Instead of needing constant power, new system adjusts to use whatever is available. //

“Unlike reverse osmosis, electrodialysis is an electrically driven process,” Bessette says. The membranes are arranged in such a way that the water is not pushed through them but flows along them. On both sides of those membranes are positive and negative electrodes that create an electric field, which draws salt ions through the membranes and out of the water. //

The two most important parameters in electrodialysis desalination are the flow rate of the water and the power you apply to the electrodes. To make the process efficient, you need to match those two. The advantage of electrodialysis is that it can operate at different power levels. When you have more available power, you can just pump more water through the system. When you have less power, you can slow the system down by reducing the water flow rate. You’ll produce less freshwater, but you won’t break anything this way. //

Octavus Ars Scholae Palatinae
18y
1,115
On average, it desalinated around 5,000 liters of water per day—enough for a community of roughly 2,000 people.
Is 2.5L per day really enough per person when that is below the adequate intake levels according to the Institute of Medicine? Let alone for other purposes such as cooking and hygiene.

The Institute of Medicine has recommended adequate intake (AI) values for total water at levels to prevent dehydration. The AI for men aged 19+ is 3.7 liters each day, and 3 liters (13 cups) of which should be consumed as beverages. The AI for women aged 19+ is 2.7 liters about 2.2 liters (9 cups) of which should be consumed as beverages each day.
Water: An Important Part of a Healthy Winter Diet : USDA ARS //

Team Tardigrade Ars Centurion
4y
370
Octavus said:
Is 2.5L per day really enough per person when that is below the adequate intake levels according to the Institute of Medicine? Let alone for other purposes such as cooking and hygiene.

Water: An Important Part of a Healthy Winter Diet : USDA ARS
Like most other things in medicine and science there are different viewpoints on what total water intake needs to be. This study says an average minimum of 1.8 L. I've seen several textbooks that list anything from 1.5 to 2.5 L. I've also see other estimates going as high as 3.5-4 L. Age, sex, renal function, diet, and metabolic disease all have impacts on these numbers.

In 2022, Florida was third in the nation, after California and Texas, in total solar power generating capacity, and solar energy accounted for more than 5% of Florida’s total net generation. About four-fifths of the state’s solar generation came from utility-scale (1 megawatt or larger) facilities. //

The Lake Placid Solar Power Plant is located in Highlands County, Fla., and suffered damage during Hurricane Milton. The facility opened in December 2019 and is 45 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 12,000 homes at peak production. //

The frequency of major storms and the costs associated with repair from them must be an essential part of any calculation when deciding if a new power facility is right for the region. It appears that green energy activists aren’t providing this data, but rather their visions of would should be based on their beliefs.

Theology is no way to power a civilization. //

rebelgirl in reply to CommoChief. | October 15, 2024 at 8:26 am
My son is a commercial electrician who works on residential and commercial solar installations. He says he would never have it.
They install the panels on roofs where no one takes into account the problems involved with reaching the source of a potential attic fire. //

Joe-dallas in reply to CommoChief. | October 15, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Correct – the capacity factor for solar during summer is around 35%
The capacity factor in the winter is around 6%

The texas freeze fiasco of Feb 2021,
Solar was producing around 12% capacity factor across the entire nation and a DROP of 60% – 70% wind production across the entire NORTH AMERICAN Continent for 7 DAYS

Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis on Tuesday said there have been 16 fires during and after Hurricane Helene attributed to lithium-ion batteries used in Tesla and other electric vehicles, golf carts and other vehicles and devices. //

For cultists worried about climate change, a roaring fire hitting 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit will change the local climate quickly and disastrously.

Typically, an EV fire burns at roughly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius), while a gasoline-powered vehicle on fire burns at 1,500 F (815 C). It takes about 2,000 gallons of water to extinguish a burning gasoline-powered vehicle; putting out an EV fire can take 10 times more. //

A tractor-trailer carrying large lithium-ion batteries overturned and caught on fire on a highway near the Port of Los Angeles on Thursday, snarling traffic and leading to road closures and the shuttering of several terminals at the port.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement Thursday night that the fire was expected to burn for at least another 24 to 48 hours and that a roughly seven-mile stretch of California State Route 47, from the Vincent Thomas Bridge to Long Beach, would be closed in that period.

