Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants 327
Dr. Hok writes "As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base-load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people's basements in Hamburg starting early next year will feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home's water/heating. The "ZuhauseKraftwerk" (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL; they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating needed replacement anyway."
Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say"
So when we're all supposed to be scared to death of EVIL GLOBAL WARMING, the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2 with... car engines... running on natural gas which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
Germany and Spain allow nice allowances for those that produce the power at home. For example, the price paid for residences in grid-tie solar systems is $.60 per KWH in Germany ("Solar is only economic for installation on rooftops because of the feed-in tariffs for solar electricity of 60 cents per kWh". http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html )
Note that Germany is doing this even though solar is much less efficient there. Germany is located at ~ 51' N latitude . For reference, Great Falls, MT is at ~ 47' N Latitude.
If the US tariffed-in rates were set at even $.38 per KWH, solar would be a no-brainer investment for majority of homes in the US and coal and natural gas generation would die a natural death with no power infrastructure upgrade needed.
As a side note, the price of natural gas sets the world price for Ammonium nitrate - a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce. Therefore the price of Natural Gas has a great impact on the cost of food for most of the world. ( http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2003/4-14-2003/natgasn.html ).
That is to say: the electricity we use that is generated by natural gas, increases the price we pay for food-stuffs here and in the rest of the world.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
Here come the chemistry Nazis: natural gas is a reactant, not a catalyst, and not to produce ammonium nitrate. It is used to produce hydrogen, which is then combined with nitrogen to get ammonia, with which you actually get the ammonium nitrate when you combine it with nitric acid.
Though you're right that the price of NG has a large influence on that of ammonium nitrate.
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Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some serious problems with this home generation concept.
1) When is extra peaking most in demand? In the middle of the day in July, when everyone's AC comes on. How much home heating is generally needed in the middle of the day in July when everyone's AC comes on? Not bloody much. But you're going to have the full heat output of a car engine pumping into your house; there's no way water heating alone will justify that.
2) Instead of spending the capital costs to build a couple really big peakers, they're going be building millions of tiny individual peakers, each with their own pollution controls? I can't imagine that would be even *remotely* cost-competitive. Or as clean.
I just don't buy it.
Germans don't have home AC (Score:5, Interesting)
Being German, I can tell you that I have yet to meet someone who has AC in his home. Public buildings *sometimes* have it, but AC isn't common here at all.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
Just a statistics i remember (i can not cite it anymore thou) is that about 40% of green energy is wasted because the electric grid couldn't handle it.
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The point is that nuclear plants can't be shut of in a few minutes (coal plants neither) and waters storing plants are not flexible enough. Because of that many windmills and water dams are shut of even thou they could produce green energy. So what it really means is that this technology will allow real green technology to run when ever it can.
Alternatively, instead of having hundreds of thousands of CO2 producing generators with the ability to rapidly ramp up and down production, you could have a few nice green nuclear power plants and ramp up and down the load instead (e.g. by using the excess power to do useful stuff like cracking water).
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively, instead of having hundreds of thousands of CO2 producing generators with the ability to rapidly ramp up and down production, you could have a few nice green nuclear power plants and ramp up and down the load instead (e.g. by using the excess power to do useful stuff like cracking water).
I guess I should buy stocks of every major paint company, just in case if someone really wanted to start building 'green nuclear power plants'. Wouldn't know of any other way to turn them 'green'
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if you mean "less impact on the environment" then nuclear power is almost as good as it get for anything that produces the kind of load needed to run a nation.
it has one by product which is easy to contain. coal emits tons of radiation and toxic gases into the air, geo thermal is limited to certain locations.
solar, wind and wave can't maintain a consistent load 24/7, so i'm curious as to what alternative you propose.
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the term "green" has lost all meaning through over use.
solar, wind and wave can't maintain a consistent load 24/7, so i'm curious as to what alternative you propose.
