Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap

Improving PV efficicy.

"From reading this article, I'm not clear if he has considered the constantly improving technologies of renewable energies. Renewable sources such as photovoltaics keep improving their efficiencies year by year. So if you implement a 10-year plan of rolling out renewable equipment, then the equipment installed in year 10 would be significantly more efficient."

The maximum efficiency of PV cells demonstrated in the lab is now 42%. The current efficiency of the moon rays's PV cells keeping the low voltage lighting in your garden lit at night is around 3%.

It is true that there have been very marginal improvements in PV efficiencies over the last few decades, but nothing substantial. Even less of an improvement is seen with what is commercially available. And if you were to average the new organic cells with the older and efficient polycrystaline cells I wouldn't at all be surprised if there has been a net REDUCTION in efficiency per unit surface area installed.

The issue with PV is cost, not so much efficiency. If you are ag 42%, you can only half your cost by doubling efficiency - and since the improvement has only been around 12% over the last 2 decades of considerable research, 84% isn't likely any time in the near future.

So with PV the target should be and is, reductions in the price of manufacture.

We will have to see how the continuous production lines for polycrystaline cells that are now coming on line will reduce costs per watt.

Business models show them being competitive per watt with grid power.

Pretty Crappy Windmill/Calculations

"And when I did start to save money, the enormous eyesore could *just* about generate enough electricity (after battery/conversion losses) to run a 1-bar electric fire if it was operating to it's perfect theoretical maximum. With reasonable averaging of windspeed, power, etc. I could *just* about get it to run a bulb or two in the shed 24/7 - energy saving ones at that."

That's a pretty crappy windmill you were looking at.

Energy saving bulbs, lets say 2 equivalent 60 watters consume about 13 watts, for a total of 26 watts. So running them for a day consumes 0.6 kilowatt hours of energy.

Now there is a 400 watt (max) windmill available just down the street from me,

This turbine will generate about 38KWh per month with an average wind speed of 5.4 m/s Enough to run your two light bulbs for 63 days.

Still not a huge amount of power. But with an average wind speed of 10.8 m/s the energy obtained goes up to 152KWh per month.

Now my home electric consumption is 330KWHh per month.and switching to solar thermal for hot water heating I can reduce that to about 250KWh per month So one wind turbine running in 10.8 m/S wind (perpetual) would provide me with a little over half of my electric power needs.

Now the wind speed in this area averages around 7.5 m/s (or is it miles/hour, I forget), in any case, it is insufficient to provide enough driving force to efficently run such a turbine.

2.5 miles down the road however, and there is sufficent wind.

All good ideas, but he's forgotten PLAN H

Plan H would surely start with the premise that overpopulated countries can somehow reduce their global population by 20%, with the bulk of the reduction coming from grossly overpopulated areas like the 30 mile radius from London.

This frees us from the burden of building new homes, which must surely be a drain on our energy resources. It makes for less congested roads, and roads with moving traffic are surely less energy consuming than roads with stop-start traffic.

Quite where the surplus population would go to would be for the bureaucrats to figure out. At one time America was a good answer. More recently, Australia. Maybe we need a "new" Australia. Maybe we need a tax on sex, so that it happens naturally over several decades. What we certainly don't need is even more surplus population, and for every new person who comes into the country, at least two have to choose to leave.

AC/DC 4 Mr Chriz

"Didn't George Westinghouse and Edisson already try this AC DC thing with the war of the currents? I was under the impression AC won because it lost less power due to the easier ability to up the voltage, which meant less resistance along the powerlines? Or does modern technology get round this?"

Yes, sort of, and yes. Early DC transmission would have meant far more repeater stations but power losses would have been lower once the repeater stations were established. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC

I've lived in various houses powered by renewables and batteries, and all of them have had 5 or 12 v DC lighting for convenience. I'm surprised all the attention on low-energy, long-life AC bulbs. Ultrabright LEDs are a future inevitability imo. Also inevitable is a drastic cut in common consumption since all these plans are politically unrealistic.