The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest port in the Western Hemisphere, said that several terminals would be closed on Friday.

…The explosion caused the batteries to ignite, causing a “thermal runaway,” a chain reaction in which heat develops extremely quickly, Capt. Adam Van Gerpen of the Los Angeles Fire Department told reporters.

Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs.

Inertia refers to a system’s capability to resist change. For a power grid, greater synchronous inertia confers greater ability to resist frequency changes. //

In contrast to gigantic 2,256 megawatt nuclear power plants such as Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) near San Luis Obispo, California which provide very large amounts of synchronous grid inertia, so-called inverter-based resources (IBRs) such as solar powered generators, wind power generators, and batteries supply negligible amounts of synchronous grid inertia. //

Prior to the introduction of significant penetrations of IBRs, each power grid's synchronous generators (coal and natural gas-fired generators, large hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants, and nuclear power plants) had sufficient synchronous grid inertia to assure power grid stability. The synchronous generators have a large amount of rotational inertia as a consequence of having massive rotating turbines and massive rotating generator rotors. (See photograph below.)

As a simplified example, each of the pair of DCPP’s generators have rotating components which weigh in excess of a million pounds (500 tons.) DCPP’s turbines rotate 30 times per second. The rotating magnetic field induces the 60 cycle per second (Hertz) AC voltage (25,000 Volts) and AC current (45,120 Amperes) in the stator windings of each unit. In response to perturbations in grid frequency, the rotational kinetic energy can be instantaneously converted to changes in the output power of the generator which tend to stabilize the generator’s output frequency and voltage.

A new study has found that a vast majority of climate policies enacted since 1998 across 41 countries have been utterly ineffective. //

The study, published in the Journal of Science, evaluated about 1,500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 by 41 OECD countries (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). The study found only 63 policies (about 4 percent) that, combined, had successfully “reduced total emissions between 0.6 and 1.8 Gt CO2.” Due to the low success rate, researchers estimate the CO2 emissions from the 41 nations they studied will exceed the Paris Climate Agreement target by 23 billion metric tons by 2030.

More importantly, the study found that two popular tools most governments’ climate policies rely on — subsidies and regulations — rarely reduce emissions. Researchers found some form of carbon tax approach was more effective at reducing emissions. //

Following the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that pledged over $110 billion in climate and energy funding, the administration introduced its Green New Deal with a grossly misleading label, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in 2022, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote in the Senate. The IRA purported to allocate $369 billion for climate change and energy over the next decade. However, the latest Congressional Budget Office’s projection of the IRA’s climate tax credit through year 2033 has already jumped to a staggering $428 billion, a rapid 16 percent increase than the IRA originally planned. //

The Harris-Walz campaign, as pointed out by The Wall Street Journal editorial board, has shamefully used the word “freedom” to “disguise that Democratic policies seek to restrict liberty across American society.” Voters who want to be free from the government’s wasteful spending and infringement on individual rights should not fall for the Democrat’s and Harris’ deception in the upcoming election.

"At last a book that comprehensively reveals the true facts about sustainable energy in a form that is both highly readable and entertaining."

Last November, Virgin Atlantic Airways made headlines for completing the world’s first transatlantic flight using “100 percent sustainable aviation fuel.”

This week, the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) of the U.K. banned a Virgin radio ad released prior to the flight, in which they touted their “unique flight mission.” While Virgin did use fuel that releases fewer emissions than traditional supplies, the regulatory agency deemed the company’s sustainability claim “misleading” because it failed to give a full picture of the adverse environmental and climate impacts of fuel.