Simple. Dont call anything that produces CO2 or other toxic waste (liquid, solid or gaseous) green
Then take that "green cant provide sonstant load 24/7" strawman-argument and put it where the sun never shines. Ignoring that almost free energie sources, just because they won't satisfy 100% of your needs is plain stupid. Grab as much as you can get from that free energy pool and then throw in less-green power until you get 100% 24/7.
Diversity is the way to success here.
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Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar? You still have to keep fossil and nuclear plants running 24/7, or eat the brownouts. Power generation figures for wind and solar are bullshit - show me the figures for reductions in fossil and nuclear generation in areas where wind and solar are "contributing" to the load.
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I have a friend who's got a cabin up in the hills that's completely off the grid. Septic system, well water, solar power, electric everything (including stove and bbq). The in-house lines have a natural 16V system which powers major appliances and lights, and there's an up-converted 120V power supply for things like TV or computer.
He uses these things called "batteries" to store extra energy that's generated during the day in order to power things at night. Coupled with turning things off at night, his system generates more than enough electricity to keep things going, and can go for about 2 weeks if the weather's overcast before he has to switch to the gasoline generator to charge the batteries.
Now while it's unusual to have 2 weeks' straight overcast weather, it's not unheard of. But you can get past that by building a distributed network that covers a large land area. We may have about 60% cloud cover in our atmosphere, up to 80% on some days, but it's always sunny somewhere, and you can use generation from places where it is sunny to help supplement the needs/generation where it's not.
If we were to get serious about conservation and turning stuff off when we don't need it, then we could switch to solar tomorrow. more practically, as the GP said, we should be using solar as much as we can, and use something that's not clean to make up the deficit.
And before you start talking about how dirty solar panels are, and how much energy is required to produce them, I'll draw your attention to this [power-technology.com]. There's other ways to use solar energy to generate power. This one uses nothing more dirty than concrete and mirrors, coupled with a large water tank and a turbine. It's so efficient that on a bright day as much as 40% of the mirrors are directed *away* from the focal point, as it produces far more energy than the system can use.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
So, you're saying that if we all live in log cabins and drink from the same hole in the ground that we're crapping in, then there's no problem with relying on solar?
Heck, why not just live in caves and burn our own dung, like the Goddamn Belgians.
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Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar?
Solar could pay back the energy cost of the production of the panels back in the 1970s. If you are going to try to tell me that we can't build solar plants that will pay back the energy cost of their entire production in less than a decade today, I am going to tell you that you are a liar and/or an idiot.
Wind farms to date have not been all that effective, but we haven't been really applying ourselves to making them work for very long, either. So they're not a fit for all our power generation needs, so what
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades, and huge power plants are as inefficient as it gets because of the long distances electricity is transported. By contrast, distributed generation of electricity as proposed by the article is much more efficient, because it happens very close to the consumer.
There are already passively safe reactor designs available to be built, most of the waste that will ever be produced has already been produced as modern reactors produce far less, and where did you get the idea that there are only a couple of decades of fuel left? More like a hundred years with current technologies and billions of years if breeder reactors are used: [slashdot.org]http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html [www.nea.fr]
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
"Had we invested a fraction of the research funding that we have given to nuclear power industries into renewable energy research, we would probably already have most of our energy from renewalbe sources. "
the fact is we HAVEN'T invested in nuclear at all for about 20 years,beyond keeping existing reactors going. and how do you come to the conslusion we could make solar/wind/wave able to provide a constant load?!?! is any amount of research going to make the sun shine and the wind blow on queue?!
"Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades" - bull-fucking-shit! the nuclear industry has a saftey record 2nd to none for a start. then consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.
and i've also heard this argument that uranium fuel will run out in 50 years. yes, present STOCKS will run out if we don't dig up anymore, or look for/develope new deposits. i know for a fact (i work in resources) australia has MASSIVE reserves of uranium, which could provide fuel to the world for easily 500 years at present rates. then there are breeder reactors, which can extend the life of fuel rods 50x, at which point you end up with either a low rad material which isn't dangerous or a highly active material which has a 1/2 life of 200 years - easily containable.
but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.
