Is Green Energy really Clean Energy ??

[Deleted member 13433]

that's right... these things are 12 volts output, I forgot about that...
So, that 1000w inverter - is that 1000w @ 12v or 1000w @ 120v ??

Only asking because I'm not up to snuff on how these things actually work.

Believe me, if I lived in the middle of nowhere an extremely minimalist lifestyle, I'd have a small solar and wind set up to power my 2 way single side band radio equipment, my shortwave radio gear, but that would probably be about it because everything else would be sold or given away as it would no longer serve any kind of purpose.

But for my current lifestyle, there's just no way - and I'm not willing to have panels all over the place - I forgot what they told me when I got caught by a solar salesman one day, but I do know he mentioned I'd need to compromise my way of living to make it work and I was like you can forget that as my love of working with sound and video is far too great to walk away from at this point in time.

If I think of it - I'll see if I can get some answers regarding the solar array they had/have?? on the roof of the new engineering building where I work, which to me was pretty good sized although I am not sure exact dimensions - maybe 75ft by 300ft ??

This was maybe around year 2000 or so... and they made a big deal about it too, had all kinds of big gauges and read outs in real time so interested people at the plant could view how much electricity was being generated, and I'll be honest I was sold because the numbers - everything about it - seemed very impressive to me, but then a co-worker* who really understands this stuff kinda laughed and said, yeah that's like maybe enough to power 6 homes.....

I saw [*Reuban...] today too, in the men's room..... I'll have to track him down and see if he remembers, because I now remember being super impressed while he felt it was embarrassing [the output of the solar set up the company put up...]

Now, I'll close with this - that was say twenty years ago - but today... all those displays and gauges are long gone from the engineering building lobby, no trace exists anywhere of this plan to generate energy from the sun, I'll see if any of the building maint. people know if the panels are still up on the roof.

As for the film I posted here, I'm hearing that the enviromental community wants it pulled immediately, which makes me want to see it again to see what their problem is with it.

I mean, if the common consensus is the film is a lie, then what's the problem - nobody would care to watch it - just like on here [STP] correct ??

ok... enough of me.... I'm out and off to sleep.

PS - no luck with tracking down that film maker I was trying to relocate, but then again with at least twenty years passing, and the nature of her subject matter being documented anything is possible....

First name was Jessica, in 1999 she was in her early to mid 20's as far as age went.

Real hardcore person who set out to document the destruction of these forests I think in Colorado..... and I remember telling her friend though how I met Jess that I would finance full production of it, so no cost of Jess's part that's how important it was to me to help her out , because I heard enough things about what she video'd to know this was very important to get out onto screens, at least on a local/independent level....

 

[Deleted member 13433]

*oh, one thing I want to close with - as I don't want to be accused of wasting too much energy on this thread which did not go over too well:

It was the forest eating power plants - which also run on fossil fuels that enraged me, when I saw what was going on in Burlington VT, that got my attention.

Also - and I bet the militant vegans loved finding out about this - how some clean green fuels which are based on animal fats, and things like corn, and- here's the best part - require fossil fuels to produce.

The one thing I got out of this film was that these alternative means to produce power rely on the consumption of other living things - be it forests, animals, food sources.... and in this age of where much of the world starves, that to me is beyond disgusting.

It also seems to me that to produce much of this green energy - more fossil fuels are used to produce the green energy sources than the benefits realized, ok... maybe that's the wrong phrase but it's almost like the cure is worse than the disease, like how that jerk in the white house advocates shooting up bleach to cure C19, now why didn't I think of that.......

Ok. I promise I won't waste anymore bandwidth on this, but this above actually woke me out of a deep sleep just now....

If you want to watch a film that really inspired me, check out Waterwalker by Bill Mason.
There's some real moving parts where he discusses how the forests are dying, and how where there's this one particular power plant [this is on the Canadian side of L. Superior] everything is dead, nothing lives.

Planet of Humans has inspired me to come out of retirement regarding my own war against those who choose to pollute, and that is going to make a whole lot of people who supported my work very happy, and those who didn't very very mad......

God Earth One A-T-W-A AIR TREES WATER ANIMALS

*edit: these pictures below are just a small portion of what I devoted 8 solid years to my life to, which included but was not just limited to river clean up, wildlife rescue, documenting factories which pollute waterways and kill fish, and a poorly photographed copy of the only new paper article that got my struggle right. At one point I had over 4000 images saved, but when I took down 3 Facebook pages I had going, those images vanished forever...

