1600 W maximum on vacuum cleaners from from Sept!

[Noxvayl]

Germany is an interesting example becuase they're rabidly anti-nuclear so have a LOT of renewables going in. This has two interesting knock on effects.

First up, their electricity is the second highest priced in Europe ( http://theenergycollective.com/wille...rmanys-economy )

Second, the unpredictable nature of renewables is wreaking havoc with the interlinked power infranstructures across mainland Europe.

The power infrastructure in Europe is ****, period. My uncle installs switch gear for UK power transmission, working for Gosvener Power, and his experience in the UK in comparison to South Africa is that the technology used here is out of date, even with brand new kit being installed. So having issues coping with renewable energy sources is something I'd expect and feel that the network technology is in dire need of an upgrade.

Something I find ridiculous is the lack of upgrading that happens in Europe. Roads get new surfaces but besides the Netherlands I don't see anyone researching or improving the road surface, and that is the only example I know of where technology is getting upgraded on essential public utilities as I am used to them being (Electricity, Transport, Water and Sewage). Governments take our taxes and the least they can do in return is maintain public utilities we can't live without, and in Europe they are in decline as far as I can see.

Power transmission needs to be upgraded, and rapidly, if we are going to cope with the load the network is going to take and the future network being less centralised. I don't see private businesses doing it and the UK is keen to privatise further because it has gotten itself into some serious debt trouble. Quite frankly, the way things are run at the moment is not good enough and needs to change as soon as possible.

[DanceswithUnix]

Power transmission needs to be upgraded, and rapidly, if we are going to cope with the load the network is going to take and the future network being less centralised. I don't see private businesses doing it and the UK is keen to privatise further because it has gotten itself into some serious debt trouble. Quite frankly, the way things are run at the moment is not good enough and needs to change as soon as possible.

Problem is I think what we need is "smart grid", and that still seems to be something that I am reading about in places like the IEEE magazine as future technology. In the mean time, we are stuck with conditioning the power from renewable sources and trying not to let the fluctuations in output unbalance the grid. I'm guessing this sort of thing must be pretty hard in the details, I remember hearing about local flywheel storage of electricity back I think in the 1970's as a way of evening out loads. Constantly spinning with magnetic bearings in a vacuum for really low loss, spin them up to full speed overnight and they can take the hit of the morning surge in power. Lovely idea, never heard of it happening anywhere.

Latest version seems to be this: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...energy-storage

That has some really nice properties. Seems to have all the upsides of flow batteries, but much simpler and so easy to maintain. Nearly as efficient at storing energy as pumped water, but can work on a smaller scale for localised storage. The inventor even has an old car that he runs off the liquid air (so mostly liquid nitrogen) that the system produces.

Edit to add: Looks like the IMechE are pushing Dearman liquid air engines for driving refrigeration as well: http://www.globalcoldchainnews.com/?p=11745

[DanceswithUnix]

I think you and I may have the same friend - yes they literally have said that to her. One said in class that her ambition was to be a porn star. And she wasn't kidding, that was her career plan. Tip of the iceberg.

She was only teaching there for couple of years in the early 60's. With all the schools in London I imagine though that the same conversation has been had countless times with many teachers in the decades since.

[Noxvayl]

Very interesting DanceswithUnix, seems like a really good solution that should be funded to accelerate its adoption.

An MIT professor is working on high capacity, common Earth elements battery that runs at high temperatures which seems promising to me from a battery perspective. Its design seems geared towards industrial use, or use at home, rather than being close to a power source like a cars engine or power plant.

http://blog.ted.com/2012/02/29/reinv...ay-at-ted2012/
http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sado...newable_energy

I like that there is another way to help intermittency, and efficiency, of power transmission and use. The more I hear about these technologies the more optimistic I become about us transforming our current electricity model into a more efficient, more abundant and more useful energy system. I do worry about the status quo being able to hold on though, the longer it continues the more difficult our use of renewables will be going forward and I think we are in the process of stunting our own progress for no good reason.