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Have you looked at the DESERTEC [desertec.org] concept at all? It answers a lot of the issues you are raising with solar energy. True, it is visionary, but it is also backed by several studies and major institutions.
but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.
Where is the "reason" y
Nuclear power is safe (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear power IS safe, at least by any reasonable use of the term. Thing is, if you scale up Nuclear power to the same electricity production as coal, even if you include a Chernobyl every year, it'd still kill fewer people than Coal does. The statistics DON'T point to a Chernobyl level event every year - at this point you're looking more at a greater than 50 year interval between them, and every year of safe operation without another disaster extends that.
Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.
Are you sure that recommendation is based on good science? Or is it like the Vaccine scare here in the USA about Thermisol? That has parents not vaccinating their kids even with thermisol free vaccines.
showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.
Given that Nuclear power provides ~20% of our power, sure, there's R&D with it, but most of that's gone to increasing power production capabilities at existing nuke plants, not for building new ones. I'd also note that wind isn't listed - which might put wind/solar over nuclear in research investments(might be why they don't list it), but still under the R&D investments for COAL.
While on this topic, I'll point out that I'm for a rough power production plan of 35% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% hydro, 5% other.
Given that I've considered installed a combined cycle generator in my basement*, I'm not hostile to Lichtblick's plan. I'd power it with propane though, as that's what I have access to. It can be very efficient as well - an electrical power only plant is lucky to reach 50%, most are closer to 30%. The rest is waste heat. If you're using the combined cycle to also utilize the heat that would otherwise be waste, bonus.
*Normally you don't want the generator in the house, but it is perfectly safe if you take the right steps and properly duct the exhaust to OUTSIDE the building, and in my case I'd be ducting the air in as well.
You are right (Score:3, Informative)
consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.
I'll add to this that passive security measures don't mean "nobody needs to take action to turn off the reactor", or even "no computer is needed to shut the reactor down". Passive safety means "this reactor cannot undergo a meltdown because it is physically impossible". Just like you can't walk through walls or damage tank armor by throwing eggs at it, passively safe reactors cannot melt because the laws of physics say so.
nuclear fossil fuel
This GP nugget is funny. What fossilized into uranium? Fire-breathing radioactive drag
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact is, nuclear power plants, today, in practice, in the real world, *can* and *do* deliver the kind of energy required to run the power grid. They can completely replace the burning of fossil fuels if necessary, and the fuel they run on is in fact VERY plentiful, particularly modern reactors that can run on U-238. This is partly because it goes so far. A pound of uranium generates a WHOLE lot more power than a pound of coal or oil. But uranium is fairly abundant anyway. There's more uranium in the earth's crust than there is tin, for instance. Enough to meet the world's power needs for *centuries* (and by then hopefully we'll have more cost-effective solar -- but I'm getting ahead of myself).
It is likely that no amount of research or investment will ever make wind and wave deliver enough power to meet the world's needs at the current power consumption rate. Falling-water power plants are very cost-effective where you have a generous amount of water at significant potential, e.g., at a dam or large waterfall, but there are relatively few such sites. We do use them where they are available, but there's a limit to how many of them we can build. We can't replace all the coal and oil plants with hoover-dam-style plants, because quite simply there just plain aren't that many large rivers.
Solar power can, in the long term, deliver the power we need, but at present it still needs decades of development to get to a point where it will be economically viable. I'm very much in favor of continuing that research, but it's not going to happen overnight. Today, the most cost-effective method we have for harnessing solar power involves using acres and acres of green plants to turn it into carbohydrates, which we can then burn as fuel. If we want to replace fossil-fuel and nuclear power generation with solar, we're going to have to do better than that. Further research and development is required.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Informative)
What do you do with the toxic waste?
Store it, reprocess it, burn it in a breeder, use alternative methods to get it so it degrades faster, like other posters have mentioned.