I hope that these images show that I indeed do care about our planet, and am not judged too harshly for questioning the trend of clean green energy, especially since major corporations are involved and behind it.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

A-T-W-A AIR TREES WATER ANIMALS

Charlie Manson Rules FTW!

 

[Stiv Rhodes]

I talked to a solar technician who has his own house on solar which he said he loves, and still a large part of the conversation was him emphasizing it's limitations and the fact that it's not really as green as people think. The panels and batteries are highly toxic and don't last forever. The pollution just isn't seen at the point of consumption. He still has to supplement with a gas generator on cloudy or rainy days and use propane for all his heating and cooking and ration his power use at night in order for his fridge to stay on till sunrise. It's still probably better than burning coal or petroleum, but there's no clean energy. Hydro electric use to be thought of as green energy until they realized the ecological damage that damming a river caused, even though it doesn't pollute.

 

[Odin]

I talked to a solar technician who has his own house on solar which he said he loves, and still a large part of the conversation was him emphasizing it's limitations and the fact that it's not really as green as people think. The panels and batteries are highly toxic and don't last forever. The pollution just isn't seen at the point of consumption. He still has to supplement with a gas generator on cloudy or rainy days and use propane for all his heating and cooking and ration his power use at night in order for his fridge to stay on till sunrise. It's still probably better than burning coal or petroleum, but there's no clean energy. Hydro electric use to be thought of as green energy until they realized the ecological damage that damming a river caused, even though it doesn't pollute.

You are speaking to the choir....

Humans easily delude themselves...

It's a choice though between simple pastoral living... waiting for a cataclysm... like an ELE asteroid or Super Volcanoes to wipe us out...

OR PROGRESS.

OR IS IT????

And I hate that word, progress... because it is so deceptive.

As this clean energy idea can ... maybe seem to be.

Perhaps there is a way to use renewable energy systems while becoming intelligent enough as a human culture to not overtax the biological systems this planet is based on...

I'm not sure what is possible...

BUT I am wiling to hope and take a chance...

So, as all of human history has gone on and on and on...

I suppose we shall find out.

 

[MFB]

Humans easily delude themselves...

It's a choice though between simple pastoral living... waiting for a cataclysm... like an ELE asteroid or Super Volcanoes to wipe us out...

OR PROGRESS.

OR IS IT????

And I hate that word, progress... because it is so deceptive.


I'm not sure what is possible...

BUT I am wiling to hope and take a chance...

So, as all of human history has gone on and on and on...

I suppose we shall find out.

To me,
Humanity has mostly never had the wisdom needed to match it's amazing intelligence and ability of manipulating external surroundings.

Ya give the right tool to the wrong man and...

 

[Deleted member 24782]

NO. But it put's on the right track to some awesome futuristic primitive utopia!!!

 

[boongah4]

First, I'd like to recommend a book related to the topic:

http://vaclavsmil.com/2010/06/01/en...bringing-science-to-the-energy-ploicy-debate/

This is a pretty accessible read for anyone interested in the question of how energy transitions take place and why some forms of energy work better than others.

At the outset, I think we need to be realistic about where we are, how we got here, and what the prospects are for the various paths we might take next. Smil's book lays some of that out in pretty straight-forward manner.

The main thing to pay attention to -- I think -- is energy density. So if you want to replace a coal-burning plant with a solar farm you first have to consider what the output of that coal plant is. The largest coal generating plant in the U.S. is WA Parish Generating Station in Texas. It has an annual output of 3.65 GW. The largest photovoltaic power station in the world is Bhadla Solar Park in India which has an annual output of 2.245 GW (I think that's planned not actual).

At first that might not seem like much of a difference but consider the following:

WA Parish occupies roughly one square mile. Bhadla Solar Park occupies about 15.5 square miles (for comparison that is twice the land area of Cambridge, MA). Keep in mind you will need about one and half Bhadla Solar Parks to do away with WA Parish. So you need an area of about 23 square miles or roughly half the land area of Boston.

So in 2019, the U.S. used about 4.12 trillion KWh of electricity or about 4.12 million GWh which roughly is about 11,200 GWh per day. A gigawatt hour is a sustained consumption over an hour. Basically, the grid needs to be delivering 11,200 GW so you need something like 56 plants rated for 2GW to meet the demand. And again, the assumes peak efficiency which often is not the case.

