electric production.

"Some People" know where to spend their tax $$$$s, and are grateful for their higher living standard.