What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech
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@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@fiyafly said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_FacilityWoah … $2.2B cost.
Ya insane, and it's not even producing close to the output they planned for.
Maybe dust and stuff... Both times we drove past, it seemed like it was very hazy, I'm guessing dust and sand in the air. It was very windy.
I've asked both inside the industry and government for the numbers for the windmill farms that are being put up around the province. No one will come clean about install and maintenance costs. :S
I did a rough calculation based on the Wikipedia article that ~640GW/h per year is $12M and ~336GWh is $6M in annual revenue based on the cited $200/MWh per year number? So, $18M/Year on a $2.2B "investment" am I on or off with the numbers?
Then, there's the stats that blew me away on the volume of natural gas the plant consumes to heat things up prior to producing solar energy.
One has to wonder if there was ever a plan for the plant to be profitable.
If you want to hear some interesting facts about clean energy, really look into nuclear. It is, hands down, the cleanest and most efficient energy we have today. Those images and such you see of clouds of smoke coming out of them? That's steam.
As far as I can tell, there are only two things keeping us from using nuclear more. Waste disposal, and people's fear of it.The costs of nuclear are not as low as people try to paint it.
Waste disposal is a huge cost and when added in properly to the calculations does make it not as affordable.
The other large cost is disaster cleanup. A single plant failure can easily have a cleanup that runs into decades and cost trillions.
Nuclear Fusion will be a big game changer as it is cleaner and safer compared to Fission. But nothing is cost effective with Fusion yet.
Lockhead Martin has been getting closer and even had a public patent submitted back in March.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/08/01/will-lockheed-martin-change-the-world-with-its-new-fusion-reactor/#2a434da4c49fObviously, if they are far enough for a patent to get submitted and made public, they are fairly confident in what they are doing.
Just saw this.
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@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
The other large cost is disaster cleanup. A single plant failure can easily have a cleanup that runs into decades and cost trillions.
This is the key. Many of the biggest nuclear nations like the US, Russia, and Japan have all had to go through this already. It's the primary component to the cost of running nuclear, followed by disposal. I've lived through my own town being irradiated by a failed disposal process (meter deep nuclear ash right in my high school's driveway!)
These costs are generally ignored to push nuclear agendas. Nuclear isn't all bad, but it is vastly more costly than people generally admit. Because it's easy to use risk costs as something you can ignore. But they are the primary cost of operations over time.
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@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_FacilityWoah … $2.2B cost.
Ya insane, and it's not even producing close to the output they planned for.
Maybe dust and stuff... Both times we drove past, it seemed like it was very hazy, I'm guessing dust and sand in the air. It was very windy.
I've asked both inside the industry and government for the numbers for the windmill farms that are being put up around the province. No one will come clean about install and maintenance costs. :S
I did a rough calculation based on the Wikipedia article that ~640GW/h per year is $12M and ~336GWh is $6M in annual revenue based on the cited $200/MWh per year number? So, $18M/Year on a $2.2B "investment" am I on or off with the numbers?
Then, there's the stats that blew me away on the volume of natural gas the plant consumes to heat things up prior to producing solar energy.
One has to wonder if there was ever a plan for the plant to be profitable.
Interestingly I just heard a presentation from our regional power co-op on how they handle demand and where clean energy factors into it. They were pushing pretty hard into clean energy initiatives (one of the municipalities they serve has a requirement of them being 100% renewable by 2030) until they started comparing their existing clean generation capabilities and the storage needed to keep the load normalized to the demand curve. They would need thousands of batteries that cost $1.5 million each and have an effective lifespan of 6-15 years. Battery storage and disposal would make more hazardous waste than most forms of electrical generation.
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@kelly yeah, I am wondering about the lifespan of the batteries from Tesla going in all over the place.
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@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@kelly yeah, I am wondering about the lifespan of the batteries from Tesla going in all over the place.
Electric cars was another part of the discussion. They're trying to figure out how to meet the potential increased demand without actually increasing their fossil fuel use and obviating any emissions gained by the use of the cars. It is a complex problem that has many simplistic answers.
