Climate Change & Alternative Energy

[Midfielder]

Please please please watch and please please please share...

This vid is so detailed ... so so so full of information... 

In short Telsa have as their leading battery tech head a guy from a major university .... they have decided to share this information with the world...

Next time anyone asks for evidence on batteries send em this...

It is amazingly detailed if somewhat dry...

enjoy ... please share...

Tesla's Million Mile Battery ... vid is made by ColdFusion who are totally independent from Tesla... 

 

 

[Smoggy]

Some good news.? Ozone layer hole smallest in three decades....https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49965556 

This was the big climate subject when I was a kid at school in the 80's, we all got angry about CFC's.

Too early to say if this is because of the decrease in CFC's and international treaties.  

[Midfielder]

More than 11,000 scientists have united to deliver a grim warning about our future on earth unless drastic action is taken.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/11000-strong-coalition-calls-for-climate-emergency-declaration-to-transform-society-and-address-climate-change/news-story/40cbd8ecbb7346fe4dbe0fab74bbb27f

 

[Neverbloom]

18 minutes ago, Midfielder said:

More than 11,000 scientists have united to deliver a grim warning about our future on earth unless drastic action is taken.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/11000-strong-coalition-calls-for-climate-emergency-declaration-to-transform-society-and-address-climate-change/news-story/40cbd8ecbb7346fe4dbe0fab74bbb27f

 

i am sure scott morrison will listen.......

 

the state of affairs is very depressing

[Midfielder]

1 hour ago, Neverbloom said:

i am sure scott morrison will listen.......

 

 

To Alan Jones & Andrew Bolt .... 

[Midfielder]

 

[Midfielder]

MUST WATCH 

 

[Midfielder]

 

[Paul01]

Up yours Morrison and co

Renewable energy powers more than half of Australia's biggest energy grid for the first time http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/half-of-biggest-electricity-market-supplied-by-green-energy/11680766

 

[Midfielder]

1 hour ago, Paul01 said:

Up yours Morrison and co

Renewable energy powers more than half of Australia's biggest energy grid for the first time http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/half-of-biggest-electricity-market-supplied-by-green-energy/11680766

 

Great find

[sonar]

 

[lloydy136]

as I sit here this morning with bushfires in pretty much every direction it is just so demoralising that the government response so far has been....

'People seem to be angry about our lack of action over climate change - how can we stop them talking about this and making us look bad.'

I am reading this morning that the Morrison government has been sitting on a report about bushfire management for 7 months because it mentions climate change as a factor and they don't want it to reflect badly on them or the coal industry. This is while half the state burns.

We are never going to solve any problems as a country while we have no restrictions on lobbying/campaign donations, no federal ICAC and no truth in media laws.

[marron]

well said lloydy.

it's unbelievable.

actually scratch that, because, unfortunately it is not.

what is unbelievable is that people are still willing to go for the budget bogeyman anyway.

as much as this is going to be painful, I really hope that at the very least situations like what is happening right now are enough to make people demand change in a big way.

I am a little scared it won't be though.

I have my treasured possessions packed and ready to go. there's not many really. the scary thing is more, my place is in a relatively safe part of town based on all previous evidence; but all previous evidence counts for **** all.

hope everything goes okay up your way.

 

[wendybr]

On 10/10/2018 at 6:28 AM, Paul01 said:

You can also see the impact of NSW Treasury on electricity prices. They got their political masters (tail wagging the dog) to argue AGAINST THE RECOMMENDED 20% REDUCTION IN POWER prices last year RECOMMENDED by the Federal Energy Regulator in Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The ironic twist was that Sydney Trains contract with Origin Energy expired this year and Sydney Trains had their electricity prices rise by 40% in the new contract. 

If theoretically, I became Premier sometime in the next 6 months (never going to happen), I would sack the entire senior management of the NSW Treasury immediately and bring in people who would work for the NSW People instead of themselves.🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Rant over.

Good rant Paul!  

[wendybr]

3 hours ago, marron said:

well said lloydy.

it's unbelievable.

actually scratch that, because, unfortunately it is not.

what is unbelievable is that people are still willing to go for the budget bogeyman anyway.

as much as this is going to be painful, I really hope that at the very least situations like what is happening right now are enough to make people demand change in a big way.

