The Future of Chinese Solar, Battery Myths & Climate Politics | Rounding Up Season 12 - Ep174

[@pinkelephants1421]

If one wants to repower coal or former nuclear power plants, as these already have hefty grid connections, instead of clinging to the old paradigm of energy (generation), perhaps these sites should become the mass renewables battery storage sites of tomorrow, both short & long-term storage.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~28:00 Not just expensive and inefficient, but insanely dangerous. Using ammonia for large-scale energy storage is just reckless. We don't need more energy storage options THAT badly.

[@MarkShapiro-m8r]

We now have a terawatt of PV manufacturing capacity! At 10 cents/Watt! Lowest cost power ever! No moving parts! So now more people can learn how to install and use it. Some opportunities: Building integration, community solar, agrivoltaics, floatovoltaics, and now even vertically installed PV as fencing or dividers. And my perennial favorite: PV for poor, isolated villages to replace kerosene, and bring light and phones and more. Thank you for another great wrap-up.

[@dama054]

Really good show Michael always looks forward to your programs keep up the good work

[@dmere123ify]

Protein produced by microbes in a vat may be much more significant than cultured meat. Many packaged food products contain protein that can easily be replaced cheaply with vat grown protein. Most of us don’t spend time reading through the detail of all the ingredients.

[@rabka123-m8v]

Dr. Paul Wood

[@rabka123-m8v]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eJKzdZ2Jr7GHmac

[@mv80401]

Loved the conversation which inspired me to look at episodes I missed.

[@MLiebreich]

Great to hear. That's the goal!

[@Zanderzan1983]

I just discovered this channel and its relaly interesting. Im trying to find Michaels views on heavy transport. As he published anything on that or is there a podcast? It looks to me like electric trucks cant get it done due to lack of energy density and the problem scaling batteries...Wondering what Michael thinks

[@NorburyNewlywed]

Volvo are giving it a good go

[@jedics1]

"Electricity with no moving parts" A critical point completely overlooked by most conversations, 30 ish year life for solar, 10 to 20 years for batteries with zero maintenence costs is huge and electic motors with 1 or 2 moving parts have a similar life span also all add up to a huge factor in the real energy life cycle of other options. So while our policy making plebs are doing what ever we will be going solar/battery/transport at home long before they do anything.

[@JWTrexler2011]

Good points, but what if you install solar tomorrow and a hail storm comes? I'm not sure what percentage of the world experiences hail storms, but in the US, hail storms are relatively common geographically and are a fairly common occurrence.

[@jedics1]

@@JWTrexler2011 Solar is at least somewhat hail resistent but if you get them the size of golf balls then probably that can be said for that new car you just bought so insurance or you just dont get solar. No solution solves all problems for all people.

[@Lewis_Standing]

Brilliant conversation thank you

[@charlesashurst1816]

Note to self: Look into how much investment in oil and gas will be required if we continue business as usual compared how much investment would be required to build a hydrogen economy.

[@philbilboe4537]

With the increase in solar supplying the grid and kwh unit prices being zero or negative during the day in the summer months. Will utility companies like Octopus Energy start charging residential solar for exporting energy? I believe this is starting to happen in the Netherlands.

[@JWTrexler2011]

I would love to see a simple ROI calculation; particularly focusing on an average residential home, using an average 30 KW-h/day, using the current cost-efficient residential storage systems, and having battery capacity for 5 days intermittent loss of solar generation.

[@Lewis_Standing]

@@JWTrexler2011 why would you buy a home storage battery to cover 5 days of use? That's crazy high. 30kwh per day is also extremely high. Average UK property use is 8kwh per day. Granted that will increase with EVs and heat pumps but your use case is extreme. But the energy saving trust has a solar calculator on it's website if you want to get ROI on solar only.

[@JWTrexler2011]

5 days is considered a standard reserve for consecutive days of clouds & rain, and 30 KW-hr is the average usage for a smaller-size home (e.g., 1000 sq-ft) when heating, cooling, and appliances having heating elements (e.g., hot water heater, stove & clothes dryer) are fully included in total consumption. Additionally, winter months result in higher energy usage, which are typically excluded in online wizards used to calculate recommended battery capacity. Regarding ROI calculations, I am capable of calculating, which is the impetus for my request.

[@dmere123ify]

It’s hard to compete with the massive scale of grid generation. For homes with grid connection, I don’t think people installing rooftop solar and home battery storage today will ever recoup their investment. Grid supplied power will become so cheap.

[@Lewis_Standing]

@@JWTrexler2011 well show us your maths if you're capable . Using a heat pump to heat or cool your home will cut heating energy requirements by 4 fold.

[@garymenezes6888]

@@Lewis_Standing I agree, I've had a Solar(7kW) battery(27kWh) system for almost 10 months now, and have been collecting the data for that long. I've also got an EV and the average electricity I use for the house and car is 15kWh per day. I haven't got a heat pump so that will raise the electricity usage.