Oh, and thermoelectrics is a major offsetting technology. Electricity generation from waste heat reclamation is an old technology which has come of age just in time, not a solution but a potential percentage offset to climate change.

Its impressive...

...the way the rabid anti-greens have jumped on this article. /Naturally/ an article from a scientist essentially supporting their already-formed opinion is reasoned, logical and well thought through. Curiously, articles from scientists opposing their opinion are always riddled with mistakes.... hmm, anyone else spot the flaw here?

I also liked your selective quoting: 10% of the UK covered in wind-farms = half the energy required to drive a car 50km. Kinda implies wind is ludicrously useless. But hang on - what has wind power got to do with cars? And thats still 150,000,000 kilometers of driving each day. And most of us dont drive 50km a day anyway... So what the prof is really saying is: if we car-shared and used efficient public transport, we could get the entire country's transport needs met from wind power. Sounds good to me!

Oh look - I've spun the same numbers entirely differently.

What's that quote about statistics?

Re: Everyone is missing the point

So die already.

(see, there's a problem: people are already too many, and nobody likes the idea of dying. they're not that hot on no longer shagging, either).

Please remember that the SE of England for example, has frequent shortages of water because there are too many people for this VERY WET ISLAND to support.

So kill yourself. Show some commitment.

@Dr Stephen Jones

"But remember - people have long memories and may one day remember your attempts to prevent them having decent living standards, health and education."

"Dr"? - when someone poses a question it is customary to attempt to answer it, not indulge swivel-eyed, ad hominem attacks based on mistaken assumptions about the OP's political/environmental persuasions.

You could perhaps define "decent living standards, health and education" that are acceptable to you and then give your estimate of how many people you would find acceptable that the west has to kill as we compete to keep our present wildly disproportionate share of ever scarcer resources?

@Marco Re: @ Michael and anyone else that things CO2 is bad!

>>>And you probably don't know either that more mercury is produced by the average coal power plant powering an incandescent bulb for five years than if you smash a CFL on the ground outside.

No it doesn't.

Do the calculation for yourself, you can find accurate Hg concentrations for different types of coal from the internet and you can find the real amount of Hg in a CFL. I read that on Greenpeace' website & calculated it for myself - it is wrong.

If 100% UK power is from the highest Hg content coal and all the Hg ends up in the atmosphere, (not most in the ash & 99% of the rest scrubbed out the fumes) _then_ it is about the same. These assumptions are flawed!

As we have ~33% _capacity_ as with coal generation in the UK, if it was all turned on & all the Hg still escaped then 6000 hours of a 100W bulb releases 3mg i.e. 1/2 - 1/3 of the Hg in a 11W CFL (6-8mg). As most is trapped in the ash or removed from the flu gas then it is tiny in comparison to smashing a CFL or sending it to landfill.

They even have legislation in the USA about Hg release into the atmosphere & what you can do with the ash and they are often the worst at anything "environmental".

Use Google, use a spreadsheet and work it out for yourself.

Re : Overpopulation and Biofuels ..

What would be the unit cost of converting all the Crematoriums in the country to function as local biofuel powered leccy generation facilities ?

Isn't there a Govt. grant or tax break that could be used to offset the cost ?

How much generation capacity could this supply ?

Then all we'd need would be the reintoduction of a mandatory death sentence for murder and as a replacement for ASBO's ... retroactively ... with cremation as the only method of biofuel, sorry, remains disposal

Results :

- Increased power generation capacity.

- Significant reduction in the prison population.

- Reduced need for police on the streets, allowing them to get all of their paperwork done.

- No need for extended detention times for suspects (which would be especially useful in the run up to Eastenders/Corrie/Emerdale Ominibus editions).

- Reduction in the UK population.

- Reduction in the number of rampaging mobs of yoofs and footie supporters.