[Please feel free to correct my math I'm doing this without looking things up so I might screw up some units or other calculations, I appreciate any help ]

At first this seems straight-forward. 56 Bhadla Solar Parks should do the trick. But keep in mind that is nearly 1000 square miles of photovoltaics. Basically, an area the size of Rhode Island.But there are some problems. Among them are:

Not all sites are equally advantageous for photovoltaics. For example, areas with lots of cloudy days will reduce the 2.245 GW peak output to something less. It's also not as simple as siting the photovoltaics in some remote desert. There are losses as power travels over the wires. The longer the wire the greater the loss. And those wires don't exist yet (despite talk of 'the grid' we actually have several discrete regional grids). Also, the sun does not shine at night which means the electrons generated during the day need to be stored. There are many schemes for doing this but pumped storage is probably the most common. Basically, you pump water uphill in the day time and store it in a reservoir until demand peaks at night. Then you release the water and use it to turn a turbine. It's sort of inefficient but it works in some locations (Northfield Mountain (hydroelectricity facility) - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northfield_Mountain_(hydroelectricity_facility)).

Other choices are things like batteries. Basically, this technology doesn't really exist yet (and maybe not ever; I'm talking about grid-scale storage schemes not DIY off-grid home solar ). Lead acid batteries are the most practical choice as there are limits to the amount of Lithium available (World Lithium Supply - http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/). But here again there will be some losses in the charging and discharging of the batteries.

You also have to consider things like where to site a solar generating plant. As mentioned, it's a land intensive method. We still have 7 billion people on the planet and 330 million here in the U.S. Those people need to live somewhere (and interestingly our current historical moment with COVID-19 might cause a rethink on dense urban lifestyles). In addition, this land also has to provide food. Also watershed protection. Forested land acts as a carbon sink and probably shouldn't be cleared for photovoltaics. And most people agree that certain tracts of land are a public trust that should be preserved for future generations. So we can't just start slapping solar panels all over the landscape willy nilly.

Finally, all this takes time. If we started in on this right now the permitting and funding process would be years maybe even a decade or more. I live in a very blue state and witnessed a town meeting where the construction of solar farm was voted down mainly for NIMBY reason. All I'm saying is that it takes time to transition from one form of energy to another.

I think one of the biggest problems we face is that the problem of climate change is not simple. There are no easy answers. But I do think that any solution that relies in large part on technologies that do not yet exist (grid-scale storage) is probably not something we should invest much hope in.

One last thing, I know this issue has become imbued with an almost Talismanic power in our current day with lots of strong emotions like fear and anxiety. It's not my intention to promulgate any ideology here. I'm trying very hard to limit myself to things that are basically proven fact. If I've put anything down here that is wrong please let me know. I'm happy to correct whatever I got wrong and will thank you for making me less dumb. All I ask is that when you do offer a correction to keep in mind that being wrong and being evil are two different things. Nothing gets better until we can talk this thing out.

Thanks.

 

[Purplesalamander]

So I didn’t watch the video, and I don’t know what all points it mentions, but you’re right in saying that “green” energy isn’t really all that green. I don’t think anyone’s mentioned all of the mining that goes into creating solar panels and the like, but it wrecks environments outside of the United States. Plus there’s everything that has to be mined to create that battery for solar, which can mean lead. I don’t know as much about wind, geothermal, nuclear, etc, but there’s no way I would ever just assume it was even mostly good for the environment. Also, there’s this thing called carbon trading, which is a huge scam. It’s pretty complicated, so I don’t want to go into it (also bc I don’t fully understand it), but essentially it’s a way for large corporations to pollute but present to the public that they’re “green.”

 

[Deleted member 24782]

So I didn’t watch the video, and I don’t know what all points it mentions, but you’re right in saying that “green” energy isn’t really all that green. I don’t think anyone’s mentioned all of the mining that goes into creating solar panels and the like, but it wrecks environments outside of the United States. Plus there’s everything that has to be mined to create that battery for solar, which can mean lead. I don’t know as much about wind, geothermal, nuclear, etc, but there’s no way I would ever just assume it was even mostly good for the environment. Also, there’s this thing called carbon trading, which is a huge scam. It’s pretty complicated, so I don’t want to go into it (also bc I don’t fully understand it), but essentially it’s a way for large corporations to pollute but present to the public that they’re “green.”

Mining isn't that bad for the environment, were just digging big holes and tunnels underground, were like ants.

 

[Stiv Rhodes]

Mining is incredibly harmful to the environment. Forget the old image of tunneling with pickaxes. It's more like blowing up entire mountaintops, mixing toxic solvents into the slag, pumping the solution out, separating the ore and discarding the polluted wastewater.

https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/problems/mining.html

 

[JessicaMcDonald]

My friend, it's time to get used to this, unfortunately, our world is so arranged that people lie to each other for their own benefit, as for them it has already become a habit without which they simply can not do.