Thread: energy sources

Thanks for that Bob>

I agree with your rant wholeheartedly.

Jst trot off to Turkey and Spain and see the use of solar heating there!

PV panels are mandated in Spain and there is no gubment subsidy!!

I have a very efficient , and almost new, Saxon hot water system, but i am still looking at solar.

Originally Posted by

PS. Keep climate change and global warming out of this thread. It is about alternate energy sources.

Well it is now. My origional post was about the total world energy requirments going forward.

citybook: It isn't a simple problem, which is why no one can offer nice neat answers to the many questions about climate and the effect of human activity. A big sudden release of methane may create a short term upswing in troposphere temps but other stuff will then happen to affect the longer term. EVERY question and EVERY issue in climate science is immensly complex and interlinked. There are already several threads on here where the issues was discussed. You could awaken one of those if you wish but I suggest you read over the old posts first.

Also I'd like to add to the praise of the idea about mandating north facing roof areas. Really good idea that. And thank you for the link to the solar projects.

The idea of north facing roof areas has played on my mind for many years.

It would seem obvious to all but the foolish that this is a great strategy. Not only do you gain access to FREE sunshine for heat and electricity but your house will be correctly oriented in terms of heat absorbtion as a means of heating in winter. With proper eaves and no windows in either western or eastern walls you also avoid excess heat absorbtion through these aspects in summer.

Of course this would require drastic rethinking on the part of all levels of government and town planners. More attention would need to be paid to street layouts so that the possibility for north facing roof areas exists with all houses, factories and shopping areas.

Solar powered fans could shift air around for heating and cooling at no cost other than for the initial outlay.

Resorting to strategies such as narrow distances between buildings also provides shade for walls and helps to keep buildings cool.

Building from Rammed earth is also a very effective means of cutting down on heating and cooling costs. Also a 12sqaure house can be built from the amount of soil excated from the floor area of the house to a depth of about 300mm. Added benefits of this type of dwelling are fire resistence and termite resistence.

I digress, but I think it is a worthy digression.

Originally Posted by artme

The idea of north facing roof areas has played on my mind for many years.

It would seem obvious to all but the foolish that this is a great strategy. Not only do you gain access to FREE sunshine for heat and electricity but your house will be correctly oriented in terms of heat absorbtion as a means of heating in winter. With proper eaves and no windows in either western or eastern walls you also avoid excess heat absorbtion through these aspects in summer.

This is what used to be called "passive solar." Maybe it still is.

Of course this would require drastic rethinking on the part of all levels of government and town planners. More attention would need to be paid to street layouts so that the possibility for north facing roof areas exists with all houses, factories and shopping areas.

This is a difficult one as effectively streets have to face exactly north south or east west. In practical terms only half the streets can face east west, which gives the best aspect. Until people can get their heads around the front of the house not facing the street we will not see houses that lend themselves to sustainability. (The north south streets would tend to have a blank wall facing the street. Poor street appeal?

Solar powered fans could shift air around for heating and cooling at no cost other than for the initial outlay.

Resorting to strategies such as narrow distances between buildings also provides shade for walls and helps to keep buildings cool.

Building from Rammed earth is also a very effective means of cutting down on heating and cooling costs. Also a 12sqaure house can be built from the amount of soil excated from the floor area of the house to a depth of about 300mm. Added benefits of this type of dwelling are fire resistence and termite resistence.

OK more passive solar stuff. Some of the possibilties include:

Adobe (mud brick)
Pise (Rammed earth)
Straw Bale
Earth Bermed (Earth to the windowsills)
Earth Sheltered (Think cave)

Unfortunately none one of these are well received in your average sub-division with spec-built homes. I know of an instance where a timber kit home was put up in a sub division and all the other owners (brick veneer) in the street complained. Such was the narrowmindedness. Can you imagine if a mud brick home was errected. Apoplexy overload. The hospital would have been unable to cope .


I digress, but I think it is a worthy digression.

What's that noise?

It's OK: Only sharpening his double bladed axe.

Regards
Paul

Your assuming heat absorbsion and insulation are good things.

I remember vividly when I was a kid my parents built a new house. Some years later they got insulation installed. The effect was immediate and tremendous. In winter the house would stay freezing until 11 am and in summer it'd stay unbearably hot until very late at night.

Most of those building methods create thermal lag but also signifigant heat banks. My partners place for some obscure reason heats up every night at 10pm. She has a weather station in the bedroom and we have watched time and again as the temperature drops tehn just before 10 starts climbing again.

I think what you really need to design for is heat managment. The old timber queenslanders were built as they were for very good reason. They dump heat at night really effectively. They also remain acceptably cool in daytime due to teh big verandahs, or oversized eves with floors if you like

We have something similar to solar extraction fans, they are called whirlybirds and provided you get your venting right they can really hammer summer heat.

