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Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

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Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Of course the replies are heavily MAGA influenced...


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">At halftime of Harvard-Yale a sit in protesting climate issues has broken out on the field, at least delaying the second half and the way the protest is growing I would be shocked if the game continues. <a href="https://t.co/2BWCU2fLuI">pic.twitter.com/2BWCU2fLuI</a></p>— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) <a href="https://twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/1198318294396215296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 23, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

respect for that
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Can coal still work in a carbon-managed future?

Minnkota Power Cooperative (Grand Forks, ND) believes so and is is putting serious dollars into it.

https://www.grandforksherald.com/opinion/letters/4880580-Letter-Cold-shows-need-for-Project-Tundra



Minnkota should know. Back on Jan 29-31, 2019, their faceplate 340 MW wind stations went to zero. It was -30F, and the chargers don't turn (safety brake) below -22F. The only reason they (and the MISO grid in the northern plains) didn't suffer rolling brown-outs was load management (certain customers allow themselves to be switched off at peak times in exchange for rate breaks) or as McLennan states "coal, natural gas and nuclear."

Wait, I thought low temps help the conductors for solar.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Couldn't we power the whole country just on wind power from the prairies? I've driven through KS. It's insane.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Couldn't we power the whole country just on wind power from the prairies? I've driven through KS. It's insane.

The grid is true "real time".
What's coming off of a generator right now is being consumed right now.
There is no "parking lot" for that megawatt off the generator to wait around until it's needed during evening peak.
And if it's not there at evening peak people don't have lights or make dinner.

If the wind isn't winding and the sun isn't sunning there's no source for right now real time.

Worse? Say there's a 400 MW solar farm powering your town right now, and a cloud comes over, then clears. How does the grid add and shed that much energy almost instantly? And how does your dishwasher stay running if there's no mitigation (storage) during the cloud time?

That's why storage is so important.
Capture the windy, sunny days and use them on the calm, cloudy days, and to flatten out peak and valleys, and to always be there (base line).

Right now we cover base line load (the bottoms of the valleys) with fossil and nuclear.


PS - Kansas is insane for far more reasons than just wind. :D
 
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Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

The grid is true "real time".
What's coming off of a generator right now is being consumed right now.
There is no "parking lot" for that megawatt off the generator to wait around until it's needed during evening peak.
And if it's not there at evening peak people don't have lights or make dinner.

If the wind isn't winding and the sun isn't sunning there's no source for right now real time.

Worse? Say there's a 400 MW solar farm powering your town right now, and a cloud comes over, then clears. How does the grid add and shed that much energy almost instantly? And how does your dishwasher stay running if there's no mitigation (storage) during the cloud time?

That's why storage is so important.
Capture the windy, sunny days and use them on the calm, cloudy days, and to flatten out peak and valleys, and to always be there (base line).

Right now we cover base line load (the bottoms of the valleys) with fossil and nuclear.


PS - Kansas is insane for far more reasons than just wind. :D

This will sound like a really stupid question, so I'm sorry. Remember: playwright.

What if we globalized the grid? At any given time the amount of the Earth exposed to sunlight is constant. It would also normalize winter and summer. And perhaps other things would even out more -- I dunno, wet and dry season? Maybe wind and storms? Intensity of energy received is fractionally greater at perihelion but our ellipse is nearly a circle so not much.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

What if we globalized the grid?

Infrastructure.

The siting crew will be by shortly to stake out that 500 kV transmission line through your back yard so Miami can power Boston in winter. :)

OK, OK, less snarky. The US grid is actually sub-grids like MISO and SPP and ERCOT and such. There is some time (seconds) in getting energy from source to need but there is a base level you have to hold to "keep the lights on". We're interconnected well save for day/night (solar).
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

(Unverified factoid recently told)

The Sun dumps the same energy onto Earth in just two minutes that humanity uses in 24 hours.


Storage.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

If you overcome that make sure my name is on the patent next to yours. ;)

I know, it's a holy grail.

Seems to me we have two critical problems: climate change, which is a surfeit of energy from the sun, and energy consumption, which is based on extraction from the earth, and which drives most of our pollution not to mention wars.

So, let me keep being stupid. Oil is good because it's a very dense source of energy which is extremely portable. Oil is basically ideal energy storage -- you can transmit it easily through pipes and on board huge ships and it stays fairly non-volatile until you want it. The Earth did us a huge solid and stored up a gazillion cubic meters of it for us to come get.

