The clean green energy thread - Lets talk about alternatives to nuclear power and how we can save th

SkScotchegg · 14 Mar 2011 at 18:08

The clean green energy thread - Lets talk about alternatives to nuclear power & fossil fuels - Lets save the world!

People say that clean green energy currently cant supply the demand of the world we live in but what if people aren't thinking outside the box, like as an example scenerio what if we just had power for 6 days a week to each home in the UK, instead of 7 days, or what about the fact that most people work all day and arent even home, so why do we need the power to our homes if we arent even there.

Or even if it was just for one hour a day or 3 hours a day or whatever, I just think we could cut our demand down drastically if we did stuff like this.

I like to enjoy the things everyone else enjoys such as 50" tv's, projectors, PC's, laptops, xbox 360's etc etc and all the usual gadgets people in Britain like to enjoy, but if the government said we aren't going to use nuclear power anymore in the UK and so you'll only have power for 5 days a week and in those 5 days it will just be for 8 hours a day...I'm cool with that...Also I'm just talking about homes, not businesses and not hospitals obviously.

Obviously this is just an example, and this is just a crazy scenario, I dont know how they would do it and how big the cuts would be in this situation...but am just wanting to discuss this as I saw other people in the "Japan earthquake thread" talking about these things but obviously its best we make a separate thread instead of taking away what that thread was made for.

I know some people will reply to this and laugh and say "dream on!!" this will never happen. But fossil fuels cant last forever and we cant rely on nuclear power forever either. We have many green options available right now and we'll probably invent better ones in the future too.

I'm still hoping they will make huge progress with cold fusion, then we really would be sorted. They say there's more energy in one cubic mile of sea water then all other energy sources on earth combined, if we could only harness it!

SkScotchegg · 14 Mar 2011 at 18:22

Well I was thinking we should get rid of nuclear power because of the dangers it poses and also fossil fuels because of global warming.

There's no reason why we cant be driving electric cars right now and no reason why we cant have power cuts.

EDIT: Also the power cuts would prob save lives because of lazy people sat in front of the TV when they could be doing something physical like exercising, since they say that the number 1 killer is heart disease due to obesity! All the information on the news saying the western world is turning into nations of fat people.

SkScotchegg · 14 Mar 2011 at 18:35

There's many schemes setup by the government now which are complicated and cost money, such as housing benefits and child benefits for single parents etc, these kind of schemes are down to individual needs for each person and am sure the government could make a database of which people work days and which people work nights and in that database it could say when people need power and when they dont. So as an example....say there is 5 million people that work nights and they work 6:30pm to 6:30am then they get in at 7 like go to sleep, wake up at 2-3 and they could have their power come on at 12-6 each day and this would all be in the database.

Everyone could just fill out a form for the goverment to say which time of day they need their power and when they dont and everyone could be allocated like 8 hours a day of power use to be turned on whenever they need it.

Sort of like in WW2 when we had rations and people would have tokens to go get milk/eggs/cheese/bread etc from post office or wherever they got it from lol.

SkScotchegg · 14 Mar 2011 at 18:44

Originally posted by Superewza:

Quote:
Originally Posted by masterluke
Holy massive pictures batman!!

Wind power is only ever going to be a tiny part of the solution. The payback for investment makes it largely pointless. Hard to see it making a real difference. The only reason it exists at all is because of massive subsidies.

Superewza:
You sure about that?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...et-stream.html]

Thats amazing, so hope they develop that!

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 05:57

I've read all your replies and I've seen the holes in my power cut idea even though I liked the idea at first! lol but I still think electric cars are a good idea.

And...If you haven't seen it already, maybe you should watch that electric car documentary...I cant remember the exact details and specifics so dont quote me on any of this but here goes....The documentary showed people in the 80's in California USA driving electric cars, and testing them, loads of people had them, and there was electric re-charge stations setup all over the state and people were really apprehensive before they got their electric car, and they thought perhaps they would be slow, and they would look rubbish, and they wouldn't enjoy to drive them, and they would run out of battery...but when they got their brand new electric car, all their fears were put to rest, and the car was actually allot faster then they thought it was going to be, they liked the look of the car, it seemed nice and sporty like other normal cars and it felt great to drive, and people really fell in love with this car....but then apparently the oil companies complained or something and there was some big conspiracy and all the cars got taken away from people, got drove to a scrap yard and completely demolished, the documentary made it seem like a big scandel...so basically we already had electric cars in the 80's in california, the whole system worked! and the world could have been changed for the better right there and then, but no....it's now 2011 and everyone is still driving cars with petrol engines...

So after seeing that documentary, plus all the other factors...someone above said batteries are crap....dont know where your getting your info from because batteries have come along way since the 80's and they were driving their electric cars like 6 hours a day.

And I've seen some new documentaries recently and they've actually invented some new electric cars now in last couple of years which are great.

So all we need is to put stations all over the city across the country to charge them, and start selling the cars! and offer incentives to people that go green and give them tax benefits etc so they opt for an electric car over a petrol car.

I think we need to do this to stop using oil once and for all...for the sake of the planet and all the species that live on it.

Plus oil prices are ridiculous now, and oil spills are dreadful when they happen, and the pollution from oil could end up killing us all eventually, I dont think there's a debate as to weather or not global pollution is real or fake any more, I believe the evidence speaks for it's self so there should be no argument there.

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 16:45

Originally posted by Aod:

you're thinking of the General Electric EV1, which was, by all accounts, a fairly reasonable EV.
The only two problems with it, are the same two problems that every battery-powered-electric-vehicle faces: it cost FAR too much, and it's range was pitiful.

Case in point? GM were only able to lease around 800 of them. they couldn't sell them due to government regulations.
Furthermore, the car was available in two generations, the first used Lead-Acid batteries, the second used NiMH batteries instead.