(currently working on "Plan S" - for "Soylent Green" to be applied to those whose religious beliefs require that they be buried as opposed to cremated)

Ebike hub motors

"The motors may be 90% efficient compared with the 15-30% of combustion engines, but you have to carry some serious battery power around to get anywhere."

Ebike hub motors are around 90% efficient (typical max) and can drive a typical bicycle on flat ground at a speed of about +20 mph. With a auto sized car battery the range is around 40 kilometers or so.

Course if you want to double the speed, you have to at least quadruple the battery size, and then you need a larger frame and bigger wheels, so maybe add another 50% on top of that. So 6 car batteries to drive a 40 MpH scooter 40 miles.

And oh, the total cycle energy utilization for such a vehicle is <LESS> than a human powered bicycle.

Further, this presumes a reasonably inefficient bicycle design. A sleek enclousure would reduce the drag by a factor of 2.

The Eradication of the AmeriKKKan state

"You could perhaps define "decent living standards, health and education" that are acceptable to you and then give your estimate of how many people you would find acceptable that the west has to kill as we compete to keep our present wildly disproportionate share of ever scarcer resources?"

One thing that you have to remember is that the U.S. refuses to ratify the International convention on human rights. In fact more than Half of the U.S. population inist that the right to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, is just pure, unadulterated, communism.

The eradication of the AmeriKKKan state is in order.

Nuclear waste disposal is trivial...

...encase the fuel slugs in a layer of lead, then stack them down at the bottom of some of those empty oil wells. Once the stack gets within about 1000' (about 305M) of the surface, fill with concrete.

netgeek

Solve one problem, create another

Good article, but doesn't solve the problem, well it might solve a problem but not this one.

As I see it if the standard status of earth before we started meddling with it was, sun shines on earth, some energy gets through atmosphere, some gets absorbed by clouds, some makes plants grow, some plants dye or get eaten and then the animal dyes and turn into coal/oil, some get absorbed by ocean, some reflected by ocean, some absorbed by clouds, some escapes back out of atmosphere.

What is the total amount of energy that we have to play with that gets delivery per day and stays in our atmosphere?

Obviously it is seasonal, more energy for us in the summer (although we used to use the most energy in the winter to stay warm, although not sure with air con now)

Equator gets the most energy, North Pole, South Pole the least.

The use of fossil fuels adds to our standard planets energy usage, releasing energy stored from previous years.

Won't solar panel absorb more energy than plants (they are green, not black so at least they are reflecting some of the light), won't this trap more energy on the earth also changing the balance?

And where these solar panel are going isn't it currently deserts which reflects most of the light?

As for trap energy in Africa and release it in Northern Europe, that really is going to upset the wind.

Carbon trading is one thing, obviously more carbon in the atmosphere the harder it is for energy to escape our atmosphere, but reducing it won't necessarily help. The amount of additional energy being put into the atmosphere needs to be reduced, fossil, green or otherwise.

(Also water vapour, methane is pretty good at trapping energy).

Still, well need to be using more energy when the next ice age comes, or preferably somewhere warmer in the galaxy.

According to Encarta the earth entered an ice age 1.6 million years ago, and although ice sheets withdrew from America and Europe 10,000 years ago, some scientists are not sure if the Quaternary Ice Age is over yet. And ice ages apparently last a few million years.

So either we'll be back to an ice age shortly, or another 150 million years.

So die already. Mark

"So die already." - Mark

You will be dead soon enough Mark. If you leave less than two children then the world will be less burdened by your arrival.

Itsy Bitsy, Micro, Tiny

"What I have always wondered is why the idea of introducing additional thermal energy into the global climate (burn fossil fuels, use radioactive materials, microwave extra solar energy from outside the main layer of atmosphere) is, in itself, not considered to be "a bad thing"". - Jerome

Because it is miniscule compared with the energy input from the sun, and the energy loss to space.

Absolutely Miniscule.

And that should tell you something about how much energy is available for solar power.

Plagiarism, or simply great minds..

I have been coming up with - within reasonable research, assumption and statistical variations, exactly the same numbers..all published on the net in various fora.