I am a little scared it won't be though.

I have my treasured possessions packed and ready to go. there's not many really. the scary thing is more, my place is in a relatively safe part of town based on all previous evidence; but all previous evidence counts for **** all.

hope everything goes okay up your way.

 

And as devastating as these fires are for humans (and the drought as well), I actually cant stop thinking of what is probably billions of other creatures,  suffering and dying horribly.

No doubt, some will survive the ravages of the fire, only to starve to death because their habitat (and food supply) has been destroyed.

It's gut-wrenching.

 

[Midfielder]

Come on Scott put some money into this

 

[mack]

He's too busy putting money into his donor's hands.

[pseudonym]

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/volunteer/support-your-local-brigade

[Midfielder]

I am advised this place is doing good business and many people are making some reasonable coin .... if you are handy with your hands...

 

People are converting  cars to electric... you can buy kits etc... great to look around the site...

Enjoy.. go to some of the bloggs...

https://www.ozdiyelectricvehicles.com/kits-parts

 

[Davo]

These guys in California do similar work:

https://www.evwest.com/

They have a few projects where they've taken older cars like Kombis and early Prosches that are in good condition but the drivetrain is knackered and converted them to EV's.

[SBW]

On 09/10/2018 at 2:09 PM, hawks2767 said:

How about these Middy, no more ugly panels on your roof

https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/solarroof

 

 

I gotta wander, what happens if that house catches fire?

From what I have, firefighters have to take real pre-caution when dealing with Electric fire

[Smoggy]

Tomorrows forecast looks bleak..catastrophic fire warning out for Sydney and surrounding areas.

 

[marron]

Damn those woke greenies eh.

 

[hawks2767]

1 hour ago, SBW said:

I gotta wander, what happens if that house catches fire?

From what I have, firefighters have to take real pre-caution when dealing with Electric fire

They're just solar panels.

The only danger is the tesla battery in your garage and if that catches fire.

I'm looking at getting panels and 2 batteries mid next year, never have a power bill again.

[Jowel]

Well I guess Armageddon is tomorrow.

i’ll be At work. Hopefully I can come home at the end of the day to a house

i don’t wanna go through the events of 6 years ago again

[Midfielder]

On 11/11/2019 at 1:22 PM, SBW said:

I gotta wander, what happens if that house catches fire?

From what I have, firefighters have to take real pre-caution when dealing with Electric fire

Yep back a bit there are some vid links with Elon Musk describing them in detail

[Midfielder]

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/world-s-biggest-wind-farm-operator-makes-first-tilt-at-australia-20191114-p53aki.html

Iberdrola, the largest wind energy producer in the world, will make its debut in the Australian market with a $500 million hybrid solar and wind farm planned for South Australia.

The 320 megawatt plant, to be built near Adelaide, would be operational by 2021, and is part of a 650MW plan for wind and solar investments planned for South Australia and Queensland, the company said.

Xabier Viteri, Iberdrola's director of renewable energy, said that while clean energy had increased its share of the Australia market considerably there remains "tremendous potential for further growth".

"Like a lot of countries, we see increasing demand from the public and businesses for their energy to come from clean sources," he said. "When you have that demand, coupled with abundant natural resources for high-performance wind and solar, it creates a highly attractive market to invest in."

The company said it was aware of existing grid constraints in some parts of Australia following a rush of wind and solar projects in recent years at the Renewable Energy Target to 2020 gets fulfilled.

Under the plan, some 33,000 gigawatt-hours of new renewable energy - excluding for instance the original Snowy Hydro scheme - must be sourced from clean energy sources each year from the end of next year.

However, Iberdrola is confident there is sufficient capacity for the firm's initial pipeline of projects that will fall outside the RET, a spokesman said.

Spanish-based Iberdrola has operations in Spain, Germany, France, the UK, Portugal, the USA, Mexico and Brazil.

[Midfielder]

 

[Midfielder]

Amazing nay searching for words.... this is unbeliever able why this is not front page news ... or for that matter a leading article in the Climate Change debate ...

If you share nothing else read this BTW its mega long .... I will bold some of the key bits.

