Comments on: Less heat, more light: solving the energy crisis

By: Acid Test » Bwahaha. They want you on the hook for even more.

Acid Test » Bwahaha. They want you on the hook for even more. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:39:47 +0000

[...] needs. Efficiency could reduce needs by 50% without affecting standard of living. (Links and calcs here, and here.) Nuclear could satisfy some 15% of our energy needs if we build a new gigawatt plant [...]

By: I told you so: negawatts work « The Confluence

I told you so: negawatts work « The Confluence — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:16:12 +0000

[...] told you so: negawatts work Posted on August 3, 2009 by quixote Not only have I told you so, repeatedly, but so did everybody else who’s capable of coming up with four when adding two [...]

By: Acid Test » I told you so: negawatts work

Acid Test » I told you so: negawatts work — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:14:29 +0000

[...] only have I told you so, repeatedly, but so did everybody else who’s capable of coming up with four when adding two [...]

By: quixote

quixote — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:41:52 +0000

Australia certainly has both wind and solar in abundance. There are so many interesting new technologies being reported almost every day in both of those renewables. Plus, the surprises are just about all to the upside: more power at cheaper cost. If only all the governments everywhere hurried up and *did* it!

By: Anton Marsh

Anton Marsh — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:34:33 +0000

Nice post. Looks like wind power is really starting to get some serious consideration in Australia now.

By: On Government » Presenting information: an energy example

On Government » Presenting information: an energy example — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:34:37 +0000

[...] So let’s get to it. The cost – benefit factors for each form of energy are constrained by the total energy available from a given source and the amount that can be recovered in practice, by the cost of its infrastructure, and by its environmental and medical consequences. (An earlier and more detailed summary of energy pros and cons is here.) [...]

By: On Government » Environment

On Government » Environment — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:32:13 +0000

[...] is also some evidence that costs may actually be lower than expected. From an earlier post of mine: “The cost estimate does not include the benefits to GDP from local business [...]

By: Acid Test » Geoengineering: a cure worse than the disease

Acid Test » Geoengineering: a cure worse than the disease — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:23:52 +0000

[...] The sad thing is really that it’s all perseverance worthy of a better cause. As one of the scientists himself says, It would “require such a Herculean effort, that maybe it’s easier to build wind turbines and solar power plants [and implement efficiency].” [...]

By: quixote

quixote — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:48:24 +0000

Tom, thanks for catching a serious typo in my write-up. The numbers I’m referring to should have read 6 kWh per m2 per day, 6 megawatt-hours per m2 per day, 9.6 TWh/m2/day, and so on. I dropped that important “h,” which is present in the links that show the more detailed explanation. (I’ve corrected it in the post.) The numbers are per day not per hour, eg 6 kWh per square meter per 24 hour day. The fact that night occurs is already included in that average, as the post points out. So I’m not sure why you say the numbers should be divided by 24 a second time. (9.6 / 24 = 0.4)

If I had been calculating the expected insolation in one hour, and that was the only hour we captured energy, then over a 24 hour period, the average for any given hour would be 1/24. But that’s not the case here. The averaging per hour has already been done and the numbers, as I understand them, are per day. Could you explain in a bit more detail what I’ve missed, if I have indeed missed something and not just made a confusing typo?

By: Energy and Physics « Twisted One 151’s Weblog

Energy and Physics « Twisted One 151’s Weblog — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:43:22 +0000

[...] Energy and Physics Tom Swanson over at Swans on Tea has an interesting post on the energy situation, giving some much-needed corrections to a lengthy post by another blogger on the issue. [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:58:06 +0000

I agree that solar is a big win, but you have a problem with your solar numbers: it’s not 6 kW, it’s 6 kW-hr, per m^2 per day. Energy, not power. Your 9.6 TW becomes 9.6 TW-hr, or the equivalent of 0.4 TW continuous production.

By: Brynn

Brynn — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:47:57 +0000

Oh, I forgot to add that you debunk the nuclear option here more succinctly than anything I’ve read elsewhere!

By: Brynn

Brynn — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:32:38 +0000

Excellent post!!! You’ve done an incredible amount of research and covered most of the bases. The only details I’d add involve housing construction and the actual wiring that carries energy within houses and, as we do now, from power plants to end-point users.

Given what we know about energy conservation, why aren’t all new homes required to be passive solar? I’ve read that solar-passive homes in Scandinavia get by with no extra heating throughout their long, cold winters. Given that, the fact that homeowners in sunny California still pay hundreds of dollars per month in winter to stay warm is ludicrous, not to mention a terrible waste of energy.

Of course, it does make a lot of Bush’s and Cheney’s friends happy.

Likewise, the way we transmit energy wastes a tremendous amount in the form of heat along inadequately insulated wires. This is true in the overland transmission of energy via wires from power-plant to homes, and within the homes themselves, especially in older homes. I read (sorry, can’t remember the link!) that upgrading the wiring in America’s homes alone would save a tremendous amount of energy every day, multiplied by millions of homes.