I am not sure whether to be annoyed at not getting the kudos, or relieved that someone with more clout than I, has taken up the identical challenge, and come up with more or less the same potential solutions.

I am less accomodating though. I refused to spend money needlessly. My estimate of the UK total power consumption was 350GW and my solution included nothing but 100 x 3.5GW nucear power stations, and the little bit of biofuel needed for miltary and aviation, though synthetic hydrogen is another possibility.

That, with battery cars and an 3 times upscale in the national grid capacity, seemed to be adequate without ruining the countryside.

I believe the professor has missed one trick: The cheapest solution for storing energy to be used for domestic heating is nothing more than a large - several cubic meters - insulated tank of boiling hot water. If my calculations are correct that would be enough to keep the average house warm for several days in winter with no more than a small pump and heat exchanger.

My all nuclear solution needs no storage anyway: its sized to the peak requirements. Any excess capacity would be in the form of waste heat that could be used by greenhouses, fish farms and outdoor heated swimming pools clustered around every nuclear installation, to allow low carbon tropical fruit, seafish, out of season vegetables and unseasonally nice swimmimg ponds. ;-)

As he points out, with nuclear there is no energy shortage nor any need to be particularly energy efficient. Cheap lightbulbs and CRT TV's would heat our houses and also give off useful light and entertainment at night, and mercury poison filled CFLs could be consigned to a footnote in history.

Nice one professor. Keep up the good work.

I'm surprised...

so few people mentioned Chernobyl with respect to nuclear power. Yes, it's very safe these days, but if something goes wrong, it goes wrong effectively forever. Not just in a small locale, either...a meltdown is a regional and *ongoing* disaster (as radioactive particulates can still come out of the area and float away, especially if repeated water flows are encountered by the pile melting downwards). The breadbasket of the Soviet Union was literally nuked in the process, and that changes the entire global trade landscape as they have to import more food each year (at added energy expense, too).

Also, nuclear disposal is not easy. The waste will be radioactive for untold thousands of years, or at least until we discover the quantum physics equivalent of a philospoher's stone (to transmute the waste into some other useful compound or elements). Not only that, *the plant itself* is radioactive. Yes, it is. After years of housing the radioactive pile, the structures around it absorb the radiation, and begin to re-radiate that radioactivity. That's why workers wear badges, not just in case of a leak. The structure itself weakens due to absorbing that much radioactivity, making it more dangerous the longer it runs. The plant's ambient radiation rises during the plant's lifespan, and when it's decommissioned, the plant has to be disposed of as well. What remains to be discussed openly is whether or not the land where the plants are currently situated have also become radioactive, and how many plants can be operated in one place before the land itself starts killing people. They may dig out the radioactive dirt as well, but then you end up digging down into the water table eventually, so the land can't last forever either.

Also, despite popular belief, nuclear plants *do* emit low-level radioactivity. This is because the water piped around the core becomes irradiated when the pipes inevitably become irradiated due to constant exposure (thus re-radiating into the cooling water). So, if you cluster reactors together, you will have clustered ambient radioactivity, much in the way that clustering cars in cities generates smog and acid rain in certain geographies. Furthermore, if you cluster nuclear plants, and one melts down, the others will probably go with it, furthering the effects of the disaster.

I won't go into the debate about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants - we have people falling asleep at the controls here in the United States, and that's bad enough.

Don't get me wrong, I'm expecting nuclear to be mandatory in the next 20 years, because telling people during the 1970's to cut back on power usage during the gas crisis did NOT work, and thus increased consumption will follow with the rise in population (and increased prices due to price-gouging by greedy bastards - kind of like today, actually). However, nuclear is by far and away a bad, bad idea. I try to use my brain in my down-time to figure out how to bridge the gaps between conventional and quantum physics in order to try to create an insane idea for a better energy technology. However, so far I've had no luck. So, expect what you see coming. You won't be able to escape it unless one of you can come up with a new way to manipulate physics to generate power.

