How good is alternate energy?

[shelkol]

In the long run, energy derived by wind and solar uses less coal, oil, and natural gas making what we have on this planet to last longer

 

[sheepfarmer]

And that chillins brings us back to coal, oil and gas fired generators

Or better, using all of them in a balanced way to get the best out of each method. Trouble is power and money direct the policies in anything but a balanced way. Coal oil, solar, turbine, and gas companies have execs saying never mind the future, I want as much for ME as possible NOW.

 

[skeets]

And that sheepfarmer is the bottom line, follow the money

 

[34by151]

I invested in off-grid power for my farm 2 years ago.

Now Im in Austraila and the economics may be different here as I think we pay a lot more for power.

I have 30kw of solar and 44kwh of Lifpo4 storage plus an autostart backup diesel genset.
Compared to my old power bill and including power exports the system will be payed off next year from savings alone. Another 2 years of savings pay for battery and pannel replacement at the 10-15 year mark. giving 5 years of free power.

I have never needed the genset and only keep the grid connection to make money from it.
The system generates all the power for the hose and sheds which is 3 phase 415v (240v per phase)

Im no greennie or doomsday prepper. I did it because it makes me money.
As power prices go up and battery/solar comes down I make more.
The more the farm can generate income the better off my family is, simple as that.

I look at it the same way as buying any new equipment, how musch does it cost to buy and run, vs how much will it make me.

BTW Im in no hurry to trade in my Supercharged V8 or drive an electric car.

Just my 2 cents worth, each to there own

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Pretty sure being 'down under' you get a LOT more sunshine and a LESS snow/ice/cloudy days than me in Southern Ontario. Even though prices for equipment have come down a lot, it's the lack of sunshine that prevent me from going solar. I'll be dead and buried before a solar 'system' would pay for itself. Same hold true for geothermal..THAt I'd love to have but not enough time to enjoy it.

 

[D2Cat]

I was watching a show on "Create" and they show some products that oil is use in. It's a LONG list. Televisions are 40% oil derivative. Make up, aspirin, medicines, tires, asphalt and so many components we use every day.

I think getting the population off of the use of oil would be like taking away cell phones, tablets, etc. Hard to deal with addicts! The spigot can not be shut off, it has to be turned down and replace with something does the job as well or better.

 

[sheepfarmer]

Pretty sure being 'down under' you get a LOT more sunshine and a LESS snow/ice/cloudy days than me in Southern Ontario. Even though prices for equipment have come down a lot, it's the lack of sunshine that prevent me from going solar. I'll be dead and buried before a solar 'system' would pay for itself. Same hold true for geothermal..THAt I'd love to have but not enough time to enjoy it.

Keep an eye on costs, you sound capable of doing a major chunk of the installation yourself. Unlike in Australia, the heating costs and the lack of sunshine in the winter put us northerners pretty much dependent on the grid part of the year. But if you are allowed to bank kWh with your local utility, and if there are any tax “rebates” it becomes more feasible. Canada makes good solar panels. I was supposed to get some, but my installer pulled a bait and switch on me as they were in short supply, so I ended up with some Chinese ones, which I didn’t discover until after they were installed.

 

[random]

I was watching a show on "Create" and they show some products that oil is use in. It's a LONG list. Televisions are 40% oil derivative. Make up, aspirin, medicines, tires, asphalt and so many components we use every day.

I think the average person has absolutely no idea just how much of our modern life is directly due to oil-based production. I doubt most of them would WANT to know.

 

[34by151]

Pretty sure being 'down under' you get a LOT more sunshine and a LESS snow/ice/cloudy days than me in Southern Ontario. Even though prices for equipment have come down a lot, it's the lack of sunshine that prevent me from going solar. I'll be dead and buried before a solar 'system' would pay for itself. Same hold true for geothermal..THAt I'd love to have but not enough time to enjoy it.

Being sub troipcal we dont get snow. The lowest temps are around 3 deg C. Howevwer the opposite is also true we have a lot more heat requiring more cooling. 2/3 of the year we are running central A/C. I also have AC collers in the work shed. I'd guess your heating is not electric where our cooling as is are water heater and pool. Id also guess out power use is much larger than the diference in the amount of sun.

The biggest barrier here is the power export. We pay aprox 5 times more for imported power that we get paid for export. Sales Tax (GST) is also applied to imports and not credited on exports.

The key is to have enough battery to cover your night use. Solar is cheep and battery is expensive aprox 3:1 in price. So Lots of solar and just enough battery. I sizedmy solar to grarantee we got a full charge even in a cyclone. The up side is most of the day we get paid (not well) to export power. Thats a byproduct of specing more pannels to cover cyclone events. The old way of specing a battery was "3 days of autonomy" and minimal solar. The way to go now is "16 hours of autonomy" and solar at a min twice that storage number.

