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Renewables have many issues. Time to stop ‘jerking around’ with them and with batteries, as Bill Gates colourfully stated, and get real instead.
By Duggan Flanakin ~
“Electricity has become a human right.” – Robert Bryce
In chapter 16 of his seminal book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, Austin-based futurist Robert Bryce speaks of “the Terawatt Challenge” – a term coined by the late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley.
Smalley posited that if we can provide sufficient electricity to all the peoples of the world, we can eliminate the massive problems of food security, water quality, poverty, and a clean environment. And Bryce solemnly points out that as a world, we are far from that goal.
But we can get there.
Bryce, whose first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2002, traces the history of harnessed electricity from Benjamin Franklin through Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse – and the much less well known but equally…
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Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Bill Gates still believes in the existence of ‘greenhouse’ gases, but even so he puts his finger on the unreality of all the renewables tosh we’re all subjected to.
‘There is no substitute for the way an industrial economy runs today’. Think steel, plastics, cement, inorganic fertilizer to start with.
When the usual 3-day typhoon hits Tokyo (population over 35 million), what batteries are going to save the day? Not a hope.
From whom is this “right” to electricity derived? Who dispenses this right? Who guarantees it?
As a young man, the local city ran its own co-op electrical utility independent of the State owned plant and sold power to the residents at 2/3 the cost. People need to stop looking for Big Brother/Uncle Sam to solve their problems.
It is impossible to get colonialism out of the heart of Western Man.
‘Smalley posited that if we can provide sufficient electricity to all the peoples of the world, we can eliminate the massive problems of food security, water quality, poverty, and a clean environment.’
Eliminating ‘massive problems of food security, water quality, poverty, and a clean environment’ does not justify the evil of colonialism. How other people live is none of our business. Our belief that we live “better” than they do doesn’t justify our interference. They don’t need to be fixed.
There are a lot of people looking for alternative energy alternatives. The Thunderbolt Project’s Safire plasma project has recently morphed into Aureon Energy, which appears to be more like a table top hot fusion reactor than cold fusion. It shares some characteristics with cold fusion in that they are seeing transmutation of elements, but has a lot of similarities with the Farnsworth Fusor (a popular high school science project).
Here is a link: https://aureon.ca/
Some day, someone, somewhere will come up with a cost effective alternative to petroleum in the Terawatt scale. When they do, photovoltaic panels will be used only for small devices or powering loads far off the grid. Wind generators will not be rebuilt after they rot. It’s just a matter of time.
I wonder whether these mini-nuke designs could be made so portable that the whole unit could be switched out periodically and the used one returned for recycling.
US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up
39 minutes ago
The price of US oil has turned negative for the first time in history.
That means oil producers are paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands over fears that storage capacity could run out in May.
Demand for oil has all but dried up as lockdowns across the world have kept people inside.
As a result, oil firms have resorted to renting tankers to store the surplus supply and that has forced the price of US oil into negative territory.
The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US oil, fell as low as minus $37.63 a barrel.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52350082
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Looking forward to negative prices at the filling station 🤗
Hmmm. My GT350R will love cheap Shell V-Power petrol.
My state reopened beaches today. And some retail stores.
CV-19 deaths here peaked 11 days ago. So state government backing off stay at home order. Still draconian, but a step in the right direction.
another pie-in-the-sky paper ignoring reality of ‘people’.
Social stability is PRIMARY. Without that you cannot hope to accomplish anything because without it you get starvation, disease, and warlords. Sub Saharan Africa will NEVER be successful like the high energy countries because they are spring loaded into the tribal warfare position. Forever.
Then there’s the third world countries of Central/South America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific where birth rates are at least half again higher than GDP growth so there is a significant percentage of the population who do not eat properly and have little access to proper medical care. Until they get that under control they will never have the money to build or buy this electricity.
Quote: ““Electricity has become a human right.” That is foolish and dangerous.
Short story: Having worked near all of my career in power generation I got interested to find out how it started – for my minuscule country – Malta. We had the first distributed AC power the same week the US did – from generated steam not hydro. But I was already 12 when I switched the first light bulb at home. We forget how that all came about, and certainly the younger generations cannot even conceive such a lack of electricity. It came quickly relatively, but there were times when all could have been lost instantly. Social collapse could be quicker than Covid.
stpaulchuck above is mistaken. Great civilisations have come and gone, and none ever lit an electric light bulb. Our civilisation’s reliance on electricity is a boon, but could also be the instantaneous obliteration of a ‘highly leveraged’ form social style. In three score and ten plus a little I saw technology change from donkey driven bucket chain to raise water, to Chicago air motor, to old 2st kerosene motor, to diesel, to auto-electric pump. All were ‘socially’ distributed independent means except the last. Now there is no plan ‘B’. My elders long ago said the system is so big its impregnable and cannot fail. I was there when it did – the shock; the disbelief on faces; saw the complacency evaporate. Experience is a good tutor it is said, and the Enron days were ‘new style’ lessons.
But it seems we never learn.
Electricity is good, but trying to get rid of other energy sources isn’t.
Grim outlook for electric cars in Europe
By EUOBSERVER
17. APR
Sales of electric cars in Europe would be much smaller than expected in 2020 due to coronavirus supply chain disruptions and low petrol prices, a US credit rating agency, Fitch, has said. Consumers might also shun the cars as pandemic-impoverished governments lagged on installing electric charging stations and other infrastructure. EU car firms would miss CO2 targets due to the factors and risked incurring fines unless laws were changed.
https://euobserver.com/tickers/148101
“Until they get that under control they will never have the money to build or buy this electricity.”
Many conditions have to exist that don’t exist now before electrification is possible in many areas. It is profoundly naive to think that you can just build a power plant and they’ll have electricity.