This would make a great school project 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/this-new-battery-aims-to-spark-a-carbon-capture-revolution

Renewable energy alone is not enough to turn the tide of the climate crisis. Despite the rapid expansion of wind, solar and other clean energy technologies, human behavior and consumption are flooding our skies with too much carbon, and simply supplanting fossil fuels won’t stop global warming. To make some realistic attempt at preventing a grim future, humans need to be able to physically remove carbon from the air.

That’s why carbon capture technology is slowly being integrated into energy and industrial facilities across the globe. Typically set up to collect carbon from an exhaust stream, this technology sops up greenhouse gases before they spread into Earth’s airways. But those industrial practices work because these factories produce gas pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane at high concentrations. Carbon capture can’t draw CO2 from regular open air, where the concentration of this prominent pollutant is too diffuse.

Moreover, the energy sector’s transition toward decarbonization is moving too slowly. It will take years — likely decades — before the world’s hundreds of CO2-emitting industrial plants adopt capture technology. Humans have pumped about 2,000 gigatonnes — billions of metric tons — of carbon dioxide into the air since industrialization, and there will be more.

But what if you could have a personal-sized carbon capture machine on your car, commercial airplane or solar-powered home?

Chemical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a new device that can remove carbon dioxide from the air at any concentration. Published in October in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the project is the latest bid to directly capture CO2 emissions and keep them from accelerating and worsening future climate disasters.

Think of the invention as a quasi-battery, in terms of its shape, its construction and how it works to collect carbon dioxide. You pump

“I realized there was a gap in the spectrum of solutions,” said Sahag Voskian, who co-led the project with fellow MIT chemical engineer T. Alan Hatton. “Many current systems, for instance, are very bulky and can only be used for large-scale power plants or industrial applications.”

Relative to current technology, this electroswing adsorber could be retrofitted onto smaller, mobile sources of emissions like autos and planes, the study states. Voskian also pictures the battery being scaled to plug into power plants powered by renewables, such as wind farms and solar fields, which are known to create more energy than they can store. Rather than lose this power, these renewable plants could set up a side hustle where their excess energy is used to capture carbon.

“That’s one of the nice aspects of this technology — is that direct linkage with renewables,” said Jennifer Wilcox, a chemical engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who was not involved in the study. 

Imagine turning the more than 2 million U.S. homes with rooftop solar into mini-carbon capture plants.

The advantage of an electricity-based system for carbon capture is that it scales linearly. If you need 10 times more capacity, you simply build 10 times more of these “electroswing batteries” and stack them, Voskian said.

electricity into the battery, and while the device stores this charge, a chemical reaction occurs that absorbs CO2 from the surro

He estimates that if you cover a football field with these devices in stacks that are tens of feet high, they could remove about 200,000 to 400,000 metric tons of CO2 a year. Build another 100,000 of these fields, and they could bring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back to preindustrial levels within 40 years.

One hundred thousand installations sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that these devices can be built to any size and run off the excess electricity created by renewables like wind and solar, which at the moment cannot be easily stored. Imagine turning the more than 2 million U.S. homes with rooftop solar into mini-carbon capture plants.

On paper, this invention sounds like a game changer. But it has a number of feasibility hurdles to surmount before it leaves the laboratory.

How this electroswing battery works

The idea of using electricity to trigger a chemical reaction — electrochemistry — as a means for capturing carbon dioxide isn’t new. It has been around for nearly 25 years, in fact.

unding atmosphere — a process known as direct air capture. The CO2 can be extracted by discharging the battery, releasing the gas, so the CO2 then can be pumped into the ground. The researchers describe this back-and-forth as electroswing adsorption.

But Voskian and Hatton have now added two special materials into the equation: quinone and carbon nanotubes.

A carbon nanotube is a human-made atom-sized cylinder — a sheet of carbon molecules spread into a single layer and wrapped up like a tube. Aside from being more than 100 times stronger than stainless steel or titanium, carbon nanotubes are excellent conductors of electricity, making them sturdy building blocks for electrified equipment.

Much like a regular battery, Voskian and Hatton’s device has a positive electrode and a negative electrode — “plus” and “minus” sides. But the minus side — the negative electrode — is infused with quinone, a chemical that, after being electrically charged, reacts and sticks to CO2. 