If you don't, you have only three options:

1. World War 3 sending us into the Third (and final) Dark Age in a vain effort by nuclear-weapon-wielding powers to grab what's left of the world's dwindling resources. There's brinksmanship, and then there's nuclear spoilsports. "If I can't rule the world, no one can!" *BOOM*. "If we can't rule ourselves, no one can! Live free or die!" *BOOM*. "Your religion is different than ours!" *BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM*. "You can't steal my stuff!" *BOOM* Once it starts, it's too late. Look up "Archduke Ferdinand", if you don't believe me.

2. Forced conservation and population control, leading to widespread starvation, food riots, revolutions and endless civil wars ending up in nuclear regional wars, destroying the human-habitable environment and civilization in the process (there's that Third Dark Age again).

3. Global cooperation (and I mean everyone - less than total participation means #2 above and maybe #1 as well). Not communism, not socialism, not capitalism, not dictatorship-style domination, but true cooperation as a species. A confederation-style global government, if you like. China runs its government its own way, USA does theirs, Russia does theirs, etc, and people shut up about the differences - but we all quit fighting and shafting each other, and cooperate to save *all* of us from extinction. Unless we cooperate to get out into space, the human race is toast. Get used to it. No one will suffer one country other than itself to rule the world alone.

...well, maybe there's the return of Jesus Christ, and maybe aliens will save us, but I really don't want to have to resort to those things if I don't have to. God helps those who help themselves (and each other, for that matter).

If you want statistics, try this: without food imports, 1.6 billion Chinese people must subsist on their own arable land, 1 square foot of which must sustain 7 adults. If half of the Chinese population have a child, this would raise their population from 1.6 billion to 2.0 billion. That same square foot of arable land (nine months later) must sustain *9 adults*. This means that each adult would have to consume 21% less food in order to not require imports. Now imagine that population increase *every 9 months* (one-child laws notwithstanding). Growth of this kind, or even near it, is *not* sustainable, not even for a country the size of China. That's not including India, the United States, or any other countries with booming populations. Add it up, and you'll probably see 10 billion people worldwide by 2020. Even then, the inevitable overpopulation of the planet will make the human race choose between housing and food and energy generation as every last scrap of land becomes inhabited (even Antarctica - melt the glaciers for tap water!). Throw in nuclear plant disasters making large regions unlivable (and non-arable), and you have a recipe for self-destruction (short of global cooperation). Bad, bad idea.

We need a Manhattan Project for advanced quantum physics and fusion power, I say. Once we solve those problems, we not only have power, but advanced propulsion units for feasible space travel. Bring it on, before it's too late. Hell, I'll lead the project myself. I may not know much about quantum physics, but I know damn well where I can find some people who do (and hire them). And as you can tell by my excessive verbosity, I am highly motivated.

@chris

"Or get that space elevator built and run cables down the inside of the shaft...

Lots of options "up there"."

http://techfox.comicgenesis.com/d/20010416.html

I like this one

Personally

To cover my electricty usage of 2500 kW per year,

costing £250 at todays rate of 10p per kW

Generally solar panels cost about £3 a Watt

e.g a 100 Watt panel would cost £300

according to

Photovoltaic Geographical Information System - Interactive Maps

http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps3/pvest.php

I would need 3 kW in London costing £9,000 36 years to pay for itself

2.3 in South France costing £6,900 28 years

1.8 in Spain costing £5,400 22 years

1.3 in North Africa costing £3,900 16 years

plus the price of a few bits (eg inverters, batteries) and still not supplying enough power in winter.

Solar panels would have to come down to a sixth of the price, about 50p a Watt, to make the investment viable.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wind turbines would be a better solution for me

according to the

UK Wind Speed Database

http://www.bwea.com/noabl/

http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/sources/renewables/explained/wind/windspeed-database/page27326.html

my average windspeed is about 5.5 meters/second (12 mph)

The 2kw 48v &120v DC turbine for sale at

http://www.ukclimatecentre.co.uk/

would suit my needs , giving out 300Watts at 5.5 m/s (2600 kW per year)

costing about £2000 for the system, it would take 8 years to pay for itself.