[@markrogers6709]

Hope the beer was nice🙈🤣🤣

[@rtfazeberdee3519]

Fix the air quality problem (because people can actually smell it) and it'll help fix the climate problem by default. Climate is too complicated and long term for the masses to comprehend.

[@philipbrown9006]

One thing that struck me about lockdown is that there was very little discussion as to whether the benefits outweighed the costs. I don’t believe that they did. The same thing seems to be happening with net zero. Many scientists believe that CO2 is beneficial to food production and we need more of it, not less. kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2OXl4qjg6Zpoq8 A study by lindzen, Happer and Winjgaarden entitled “Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase” calculated that even if the entire world were to achieve net zero, this would only reduce global temperature increase by 0.07°C. Net zero could cost the World economy $3.5Tr p.a. If, as I’m sure you do, you care about the future of humanity, why aren’t you discussing these issues?

[@dipakraje4145]

Enjoying listening

[@johnbrown6611]

52:12 : Baroness Bryony Worthington : “….I think the direction will stay the same, just the pace at which we will go down that path will be slightly slower, which is not what you need when the planet's on fire…” Is the planet “on fire”? Does the Baroness refer to wildfires, which the data shows is not increasing when viewed globally? Not that I would consider wildfires to have any direct connection with global warming. Or the 1 degree C rise in temperature since the start of the Industrial Revolution? Fortunately, increasing CO2, the gas of life, has never caused a climate catastrophe in the past despite far higher atmospheric levels and will not do so in the future because of a phenomenon known as IR saturation. Briefly, although CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere, it has already caused 99% of all the greenhouse gas warming that it can. So additional emissions of CO2 can only produce a further 1% of warming. The amount of greenhouse gas warming effect is not unbounded but limited by CO2’s IR absorption bands and the Earth’s IR Plank distribution curve and 99% of this effect has already taken place. Together with the much larger GHG effect from water vapour CO2 and water vapour have warmed the planet by around 33 degrees C. The IPCC WG1 (“The Science”) states on P95 (footnote) that doubling CO2 (which will take 170 years at the current rate) causes a mere 1.2 degrees C of additional warming. The Royal Society admit to IR saturation from the main CO2 IR band but do not quantify the increase in temperature from the “weaker bands and the wings of the strong band”. Physics Professors Happer & Wijngaarden have done this calculation and they calculate it is 0.7 degrees C. Satellite (UAH) data shows global warming to be currently 0.14 degrees C per decade and Table 12.12 in the IPCC WG1 report shows no signals for climate change (precipitation, drought and storms) other than some slight warming leading to some loss of ice and snow. So, is the planet really “on fire”?

[@rrlabastida]

If you get into food , you should bring a nutrition expert like Peter Attia to do amyth busting on food components

[@garymenezes6888]

Also Tony Seba with his "Precision Fermentation" predictions

[@rabka123-m8v]

@@garymenezes6888 And Dr. Paul Wood

[@stanleytolle416]

In California increase penetration of Solar into the Grid has almost tripled the cost of electricity. This is why stuff like high temperature nuclear with storage makes sense to make solar more practical.

[@MLiebreich]

Sure. Except it would be *even more* expensive. Far better to figure out why cheap solar is not cheap at the point of use, and fix it.

[@stanleytolle416]

Call me an electricity septic. My experience with electricity is it works great except when conditions get bad, a blizzard , hurricane, war then it doesn't. Like something about a wood stove it works no matter what. What I see is building way too much complete dependence on one type of system. Like houses where the heat goes out when the electricy disconnects is not a good system. Like in case of war all the EVs would not work once the grid is attacked. Same with central heat systems. So my thinking is keep the system resilient for the worse of events.

[@aoeuuaoaou]

You’re off the mark…by a lot. Have you been through a hurricane? With a BEV? You’re ultimately better off than with a gasoline car. Same with the wild hypotheticals by preppers, because it’s much easier to make your own electricity than combustion fuel. In very cold situations there is an issue with losing power, but that’s already a thing for pretty much all heat systems, save for the wood stove example…well SOME wood stoves, not all of them. And wood stoves aren’t really practical the rest of the time, certainly not without a density of multiple acres per household.

[@pinkelephants1421]

On the point about synthetic or cultured meat, however one wants to define it, climate change, rising sea levels, and the resultant impacts of those may make the point of whether or not the public will buy into the idea of its consumption rather moot. People are just trying to feed themselves and their families. Cost is a big driver of what we buy. Traditionally produced meat may, in the future, become either a rich person's perogative or a special occasion such as Xmas for the average consumer. Indeed, in the UK, the last two year's worth of what's probably climate change driven, cold and very wet weather, has left livestock farmers with some very hefty feed bills and difficult choices, neither of which has done anything to reduce the cost of meat.

[@lesliecarter4295]

Podcast from the flying hypocrite’s 🧐

[@MLiebreich]

I must have missed the bit where we told you not to fly.

[@ldm3027]

and with cheap solar and batteries in the right place we get cheap power for Direct Air Capture to remove the emissions from aviation