green power solar is

[Bruce]

My model planes have been electric for years. And today I started using a new 54 volt chainsaw and its great.. Far better than the 2 stroke one for my small personal firewood jobs..

 

So electric cars for city use make sense, except for the load on the grid if more than a small percentage had one.

 

You really need to be off the grid . Except you would need a special sort of wife who could cope with a funny fridge.

 

In the meantime, what about an electric bicycle? I'm looking to get one since they have finally come down to a few hundred dollars instead of thousands.

 

 

[octave]

So electric cars for city use make sense, except for the load on the grid if more than a small percentage had one.

Utilities Say Electric Cars Could Strain the Grid

 

How Electric Vehicles Are Becoming a Tool for Grid Stability

 

 

[Marty_d]

In the meantime, what about an electric bicycle? I'm looking to get one since they have finally come down to a few hundred dollars instead of thousands.

My mate has got one and loves it (although I think he bought the "in the thousands" one). His gives a variable assistance - you still have to pedal, but you can dial up the help so going up hills is like being on the flat.

 

Then again he lives in West Hobart so everywhere is close enough.

 

 

[storchy neil]

Banks are not going to fund coal mining so according to some BUT record EXPORTS of COAL neil

 

 

[Marty_d]

Banks are not going to fund coal mining so according to some BUT record EXPORTS of COAL neil

Banks have millions of customers, most of whom agree that coal is BAD for humanity. It'd be a foolish bank indeed that financed coal mines.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was listening to a show on the radio last night where current safe capacity is something like 200kw/kg with LiIon and some other nasties thrown iun. They think that in a couple of years it will grow to 500kw/kg (although it was pointed out that cobalt prices have doubled over the last couple of years, which will drive up prices). Interestingly, 5 years ago, it cost £3m to build a 1mw/h solar farm; today £800k.... In addition, materials development in sPV solar cells is such where they can manufacture flexible solar cells rather than rigid - and in different, albeit darker colours. So, wrap-around for buses, cars, etc.

 

Coal is sort of like the COBOL programming language - well on it's way out with more modern languages, but such a large legacy base, it gives the impression it is a growing language. These days, it's an ancient relic (although, we can start another thread on that one). Coal is heading he same way.. Increased population, devices, wealth = increase power consumption and for existing coal plants, that means more coal needed. But it will be replaced.

 

 

[facthunter]

Go and live in the Hunter Valley Neil, and see how you like everything covered in dust. The place is destroyed. when it all ends it will still be a disgusting mess. It will never be fixed. If you go to Cook's Hill memorial walkway and look up the valley all you see is dust. It WAS some of Australia's BEST agricultural land with plenty of water from a good catchment, the right climate and near consumers of two big cities. Nev

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Surely the regs would require scrubbers in those stacks and have max air particulate density/concentration rates.. Does no one enforce these (or am I optimistic such regs actually exist?

 

 

[coljones]

Banks are not going to fund coal mining so according to some BUT record EXPORTS of COAL neil

The time for a mine to pay for itself is measured in decades. The life of Liddell is measured in just years. Why would a bank sponsor a mine that might run out of customers in a few years? It is a bit like buying shares in Channel 10, not the brightest idea.

 

 

[coljones]

Go and live in the Hunter Valley Neil, and see how you like everything covered in dust. The place is destroyed. when it all ends it will still be a disgusting mess. It will never be fixed. If you go to Cook's Hill memorial walkway and look up the valley all you see is dust. It WAS some of Australia's BEST agricultural land with plenty of water from a good catchment, the right climate and near consumers of two big cities. Nev

Nev, that's OK, the local residents vote Labor and wouldn't know the difference - not at all like those smart people in Sydney and Melbourne or those Country Party voters who don't want polluting stacks anywhere near them nor a carbon price to share the pain of polluting coal. Cooks Hill, gotta love it but you never left your windows open while BHP was there.

 

 

[nomadpete]

I suspect that most of the dust problem comes from the coal mining and transport process. The fires in the big steam engines don't produce dust after the exhaust goes through electrostatic precipitators. Most of that very fine ash is recovered and used to dilute the cement that we all buy. (A great cost recovery from a waste by-product).

 

All the control buildings that I worked in (adjacent to power stations), had a constant black dust problem in spite of filters on the air conditioners. And take a look at the black dust around any coal conveyers, or railway loaders.

 

 

[coljones]

I suspect that most of the dust problem comes from the coal mining and transport process. The fires in the big steam engines don't produce dust after the exhaust goes through electrostatic precipitators. Most of that very fine ash is recovered and used to dilute the cement that we all buy. (A great cost recovery from a waste by-product).All the control buildings that I worked in (adjacent to power stations), had a constant black dust problem in spite of filters on the air conditioners. And take a look at the black dust around any coal conveyers, or railway loaders.

you may well be correct for modern power stations but you need to transport and crush coal for use in the boilers and there is a constant pressure to relax environmental standards. Cooks Hill was a filthy place when I lived there and there is still a major coal loader down on the Hunter River even though BHP has gone.

 

 

[storchy neil]

Were is bex I heard that 480 new coal fired power stations to go on line in China 2018 bex what's the real story neil

 

 

[nomadpete]

He's probably too busy making aeroplanes to answer.

 

 

[Bruce]

Saw one of the solar cars yesterday 50 k north of Adelaide. It was the University of Michigan second place getter and going at nearly 100 km/hr.