Besides, radioactive waste isn't having a real effect on the environment because it's contained, unlike the chemical and radiological pollution coal plants release.
Going after salt flats is missing our point, because I haven't ever heard of a pro-nuclear power slashdotter propose using them for long term storage. The proposals are almost universally reprocess/breeder/netron flux with diversions into burying it in subduction zones.
Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.
We have functioning fission plants now, the biggest fusion test reactor being built/proposed is going to cost a couple times that of a good sized fission plant and still has absolutely no provisions for actually producing electricity.
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Well, it's not green, but the mural on the cooling tower at the Cruas [wikipedia.org] plant near Montélimar took 4,000 litres of paint, so you should be able to make a bit of dosh.
(Most paint production is one of the least "green" activities you could imagine - petrochemical shit all over the place).
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You should buy stocks in the ones that make white paint. Painting roofs white to increase their albedo is a perfectly valid geoengineering technique.
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Informative)
Different story: Technically it might actually replace those plants, because the government decided in 2000 that all nuclear power plants will be shut down until ~2019. But we have elections coming up and it's possible that this decision gets revoked.
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That's good, so if I'm helping them pay for two nuclear power plants, I'm getting paid for the use of my basement, or at least getting it for free, right?
FTFA: "Households would pay around $7,250 to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system."
W...T....F.... so, I save them the billions it costs to build a nuclear power plant [csmonitor.com], and they want me to pay them to save them money
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Someone explain how this works, why would anyone sign-up for this?
Because $ 7.250 already is significantly cheaper than a regular heating system with condensing boiler technology (nothing else makes sense from an efficiency point of view), plus you get money for the electricity you produce. So you save on two fronts. You know, there's a law here in Germany which says that the grid *must* take the electricity I produce, and at a fixed price, which conveniently is higher than the price I pay at the moment.
So, it's pretty much a no-brainer. The only thing that makes me a bit
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In case you didn't get the memo, Russians stopped being "Commies" almost twenty years ago and are now a good capitalist dictatorship. Plus, there's a second pipeline project on the way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline) that'll provide access to more suppliers.
Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant)
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Talk to the French [wikipedia.org].
France currently produces 1/10 of the C02 per kWh that Germany does.
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How is that addressing the point of the GP?
France delivers a lot of cheap electricity to its neighbours because, having a mainly nuclear-based power system, they can only provide the base load. This means they have to produce more than what they need and sell the excess, even if the prices are not advantageous and would not justify the sale economically.
Nuclear plants are difficult to control. The reaction's dynamics are nonlinear and unstable, and you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10
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Follow the link. The (G)GP said:
but he's wrong. EDF does actually run some it's nuke plants in load following mode - it's not as efficient, but when you have a lot of plants why the hell not.
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I don't see why you're looking at Denmark. They've never had any commercial nuclear reactors and the only experimental one in Risø was shut down a few years ago.
Now, is it stupid that they are using that much coal power? Yes, that it is, but on the other hand they are also one of the leading nations when it comes to adopting renewable energy sources, like wind po
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If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?
Well, we would over here in Wales where we have at least one storage system that pumps water up to the top of a mountain using cheap power and generates electricity via a hydroelectric dam when the demand is high. This kind of system smooths out demand spikes because it can be turned on and off very quickly. Given the amount that it rains in Wales, the same system also generates some power for free by impeding the rainfall on its way to the sea.
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, nuclear power plants used by the US Navy work just fine when the power demand spikes (or is reduced suddenly) without becoming uncontrollable.
Proper design ftw.
Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion (Score:4, Insightful)
You failed to consider that the target applicants are already using gas for heating purposes anyway. Now the heat production of the engine will be exactly matched to this need (same as before). All extra gas consumption is fully transformed into electricity (which is possible, even for only 40% raw conversion efficency, as long as the electrical output is much below the heat load).
So, overall, the extra gas consumption (compared to conventional heating) is transformed with 100% efficiency into electricity which is a vast improvement over all competing technologies with similar flexibility.