Perhaps if you designed the house to stay cool, installed a plastic tube heating system and a big concrete tank under the ground and pumped the hot water around some radiators inside you'd have a very low cost heat managment system.

Of course up here it's the heat that'll kill you. You can sleep in the lawn mid winter under half a dozen kleenex and not freeze (caveat: I carry my own "inbuilt" insulation, you skinny folks might not do so well).

Remember a lot of how building practise has developed is (upfront) cost driven, balanced against astetics and fashion. For most people ongoing costs don't get much thought.

If you are interested in the use of solar in a suburban house, have a look at this - better still, you could buy it...

Solar House 1a

Cheers,
Bob.

Originally Posted by damian

I think what you really need to design for is heat managment. The old timber queenslanders were built as they were for very good reason. They dump heat at night really effectively. They also remain acceptably cool in daytime due to teh big verandahs, or oversized eves with floors if you like

I suppose this is related to energy sources at least in so far as we are saving energy, but probably really requires as separate thread to do it justice. Just a quick comment therefore bearing in mind that Artme raised the subject with his reference to rammed earth houses and I contributed further.

Passive solar houses made from earth work best in the more arid regions. Inevitably this restricts to the inland regions. Brisbane for example will not provide a good result. Darwin would be a catastrophe.

It is essential for there to be a large range of temperature between day and night. The effect of the massive walls (commonly 300mm in mud brick) is to become a heat bank and even out the swings in temperature.

The essence of an earth sheltered house is that the ground 600mm to 900mm down remains fairly constant all through the year around 17 deg C.

You also have to differentiate between a thermal store (mudbrick, rammed earth, earth sheltered) and just insulated (strawbale).

Regards
Paul

Back in post No 182 Damian said
"I think the economics of the carbon -> solar -> methane system don't stack up"

No numbers, no sources, no reasoning.

Firstly, who said that dealing with carbon emissions was economic ?

Secondly, carbon emissions are not costed into the "economics" of the so called commercial operations that make the emissions.

Thirdly, there is a lot of research going on at the moment trying to work out processes that might recover carbon. One interesting paper is
wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/pdfs/CEIC_05_05.pdf

They suggest at the moment recovery costs could be between $240 and $550/tonneC - that is around 2 to 3 times the cost of coal - so it is certainly reasonable to say this is getting close to doable.

Most importantly for me, change will only come if people think about and discuss new stuff.

It is comfortable to stay with things we have done and are familiar with - unfortunately it is things we are familiar with that have got us into a position where we may have to ditch coal and nuke.

So I would really like to know, exactly why doesn't solar -> carbon -> methane stack up ?

Cheers,
Bob

Originally Posted by Sebastiaan56

Google "DIY Solar Panels" Mic. There are a number of sites that teach you how to solder small Solar Cells into full size functioning panels. Solar panel cells are a fraction of the price of constructed panels. Broken cell pieces are even cheaper. That auction site had plenty of very cheap cells last time I looked.

I think are right in that an electrician is needed to verify the functioning of your inverter if you are going to claim a feed in tariff. Its a matter of how much time and patience you have. Currently the price of solar installations is vastly inflated due to lack of competition and a local manufacturing industry.

Haven't followed the forum much recently and haven't kept up with this thread, some late night reading ahead, no doubt I just wanted to pull this quote out and say that I made a start on collecting the ingredients for a small 50W trial panel. Have the cells, just have to get the casting resin, aluminum extrusion etc to build the panel. If I feel it can be scaled up to a full system and I can jig it up to make it efficient then I might give it a go. The trial panel can then go to augment the small panel at swmbo's shed. I called my sparky about the prospect of wiring system in but he's quite negative about solar - said I should have an OS holiday instead. He reckons the payback is much longer than claimed and the only person he's seen who's on the claimed payback curve is a sparky mate who switches off the house during the day, apart from one fridge, so most of his solar electricity is exported. He is right in a way, since I work at home, I will be using most, all or even more than I generate and not selling any back so my payback would be extended. DIY seems a good option for me because it reduces payback time, I'm reducing my power bill and reducing my load on the system (environment, grid etc etc). Progress will be glacial at best as there is loads for me to learn.

Originally Posted by citybook

Back in post No 182 Damian said
"I think the economics of the carbon -> solar -> methane system don't stack up"

No numbers, no sources, no reasoning.

Firstly, who said that dealing with carbon emissions was economic ?

Who said dealing with carbon emissions was necessary ?

I accept I didn't expand on that statement. I don't have infinite time to research every idea that's put up here, but your quite right I offered no specific proof on that statement.

They suggest at the moment recovery costs could be between $240 and $550/tonneC - that is around 2 to 3 times the cost of coal - so it is certainly reasonable to say this is getting close to doable.

