Scrutable

dyqik wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:40 am

There's already loads of hydrogen fuel stations in Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Germany, Finland and California, among other places. There have been stations in the UK since 2011.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_station

Consumer hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been in the roads for most of a decade.

And are a still a complete commercial failure. I walk by 6 kerbside charge points for EVs on the short walk from my house to the overground I catch to work. There are a bunch of EVs parked and charging in various driveways. The number of H2 stations in the whole U.K. seem to be roughly the same number as those.

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:02 am

dyqik wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:40 am

There's already loads of hydrogen fuel stations in Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Germany, Finland and California, among other places. There have been stations in the UK since 2011.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_station

Consumer hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been in the roads for most of a decade.

And are a still a complete commercial failure. I walk by 6 kerbside charge points for EVs on the short walk from my house to the overground I catch to work. There are a bunch of EVs parked and charging in various driveways. The number of H2 stations in the whole U.K. seem to be roughly the same number as those.

That's a pretty big non-sequitur you've made there. I was replying to the statement that there would be accidents within weeks of them being rolled out.

The commercial success is, of course, reliant on there being fueling stations for them. They sell ok where there are fueling stations, and there is substantial funding for rolling out more stations.

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:02 am

dyqik wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:40 am

There's already loads of hydrogen fuel stations in Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Germany, Finland and California, among other places. There have been stations in the UK since 2011.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_station

Consumer hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been in the roads for most of a decade.

And are a still a complete commercial failure. I walk by 6 kerbside charge points for EVs on the short walk from my house to the overground I catch to work. There are a bunch of EVs parked and charging in various driveways. The number of H2 stations in the whole U.K. seem to be roughly the same number as those.

It's trite, but that's roughly where EV was not too long ago. Most of the time it was home charge only and there was "range anxiety". Having said that after I killed my old Fabia in a flood in mid-Jan, I've now got a Renault Zoe - I can charge it whilst I'm at work (for free) and the charging network is now seriously expanding. Although, if you look on social media groups there are lots of tales of woe of EV drivers stranded as they rock up to find a charging station is dead or "ICEd". Seriously, there are lots of moans about that. In the main I only need mine for a 30 mile round trip commute, so the 150 mile range on this 2018 Zoe isn't (currently) a massive issue.

H₂ is good for range (and (local) emissions). However, it's only going to take off if there's sufficient low-carbon production developed - and that isn't in the near future - coupled with increased filling stations.

It's taken 161 years for EVs to get where they are, but unless major improvements in production and distribution of electricity occur to completely shelve it, I wouldn't yet write off hydrogen.

https://www.eenewsautomotive.com/news/h ... _id=125743

Hydrogen infrastructure is growing albeit slowly.

Start of 2019 - 83 hydrogen filling stations worldwide
End of 2019 - 432 worldwide

Really stupid article on windturbines suggesting that they provide no net energy, from the Spectator.
I think that falls into the "Not even wrong" category, it's such a Gish-gallop of half truths, misunderstanding, cherry picked data, straw men and sheer lies it's hard to know where to start.

FEATURES

Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy
We urgently need to stop the ecological posturing and invest in gas and nuclear
Matt Ridley

Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

What a load of old bollocks.

Boustrophedon wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:02 pm

Really stupid article on windturbines suggesting that they provide no net energy, from the Spectator.
I think that falls into the "Not even wrong" category, it's such a Gish-gallop of half truths, misunderstanding, cherry picked data, straw men and sheer lies it's hard to know where to start.

FEATURES

Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy
We urgently need to stop the ecological posturing and invest in gas and nuclear
Matt Ridley

Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

What a load of old bollocks.

I didn’t get more than three paragraphs in before finding at least two fairly fundamental errors. And I’m taking it on good faith that the figures are correct.
1: talking about energy capacity installed last year (2019) then talking about what the generating capacity was in 2014 as if that meant the new capacity was insignificant- the last 5 years have been extraordinary for the wind industry.
2: deliberately choosing a % of total energy instead of electricity only and then claiming that makes the figures more relevant rather than less. Wind only generates electricity.