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Now the heat production of the engine will be exactly matched to this need (same as before).
How do you "exactly match" the heat production when heating and power requirements fluctuate all the time? I'm sure that will be "exactly matched" really well in the height of summer when all the offices have their aircon on....
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There's not much air conditioning going on in Germany in the summer. Maybe for two weeks we use some fans, and in the rest it's not that warm to turn on any aircon or fans. It's also not that cold in winter anymore. A friend of mine basically uses no heating or cooling at all during the whole year, because his apartment is pretty well isolated by being on the first floor of a high-rise.
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There's not much air conditioning going on in Germany in the summer. Maybe for two weeks we use some fans, and in the rest it's not that warm to turn on any aircon or fans.
Germany is slightly further south than the UK (where I live), and airconditioned offices are reasonably common here (which is why I specifically said _offices_, not homes).
It may not be blisteringly hot in the summer, but I seriously question the ability to "exactly match" the heat generated (up to 34KW per generator) with the heating requirements of homes during the summer (probably not far off 0KW - the amount of heating required for peoples' showers during the summer is pretty tiny compared to the amount
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Look for 'Absorption chiller' (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually pretty neat - you can build a refridgerator that has no moving parts, mearly piping and a heat source. They're known as Absorbtion Chillers [wikipedia.org]. Though after a certain point it is more efficient to have some pumps. Some RV's have these, the heat source is a propane burner. It's more efficient than trying to run a generator(~20% efficient at that size) all the time to keep your food(or medicine) cold when you're not otherwise using electricity. They take a 9V or some other configuration of sta
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So when we're all supposed to be scared to death of EVIL GLOBAL WARMING, the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2 with... car engines... running on natural gas which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
There is one thing that nucular plants can't do, namely ramp up in a minute. But that's is a prerequisite if you want to use wind and solar power when it's produced. AFAIK only water and gas plants can do that. So the CHP swarm is green because it enables the massive use of green energy. Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going, which is just not fast enough. Plus, I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.
I'll grant you th
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.
Massively flawed reactor designs being run by complete idiots is simply not acceptable. Modern reactors are extremely safe and (in the West) well regulated. If you're going to ban the modern nuclear industry on public safety grounds, you'd better ban the whole chemical industry too since that deals with chemicals that are way more harmful and is far less well regulated. Replacing all the coal fired power plants with nuclear plants would massively cut pollution (coal plants put up a *lot* of particulate pollution into the atmosphere, much of which is radioactive and/or highly toxic, not to mention the environmental concerns of the toxic and radioactive fly ash which has to be disposed of - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill [wikipedia.org] for why this is bad).
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So just because some incompetent bureaucracts intentionally push one power plant beyond its intended use, all nuclear plants everywhere must shut down?
Well, over the lifetime of a power plant (40+ years) it's a certainty that there will be at least one deep economic recession - during which time there will be extreme cost cutting, attempts to push the plant's output, and savage headcount culls. A perfect environment for breeding 'incompetent bureaucrats'.
A reminder from history - Chernobyl happened when the Soviet Union's economy was dying.
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Plus, I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.
Plus, I live close enough to the Hudson Bay to know that air travel is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love getting crushed to death.
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So, I've got one of these thingies, it's high summer, everyone turns on the aircond - bam! My house heating system turns on. WTF!
As for "Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going", like I said elsewhere - talk to the French. The EDF run some of their plants in load following mode, they have just so damn many of them.
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Germany is pretty cold compared to most of the US, and it has more of a coastal climate (warmer winters, colder summers) than inland (warmer summers, colder winters). Few people have AC.
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Pro-tip - central heating uses radiators which can be turned off !
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I don't use much of it for heating the house. I have a children so insane amounts of it get used in the shower every morning while they try to wake up before school.
So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?