[wasabi]

seems like a really good solution that should be funded to accelerate its adoption.

By funded you mean somebody else gets taxed to pay for it?

If it were viable, somebody would fund it.

The only genuinely interesting new storage medium that seems to be more than hot air at the moment is ultracapacitors. For the likes of regenerative braking, they're great. Batteries - i hear a new wonder-material story every week and have done for the past 5 years. Was really into it when I ran an electric mountain bike for about 3 years commuting to work. None of these wonderbatteries have come good. Personally I think stuff like flywheels and spring tensioning have perhaps more mileage - literally, although again massive mechanical problems implementing small scale.

[DanceswithUnix]

Very interesting DanceswithUnix, seems like a really good solution that should be funded to accelerate its adoption.

An MIT professor is working on high capacity, common Earth elements battery that runs at high temperatures which seems promising to me from a battery perspective. Its design seems geared towards industrial use, or use at home, rather than being close to a power source like a cars engine or power plant.

Problem with batteries is scalability. That is helped with flow batteries, where you have a tank of electrolyte and how much power you can store is down to how big a tank you can build for the electrolyte. They still have problems though, and seem quite complicated if you want any efficiency.

I think that is why I like the liquid air setup. The original prototype was built in a garage/shed. If you can build a pump (similar technology to fridges by the sounds of things) and a big Thermos then you build one of these. A bigger thermos stores more energy. Might be a bit loud for domestic use, though fridges aren't that loud.

[Saracen]

Gotta love HEXUS. Vacuum cleaners to common earth element batteries and nuclear reactor design in a single bound ... er, thread.

[peterb]

Gotta love HEXUS. Vacuum cleaners to common earth element batteries and nuclear reactor design in a single bound ... er, thread.

Yes, got me thinking about designing a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner with standby rare earth batteries. The only really insurmountable problem is keeping the thing under 1600Watts - thanks EU!

[SeriousSam]

Perhaps the real reason for the cap on power...

[Noxvayl]

By funded you mean somebody else gets taxed to pay for it?

By funded I mean funded, I am not bothered how. Government or private, as long as we are moving in a direction that can cater for the requirements of our society going forward. It so happens that business is not very good at long term planning with regards to wider society, and even for the company itself as Phones4U is proving along with many other companies that have disappeared since 2007. It is natural to assume government is going to fit the bill and understandable that it could lead to higher taxes, but at the moment the alternative of doing nothing is more costly so if private business is not doing it then something needs to be done.

I'm in favour of fossil fuels costing what they are supposed to cost, zero subsidies, and using the savings to fund new industries that are sustainable. Solar can be funded privately now, the Rockefeller family have initiated a large change in their investment strategy and as such I think private investors are moving towards more renewable solutions so the market will do good work there. It could be something local government can benefit from, not something they waste money on but can make money from; that is neither here nor there though, the more pertinent issue is replacing the aging power generation network and the large scale power stations that we need going forward. That is something private business doesn't seem willing to do and needs government intervention.

Funded is a loaded term, I intensely dislike simplifying it because it unintentionally removes very important aspects of it from the equation. It is a complex issue with complex causes and correlations. Simple funding from one source is not good enough to help move things in a positive direction, we need all aspects of the economy pulling in the same direction and we need to figure out how to help achieve that. At the moment the government seems very tentative with anything it does to move the power generation industry forward, probably because the incumbents stand to lose a ridiculous amount if they can't adapt but possibly because they don't know which direction to go in; that uncertainty could be worse for us than doing the wrong thing. I think we are at the point where continuing to decide what to do next could be worse than trying something that fails; we can at least learn from doing the wrong thing, there is zero progress waiting to get more information to make a decision.

If it were viable, somebody would fund it.

Yes and no; Khan Academy is viable yet it was started and funded by a single person and his savings before others recognised its social value and funded it. Now it is funded by a diverse range of means and is the single most important education resource in the world in my mind; I would not have the university marks I currently do without it and it serves as a useful tool for family members and friends; it becomes better by the month and is being used in schools throughout the USA. it is successful, viable and much needed but it could easily have failed if Salman Khan didn't put his livelihood on the line to make it work, and I find it hard to believe that this is a good way to encourage innovation.