As I carry on reading the errors just keep getting worse. Where does the density of 50 acres per megawatt come from? He uses a 2MW turbine - the recent installations have used 10MW turbines - and assumes a crazy low availability for it when if you pay any attention to gridwatch.co.uk you will see is complete bunkum.

Ridley claims ~50 acres are required per MW of output. 2 MW turbine wind farms generally use about 1.5 acres per turbine (0.75 acres/MW) which has a not too appreciable loss of efficiency. So on that he's out by a factor of 66.6. Larger wind turbines will need more space per turbine, but modelling suggests that they can be fitted in with a greater density (eg, a farm of 10 MW turbines may only need ~5.5-6 acres per turbine. My colleague is working with industry in modelling this very thing.)

Ridley also talks about it needing 150 te of coal to produce one 2 MW wind turbine. But you don't need coal to do it, just any energy source, and hey, once we've built one wind turbine, we have that energy source. Coal has an energy density of ~24 MJ/kg, or 24 GJ/te, so 150 te is 3600 GJ of energy.

A 2 MW turbine produces 2 MJ of energy every second (at full load). 3600 GJ / 2 MJ/s = 1,800,000 seconds, or 500 hours, or ~21 days. But wind turbines generally produce about 25-30% of full load averaged out over the year, so even taking the low figure of 25%, that's 83 days, or just under 3 months. That's the energy payback time for a 2 MW wind turbine. The larger wind turbines are even better (could be as low as 2 months).

The energy payback period for a coal-fired power station is 1-2 years. (BTW, the energy payback time for nuclear power stations is 7-14 years!)

Martin_B wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:26 am

Ridley claims ~50 acres are required per MW of output. 2 MW turbine wind farms generally use about 1.5 acres per turbine (0.75 acres/MW) which has a not too appreciable loss of efficiency. So on that he's out by a factor of 66.6. Larger wind turbines will need more space per turbine, but modelling suggests that they can be fitted in with a greater density (eg, a farm of 10 MW turbines may only need ~5.5-6 acres per turbine. My colleague is working with industry in modelling this very thing.)

He arrives at that figure after making a very dubious claim about the actual MWh produced by a 2 MW turbine over a year, not a direct claim about how much space that turbine needs. So he’s dishonestly factoring in the availability of the energy, which you have as 25% giving about 6 acres per MW of output, so he’s just the one order of magnitude out.

That Ridley article may be sh.t -- I've not wasted much time reading it in detail -- but it's from 2017 so given the enormous changes in the last three years, it may have been less sh.t when it was published.

Sciolus wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 9:36 am

That Ridley article may be sh.t -- I've not wasted much time reading it in detail -- but it's from 2017 so given the enormous changes in the last three years, it may have been less sh.t when it was published.

Er, no. Wind turbines have not improved in efficiency by a factor of 66 in 3 years.

Matt Ridley has been a lying toad for much longer than that.

Another coal-fired station to go (early), which leads to this quote:

Coal-fired electricity made up only 2.1% of the UK’s total power mix last year, after a dramatic fall from only four years ago when coal powered almost a quarter of the electricity system.

That's quite a steep drop in the percentage mix.

Fiddler's Ferry has looked like it's had very little use over the last couple of years, and even then they've only had half the cooling towers in use.

With the reduced demand for electricity due to lock-downs world wide, the most expensive generators will be hit hardest. Which is coal. Without subsidies or other support, I'm expecting to see a bunch go to the wall.

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:32 pm

With the reduced demand for electricity due to lock-downs world wide, the most expensive generators will be hit hardest. Which is coal. Without subsidies or other support, I'm expecting to see a bunch go to the wall.

Seams likely.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:37 pm

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:32 pm

With the reduced demand for electricity due to lock-downs world wide, the most expensive generators will be hit hardest. Which is coal. Without subsidies or other support, I'm expecting to see a bunch go to the wall.

Seams likely.

Arf

More good news:

Global oil producers have begun shutting down their oil rigs on the largest scale in 35 years as the coronavirus continues to drive market prices to their lowest level since 2002.