Think about what you just said. 2 - 3 times the price. As I keep saying it's really easy for me and you to "volunteer" to double or triple our electricity and fuel bills. I can afford it. There are a LOT of people who can't/won't and I don't feel I have the right to impose that on them. Like it or not we are one adult one vote and people who don't share your views get to vote aswell.

This isn't a global warming thread, there are already plenty of those. I am really happy people are thinking about energy sources, but if you begin the case for an alternative energy option with the premise that we can impose tremendous costs on others against their will justified by the assumption that we are on the brink of terrible horrible doom than I'm afraid you've crossed that line. I don't accept the premise therefore I don't accept the justification for punitive impositions on peoples lives.

I brought up bluegen not realiseing there was no viable payback period. I accept that error. You can certainly offer up ideas on systems that are inherantly more expensive than existing options, but if you suggest they "should" be deployed because we "must" address co2 emissions I can not accept your premise.

To change the subject, what do people think about this:

So you run your plastic tubes over the roof and into an underground concrete tank to store heat. Circulate the water through radiators in the house to warm the house in winter. No worries. How about in summer you circulate the water at night to cool it and run it through the radiators on hot days to COOL the house ? Anyone ? thoughts ?

"Who said dealing with carbon emissions was necessary ?"

Well, I can give a list if you really want it.

Even though the US and China reneged at Copenhagen, those countries are actively fixing their emissions.

The US was the leader in investment in low or non emitting energy until recently - but China topped the list of investors in renewables in 2010 - construction worth $48.9bn - up 28% from 2009 (BBC News).

The fact that Australia spent almost nothing on renewables in 2010 doesn't mean much in the global scheme of things.

"Think about what you just said. 2 - 3 times the price"

I did think about what I said - the 2-3 times was not my point - my point was that it's almost doable.

How about the China People's Daily reporting a $30.8 million project in Ordos city - to capture 100,000 tons of CO2 pa at a cost of around $50 per ton ? Is that doable ? The Chinese think so...

The fact is a lot of people think recovery of carbon will happen - maybe not in Australia, but that doesn't matter.

My post is not about global warming - it's about a massive opportunity to adopt an energy source that almost fits our existing infrastructure. The fact that it would fix the carbon emission problem could be a springboard to the adoption of something like this because there are huge amounts of money available - eg. 2011 UK Budget provides almost $5 billion Aussie.

I don't think talking about BlueGen was an error - I also have been interested in them for a while - I also was interested in Allis Chalmers testing a 30hp fuel cell tractor in the UK around 1965 - it disappeared, but I'm still wondering where it went. Maybe I'm obsessive...

"To change the subject"

In post No 88 in this thread I included a link to work done by O'Keefe and Francis in the late '80s - specifically about using EPDM tubes to heat water - they say the efficiency is suprisingly close to copper - and the price is much lower - so yes, I think you are on a winner here.

I am planning to do the EPDM thing, hopefully later this year.

Along these lines - there are commercial hydronic heating outfits in the south - but none in Qld ? It gets cold here ...?

The key is solar power - cheaper than electricity or gas - and more importantly, the price has been the same for years...

But cooling is a little harder - need some more ideas on that one.

Cheers,
Bob.

Even solar power won't hack it at the rate of economic growth the planet has had for the last few hundred years (about 2.9% per annum); in just under 300 years we will need all landmass covered in solar panels; 100 years later we will need all solar energy hitting the planet (panels on oceans as well as landmass) to meet our energy needs.

A mere 900 years after that, we will need to capture the entire energy output of our sun; just over 1,000 years after that, we will need the energy output of our galaxy to keep us in the lifestyle that we want to be accustomed to!

And don't even think about global warming unless you mean 'hot enough to melt lead'!

Galactic-Scale Energy | Do the Math

Interesting - the problem is that all the energy we have comes from the sun - it's a bit academic to talk about exceeding that.

First comment about Tom Murphy's blog is his graph plots energy as watts - actually watts is a measure of power, which is different to energy.

Second comment I'm suprised Tom Murphy shows a straight line - I am pretty sure it should be exponential - for instance have a look at
Manicore - What is our present energy consumption like ?

Third comment - we get enough sunlight to keep us going for a while yet - for instance this bloke here thinks covering Spain with solar panels would do the trick at 199,721Twh
Land Art Generator Initiative

cheers,
Bob.

Running out of solar energy presurposes we will have enough food supplies to sustain the sort of population you must be talking about.

As a good proportion of the planet aready does not have enough food, I don't see that there will be a significant improvement in this area. That in itself may be self limiting. The need for power might not escalate quite as fast as is supposed.

The need to use landmass for food production is a reason I am not a fan of "growing" fuel. You can't eat fuel.

I don't mean to minimise the need to find more energy sources. It is incontestable that we will need more.

Regards
Paul