Todd Lewis, a commenter on my previous article on PJ Media, put it succinctly. “It is a way for governments to advance totalitarian control of the populace, wreck the economy, and disempower the middle class.” His thesis is backed up in Joel Kotkin’s masterpiece "The Coming of Neo-Feudalism." Kotkin chronicles how the once-numerous and thriving middle class is relentlessly being phased out of existence by a power elite intent on re-medievalizing society while advancing their own social, political, and economic supremacy. Like the serf who lacked freedom of movement and was bound to the lord’s estate, the enfiefed EV owner for various reasons is tethered to a sort of manorial orbit.

The fact is that EV obsession has nothing to do with “saving the earth,” replacing fossil energy with presumably “clean” alternatives, or reducing across-the-board costs involving transportation and maintenance — all of which reasons are contra-indicated by the facts. They are delusions, mere fetishes, or outright lies that a modicum of sober research would render null and void. The real issue has to do with the ongoing battle between a market economy and a command economy, between a business-oriented system and a centripetal Marxist political organization, and between an individualistic political economy and oligarchic socialism.

The EV project is a major strategy in a political program that envisages replacing not simply fossil fuel propulsion with electrical power, which is neither feasible nor even conceivable, but swapping a free market economy, in which the law of supply and demand determines output and prices, for a centralized government authority that dictates production, prices, and distribution. Top-down control supersedes private enterprise.

In a command economy, the managerial class and state officials control the means of production, set prices, determine production goals, and limit or prohibit competition — as opposed to private individuals and joint-stock companies freely transacting business for personal profit or in the interest of stockholders, their decisions based on consumer demand. //

FrankD92
16 hours ago
“It is a way for governments to advance totalitarian control of the populace, wreck the economy, and disempower the middle class.”

These are exactly the purposes of the entire climate change hoax and associated "green new" scam.

While on the subject of Equinor, I would like to recommend a fabulous piece written by energy expert Robert Bryce. He noted that The NGOs have been shameless in their collusion with foreign corporations, including Equinor, which are collecting billions in federal tax credits to construct wind projects.

But more importantly, Bryce examines the green energy realities based on the science of physics:

…Big Wind is facing a crisis caused by simple physics. The turbines now being deployed onshore and offshore are failing far sooner than expected. Why? They have gotten too big.

Yes, bigger wind turbines are more efficient than their smaller cousins. But the larger the turbine, the more its components get hit by the stresses that come with their size and weight.

The GE Vernova Haliade-X wind turbine used at Vineyard Wind stands 260 meters high and sweeps an area of 38,000 square meters. That means the turbine captures wind energy over an area five times larger than a soccer pitch.

But here’s the critical part: its blades are 107 meters (351 feet) long and weigh 70 tons. In addition, the rotor of the massive machine spans 220 meters. For comparison, the wingspan of a Boeing 737 is 34 meters.

In other words, the turbines at Vineyard Wind are nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and each of their blades weighs more than a fully loaded 737. piece has an eye-opening piece on the physics associated with the massive wind projects that touches upon blade size.

PJM’s capacity auction has competitively secured resources to meet the RTO reliability requirement for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year. Auction prices were significantly higher across the RTO due to decreased electricity supply caused primarily by a large number of generator retirements, combined with increased electricity demand and implementation of FERC-approved market reforms.

While the overall resource mix is adequate, two zones cleared just short of their reserve requirement, resulting in prices being set at the zonal cap.

The higher prices send a clear investment signal across PJM’s 13 states and the District of Columbia. //

The auction cleared a diverse mix of resources, including 48% of gas, 21% of nuclear, 18% of coal, 1% of solar, 1% of wind, 4% of hydro, 5% of demand response and 2% from other resources. //

The amount of supply resources in the auction decreased again this year, continuing the trend from recent auctions and underlining PJM’s stated concerns (PDF) about generation resources facing pressure to retire without replacement capacity being built quickly enough to replace them. Approximately 6,600 MW of generation have retired or have must-offer exceptions (signaling intent to retire) compared with the generators that offered in the 2024/2025 Base Residual Auction (BRA).

