Tag: baseload renewable energy

So which is true?

Ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a phase-out of nuclear energy over the next decade and pledged to generate as much as 80% of the country’s electricity from renewables by 2050, big question marks have been hanging over the future of coal and gas-fired plants in Germany.

Merkel, seeking a third term in general elections on September 22, is a staunch supporter of this hugely popular policy move.

But the turnaround is depriving utilities, including market leaders RWE and E.ON, of massive profits from their atomic plants and turning their gas and coal-fired stations into loss-makers as they are sidelined by rival renewable sources of energy.

http://www.industryweek.com/en…

I don’t expect there are copious tears shed for the utilities with their decaying dirty power around here and surely not in this corner.

But what of this from a now decaying, unloved posting:

The German Association of Energy Consumers estimates that up to 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because they couldn’t pay the country’s rising electricity bills…

For many weeks in December and January, Germany’s 1.1 million solar power systems generated almost no electricity. During much of those overcast winter months, solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity. To prevent blackouts, grid operators had to import nuclear energy from France and the Czech Republic and power up an old oil-fired power plant in Austria.

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Without being on the ground with access to all the available data, it is impossible to ascertain the truth of matters.  My bias is that both are true.  A mobile blind man might feel two different aspects of the elephant but still would not know much about the beast.

What we do know is that intermittent power is – umm – intermittent and must be supplemented by baseload power.  Baseload renewable power is far cheaper and more available than all other energy sources.

Ancient inhabitants of North America some 12,000 years ago are known to have cooked with geothermal energy and millenia later, the ancient Romans used the same source of heat for their baths.  Of course fire was discovered much earlier and perhaps utilized by ancestors of humans. Biomass is a new word for the most ancient of all technologies.  There was then no need to freeze in the dark when the distant sun was neglecting earth.

So why do we concentrate on poisonous and haphazard sources of supply of energy?

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. – Albert Einstein

Albert forgot human greed but no one knows everything.

Best,  Terry

Al Jazeera making case for utilizing abandoned oil wells for geothermal

http://thinkgeoenergy.com/arch…

Sorry, Americans, Time-Warner has decreed you cannot watch Muslim propaganda – at least for those of us who subscribe to Time-Warner.

The principle is simple enough.  Hot water from deep oil or gas wells can generate electricity without drilling.

The hot water is a burden today for active producers as it is not only produced in far greater quantity than the methane and petroleum from which it must separated but is loaded with often noxious chemicals and may even be radioactive.

Abandoned mines also produce hot water in quantity. Entrepreneurial firms offer portable geothermal power platforms to miners but they may require some drilling.  Miners and water don’t mix well.  A Papua New Guinea gold miner has struck gold with its use of hot water for power that has expanded to use far away from the mine.

But you should understand it’s not the expensive sometime energy from solar and wind beloved by politicians and fossil fuel purveyors so we care little about such ways of producing energy.

Thanks, Time-Warner, for helping keep those coal mines open and drillers busy.  The Koch brothers and Exxon must be appreciative.

Best,  Terry

Slowly but gradually, Europe is awakening to a green energy crisis, an economic and political debacle that is entirely self-inflicted.

http://www.thegwpf.org/benny-p…

Indeed the problems are self-inflected but far from the way the article would have you believe.

EU members states have spent about €600 billion ($882bn) on renewable energy projects since 2005, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Germany’s green energy transition alone may cost consumers up to €1 trillion by 2030, the German government recently warned.

These hundreds of billions are being paid by ordinary families and small and medium-sized businesses in what is undoubtedly one of the biggest wealth transfers from poor to rich in modern European history. Rising energy bills are dampening consumers’ spending, a poisonous development for a Continent struggling with a severe economic and financial crisis.

The German Association of Energy Consumers estimates that up to 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because they couldn’t pay the country’s rising electricity bills

The folly is not in going green but in taking the high-priced rich man’s route that guarantees continued enslavement to fossil fuels, most notably solar and wind.

For many weeks in December and January, Germany’s 1.1 million solar power systems generated almost no electricity. During much of those overcast winter months, solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity. To prevent blackouts, grid operators had to import nuclear energy from France and the Czech Republic and power up an old oil-fired power plant in Austria.

The answer is plain enough for the few that will listen – like some of the poorest countries on the planet.

Baseload renewables, primarily geothermal and biomass, are cheaper than the foppery of sometime power, far more potent and plentiful than fossil fuels.

We will learn or we may not survive.

Best,  Terry

A papal bull issues eternal truth that is not to be questioned.  I have an unquenchable admiration for the choice of wording.

The most undeniable liberal groupings do the same but would never, ever call it bull.

How can anyone explain the leaders of the Enlightenment regarding a bloodstained autocrat – Catherine the Great – an ideal ruler?

Was there ever a report of any opposition from liberals of the day to George Washington’s diversion of troops from fighting the colonial overseers to destroy the food and shelter of the Seneca and Cayuga villagers in the winter of 1779, the coldest winter ever recorded in the Americas?  The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign is a largely forgotten stain on America and its Revolution.

Of course we know that was just a continuation of the genocidal attacks on the “Noble Savages” that have lasted to this day though in less virulent form.

When MSNBC puts Chris Matthews, a dubious liberal at best, on air with grand words about the faces carved into the background of the Lakota’s sacred Mt. Rushmore, did they not know that the poorest tribe of the poorest population in America on which statistics are available has refused tribute of billions of dollars for the insult?  Indian genociders are not admired among Indians.

Today misguided antiscience superstition is more dangerous to continuation of survival of humans than it has ever been IMNSVHO.

From the organic foods hoax to obliteration of clean, green energy by devotion to relatively feeble and environmentally damaging intermittent energy that assures the continuation of fossil fuel mining and pumping, liberals so imbued with such false doctrine are a threat to the planet.

Best,  Terry