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Just finished We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse) (Volume 1)
https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse/dp/1680680587/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534860075&sr=8-1&keywords=bobiverse+book+1It is an audible original but you can get the paperback on Amazon. Great sci-fi book. Can't wait to listen to book 2
From Amazon:
"Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. " -
I am reading "You are a badass" by Jen Sincero
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For Learning:
Astronomy A self teaching guide
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1620459906/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Student Guide to Mathematics of Astronomy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107610214/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1For Fun:
Revelation Space, Chasm CityRecently:
Book of Five Rings, Meditations -
We have a HP colour 11x17 printer at home (we home school) so I print the following out regularly:
An amazing interactive sky map:
I love the stars and can spend hours at night watching them.
A super cool moment was teaching each of my kids to triangulate to hunt satellites and the Space Station (this one is a big lightbulb going over us).
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@phlipelder Linux has a several really amazing star tracking and charting apps if you haven't looked em up.
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@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder Linux has a several really amazing star tracking and charting apps if you haven't looked em up.
We have a relatively low pitch roof (~4/12 or 5/12) that is L shaped. One of our dream To Do items is to set up a platform on the garage side of the roof and put a good sized telescope up there with a full remote configuration. It's been on the To Do list for a couple of years now as it got put on hold because Edmonton swapped all of their street lights for LED over the last 24 months.
Prior we were outside the light envelope of the city. Now, we've lost some of our night sky due to the amount of light "pollution" they throw off.
I wish we were more like cities in the US where residential areas only get key intersection lights. That would greatly reduce the amount of light pollution and give city dwellers a better sleep.As long as there are no clouds over Edmonton we can still pull it off though. The Little Dipper is fairly easy to pick out in the night sky which is the boundary for good night sky viewing. The Milky Way is amazing and the binary in the Big Dipper is neat to pick-out with the small telescope we currently have.
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@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
I wish we were more like cities in the US where residential areas only get key intersection lights.
This exists no where in the US that I have lived.
The only reason lights are limited is because the local government ran out of money and has to wait a few yeas for more lights.
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@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
I wish we were more like cities in the US where residential areas only get key intersection lights.
This exists no where in the US that I have lived.
The only reason lights are limited is because the local government ran out of money and has to wait a few yeas for more lights.
My Dad is in St. Petersburg, FL. They limit the number of street lights there in residential areas. My assumption my bad.
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@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
I wish we were more like cities in the US where residential areas only get key intersection lights.
This exists no where in the US that I have lived.
The only reason lights are limited is because the local government ran out of money and has to wait a few yeas for more lights.
My Dad is in St. Petersburg, FL. They limit the number of street lights there in residential areas. My assumption my bad.
Light pollution is a horrible thing. So I am 100% behind your desire.
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Romania uses directional LEDs to reduce pollution and energy consumption. Works pretty well. About the same light on the roads, far less in the skies or in your faces, way less power needed.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Romania uses directional LEDs to reduce pollution and energy consumption. Works pretty well. About the same light on the roads, far less in the skies or in your faces, way less power needed.
No one uses a light that shines up. Reflected light is reflected light. It is all light pollution.
LED street lights are going in all over the world because of the reduced OpEx. That does nothing to reduce light pollution.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Romania uses directional LEDs to reduce pollution and energy consumption. Works pretty well. About the same light on the roads, far less in the skies or in your faces, way less power needed.
Part of the irony in that is any fired power plant such as coal and natural gas can only spool down so far before they can no longer spool up without a start-up procedure.
Our coal and natural gas fired plants have a huge rod that goes into the ground for the surplus energy.
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@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Romania uses directional LEDs to reduce pollution and energy consumption. Works pretty well. About the same light on the roads, far less in the skies or in your faces, way less power needed.
No one uses a light that shines up. Reflected light is reflected light. It is all light pollution.
LED street lights are going in all over the world because of the reduced OpEx. That does nothing to reduce light pollution.
Its' both. But normal lights shine out in EVERY direction. So they need WAY more total light, and ergo more pollution, to light up the same around of road.
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@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:
Romania uses directional LEDs to reduce pollution and energy consumption. Works pretty well. About the same light on the roads, far less in the skies or in your faces, way less power needed.
Part of the irony in that is any fired power plant such as coal and natural gas can only spool down so far before they can no longer spool up without a start-up procedure.
Our coal and natural gas fired plants have a huge rod that goes into the ground for the surplus energy.
Correct. that is why the Tesla power projects in Australia are so effective. All they are doing is adding storage for the power.
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Alistair Reynolds is great, I really need to find some more of his stuff.