This system cannot be used for load following - you can't pump unplanned amounts of heat into peoples houses, they have to
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This is secondhand info, since it comes from a relative in Germany, but - consider that most German homes are heated by burning natural gas or "heating oil" (diesel fuel that is sold at a much cheaper rate than the fuel used for cars - and marked with a dye so that it can be detected if some clever guy fills up his car with it) in any case, then burning the same stuff and getting some electricity out at the same time does not seem such a bad idea.
I was quite interested when visiting, since where I live we
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This kind of power is really not a replacement for nuclear. The thing about nuclear is that it is great for baseline power: a nuclear plant is very hard to start or stop, or even to reduce output. Coal or gas fired plants can be started and stopped relatively fast and easily.
These generators can also start up and shut down fast, and way faster than a gas/coal plant. They are great for substituting wind and solar. When there is a cloud in the way, solar production drops suddenly and quickly, then these guys
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Your link stacks up all the carbon emissions produced to mine, process, refine, enrich, clad (and the emissions from mining, processing, smelting, casting and welding the cladding), assemble, ship and swap a nuclear plants fuel source.
Fair enough, just let me in on the fossil fuels refill fairy and your secret's safe with me!
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Nuclear plants themselves emit NO gases
so you're saying that we only need to compare costs and wastes of the completed power plant ? ...
If I use that same reasonning for wind turbines and solar panels, I can conclude that those deliver completely FREE energy
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I just love this quote on that scaremongering site:
So, since the plant needs electricity to keep the lights on, and so much
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Every single argument(*) on that site is an argument for increasing nuclear power generation so we can use nuke's to replace the non-nuke powered steps.
Yes, let's magically produce uranium,plutonium,concrete,steel,copper out of thin air then, shall we ? and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air ...
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And no other electricity generation method uses concrete, steel or copper?
Claiming that production of uranium(*), concrete, steel and copper necessarily uses fossil fuels is stupid. At the moment it does because we don't have enough nukes.
(* in fact, as the scaremongering aussies admit uranium enrichment can be (read is already) done using electr
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Seriously, reading that 'article', while they make a decent point, pretty much every human activity as it stands results in CO2 emissions. Extracting and refining the materials to build equipment to harvest renewable sources of energy? CO2 emissions. Transporting and installing equipment? CO2 emissions. From the 'article':
If you ignore the vehicles that the workers use to get to work, the reactor does not produce any CO2
I guess we're also ignoring the fact that the workers breathe and engage in other activities in living that emit CO2.
Nuclear energy couldn't possibly be made less carbon intensive, making
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The same argument is made in a stupid car ad - some loonies are living a "frugal" life trying to emit not CO2, and being interviewed - the guru of the loonies claims they've achieved zero CO2 emissions and the interviewer ripostes - "but you're emitting CO2 by breathing". The interviewer, and you, are only right if the food the breather ate was made from fossil fuels.
(Of course most of the f
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As for your first point - he IS emitting CO2. Whether it is a net addition to the atmosphere is not mentioned, so you cannot deny the fact.
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Funny)
EVERY DAY IS ANGRY GERMAN DAY, SCHWEINEHUND!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
92% efficiency?? (Score:4, Insightful)
"generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. "
since when is heat generation anything but 100% efficient. Now delivery to where you want it perhaps not. ANd it might go up the stack. but citing a 92% efficiency does not tell me much about the electrical generation efficiency.
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:5, Informative)
Well,
you could use math...
If 20kW+34kW is 92%, then the total input energy is 58.7kW, therefore the electric efficiency is approximately 34%.
However, natural gas boilers for heating and warm water are very common in Germany, so replacing some (and 100000 is "some") of them with units that can also generate electricity is not such a bad idea.
Cheers,
Sirius
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:5, Informative)
You are right about the electric efficiency which is of cause bad. But what happens to the waste energy? All the rest is heat is stored in a big water tank for your home warm water. Only 8% of the energy escapes that system and will leave your chimney.
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:4, Informative)
I live nextdoor to Germany, in the Netherlands, and here airconditioning in homes is not very common. I assume it's the same in Germany.