Meanwhile, the peak load forecast for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year has increased from 150,640 MW for the 2024/2025 BRA to 153,883 MW for the 2025/2026 Delivery Year. Additionally, FERC-approved market reforms contributed to tightening the supply and demand balance by better estimating the impact of extreme weather on load and more accurately determining resource reliability value.

These reliability concerns associated with reducing supply and increasing demand are not limited to PJM; the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has identified elevated risk to the reliability of the electrical grid for much of the country outside of PJM. To facilitate the entry of new resources, PJM is implementing its FERC-approved generation interconnection reform, with approximately 72,000 MW of resources expected to be processed in 2024 and 2025. //

The auction produced a price of $269.92/MW-day for much of the PJM footprint, compared to $28.92/MW-day for the 2024/2025 auction. Capacity auction prices fluctuate annually based on the need for investment in generation resources.

This year’s auction procured 135,684 MW for the period of June 1, 2025, through May 31, 2026. The total Fixed Resource Requirement (FRR) obligation is an additional 10,886 MW for a total of 146,570 MW.

The total procured capacity in the auction and resource commitments under FRR represents an 18.5% reserve margin, compared to a 20.4% reserve margin for the 2024/2025 Delivery Year.

The TYNDP 2024 will assess how 176 transmission and 33 storage projects respond to the TYNDP scenarios. Learn more about the projects by clicking on their location on the map below or filter projects by country, type of infrastructure or status. More information about the projects will become available with the release of TYNDP 2024 for public consultation at the end of 2024.

EU is planning power lines from the wind fields on the Atlantic down to the south – and from the sunny deserts up to the north.

https://tyndp2024.entsoe.eu/projects-map

President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is likely to deliver blackouts for millions, according to a North Dakota state assessment of new rules finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In May, the North Dakota Transmission Authority published a report with the firm Always On Energy Research examining implications of the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations on the state’s power grid.

The EPA’s strict emissions standards, researchers reported, “is not technologically feasible for lignite-based power generation facilities.” State investigators say the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rule, finalized this spring, will force the premature retirement of reliable coal plants so they can be replaced by intermittent, weather-dependent sources such as wind and solar. //

“We determined the closure of lignite-fired powered plants,” they added, “would increase the severity of projected future capacity shortfalls, i.e. rolling blackouts.”

Larry Behrens, the communications director for the energy non-profit Power the Future, called less power and higher energy prices “two guarantees of Joe Biden’s energy failures.”

“Sadly, the threat of blackouts is the logical result of efforts to destroy reliable energy sources in favor of intermittent wind and solar,” Behrens told The Federalist.

The North Dakota state findings corroborate warnings issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) 2024 Summer Reliability Assessment published last month. The Atlanta-based non-profit cautioned that the power grid will face extreme stress under higher-than-average temperatures expected this summer. //

Alex Epstein @AlexEpstein
·
Replying to @AlexEpstein
To function at its potential, AI requires massive amounts of power. E.g., state-of-the-art data centers can require as much electricity as a large nuclear reactor. ["several gigawatts"]
Image

Alex Epstein @AlexEpstein
·
Electricity demand from US data centers already doubled between 2014 and 2023. Now with the fast growth of energy-hungry AI, demand from data centers could triple from 2.5% to 7.5% of our electricity use by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group.
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3:17 PM · May 23, 2024

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino @VickieforNYC
·
We must destroy the environment to save it!

Once every Joshua Tree is uprooted to make room for acres solar panels and the whales and birds are killed by windmills, and electricity is expensive and intermittent for all but the wealthiest, we’ll have saved the planet!

This is all much better than building a few modern nuclear plants.