Its really close though, because turbines dont much work under 5 m/s.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

see also

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/greener-power-to-the-people-the-real-energy-alternative-837821.html

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/what_can_i_do_today/energy_saving_grants_and_offers

I think you can get a grant of 30% of the install cost upto £2500

The Prof and Climate/Energy Scrap

The fear of Nuclear Power among your posters is surprising, considering the fact that your readers are supposed to be intelligent.

The French have 80% + of their electric power generated by Nuclear Power Stations.

They don't seem to have any problems- and I am sure that I would soon hear about any little hitch.

Sure Chernobyl in USSR was a disaster, as was almost everything in that mismanaged empire.

Tens of millions died in the time of the Communist Dictatorship of Uncle Joe, and his successors , with widespread pollution like no other nation (even China) have seen.

Down here in sunny New Zealand we have the coldest houses(uninsulated) in the world apparently, but we are now trying to improve. My house has underfloor insulation and a second lot of ceiling insulation installed. Paid for by an unusually enlightened Government. Got a modern electric hot water cylinder installed last year to replace the 1952 model! Very energy efficient now I understand.

When I moved into this house 40 years ago , I dug trenches and installed field tile drain around the house to keep it dry (clay soil),-less heat required.

Drive my car to town for shopping (about 2 mile trip) as arthritis makes pedal power a non starter.

I guess I am trying to say that I am doing my bit to save energy (the usual low energy light bulbs etc), just as some of you younger types

I don't however go in for the extreme things promoted by the Greenies (shows bias) like turning off the TV at the wall etc. With modern appliances , the standby power use is bugger all -my TV is less than 1watt.

Peace and Joy to you all. -Greenies and Nuke lovers.

Icon -Why not?

@Mark & Sam Tana

"We're about as densely populated as Sweden" - double the area of the UK and 15% of the population. Oh, and a lot of Sweden's power comes from hydroelectricity which (if you ignore minor details like building dams and flooding vegetation) can be presented as zero-carbon - not an option that's available in most of England at least.

"That's about 60 million miles. That's a lot of energy, not a little. Seems to me that if you can reasonably save energy, you should." If everyone in the UK saved 1kWh a year is that a lot of energy? It's over 200 TJ, which sounds like a lot, but it's 1/6000 of our total electricity output, so it might affect the fourth significant figure of our CO2 emissions. To quote Prof MacKay, this is "innumerate codswallop", I personally would use a pithier description.

I was urging people to read at least the first 100 pages of Prof MacKay's book, but I now see that some people can't even read three paragraphs of an Internet post.

@ Kevin Kitts

"However, nuclear is by far and away a bad, bad idea. I try to use my brain in my down-time to figure out how to bridge the gaps between conventional and quantum physics in order to try to create an insane idea for a better energy technology. However, so far I've had no luck. So, expect what you see coming. "

Oh no! If you can't come up with something then we're doomed, DOOMED!!

This "scientist" doesn't consider simply using less

Did you even read the article? It's explicitly stated several times that the calculations used depend on everyone using less energy.

@ Bruce Sinton

"Sure Chernobyl in USSR was a disaster, as was almost everything in that mismanaged empire."

That's what scares the sh1t out of most of us Brits.

Public services are falling apart, the transport system is slowly choking itself to death, the Government is completely incompetant, we can't even build a football stadium on time or to budget and it looks like we are going to have to start a massive Nuclear Reactor building program!!!

I assure you, we can teach the USSR a thing or two about incompetance.

The new Reactors will be built to the absolute minimum safety specification allowed, by the lowest bidder, by a poorly skilled workforce and while the jobsworths in charge argue about how much the door handles cost, no-one will notice that the trainee Latvian sparky was holding the wiring diagram upside down while he was fitting the safety control system.

We're screwed.

Flames, 'cos we're all going to burn.