It can be hot, of course, but never for very long. "Airco" is considered to be a luxery. And hot water is still needed in the summer.
Just be sure not to install such a system near your carefully stored wines in the cellar.
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:5, Informative)
Very few homes in (North-)Western Europe have air conditioning, and the warm water tank would obviously not be placed in your living room. Average summer temperatures are between 20 and 30 degrees Celcius. And while the system would probably be overall less efficient in summer than in winter, you will still need some warm water anyway to do the dishes, to clean, to take showers, etc. There are also washing machines and dish washers nowadays that can take warm water as "input" rather than cold water that is subsequently heated using electricity.
Re: (Score:2)
"Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?"
Yes.
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:4, Informative)
What about during summer? Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?
How efficient will it be to run the gas generator, using the waste heat on your hot water heater, then crank up the air conditioner when it gets too hot?
Summers are much cooler in NW Europe than in the Mid East Coast states. Like 30F cooler on average. Because of that difference of climate, AC is really not common in homes (those that have it probably do so for its dehumidifying properties FWIW) and peak power demand comes in the winter.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:92% efficiency?? (Score:4, Informative)
For heat generation only, 92% efficiency can be achieved using a secondary heat exchanger which extracts heat from the flue gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensing_boiler [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
hmm, surely 20+34=54?
perhaps you should show your workings because I'm not sure where you got the 57.6 from?
don't forget to mention that electricity and heat generation are happening concurrently so you need to add those two figures together to get an efficiency figure relating to the actual amount of energy that we are extracting from the fuel..
finally, it would be useful to compare this a
Russia and natural gas (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
personally I think the higher up front cost of nuclear is more than offset by the stability it provides
Not sure about that. Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page [wikipedia.org].
So in short, yes you're right, nuclear is great *for you* (and inhabitants of a few other rich politically stable countries), provided (1) it stays fairly unpopular and (2) other
Re:Russia and natural gas (Score:5, Insightful)
Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page [wikipedia.org]
Not quite. That's assuming a "once-through" fuel cycle, and ignoring things like the newer generations of breeder reactors that burn waste from other reactors. Depending on a number of factors, estimates range between 80 and five BILLION year.
I quite like Bernard Cohen's take on things, cited in that same article, that effectively suggests that we can keep getting uranium from seawater at least as long as the time we have until the sun burns out. I don't quite know how realistic it is, but it's certainly interesting and worthy of further examination.
Re: (Score:2)
I quite like Bernard Cohen's take on things, cited in that same article, that effectively suggests that we can keep getting uranium from seawater at least as long as the time we have until the sun burns out.
Sounds a lot like how we can replace fossil fuels with biodiesel. On a small scale yes, to supply the world with energy? Right. I don't know how few parts per million there is in sea water, but good luck on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Those are reserves. Not resources. Above and beyond seawater uranium, there are tons of locations that haven't been prospected yet, chiefly because uranium was so ridiculously easy to locate they stopped looking for it sometime in the '50s or '60s.
And given how little of the price for nuclear power is due to fuel, even a tenfold increase in uranium prices would hardly have a noticeable effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page [wikipedia.org].
*known reserves* of U235 are pretty limited, but we have stacks and stacks of U238. Maybe you missed the bit in the article you pointed at that states: "We thus conclude that all the worldâ(TM)s energy requirements for the remaining 5Ã--10^9 yr of existence of life on Earth could be provided by breeder reactors without the cost of electricity rising by as much as 1% due to fuel costs. This is consistent with the definition of a âoerenewableâ energy source in the sense in which that term
Re:Russia and natural gas (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Not for paying customers. The problem is that those nonpaying customers tend to steal gas because they need it regardless of whether they can pay for it or not. That's why Gasprom is so hot about the Baltic sea pipeline.
