I honestly despair when I see someone that should know better like Dennis Meadows hoodwinked by the likes of Simon Michaux. Honestly! Simon Michaux is a GEOLOGIST - not a renewable systems engineer - and his work on renewables breaks all the rules.
RULE 1: Geographic diversity: Professor Andrew Blakers is a renewables engineer. (Not just any engineer - he received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering for inventing the PERC solar cell. That's the Nobel prize for engineers!) Blakers talks about spreading renewables risk by Overbuilding capacity across a large and diverse geographic area. To illustrate the importance of a wide area, he said that if Australian states tried to build their own independent renewable grids they would pay 5 TIMES MORE for storage than in an Australian-wide super-grid. https://reneweconomy.com.au/solars-stunning-journey-from-lab-curiosity-to-global-juggernaut-wiping-out-fossil-fuels/ My own state of NSW is twice the size of Germany. If it’s important for us to connect up to the whole, how much more important is it for Germany to connect into the super-grid plans of ENTSO-E. Blakers plan for Australia reduces storage down to 2 days. Australia is 21 TIMES bigger than Germany - but the ENTSO-E super-grid that Germany is a part of is 27 TIMES bigger than Germany itself. So why on earth does Michaux cherry-pick out rare studies into a hypothetical isolated German grid? It’s ridiculous!
Watch this 25 minute presentation by Blakers - it’s 3 years old but lays out the rules for renewables that I’ve seen repeated in different terminology in various studies. https://youtu.be/BIcwaXRN1Hs?t=105
RULE 2: Use batteries for a few hours, then Pumped Hydro Electricity Storage (PHES) for a few days. That’s it! But Michaux picked NMC batteries high in Critical Minerals - and pretended we needed 28 days of storage! He ignored sodium batteries even though they were commercially available before his study. Sodium batteries can come from sea-salt and bio-charred agri-waste (Hard Carbon). We’re NOT running out of either! They’re also 30% cheaper now, safer, and do not need any critical minerals or even copper.
RULE 3: PUMPED HYDRO: Michaux’s paper claimed PHES were limited, but did not cite a source. Then he revealed his source was a study into tiny flat Singapore where the highest hill is 15 m! Gee - I wonder why THEY had trouble finding PHES sites! (Facepalm!) https://youtu.be/LBw2OVWdWIQ?t=1342
What is the actual potential resource of PHES sites? Professor Blakers developed a satellite map of the earth. The OFF-RIVER sites are cheaper and faster to build, and the world has 100 TIMES what we need! https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
MICHAUX’S OWN PAPER shows that if we just replace his NMC “batteries that ate the world” with sodium and PHES - there’s more than enough minerals! I did the math here. https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux/
💬 In the transition to a renewable energy system, we can adapt, reduce demand, improve efficiency, deploy new technologies, and simply be happy with a more limited supply of energy 👌
Bullseye! 🙂 The lengthy Ahmed’s quote holds much truth as well. As Tim Morgan doesn’t tire to intone: we can run our economy on renewables—just *not* on the scale & complexity of the current.
To sum up, technology rides the energy coattails, and slaves to the laws of physics. Thermodynamics rulez. No technological process can *gainfully convert diffuse energy into concentrated form* 🤷
Speaking of slaves, check out a highly illuminating & educating & entertaining beautifully drawn & worded fabulous comic strip featuring a quite peculiar protagonist --> stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves 👌😉
🗨 About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent to that in one pound of hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved, and processed for one pound of battery produced.
🗨 In rough terms, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy.
Which math? I don't dismiss the paper. I went through it, although not in depth. But it seemed to me that it said nothing I didn't already know.
I honestly despair when I see someone that should know better like Dennis Meadows hoodwinked by the likes of Simon Michaux. Honestly! Simon Michaux is a GEOLOGIST - not a renewable systems engineer - and his work on renewables breaks all the rules.