John Solomon @jsolomonReports
Joshua trees growing for over 100 years will be cleared for solar farm in California https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/joshua-trees-growing-over-100-years-will-be-cleared-solar-farm-california
8:55 PM · Jun 7, 2024

In June of last year, a 14,000-panel 5.2 MW solar panel farm called the Scottsbluff Community Solar Array in Nebraska was blasted by baseball-sized hail. There wasn’t any question that the array would be brought back online because the power company had no choice. Leaving it would have been a PR disaster worse than having the array destroyed by hail.

It took 7 months to bring it back online. //

Solar releases a nasty thing called nitrogen trifluoride. And, what, pray tell is NF3’s impact on the environment? It is reportedly 17,000 times worse for the atmosphere than the dreaded CO2.

And there are other inconvenient facts like 80 percent of the silicon torn from the earth during the mining is eventually lost making crystalline silicon. A cancer biologist named David H. Nguyen noted that toxic chemicals associated with solar farms include cadmium telluride, cadmium gallium, copper indium selenide, and a bunch of other nasty toxins. Sometimes you have to wreck the environment to save it.

Solar acolytes will grudgingly admit that there is a chemical downside to manufacturing solar panels – like a byproduct called silicon tetrachloride. It’s toxic and, if not handled properly, will cause severe burns. If it is inadvertently combined with water it can create hydrochloric acid. But hey, they are made in China so, never mind. //

Northeast of Edward Air Force Base sits the tiny town of Boron. The surrounding desert is home to desert wildlife including the Joshua tree. It will soon be home to a vast solar farm owned by Aratina Solar Center. Joshua trees can survive 200 years in the desert heat but they won’t survive in Aratina’s heat sink of a project.

About 3,500 Joshua trees will be uprooted and destroyed to make room for the solar farm. Aratina (owned mostly by a private equity group known as KKR). To mitigate the bad press, Aratina is shredding trees on-site rather than piling them like so many corpses. //

On completion, the project will blacken about 2,300 acres but it will generate power for up to 180,000 homes. //

Sometimes you gotta kill a tree, to save a tree.  

As global governments push for a rapid transition to electric vehicles and to wind and solar power, they are creating a demand for copper that threatens to undermine the very goals they seek to achieve.

According to a recent International Energy Forum report, electrifying the global vehicle fleet would require the opening of 55% more new copper mines than are already needed, and twice the total amount of copper that has ever been mined throughout human history over the next three decades. //

Since copper is a core component in electronics, raising the cost of copper makes it far more difficult for developing areas of the world to access energy. Copper is a crucial component in electric vehicles. A typical EV requires nearly 200 pounds of copper, or about four times the amount needed for a combustion-engine vehicle. //

The energy industry is facing government mandates for wind and solar. A typical 3-megawatt wind turbine requires 9 tons of copper, more than the weight of a school bus. Wind power requires more than seven times the amount of copper to produce the same amount of energy that natural gas or coal does, and five times the copper as nuclear power. //

Policymakers pushing for a rapid shift to EVs and renewables are also responsible for the red tape in mining for critical minerals. Without more mining, the planned EVs won’t be built. Even Chinese critical materials won’t get America all the way to its EV targets.

40% of US need for lithium could be covered by Pennsylvania's fracking byproduct.

flailed like a beached fish trying to explain why the Biden administration has only built eight electrical vehicle charging stations despite the fact they've promised over half a million by 2030. //

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the massive infrastructure package Biden signed in 2021, earmarks $7.5 billion for EV charging programs while the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act expands tax credits for EVs and charger installations.

To date, only eight have been built since Biden signed the legislation, according to reporting by Autoweek. //

RNC Research
@RNCResearch
·
Follow
CBS plays a clip for Pete Buttigieg of President Trump slamming Biden's insane electric vehicle mandate: "We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants!"

MARGARET BRENNAN: "He's not wrong."

BUTTIGIEG: "Oh, he's wrong."

BRENNAN: "He's not."