Future for gas engines ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not an entirely insane idea since peak loads are the problem and a lot of these may replace a base load station that isn't doing much 75% of the week anyway but is still burning some fuel over that time. That base load station it replaces is going to either be running fossil fuels or will be a very old nuclear installa
Re: (Score:2)
Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators (Score:4, Insightful)
They sure have a great marketing team at Lichtblick and Volkswagen: so much rah-rah to describe a generator made out of recycled WV engines, that's pure genius.
Re: (Score:2)
Those old air-cooled Beetle engines can do anything if you put your mind to it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not "a generator". A system of 100,000 generators, scattered throughout the country, centrally managed via data links. Which is the point.
Nothing new (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Why now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well (Score:2, Funny)
That really gives new meaning to word 'botnet'
Imagine a 'swarm of power plants' controlled via DSL
Ah, and imagine a Beowulf cluster of... skip it
What a stupid idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Once they add these expensive units, ppl will NOT want to change until the price of their natural gas goes up. That is the mistake that America has. We typically install Natural Gas/AC which together is about 6-10K. Nobody wants to put out 10K again.
AT&T does this. (Score:4, Interesting)
AT&T has "distributed generation", and not just in central offices. Some in-ground network nodes have a small engine fueled from a gas line. This provides backup power if commercial power goes out. In some areas, there's been grumbling about this; somebody in the subdivision gets stuck with the big green box in their yard.
It's mostly a problem in high-density suburban areas. In urban areas, there are underground vaults and commercial basements in which infrastructure equipment can be placed. In low-density suburban areas and rural areas, big metal boxes that make small amounts of noise aren't that bothersome. But in areas where everybody has their little patch of lawn and little else, there are complaints.
I have one of these nodes at the end of my driveway. I get landline phone and DSL through it. It's about 1m x 2m, projecting about 30cm above ground, with a big exhaust vent. I've seen the box open; it looks like a server rack. Normally, it just produces fan noise; the engine is only run for tests and power outages.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thats exactly what they want to do. "Lichtblick" is basicly a energy company selling renewable energy. They simply found out that if you want to sell lots of solar energy, you better should have a backup for ..say.. nighttime. Espescially nights that aren't windy...
Re: (Score:2)
Well isn't it in Western Europe's interest? Why should we be dependent on Russia's relationship with Ukraine or Belarus etc. Why should we allow ourselves to be taken hostage and used as bargaining chips in former USSR political fights?
Re: (Score:2)
The pipeline is still cheaper than paying contractual penalties when Ukraine again decides to steal gas from the land pipeline.
Wrong assumption (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to assume that this is something "the germans" as a whole have something to do with, or that it's inherently something that wouldn't happen elsewhere.
In reality, it's just capitalism finding a way to exploit a legislation loophole. There are some hefty subsidies for energy put back into the grid, on the assumption that (A) it would be some green energy like solar or wind, and (B) that it wouldn't happen otherwise, because, (C) there's not much you can put in that way.
Germany is way north, and in at least half of it there are plenty of cloudy days. The same gulf stream influence that makes us not have the climate of, say, Canada or Siberia, well, warm air coming from the direction of the ocean, you do the maths. In, say, Düsseldorf probably a vampire could probably get a day job because there aren't many days with direct sunlight ;)
So solar power isn't a very efficient way to generate energy. Wind is a bit better, but still takes a long time to pay for itself otherwise. So someone figured they'd subsidize people who nevertheless buy a turbine or solar pannels, to have _some_ green energy, even if expensive green energy. Debatable, but Idon't think it's downright stupid or perplexing by any reckoning.
It was not particularly designed for people running diesel or gas generators in that basement, because, well, there weren't any significant numbers of those.
So now two companies figured out they can use a loophole to sell more of their own crap.
Whop-de-do. If you think no American company would do the same abusing a loophole, you haven't been paying attention much. There have been even more stupid attempts, all the way to trying to sell a SMG without the trigger (it would start firing automatically when you chambered a round, and only stop when the magazine was empty) because some PHB thought it wouldn't qualify as an automatic weapon that way. Apparently the BATF thought it still did, though.