The Green Room

[Art Deco]

can't tell if serious or elaborate digital performance art piece.


There's worse places to live in Australia. Plenty of towns ran out of water completely last year. Some major centres came close. Plus at least there's no risk of bushfires!

It's on the long term plan to build in a little more resilience.. simple things like a drinkable rainwater tank and battery to go with the solar array. It's those short term utility disruptions I believe will be the immediate threats.

I have a deep water well, but it takes grid power to run it, so I asked my solar guy to come over and spec out a system just for that in addition to the grid based system shown earlier. Maybe just a pitcher pump will work.
I have an old 400 gallon rainwater filled pond full of weeds and frogs but with a 5 gal bucket it's good enough for keeping the toilets working. Water is easy to filter and treat.

 

[Art Deco]

Weather control begins in China ...just a short cnn piece, but impressive

China to expand weather modification program to cover area larger than India | CNN

China this week revealed plans to drastically expand an experimental weather modification program to cover an area of over 5.5 million square kilometers (2.1 million square miles) -- more than 1.5 times the total size of India.

www.cnn.com

 

[Art Deco]

Some cities in the USA that are making real progress on the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy. Some are home to EBR members. Way to go guys.

These 10 Cities Are Embracing 100% Renewable Energy

St. Louis, Orlando and Minneapolis are featured in a new Sierra Club report on the growing number of American cities rejecting fossil fuels.

www.treehugger.com

 

[Art Deco]

Ireland leaving burning peat behind? Hope they keep enough to flavor my whiskey ...

How Ireland is abandoning its dirty fuel

Peat bogs have played historic role in Ireland’s economy and culture, but this high-carbon fuel is in fast decline. How will Ireland’s peat-reliant regions adapt?

www.bbc.com

 

[Art Deco]

Some like it hot . This solar tech uses AI to focus mirrors.

Introducing the World's First Sunlight Refinery™ – Green Hydrogen - Heliogen

Heliogen has developed a green hydrogen and 24/7 electricity plant that transforms sunlight into clean, transportable, on-demand energy.

heliogen.com

 

[Art Deco]

Christmas gifts? Only homemade cookies, thank you.

Of Two Minds - Dreaming of a Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants or Needs

www.oftwominds.com

Or perhaps something used?

Patagonia Now Sells Used Clothing Alongside New

Outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia has added a "buy used" option to its website, making it easy for shoppers to buy secondhand.

www.treehugger.com

 

[Art Deco]

For first time in years, chinook salmon spawn in upper Columbia River system

The news is a step toward full reintroduction of the migratory fish and another watershed cultural moment for the region’s tribes.

www.oregonlive.com

I have never been there, but this sounds like it might be a big deal. Incidentally, my Pennsylvania fishing liscence still comes with a warning to not eat more than 2 or 3 fish from the river a year.

 

[Art Deco]

Following the money from fossil fuels..

'These Two Things Are Related': As Big Oil Ups Donations to Dems, Biden Says Fossil Fuel Ban This Decade 'Not Possible'

"Yes it is. And we're going to do it," countered Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media.

www.commondreams.org

 

[Dallant]

Washington is a beautiful state and the salmon/dam relationship is a very complicated one. I produced/filmed video segments on environmental research done in cooperation with the tribes, state biologists, and government researchers. Did videos on salmon, deer, elk, bird migration, eagles, etc. miss those days, the land, the animals and the folks I got to work with.

 

[Art Deco]

I have Washington State and the California coast both on my bucket list, but I'm not willing to fly anymore, so I have to go overland in the van and really spend some time there.
My visits to the "left coast" have all been via airports, identical hotels, and going straight to whatever destination I was heading for, and fly back. Not a big improvement over watching the discovery channel, TBH.

Speaking of watching are any of those videos available online? I'd like a link, please.

 

[Dallant]

I have Washington State and the California coast both on my bucket list, but I'm not willing to fly anymore, so I have to go overland in the van and really spend some time there.
My visits to the "left coast" have all been via airports, identical hotels, and going straight to whatever destination I was heading for, and fly back. Not a big improvement over watching the discovery channel, TBH.

Speaking of watching are any of those videos available online? I'd like a link, please.

I wouldn’t have a clue where they would be as all of it was done well before the internet and they weren’t widely available. A number of them were done to help gain federal funding for the research so it’s not like they were done for tv. I may have a vhs copy of one or two of them somewhere though I don’t think I even have a working vhs player anymore.

 

[Art Deco]

Yeah. My VHS player dates to before the net. It still worked when I took it down to the pile in the basement closet.

 

[Sierratim]

Yeah. My VHS player dates to before the net. It still worked when I took it down to the pile in the basement closet.

We use our old VHS player to play the movies our kids liked to watch for the grandkids.

A form of recycling I suppose!

 

[Art Deco]

I still have a few shelves of VHS movies in the basement. With an inch of dust on them by now. My grandsons prefer games on a tablet.