The start of the next big thing requires great sacrifice and risk. Sometimes that comes from governments, sometimes individuals and sometimes businesses; it isn't as simple as a good idea getting into market and succeeding because people recognised it as something worth while. Your sentence makes it out to be a far simpler than it is, and it seems to me you'd rather just let things take their course than actively try and make this world a better place. I am the opposite, I'd rather research and discuss things that are being developed in the hope that through discussion the idea gets more attention and more support.

It is easy to look back and say we should have funded this and that to make things better today, it is more difficult to fund things that are going to be hugely influential in the future than to fund things already beneficial now. In the process we have to fund things that will fail, because if we don't we are less likely to get the good ideas coming through because ideas are less likely to be thought of due to the lack of ability to give them a try.

In short there are so many ideas around that come from generations before, not because they were bad back then or couldn't be done but because we weren't willing to take the risk and develop them further. The electric motor is older than the combustion engine for example, always has been a much more efficient engine but it hasn't had the power generation and flexibility we are so fond of from pouring petrol into a tank. Was a good idea but the landscape would of had to be moulded to support it, now we have that landscape and it has facilitated many other things

The only genuinely interesting new storage medium that seems to be more than hot air at the moment is ultracapacitors. For the likes of regenerative braking, they're great. Batteries - i hear a new wonder-material story every week and have done for the past 5 years. Was really into it when I ran an electric mountain bike for about 3 years commuting to work. None of these wonderbatteries have come good. Personally I think stuff like flywheels and spring tensioning have perhaps more mileage - literally, although again massive mechanical problems implementing small scale.

I'm guessing you think my links to the new battery technology is not genuinely interesting. I disagree.

Ultra capacitors are interesting but have little application to the problem we are talking about. Intermittent energy production and the ability to use energy at a different time to when it was produced is something we have to address if our society is going to get itself off fossil fuel production as we know it and meet the needs of the future. The current system is unfeasible going forward and will become rapidly more difficult to keep working as our demand grows and the waste in the system is increased.

___________________________________________________________________________________________


As a side note, NASA is an interesting case where public funding of moonshot ideas like space travel have hugely beneficial side effects for the wider economy. Something pointed out to me by Neil deGRASSE Tyson which I had not thought of before.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/inn...asa-inventions


___________________________________________________________________________________________


Check the TED talk about that battery DanceswithUnix, it is an electrolyte design that is scalable as you eluded to. Very interesting. I honestly hope it proves to be as good as theoretically expected because it would be a huge help for a larger renewable mix in our power network.

[Dareos]

Problem with batteries is scalability. That is helped with flow batteries, where you have a tank of electrolyte and how much power you can store is down to how big a tank you can build for the electrolyte. They still have problems though, and seem quite complicated if you want any efficiency.

are you trying to to tell me that The Amazing Spiderman 2 was playing fast and loose with the laws of physics?

[wasabi]

By funded I mean funded, I am not bothered how. Government or private, as long as we are moving in a direction that can cater for the requirements of our society going forward. It so happens that business is not very good at long term planning with regards to wider society, and even for the company itself as Phones4U is proving along with many other companies that have disappeared since 2007. It is natural to assume government is going to fit the bill and understandable that it could lead to higher taxes, but at the moment the alternative of doing nothing is more costly so if private business is not doing it then something needs to be done.

Phones4U went bellyup because they were not as good as the competition so quite rightly are gone. Unlike government bodies which just keep on rollin'.

The 'alternative of doing nothing is more costly'. Nuclear and fossil fuels are much cheaper and would make the country more competitive with the Far East.

I'm in favour of fossil fuels costing what they are supposed to cost, zero subsidies, and using the savings to fund new industries that are sustainable.