The shutdown of oil wells has already wiped out almost 1m barrels a day from global production, but the figure is expected to rise as producers run out of space to store their extra oil as the crisis continues.

In some landlocked markets in the US, where storage space is scarce and shipping costs are high, oil producers started oil well “shut-ins” late last week rather than pay buyers to take their barrels.

In Canada the price of a barrel of oil fell below the cost of shipping it to a refinery – $5 – making it more economic for producers to shut down their wells than plummet to “negative prices”.

The international oil price benchmark, Brent crude, has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years, at below $23 a barrel.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... oronavirus

Some of these closures will be temporary I'm sure, but anything that damages the fossil fuel market (and in turn reduces the lobbying power of fossil investors) is a good thing.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:52 pm

anything that damages the fossil fuel market (...) is a good thing.

Even a global pandemic that kills millions? What about a global pandemic that kills 30% of the world's population? What about an asteroid strike that kills all humans and almost all multi-celled life? A global nuclear war?

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:52 pm

More good news:

Global oil producers have begun shutting down their oil rigs on the largest scale in 35 years as the coronavirus continues to drive market prices to their lowest level since 2002.

The shutdown of oil wells has already wiped out almost 1m barrels a day from global production, but the figure is expected to rise as producers run out of space to store their extra oil as the crisis continues.

In some landlocked markets in the US, where storage space is scarce and shipping costs are high, oil producers started oil well “shut-ins” late last week rather than pay buyers to take their barrels.

In Canada the price of a barrel of oil fell below the cost of shipping it to a refinery – $5 – making it more economic for producers to shut down their wells than plummet to “negative prices”.

The international oil price benchmark, Brent crude, has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years, at below $23 a barrel.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... oronavirus

Some of these closures will be temporary I'm sure, but anything that damages the fossil fuel market (and in turn reduces the lobbying power of fossil investors) is a good thing.

If you ever want to win people over to your cause, do the f.cking opposite of this post. Seriously.

ETA: Also, there's a preexisting production war between Saudi and Russia that had crashed the oil price before the effects of the pandemic hit. And much cheaper oil probably won't help persuade people not to use it as a fuel, either

Lol. Today's prize for deliberately misinterpreting words gets won before most of us have woken up.

For the avoidance of doubt, the closures are a good thing, not the coronavirus pandemic!

And I'm not sure who I need to win over, exactly. Everybody with the slightest grasp of the subject agrees that we need to transition to net zero carbon yesterday. Fossil fuel companies have deliberately caused the climate crisis, by suppressing data, spreading misinformation and blocking political progress. So it's with no reservation whatsoever that I say: f.ck them, their investors and their apologists. The time for gentle persuasion was the 1990s.

Article in the Guardian on the effect of Covid-19 on oil and gas.

More good news

Oil crashes 305% to -$36.73 a barrel

U.S. oil prices plummeted in historic fashion Monday, crashing below zero as traders unloaded positions ahead of the May contract's Tuesday expiration.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures for May delivery cratered by 305 percent to -$36.73 a barrel. At a price below zero, buyers would be paid to take delivery as there are costs associated with transportation and storage. The selling had WTI on track to close at its lowest level since recordkeeping began in March 1983, according to Dow Jones Market Data

Having oil is now worse than not having oil for US investors as well as for the world.

Why on Earth are they continuing to make it? Is it impossible to turn the plant off?

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 1:47 am

More good news

It's not good news you blithering idiot. It's the result of a devastating pandemic, and that's it.

It means nothing for how things will go once the pandemic is done and life starts to return to normal.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 1:47 am

More good news

Oil crashes 305% to -$36.73 a barrel

U.S. oil prices plummeted in historic fashion Monday, crashing below zero as traders unloaded positions ahead of the May contract's Tuesday expiration.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures for May delivery cratered by 305 percent to -$36.73 a barrel. At a price below zero, buyers would be paid to take delivery as there are costs associated with transportation and storage. The selling had WTI on track to close at its lowest level since recordkeeping began in March 1983, according to Dow Jones Market Data

Having oil is now worse than not having oil for US investors as well as for the world.

That’s the frackers f.cked.