RULE 1: Geographic diversity: Professor Andrew Blakers is a renewables engineer. (Not just any engineer - he received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering for inventing the PERC solar cell. That's the Nobel prize for engineers!) Blakers talks about spreading renewables risk by Overbuilding capacity across a large and diverse geographic area. To illustrate the importance of a wide area, he said that if Australian states tried to build their own independent renewable grids they would pay 5 TIMES MORE for storage than in an Australian-wide super-grid. https://reneweconomy.com.au/solars-stunning-journey-from-lab-curiosity-to-global-juggernaut-wiping-out-fossil-fuels/ My own state of NSW is twice the size of Germany. If it’s important for us to connect up to the whole, how much more important is it for Germany to connect into the super-grid plans of ENTSO-E. Blakers plan for Australia reduces storage down to 2 days. Australia is 21 TIMES bigger than Germany - but the ENTSO-E super-grid that Germany is a part of is 27 TIMES bigger than Germany itself. So why on earth does Michaux cherry-pick out rare studies into a hypothetical isolated German grid? It’s ridiculous!
Watch this 25 minute presentation by Blakers - it’s 3 years old but lays out the rules for renewables that I’ve seen repeated in different terminology in various studies. https://youtu.be/BIcwaXRN1Hs?t=105
RULE 2: Use batteries for a few hours, then Pumped Hydro Electricity Storage (PHES) for a few days. That’s it! But Michaux picked NMC batteries high in Critical Minerals - and pretended we needed 28 days of storage! He ignored sodium batteries even though they were commercially available before his study. Sodium batteries can come from sea-salt and bio-charred agri-waste (Hard Carbon). We’re NOT running out of either! They’re also 30% cheaper now, safer, and do not need any critical minerals or even copper.
RULE 3: PUMPED HYDRO: Michaux’s paper claimed PHES were limited, but did not cite a source. Then he revealed his source was a study into tiny flat Singapore where the highest hill is 15 m! Gee - I wonder why THEY had trouble finding PHES sites! (Facepalm!) https://youtu.be/LBw2OVWdWIQ?t=1342
What is the actual potential resource of PHES sites? Professor Blakers developed a satellite map of the earth. The OFF-RIVER sites are cheaper and faster to build, and the world has 100 TIMES what we need! https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
MICHAUX’S OWN PAPER shows that if we just replace his NMC “batteries that ate the world” with sodium and PHES - there’s more than enough minerals! I did the math here. https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux/
Also try: Michael Barnard: an actual renewables engineer with experience in the industry. https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/04/how-many-things-must-one-analyst-get-wrong-in-order-to-proclaim-a-convenient-decarbonization-minerals-shortage/
Nafeez M Ahmed: investigative journalist and tech writer https://ageoftransformation.org/energy-transformation-wont-be-derailed-by-lack-of-raw-materials/
International Energy Agency:
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/mineral-requirements-for-clean-energy-transitions
Data Scientist Hannah Ritchie: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/minerals-for-electricity
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/energy-transition-materials
It would seem we need to destroy our ecological systems to save them...hmmmmmm.
💬 In the transition to a renewable energy system, we can adapt, reduce demand, improve efficiency, deploy new technologies, and simply be happy with a more limited supply of energy 👌
Bullseye! 🙂 The lengthy Ahmed’s quote holds much truth as well. As Tim Morgan doesn’t tire to intone: we can run our economy on renewables—just *not* on the scale & complexity of the current.
To sum up, technology rides the energy coattails, and slaves to the laws of physics. Thermodynamics rulez. No technological process can *gainfully convert diffuse energy into concentrated form* 🤷
Speaking of slaves, check out a highly illuminating & educating & entertaining beautifully drawn & worded fabulous comic strip featuring a quite peculiar protagonist --> stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves 👌😉
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PS The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking is a highly recommended longread --> https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible. Admirably well reasoned, with imperial tons of apt pics, analogies, and numerical examples. At the very least, skim its executive summary 😇 [Alternatively, nicely formatted downloadable pdf --> https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf]
To whet the apettite ↓↓ 😊
🗨 About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent to that in one pound of hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved, and processed for one pound of battery produced.
🗨 In rough terms, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy.
💬 Models may be perfectly correct
Nope. Your assumptions are wrong on this one—by the very definition of what a model is 😝
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ETA Back into serious mode, let's compare notes with SEEDS model's Tim Morgan ↓↓ 🙂
🗨 As it applies to economics,[...] what will happen is a great deal clearer than when it will happen.