I assume you're referring to the OECD report? The 3.6bn is not a subsidy, but the value of the reduced rate of VAT on energy - ALL energy, not just oil and gas. Or the other 65m reduction in supertax also widely claimed to be a subsidy? The reduced supertax only applies to oil and gas while the renewables crowd don't pay the tax at all. Lower tax is not a subsidy - especially if you're going to compare it with something that pays no tax at all AND receives huge subsidies.

[Noxvayl]

Phones4U went bellyup because they were not as good as the competition so quite rightly are gone. Unlike government bodies which just keep on rollin'.

The 'alternative of doing nothing is more costly'. Nuclear and fossil fuels are much cheaper and would make the country more competitive with the Far East.



I assume you're referring to the OECD report? The 3.6bn is not a subsidy, but the value of the reduced rate of VAT on energy - ALL energy, not just oil and gas. Or the other 65m reduction in supertax also widely claimed to be a subsidy? The reduced supertax only applies to oil and gas while the renewables crowd don't pay the tax at all. Lower tax is not a subsidy - especially if you're going to compare it with something that pays no tax at all AND receives huge subsidies.

I refer you to a previous post of mine> http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...ml#post3381205.

Not sure we are on the same page anymore, my posts highlight nuclear technologies I am supportive of that are estimated to last hundreds of years in terms of the fuel reserves they are going to use. Reserves of Oil and Gas are not as favourable in their future availability and cost of acquiring them... I'm not sure using the cost of oil and gas today is a good measure for how good an investment that is for our future; oil and gas will get more expensive as we run out of easy to access sources, so that point becomes mute when thinking of the life of a power station. Thinking further down the road would bring into the equation the risks involved in continued exploration for more oil reserves and the consequences of that going wrong, because oil companies have a really good track record for assessing and mitigating risk...

When it comes to the history of the industry and the future projections for costs and difficulty of acquiring fossil fuels I find the argument for using them in power generation to be too weak to consider them as viable for our future. They may be cheap right now but they are not suitable as a long term investment, the Rockefeller's seem to agree.

I refer you to another of my posts about how privatisation and lack of forward thinking (shelving of government plans to upgrade the power network) has lead to serious issues in my home country> http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...ml#post3361413. Real life privatisation doesn't have such good results, despite the virtues businesses like to talk about with regards to the "free market".

I can agree to disagree but I find private business being beneficial for consumers hard to understand. there are too many examples of private business being in ways detrimental to the market because that happens to be profitable. We guard against it with regulations where required but I find it strange that things as essential as power generation should be run in such an inefficient manner.

[wasabi]

I refer you to a previous post of mine> http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...ml#post3381205.

Not sure we are on the same page anymore, my posts highlight nuclear tech

So you refer me back to our own post to articles repeating barefaced lies? (that non-subsidies are subsidies)

However I am pro nuclear and pro individuals investing in alternative technologies, but not pro experimental taxpayer-subsidized big-government boondoggles.

[peterb]

So you refer me back to our own post to articles repeating barefaced lies? (that non-subsidies are subsidies)

However I am pro nuclear and pro individuals investing in alternative technologies, but not pro experimental taxpayer-subsidized big-government boondoggles.

That is just a bit too strong. You may disagree with the definition, or disagree with Noxvayl, but the implication that he is deliberately lying is not acceptable.

Removing my moderators hat...

There is a case for Governments to invest in projects that may not be immediately viable, or where it is in the National interest and private investment may not be `appropriate - although the latter cases are few and far between. However, once a technology has been kick stated, then the government should divest.

A parallel is in "green" fuel duty - it accelerated the development of fuel efficient engines - with the collateral effect that green tax revenue as fallen below expectations.

[wasabi]

That is just a bit too strong. You may disagree with the definition, or disagree with Noxvayl, but the implication that he is deliberately lying is not acceptable.

Removing my moderators hat...

Not clear on my part so apologies. Not calling Noxvayl a liar. Simply pointing out that he is referring back to his own previous argument. Which as I said are backed by links to untruths mostly started by Barry Gardiner MP, Shadow Minister for the Natural Environment. i.e. a tax rebate applying to all energy types is not a subsidy to oil and gas.