 

The ultimate racing aircraft would be like a glider with every upper surface covered with solar cells and it would be able to fly above the clouds and the race winners would use winds and wave lift to go faster than the rest.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

If one googles Chinese coal power station 2018 you will find articles about banning new coal plants in China until 2019 but Chinese companies putting them in other countries even those that have little if any coal fired plants today

 

 

[storchy neil]

I have read jerry look into who and what the agenda it goes around in circles from green peace earth somen back to Greenpeace to convince the persons that are led like sheep to a tune off al gore the con making money off the pore

 

Bit like Turnbull and his crap of pumping water up hill to run hydro how in the hell do you pump the amount off water up hill to run one turbine at no cost

 

Neil

 

 

[octave]

If you spent 5 minutes researching pumped storage you would understand how it works and why it is done. There, of course, is the obvious using excess renewables but there are also pumped storage facilities that don't use renewables but use traditional sources of power but you point you seem not to be able to grasp is that they pump water uphill when there is an excess of energy and it is very cheap and they release water when there are peaks and the energy is very expensive. Note this facility uses only those methods of generation the YOU would approve of - coal and nuclear. Bath County Pumped Storage Station - Wikipedia

 

Method of operation[edit]

 

Water is released from the upper reservoir during periods of high demand and is used to generate electricity. What makes this different from other hydroelectric dams is that during times of low demand, power is taken from coal, nuclear, and other power plants and is used to pump water from the lower to the upper reservoir. Although this plant uses more power than it generates, it allows these other plants to operate at close to peak efficiency for an overall cost savings. Back Creek and Little Back Creek, the water sources used to create the reservoirs, have a relatively small flow rate. However, since water is pumped between the reservoirs equally, the only water taken from these creeks now that the reservoirs are full is to replace the water lost to evaporation. During operation, the water level fluctuates by over 105 feet (30 m) in the upper reservoir and 60 feet (20 m) feet in the lower reservoir.

 

When generating power, the water flow can be as much as 13.5 million US gallons (51,000 m3) per minute (850 m3/s). When storing power, the flow can be as much as 12.7 million US gallons (48,000 m3) per minute (800 m3/s).

 

With a vertical pressure head of 400 meters, each cubic meter moved from the lower reservoir to the upper one stores 400 * 9.8 * 1000 joules of energy. A joule is a watt-second, so that is equivalent to 1.08888... kWh. If we round down to account for losses in the system, every million cubic meters of water stored is equivalent to approximately 1 GWh of energy.

 

 

[kgwilson]

Pumped Hydro has been around for 100 years & it it has operated around the world since then. It is simply a matter of market economics. Produce power with the turbines when the demand is high & the price is high & pump the water back up the same pipe when demand & price is low. About 30 - 40 pumped hydro schemes plus wind and solar farms with batteries is all that is needed to provide cheap clean reliable power to the entire eastern seaboard plus South Australia. Some 22,000 potential sites have been identified around the country so there is plenty of choice.

 

 

[storchy neil]

So my solar panels are now paying me $0.173 cents per kW back to the grid

 

Selling me grid power at $0.3229 cents per kw peek

 

Selling me grid power at $0.1808 cents per kw off peek

 

What brand are of pills are the solar mob on cause I don't want to take them neil

 

 

[octave]

So my solar panels are now paying me $0.173 cents per kW back to the gridSelling me grid power at $0.3229 cents per kw peek

 

Selling me grid power at $0.1808 cents per kw off peek

 

What brand are of pills are the solar mob on cause I don't want to take them neil

Victoria solar feed-in tariff more than doubles to 11.3c/kWh

 

 

[Marty_d]

So my solar panels are now paying me $0.173 cents per kW back to the gridSelling me grid power at $0.3229 cents per kw peek

 

Selling me grid power at $0.1808 cents per kw off peek

 

What brand are of pills are the solar mob on cause I don't want to take them neil

I think you want to ask what sort of pills your grid power provider is on. Don't know how it's the panels fault if your power provider is paying you less per kWh than they're stinging you for off peak.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Considering the damage by the recent hailstorm (in Vic), these might be the go...

Two decades ago Prof. Green of UNSW developed solar roof tiles. Few people in Oz were interested...

 

 

[Bruce]

You have to be very well off to afford to be green. I wish it wasn't so. Just do the sums.

 

For example, a car which uses 25kW and is driven for 2 hours per day needs 50kWh per day.

 

On a good day, a solar panel can produce one kWh. Let's ignore cloudy days, after all we want to be green huh.

 

So you need 50 solar panels just to charge your car. About $15,000 worth if you install them yourself and have all the frames handy.

 

If you want to charge it overnight, you also need 60 kWh of battery storage, which would cost $1 per Watt-hour from Hobbyking, which is $ 60,000 worth of batteries. ( I noticed that the super battery in South Australia is getting bulk discount and paying about half as much per watt-hour.)

 

Even an electric bike fed from solar panels is quite expensive, but the idea is so nice that I am seriously considering doing it.

 

 

[facthunter]

They might not want the power you give them when it suites YOU to provide it. Power from a coal power station (OLD ONE) would be about 5 cents/Kw Hr. maximum at source Storage Has to be the answer.. You could massive version of a grandfather clock (weights) or a heavy electric train going up a steep hill when power is surplus and bring it down EGR when you want some energy.. You could have large flywheels spinning to even out power demand. surges. I don't see 11 c as being too far wide of the mark. if you are being reasonable about it. Nev