3:39 PM · May 26, 2024
2.1K
Reply

When I finally plugged the Hyundai Ioniq 6 into a 120V outlet outside of my home, the battery level was 36% with an estimated range of 135 miles. Fast forward 14 hours and 33 minutes later, I proceeded to get into the Ioniq 6 only to realize it managed to get to just 42% overnight — roughly giving it a range of 162 miles. This tacked on an estimated 27 additional miles from where it started the previous night.

I think this is worth pointing out because there needs to be an expectation put forward for first time EV buyers. I was certainly shocked by the results after charging it overnight, so while Level 1 charging is convenient, it would take days for it to fully charge due to the slower charging speed. However, if your daily commute amounts to less than 20 miles in total, charging at Level 1 speed shouldn’t be a problem. //

For example, the Ioniq 6 can get up to an 80% charge in 73 minutes using a 50kW charger. And if you can somehow find a station around you that offers 350kW charging, it would take 18 minutes worth of charging to get the Ioniq 6 to 80%. I often tell prospective and first time EV drivers that they should reserve charging at a station when it’s an emergency or if they plan on driving long distances.

On Tuesday, a series of tornadoes ripped across central Iowa, dealing an as-yet unknown amount of damage and resulting in multiple deaths.

Tornadoes are nothing new to Iowa residents, especially in this rolling farm country southwest of Des Moines. It's tornado country; it has been since longer than people — any people — have lived in the area, and it always will be tornado country. //

Granted the human cost of these storms far, far outweighs any concern about windmills. But that doesn't preclude us from examining yet another failure of the whole "green" energy agenda. //

Bear in mind that not only have these windmills, installed at great expense, been flattened by what every Iowan could have said would happen sooner or later — a tornado — but the aftermath of those tornadoes, along with the human and property cost, has generated what looks to be a great deal of toxic smoke but also has compromised one leg of central Iowa's electrical generation capacity.

The same issue could easily arise with solar panels. Look at any solar panel field and consider the likely outcome of a tornado — or any other major storm, with high winds or hail.

Last week, leading lights of the global fossil power industry gathered at a conference in Houston, Texas, for CERA, known in the sector as the “Davos of Energy”. They reportedly got the shock of their professional careers.

They had invited the most senior executives from the biggest network owner (Chine State Grid Corp) in the biggest energy market in the world (China). The organisers fully expected their Chinese guest to endorse the “all of the above” marketing pitch, which is underpinning the “keep coal” campaign.

No such luck. Despite prodding by leading oil industry commentator Daniel Yergin, the chairman of State Grid Liu Zhenya reportedly said the “fundamental solution was to accelerate clean energy, with the aim of replacing coal and oil.”

As the network operator builds out its clean power sources, they noted, coal-fired generators could only serve as “reserve power” to supplement renewables.

“The only hurdle to overcome is ‘mindset’,” Liu said. “There’s no technical challenge at all.” //

New data bears this out. In China, thermal power plant utilisation rates (capacity factors) declined from 56.2 per cent on average in 2014 to a record low of just 50.9 per cent in 2015.

“This highlights coal is not ‘base load’, even in China,” Buckley says. “It is the marginal source of supply. Coal-fired power plants aren’t designed to run only half the time, but that is what is happening in China, and increasingly that is occurring in India as well.” //

Indeed, CLP, the Hong Kong-based owner of the Yallourn and Mt Piper coal-fired power stations in Australia, revealed this week that its “flagship” Jhajjar coal plant in India ran at a capacity factor of just 49.9 per cent in 2015.

In Australia, it was even worse. The 1,400MW Mt Piper power station near Lithgow in NSW operated at just 45 per cent of its capacity, even after its neighbouring Wallerawang coal plant had been shut down.

Other black coal generators have been similarly afflicted, so much so that the Northern power station in South Australia is to shut permanently in May. //

A study by energy consultant Energeia suggests that wind energy will become the default “base load” generation in South Australia, and dispatchable power sources – which previously dominated the grid, the markets and the business models – will have to fill in the gaps left by wind and solar. //

The gaps would be filled by flexible plant such as solar towers, or battery storage, or from gas – as long as it can compete with the new technologies.