The transition

Art Deco said:
I studied the Luddites years ago. They were trying to protect themselves, their jobs, their families. Doesn't seem to apply to today's "haters " ... personal transportation isn't under threat, and what powers the cars and trucks is irrelevant
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I've read that the Luddites didn't object to the new tech, they just wanted a piece of the improved production and profit. Of course the mill owners said "Forget it."
 
Indeed. We saw that happening with the actors / writers strike regarding A.I. scraping "content " ... automatic plagiarizing.
 
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
 
Art Deco said:
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
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Current "AI" tech is dreadfully inefficient. They train inefficiently, they discover very inefficient representations of their training data, and their run-time costs are ridiculously inefficient for how much actual work they are doing.

They are nowhere near human capabilities, and in spite of what the hype-mongers and fear-mongers are spraying all over the interwebs, there is no clear path from what we have today to any system with capabilities comparable to humans. Bluntly there is complex emergent behavior in bumblebees that neural networks cannot adequately model.

None of that is to say that there aren't useful and valuable applications. And underneath the hype at the very high end there are lighter weight open source models that give roughly ninety percent of the performance with less than one percent of the footprint (in terms of training cost, memory, and power consumption). My own research and experimentation indicates that footprint reductions of a factor of a million are indeed possible -- and that shouldn't be surprising because bumblebees don't consume that much power.
 
And as far as the economics of the EV transition, Ford doesn't seem impressed ... almost a $50,000 loss per vehicle...
substack.com

Ford's EV Bloodbath Continues

FoMoCo lost $47,585 for each EV sold in Q2, GE Vernova calls failure of offshore blade a “manufacturing deviation”
substack.com substack.com
 
Art Deco said:
A.I. ( especially self driving cars and trucks) is another huge part of the transition that we aren't really ready for, but is happening now. Think about the amount of battery power needed for an A.I. based city to run for three or four days of no grid power . :eek:
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1mw chargers for semi trucks.
There are 4m of them in the US.
Do the math.
 
Solar or wind plus battery storage is like the new plastic ... soon enough to be found everywhere ...
and most of that power will end up wasted, just like most of today's power is wasted on trivial uses. See @Mr. Coffee post above about A.I., but energy waste is everywhere in the cities, and growing ethanol on our farmland .. another big waste. Bah.
 
I've heard of farmers over here that overbuilt arrays expecting to sell excess to rhe grid getting less money than expected and turning to bitcoin mining to make up the shortfall. Yeah, that helps the climate...
 
I havent got a degree, but I do have an HND in electronic principles and 20 years experience installing telephone exchanges, 100 thousand amp busbars, 1000 amp explosive fuses, mechanical, reed and digital telecoms tech.

Ive also been a solar and wind amateur enthusiast for 50 years.

Theres no magic, solar and wind makes the power it does, but the reality of its limitations is being ignored for political agenda.

We can build a turbine and solar grid, but only with central control of usage, sharing consumer battery tech and rationing of consumption.

This still leaves 80% fossil use and 90% during the long winters.

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
 
Art Deco said:
Solar or wind plus battery storage is like the new plastic ... soon enough to be found everywhere ...
and most of that power will end up wasted, just like most of today's power is wasted on trivial uses. See @Mr. Coffee post above about A.I., but energy waste is everywhere in the cities, and growing ethanol on our farmland .. another big waste. Bah.
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they are going to raise corn no matter what,so i guess it would be better better utilized as motor fuel than the people killing corn sweetner.
 
Chargeride said:
I havent got a degree, but I do have an HND in electronic principles and 20 years experience installing telephone exchanges, 100 thousand amp busbars, 1000 amp explosive fuses, mechanical, reed and digital telecoms tech.

Ive also been a solar and wind amateur enthusiast for 50 years.

Theres no magic, solar and wind makes the power it does, but the reality of its limitations is being ignored for political agenda.

We can build a turbine and solar grid, but only with central control of usage, sharing consumer battery tech and rationing of consumption.

This still leaves 80% fossil use and 90% during the long winters.

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
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as well as food
 
kevinmccune said:
they are going to raise corn no matter what,so i guess it would be better better utilized as motor fuel than the people killing corn sweetner.
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Exactly. But "they" are not interested in raising that labor intensive organic sweet corn for people ... especially if there are subsidies available for ethanol.
 
Chargeride said:
I havent got a degree, but I do have an HND in electronic principles and 20 years experience installing telephone exchanges, 100 thousand amp busbars, 1000 amp explosive fuses, mechanical, reed and digital telecoms tech.

Ive also been a solar and wind amateur enthusiast for 50 years.

Theres no magic, solar and wind makes the power it does, but the reality of its limitations is being ignored for political agenda.

We can build a turbine and solar grid, but only with central control of usage, sharing consumer battery tech and rationing of consumption.

This still leaves 80% fossil use and 90% during the long winters.

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
Click to expand...
Indeed. I am also a solar enthusiast, but the first thing you need to do in any home PV install is cut consumption first. That's true for the whole society.
 
Chargeride said:
...

We would need another planet to provide first world consumption to 8 billion humans using wind and solar.
Click to expand...

not even remotely true; the solar and wind footprint required is actually very small, far less than the amount of the world we've already paved over.

here's an interesting study on the subject. you can quibble with elements of the methodology but the orders of magnitude are clear.


what we need to continue making renewables a larger part of the energy solution is a better grid and more/better storage. these are not "if" problems, they're when problems. they will be figured out just as surely as we figured out an infrastructure to power a couple billion two ton vehicles roaming around the planet every day. but hopefully the new version won't destroy that same planet.
 
mschwett said:
not even remotely true; the solar and wind footprint required is actually very small, far less than the amount of the world we've already paved over.

here's an interesting study on the subject. you can quibble with elements of the methodology but the orders of magnitude are clear.


what we need to continue making renewables a larger part of the energy solution is a better grid and more/better storage. these are not "if" problems, they're when problems. they will be figured out just as surely as we figured out an infrastructure to power a couple billion two ton vehicles roaming around the planet every day. but hopefully the new version won't destroy that same planet.
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Another way is to install many small scale facilities that each service a small area. That would make the integrity of a massive grid less critical. Sabotage or natural disasters, such a hurricanes show the vulnerability of the system. Look at Texas, and their messed up power system. Anyhow, transmitting lots of power over great distances is highly inefficient. That's why the huge power lines you see carry such high voltages.
 
To even provide the next 25 years increase in world energy demand....just the increase... using wind... would require an offshore windfarm the size of Russia.

Just the increase.

People often purposely grey the area between electric energy and total usage.

In the UK the grid is only 18% of our energy usage, if 8 billion people started using power like the west does, we would need another planet to provide that total power from renewables.

You need a factor of at least 4X to provide energy over the year and the cabling alone would require us to capture an asteroid for materials.
 
Kayakguy said:
Another way is to install many small scale facilities that each service a small area. That would make the integrity of a massive grid less critical. Sabotage or natural disasters, such a hurricanes show the vulnerability of the system. Look at Texas, and their messed up power system. Anyhow, transmitting lots of power over great distances is highly inefficient. That's why the huge power lines you see carry such high voltages.
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theres a lot that can be done,what we really need is a decentralized mix,with a total wipeout of the current grid,the cost of lives and suffering would be immense.
 
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