ian's Comments

As I understand it CSP with molten salt tanks allows solar to extend in to the night peak period , and might be able to extend to overnight EV charging. Since it has different delivery aspects to PV and can help balance grid demand it seems like we need it. I guess the rich companies will get richer and some desert will get covered but it seems less onerous than the whole scale destruction of the fossil and nuclear industry.

Its not PV or CSP, its about how much of each work best together with wind.

Corn ethanol is reported to have a lousy EROI

If EROI less than 1 ( as I suspect ) don't bother to build a pipeline to help the industry destroy more energy.
if EROI greater than 1 - use it in 100% ethanol vehicles ( bought from Brazil if the US cant make them) local to the producers and save the pipeline money. You get the same savings in carbon emissions from 1 100% vehicle as from 10 10% vehicles.
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Do utilities consider future fuel prices over the 30 year period of installation. If for example nuclear or gas or coal become in short supply there is the possibilty that the plant may have to be closed down early and thus significantly increase the cost of financing capital.

Is this ignored , if not how do they handle it.

Stupid question- can someone explain why the cooling water isnt recycled- why do you need to use lots of enrgy desalinating?

The UK has separated grid operations commercially from electricity production and retailing. This structure should allow for additional sources to be handled structurally...although the grid operators need to be a lot smarter about how they are going to do it!

Marine Current turbines in the UK http://www.marineturbines.com/ has been running a 1+ Mw dual turbine system off the north coast of ireland for nearly a year now, generating to the grid. Previously it ran a smaller one off the coast of Devon for a few years. I don't know anything about the costs etc but it should be included in such a review.Presumably they know a lot about the problems referred to above.

could a staff writer do a survey of this field. Every time I pass a coal fired power station I see great plumes of steam coming out - obviously this is lower grade heat and thus of less utility but how much really can be utilised?

The main piece above is inspiring but not informative.

This discussion as usual is confused because of where you decide to put boundaries around costs of various options, as well as a lack of derivation in the figures. May I suggest http://www.withouthotair.com/ as a source to help out. It's UK centric but its ballpark estimates are all given with sources and derivation, and for the more mathematically inclined each chapter is paralleled by another with the full story . Its a great education and a great antidote to lobby group figures on both sides.
It makes it clear that 1. fixing the transition to renewables will involve serious money...but less than saving the banks 2. It's a massive engineering project which will change the face of the country ( like the industrial revolution , or the US rollout of grid electricity and roads last century).

It is something that has to happen, and most importantly while we still have spare fossil energy to build the huge amounts of steel and concrete we need to jump start renewables. Leave the transition too late and it becomes energetically impossible. as we drop into the energy chasm.

Once the US got out there an built things. Now it spends its seed money on consultants writing reports on frameworks for enabling other people to do things. Sheesh.

China is the new US : brash, can do , makes a lot of mess on the way but makes things happen.

Come on US, we look to you for leadership and action . Dont let us all down.

could someone explain why steg , with no fuel costs , is so much more expensive than coal and whether these additional costs are going away with technology advances?

The battery life issue might be solved if one rented the battery rather than buying it. This ensures that the renting company will use smart batteries that manage their cycles for extended life, that batteries are completely reprocessed at end of life ( critical for lead for pollution , and for lithium since the will be a world shortage of the metal). It will also make technology transitions easier as rental agencies will want standard fixings, and focus on advanced batteries as a commercial unit rather than a component...so we should get ultra capacitor battery combos providing good peak discharge with long life.

can I add my request for a balanced article on the pros and cons of Hydrogen as an energy transfer medium for vehicles compared with electrons and a liquid carrier such as methanol . The problems are obvious ( eg climate effects of escaped hydrogen, technology costs, eroie ) but does the historical rate of progress in solving these problems( after all we have over 30 years of evidence of the technology curve) mean we will get realistic competitive products on the streets within the next ten years?

Having looked at the backgrounders on the MIT site , it is clear that the research group is actually looking at the underlying processes in photosynthetic type reactions..basically the neat way that it ships naked electrons and protons around the structures.

I cant see how they got from there to a more efficient electrode for producing oxygen which is the actual advance but perhaps the actual paper in Science will reveal this as will the inevitable papers by other researchers in the field.

If they can also apply their approach to generating hydrogen, chlorine etc it will be very interesting and this certainly justifies basic research money

However the journalistic claims seem to be way over the top. Its a small contribution to an overall process folks. Celebrate it but don't go mad!

1. I'm pretty sure that its an onshore project looking at a map.
2. Projects in the US possibly look cheaper because the dollar has dropped so much with respect to the pound? What is important is the local cost relative to competitors...still I wish it were cheaper we could have more!

While agreeing that bigger is better, and that casting a blade in a built up area is dangerous, we should not assume that the traditional three blade design is the one for this case. In finland vertical axis turbines ( look a bit like a barbers pole) can be used in areas where wind is gusty and changes direction rapidly ( ie at the edge of forests and near buildings) and have different noise and safety characteristics. Relatively little r&d has gone into them but they remain a possibility so lets not write the possibility off yet.