The Skeptics Guide #911 - Dec 24 2022 (Ad Free)
Added 2022-12-24 15:33:22 +0000 UTCLive from Phoenix; News Items: Fusion Breakthrough, Closed Loop Pumped Hydro, Jibber Jabber, Artemis I Returns, Bright Satellites, Cuttlefish Pass Marshmallow Test; Science or Fiction
Comments
Besides hydro, excess energy can always be used to split hydrogen from water. store it in large containers near the point of use, then it can run hydrogen gas turbines, or mix with at least 25% methane and you can run natural gas turbines. You can always do this where pumped storage is unavailable - which is a lot of places, Florida for example. Round trip efficiency of hydrogen gas turbines is only 60%, so you would need to produce more solar electricity than if you had PWS everywhere, but the low cost of production more than makes up for it, making the total cost still cheaper than what we have now.
Ted Apelt
2022-12-24 21:10:57 +0000 UTCWhat Steve just said about closed loop pumped hydro is exactly what I told him years ago: "In 2017 Blakers and colleagues used satellite imagery and algorithms they described in an Applied Energy (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918305270) paper to identify 22,000 Australian sites with the right topography. Now they have expanded this to the world, releasing maps of the locations they have identified. Each site is suited to storing at least 2 gigawatt hours, enough to last a small city through a windless night. This world-scale map of potential pumped hydro sites shows that heavily populated areas have more than enough sites very nearby, although northern Europe may depend on storage to the south. Matthew Stokes and ANU Colleagues AREMI Collectively, these sites could store 22 million gigawatt hours. “Only a small fraction of the 530,000 potential sites we’ve identified would be needed to support a 100 percent renewable global electricity system,” first author Dr Matthew Stocks (http://www.anu.edu.au/news/for-journalists/dr-matthew-stocks) said in a statement (http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide). Urban areas and national parks have been excluded. Blakers dismisses the idea many sites lack sufficient water, noting the water is recycled endlessly. He added floats that suppress evaporation can ensure even desert sites will refill with rain quicker than the water escapes. 500,000 Possible Pumped Hydro Sites Show We Can Easily Store Renewable Energy (https://www.iflscience.com/technology/500000-possible-pumped-hydro-sites-show-we-can-easily-store-renewable-energy/)"
Ted Apelt
2022-12-24 21:09:30 +0000 UTCMaybe reduplication is an evolutionary tac-tic.
Richard Moore
2022-12-24 17:10:26 +0000 UTC