 

[Sierratim]

'Green' power has a storage challenge. Northern California's biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has long made hydro a centerpiece of their generating system. Pumped storage, where excess power (at night normally) is used to pump water back into higher elevation reservoirs has long been a part of this system. Hydro does not have a big expansion opportunity on the US West coast. Elon Musk wants to address this with batteries, BIG batteries. A couple of other companies have another idea;

Gravity Energy Storage Will Show Its Potential in 2021

Gravitricity and Energy Vault are pioneering a radical new alternative to batteries for grid storage

spectrum.ieee.org

Just some food for thought about our energy future.

 

[Handlebars]

Here in Australia we just passed the tipping point in favour of new renewable + battery storage farms versus new coal plants. South Australia is well on its way to hitting its 100% renewable target, and their Tesla battery - the big one - is doing wonders to balance grid fluctuations.

Industry following the money will dramatically change the face of energy generation here in the years ahead as our aging coal plants reach end of life one by one. I just wish our conservative government would be a bit truer to their fiscally rationalist roots and quit subsidising a losing horse.

The shift - when it comes - will have a big impact locally. My home town is the largest exporter of coal in the world. 5% of jobs in the Hunter Valley are connected to coal mining - much more in some towns - and the royalties contribute 2% to the state budget.

It will be a painful transition, and one we should already have begun preparing for years ago with the evidence as it stands. Newcastle has done it before when our steelworks closed down, sending thousands out of work. We survived, and almost two decades on the city is more vibrant for it. It won't be fun, it'll hurt, but fear of transitioning will cause us to lose a lot of opportunities in the booming renewable and bio manufacturing space.

Coal is beautiful though. We need it for very many things. Most would not be here but for coal. https://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-coal

Carbon fibre - an extremely strong but light weight reinforcement material used in construction, mountain bikes and tennis rackets.

Anything can get out of hand, and that's just exactly what humans do. Make people feel good about themselves to use an alternate form of energy and they certainly will!
Imagine very low cost "clean" energy, and what incredible destruction would ensue.

 

[pmcdonald]

Speaking of storage challenge (though not specifically green storage in this case) this announcement from my little corner of the world made some headlines this week:

Quoting from this news article:

An energy provider's plan to build Australia's largest battery is the latest development in a quickly transitioning energy market.

Origin Energy has unveiled plans to build a giant 700-megawatt capacity battery at its coal-fired power plant in Eraring, south of Newcastle, in the New South Wales Hunter region.

Origin's proposed 700MW battery, and Neoen's 500MW battery in western NSW, will be the two largest storage devices in the world, and will be worth a combined $1 billion.

The plan is to feed the battery with the existing coal power plant, transitioning to storage and load distribution once the power plant reaches end of life in a decade.

It's a fast changing space here in Australia. Investment in green energy is charging ahead, despite mixed messages and a lack of incentives at the Federal level. The rationale I read is a reduced appetite for money lenders to invest in new fossil fuel projects, the cost effectiveness of new renewable versus fossil fuel projects, and plummeting confidence in existing fossil fuel investments.

The proto-battery facility in South Australia, the largest in the world at the time of completion, has proven its worth in the three years since. It has more than paid for itself in energy savings to consumers, and absorbed fluctuations in the grid avoiding regular summertime brown- and blackouts.

 

[Art Deco]

'Green' power has a storage challenge. Northern California's biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has long made hydro a centerpiece of their generating system. Pumped storage, where excess power (at night normally) is used to pump water back into higher elevation reservoirs has long been a part of this system. Hydro does not have a big expansion opportunity on the US West coast. Elon Musk wants to address this with batteries, BIG batteries. A couple of other companies have another idea;

Gravity Energy Storage Will Show Its Potential in 2021

Gravitricity and Energy Vault are pioneering a radical new alternative to batteries for grid storage

spectrum.ieee.org

Just some food for thought about our energy future.

Missed this post ... got caught up in following the red hats vs blue masks blaming each other lately. However, lifting a heavy weight to store power for later use makes perfect sense. I didn't know that anything other than water pumping was in use. A good find @Sierratim.

 

[BarryS]

LOL Green Energy ?? Has anyone considered that emission will increase with more batteries? Solar and Wind are not sufficient . Lets face it if as usual Green energy was about conservation instead of Making Money for themselves . We'd be looking seriously at Nuclear .
Batteries increase Emissions . Not their use but how they are currently produced . And all of this is based on some basic lie that C02 is a Problem. Who wants to step to the front of the line and sacrifice themselves for the climate ? LOL

 

[Handlebars]

LOL Green Energy ?? Has anyone considered that emission will increase with more batteries? Solar and Wind are not sufficient . Lets face it if as usual Green energy was about conservation instead of Making Money for themselves . We'd be looking seriously at Nuclear .
Batteries increase Emissions . Not their use but how they are currently produced . And all of this is based on some basic lie that C02 is a Problem. Who wants to step to the front of the line and sacrifice themselves for the climate ? LOL

At least one UN scientific climate scare supporter has sacrificed taking showers and goes stinky as he flies and limo rides to hobnob at the expensive upper-class events.