Look at it another way. Doing this stuff is like a futures contract on your crop. All we are doing is locking in our costs where we know costs are going up and never down, which from our thinking is a good thing.

 

[007kubotaguy]

Here in the great state of California were we have so many regulations we are turning livestock manure into energy. I take care of 3 sites for a company the operates 22 methane digesters on dairies in California. The methane is captured under a cover over the manure ponds and piped to the engines. The engine are intended for natural gas use. They have a few modifications to run on the methane. They burn very clean and have smog checks every 2 years. They have a urea injection system. Power that is produced is sold right back to the utility company. It's a win-win for everybody. The dairy does not get penalized for emitting methane gas into the ozone. And truly is a renewable resource.

 

[Geoz67]

Our family lives in Tasmania and we're currently building on a 20ha block - hence the L4300 and the U17, I have no idea how we would do all the work without those tools. Tassie doesn't get as hot as the rest of Australia but being in the NE of the state our climate is warmer and dryer than the rest of Tassie.

Similar to what 34by151 wrote above, we have recently installed an 18kW system and a 15kWh LiPoFe battery, which is currently only powering the shed. We have an option (and quite possibly the need) to expand both once the house is built. We will live fully off-grid since there was no power connection to the block when we bought it and building one would have cost as much as building our PV system - pretty much a no brainer since from now on we don't pay anyone for our power and don't pay to support the infrastructure either, which tends to be about half the power bill for us.
The downside is that we can't export to the grid but given the prices paid for surplus energy are ridiculously low I don't really mind that.
The key concern is that in Tassie in winter the sun is relatively low and the days are short, reducing the real output to less than a third of the nominal performance in winter. To balance that the house will be build as energy efficiently as possible, solar passive etc and a massive wood heater (we have a lot of gum trees on our block).

The one thing I'd add is I actually can't wait to get an EV. I found one that does pretty much everything I want from a car and we'll be able to charge it from our PV system - free fuel! Did I mention it has about 800 bhp through 4 motors and an insane amount of torque? The only issue is they are only just starting to roll it out in the US and I expect it will take another 3-4 years to get released here. I hope the Disco will live long enough so we don't need to buy another vehicle.

 

[BruceP]

Solar and wind both need serious backup for when they are unable to produce, or are producing below max.

This was one of my main points.... STORAGE to supply power during low-generation periods. There needs to be some kind of breakthrough before batteries will suffice. lets never forget that batteries are a CHEMICAL REACTION. By its very definition, batteries are hazzardous.

We need to think outside the box to store energy.
*) A hybred of gyroscopes and supercapacitors
*) Pumping water uphill INTO a hydroelectric dam
*) Molton sodium to store as heat.
*) ..... other..... ?

 

[Oliver]

This was one of my main points.... STORAGE to supply power during low-generation periods. There needs to be some kind of breakthrough before batteries will suffice....

We need to think outside the box to store energy.
*) A hybred of gyroscopes and supercapacitors
*) Pumping water uphill INTO a hydroelectric dam
*) Molton sodium to store as heat.
*) ..... other..... ?

Making hydrogen (and oxygen) from water and surplus electricity, then storing the hydrogen to be used when required to run gas fired turbines. Mitsubishi is doing this now.

(Pumping water uphill INTO a hydroelectric dam has been done for years)

 

[Steppenwolfe]

I think the average person has absolutely no idea just how much of our modern life is directly due to oil-based production. I doubt most of them would WANT to know.

That would be the same people who don't know Chick-fil-e chicken sammich's are made from CHICKEN... Or that a quarter pounder is a COW....

 

[Orange man hero]

View attachment 56094

AE is the same scam as Covid....control!!!!!!!!!

 

[lugbolt]

wind and solar

the wind never blows here in the summer but the sun shines during the day. It's still hot at night and the sun don't shine at night so then what? No wind, no solar. Those batteries only run air conditioners for so long.

neither is a viable, reliable option here in the mid south.

so that leaves hydro and nuke. Nuke has it's own challenges, and it uses oil (diesel) to truck the fuel in, transport the fuel to where it needs to be within the "plant", then remove the spent fuel, etc. Hydro? Only works on certain areas of certain rivers.

simply put the technology is NOT there for alternative sources, at this time.

 

[random]

Why can't we just use dilithium crystals?

 

[Magicman]

Methane (LINK)

 

[GreensvilleJay]

re: Making hydrogen (and oxygen) from water and surplus electricity,
yes BUT it requires MORE energy to break down H2O into H and O than you can get from using the H and O....

one of those nasty Physics laws.....

 

[BigG]

Methane (LINK)

How does a cow produce "300 liters or 80 gallons" of methane a day?

The last time I checked by definition a gas (methane) fills the container that it is enclosed in.

So if I hook a cow up a 500 gallon tank it will make 500 gallons of methane?

If that is the case I want a methane fueled truck.