When you charge the battery, you have carbon capture. When you discharge it, you release the carbon that you captured.

“You can think of it like the charge and discharge of a battery,” Voskian said. “When you charge the battery, you have carbon capture. When you discharge it, you release the carbon that you captured.”

Their approach is unique because all the energy required for their direct air capture comes from electricity. The three major startups in this emerging space — Climeworks, Global Thermostat and Carbon Engineering — rely on a mixture of electric and thermal (heat) energy, Wilcox said, with thermal energy being the dominant factor.

For power plants and industrial facilities, that excess heat — or waste heat, a byproduct of their everyday work, isn’t a perfect fit for carbon capture. Waste heat isn’t very consistent. Imagine standing next to a fire — its warmth changes as the flames flit about.

This heat can come from carbon-friendly options — such as a hydrothermal plant — but some current startups are preparing their capture systems to run on thermal energy from fossil-fuel burning facilities. So they may capture 1.5 tons of CO2, but they also generate about a half ton in the process

In Voskian’s operation, “We don’t have any of that. We have full control over the energetics of our process,” he said.

Will it work?

Voskian and Hatton, who have launched a startup called Verdox, write in their study that operating electroswing carbon capture would cost between $50 to $100 per metric ton of CO2.

“If it’s true, that’s a great breakthrough,” said Richard Newell, president and CEO of Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research organization that develops energy and environmental policy on carbon capture. But, he cautioned, “the distance between showing something in the laboratory and then demonstrating it at a commercial scale is very big.

The costs for capturing carbon and storing it (or sequestration) typically fall into three bins: the price of physically capturing the gas, the price of transporting the CO2 to a disposal site and the price of burying it in the ground.

Direct air capture is the most expensive form of sequestration because CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are so low. “Recent estimates for direct air capture are in the range of $125 to $325 per ton,” Newell said.

It is cheaper to collect carbon in an industrial setting where the pollution is high. The most optimal locations are natural gas production sites, ethanol plants and ammonia factories, where the costs range from $20 to $30 per metric ton of CO2, Newell said. Head to a power plant or cement maker — where the facilities are bigger — and costs are $50 to $100 per metric ton.

All of this means the costs of Voskian and Hatton’s device would be on par with the cheapest options for carbon sequestration in general, not just among the market for direct air capture.

This price point for electroswing seems sensible but a little surprising, Wilcox said, given carbon nanotubes are two to 10 times more expensive than the base materials for other forms of direct air carbon capture.

She also worries that carbon capture technology for large industrial operations has reached a stage of development where it might be difficult to catch up to and outcompete them. She co-authored a report earlier this year with the National Academy of Sciences that predicts the price of direct air carbon capture will drop over time, but reach a competitive price point of $100 per metric ton of CO2 until the second half of the century, after significant deployment.

“Scale up will take time and learning by doing should help in cost reductions,” Wilcox said, adding that current direct air startups are also solidifying their positions in the market. “Climeworks is at a commercial scale. Global Thermostat and Carbon Engineering are just about there.”

Moreover, she questions the ease at which electroswing scrubbers could be adapted for transportation, contrasting the situation with catalytic converters used by cars to prevent nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution. An automobile’s catalytic converter reduces NOx emissions by turning the pollutant into non-harmful nitrogen and water vapor.

That strategy won’t work for CO2, given the end goal is burying it. If your car is burning fuel and capturing carbon from the tailpipe, the CO2 would need to be stored in a tank, which would quickly weigh down the vehicle. What would one do with compressed tanks of CO2?

“You’d have to establish a secondary market for taking CO2 tanks off people’s cars,” Wilcox said, which would be difficult given there isn’t much commercial demand for carbon dioxide.

All that said, Wilcox and Newell believe electroswing tech is an interesting new arena for carbon capture. Given nearly 40 billion metric tons of CO2 are still added to the atmosphere each year, any feasible solution for climate mediation deserves deployment, they said.

“We can’t meet our goals by just avoiding CO2. It’s not going to work anymore,” Wilcox said. “We need all hands on deck.”

 

 

[Paul01]

Battery expansion in South Australia 

Morrison likened it to the Big Banana, but South Australia's big battery is now getting big dollars http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-19/sa-big-battery-set-to-get-even-bigger/11716784