So... can we just do that, but on purpose and in real time? Can we "make" oil? How do you make it, anyway? I assume making oil is actually very energy inefficient. The energy inputs are mechanical energies of gigantic pressures applied over long intervals of time. However, the Earth did this for us, so we get to free ride on the back end, and that's why oil is energy "cheap" -- we aren't paying for the externalities.

Are there any large forces we could use to do the same thing? Could we, I dunno, throw our bio-waste into Jupiter's gravity well and get oil out on the back end? Or make a black hole to do it? Or create some synthetic substance with even better properties that doesn't, you know, poison the oceans and which is just as portable?
 
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Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Soooooo, it wasn't really the cold, then. It was clouds.

No.
It was -30F that shut down wind (safety lockout/shutdown at -22F).
The amount of solar in Minnkota's repertoire is a rounding error compared to 340 MW (face plate) of wind. <-- All of which was producing 0 MW.

Solar this far north only works at 14% (yes, fourteen percent) of face plate rated generation. A cooperative in Fargo has a 102 kW (not MW, kW) solar farm*. Here's how it's doing so far this year (YTD). The best day on that farm this year is 402 kWh. That means it got the equivalent of full sun for 4 hours. There are a lot of days (change to YTD view) where the whole farm got an effective one hour of full sun total farm output.

Solar, in places where daylight goes down to under 10 hours per day for long periods of the year, is not a solution. Down south, like AZ? Your mileage will vary. (It makes way more sense there.)


Looking back, dx brought up solar and conductors when we'd been talking wind. But yes, cold conductor are more conductive relative to hot conductors; but, if there's no energy to flow those factoids are trivia.


*Under perfect sun conditions for an hour, the farm would produce 102 kWh (kilowatt-hour).
 
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Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

No.
It was -30F that shut down wind (safety lockout/shutdown at -22F).
The amount of solar in Minnkota's repertoire is a rounding error compared to 340 MW (face plate) of wind. <-- All of which was producing 0 MW.

Solar this far north only works at 14% (yes, fourteen percent) of face plate rated generation. A cooperative in Fargo has a 102 kW (not MW, kW) solar farm*. Here's how it's doing so far this year (YTD). The best day on that farm this year is 402 kWh. That means it got the equivalent of full sun for 4 hours. There are a lot of days (change to YTD view) where the whole farm got an effective one hour of full sun total farm output.

Solar, in places where daylight goes down to under 10 hours per day for long periods of the year, is not a solution. Down south, like AZ? Your mileage will vary. (It makes way more sense there.)


Looking back, dx brought up solar and conductors when we'd been talking wind. But yes, cold conductor are more conductive relative to hot conductors; but, if there's no energy to flow those factoids are trivia.


*Under perfect sun conditions for an hour, the farm would produce 102 kWh (kilowatt-hour).

No, YOU brought up solar in your quote. :)

Routinely, subzero temperatures can limit the ability for wind and solar to produce energy for homes and businesses when they need it most.

I questioned that statement.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Solar PV on a cold day in March should produce more energy than a warm Sept day given equal sunlight.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Forgive me. The days in question (the -30F on Jan 30, 2019) were overcast and that was ... clouding ... my thoughts writing.

As I write, the sun has not shone on my yard since Sunday. Not kidding. Hoping later today. Don't believe me? The solar farm link above is representative of the region I live. That shows about an hour of solar farm useful daylight per day.

I need storage for the wind energy. Southerners need storage for solar.

Storage.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Typically the clouds lead to warmer weather. The coldest days of the year are typically sunny.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Had I remembered to bring a jacket with me Friday night it would have been the first time I'd have worn one since my last day in Minnesota, October 10th, 2014. As such it's still gathering dust in a closet.
 
Re: Climate Change 3: Whatever you do don't call it a twatwaffle

Had I remembered to bring a jacket with me Friday night it would have been the first time I'd have worn one since my last day in Minnesota, October 10th, 2014. As such it's still gathering dust in a closet.

Reminds me of a live weather channel spot I saw during one of our innumerable blizzards in upstate NY in the 90s. The reporter found a guy trudging through the snow and asked him where he was walking and without missing a beat the guy held up an ice scraper and said "south until people don't know what this f-cking thing is."
 
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