Lead Acid Batteries have a Specific-Energy of only 30-40 Watt-hours per Kilogram (Wh/Kg), and NiMH batteries have a specific energy of up to 75Wh/Kg.

as a result of the poor energy-storage capabilities of those battery technologies, i quote this from Wikipedia:
"Cars with the lead-acid pack had a range of 80 to 100 miles, while the NiMH cars could travel between 100 and 140 miles between charges."

best case-scenario, 140 miles between charges? considering a charge takes hours, can you see why that's simply impossibly impractical? a conventional petrol or diesel powered vehicle have ranges upto and exceeding seven hundred miles, and then refueling only takes ten minutes if there's a queue to pay.

Battery technology hasn't advanced as far as you might think it has.
Even with highly-environmentally-destructive lithium batteries (the production-process for them is abhorrent), you might see 200Wh/Kg.

Assuming that an EV with the same efficiency as the EV1, with a Li-Poly battery-pack of the same mass was used, the range would only increase to about 370 miles, which will still require the many-hour-charge-cycle to refuel.

going to mention the "fast-charge-technology" that allows these newfangled lithium batteries to be recharged in 20 minutes? don't bother: they're technologically impressive but have three major drawbacks;
First: They require current-delivery-capabilities that most STREETS cannot accomodate, we're talking currents in the thousands of Amps range.
Second: They reduce the charge-efficiency of the charging process markedly - with regular charging, more than 80% of the energy you put into a lithium battery will be stored, with these "fast-charges", that drops to around 60% or less, depending on the speed. that's energy that's simply turned into heat.
Third: the fast-charge-cycles are incredibly damaging to the already fragile Lithium batteries, which generally have a cycle-lifetime of only 1000 charge-cycles before their usable capacity becomes too low to be useful.
with fast-charges, this can be as low as two hundred and fifty cycles.

Assuming a daily travel total of about 80 miles, that could easily see the battery needing to be replaced after just eighteen months. Isn't the whole point to save the environment?

Well maybe an electric car couldnt work for some people because they commute to work in other cities and have to travel vast distances...but I think for millions of people in almost every city world wide, when it comes to countries like UK and USA I mean....why wouldn't an electric car be ok? Because most people get in the car in the morning, drive 3 miles to work in city center and then drive home on a night. So I think electric car would be perfect.

I know everyone situation is different, but I'm going off most people I know, friends and family, we live in Leeds, and everyone lives around the city centre, where most people in Leeds probably work. So the batteries they've created you said can do 100 miles, but people are only doing 6 miles a day so surely thats more then enough.

What if like 70% of people in every city drove electric cars, that could cut fossil fuel usage down and help with global warming...also we could really do with getting planes using electric too.

I dont know what boats use? like the big ferries etc? and think trains already use electric dont they?

I just think we could make a big difference to our world wide carbon footprint if we did these things.

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 16:57

Eddited title of thread to "The clean green energy thread - Lets talk about alternatives to nuclear power & fossil fuels - Lets save the world!"

Originally posted by Khaaan:

The City of Masdar looks set to be the only green city on Earth with no water being wastd and all energy generated through solar power and other completely green methods. It's still being built but if you've watched Human planet you'll know a little about it already.

Info @ http://www.masdarcity.ae/en/index.aspx

Thats awesome, I hope the city gets built with no problems, I hope its a complete success, and then afterwards I hope the whole world can head in that direction. I'd never heard about this so thanks for the link, now we can all watch the progress of it over the next few years.

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 17:01

After reading your replies about nuclear energy, you've given a pretty good argument for nuclear energy, and you almost had me convinced its the best source of energy and better then anything else....but then I just think about one thing, and all what you've said kind of goes out the window for me....and I'm being really serious when I say this...I just think to myself, ok yeah, but if a nuclear power plant had a serious meltdown next to my city, then everyone here would die unless they were evacuated early, and then what? people cant live in Leeds ever again for what? 250,000 years?

Wait a second...is it just me, or does this seem like too big of a risk? Just because it might have only happened once before in one place like Chernobyl or whatever, I just think isn't human life worth more, and why take such huge risks with our lives and our planet?

I don't know, just cant get my head around that one factor.

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 17:06

Originally posted by Khaaan:

It won't be possible for the whole world to follow Masdar's path though because the Sun isn't always available all over the globe during all daylight hours like it is there

It will however push other nations to follow the example of researching alternative energies!

I hear what your saying about not everywhere having the same sun power, but if that city is a complete success then the rest of the world could design their cities based on Masdar and instead of mostly relying on sun just use another source of energy like wind/tidal etc.

I think its just important that a city will be built completely green, and that someone takes the first step to do this, and then perhaps other cities will follow in a green path...before you know it we could have 5 green cities world wide, and 50 years later we could have 20 green cities and so on, each city using different types of green power of course based on their location and options available to them.

SkScotchegg · 15 Mar 2011 at 17:20

Originally posted by Prime:

Question - The materials, labour and infrastructure being used to build the city, where is it sourced from?
Not knocking the end concept as it's ideal, but cities don't make themselves unfortunately. Not followed it so curious.

Good point but the city is still worth making imo for many reasons such as the long term benefits and also persuading the rest of the world and other corporations and governments to do the same.

SkScotchegg · 16 Mar 2011 at 05:18

Originally posted by kalvindeane:

By the time nuclear fusion is developed properly, Britain will be underwater

Why will we be under water?

SkScotchegg · 16 Mar 2011 at 19:19

Can someone shed some light on the breakdown of what power we use and where it comes from?

like as an example:

Wind 5% - location?
Solar 5% - location?
Gas 15% - location?
nuclear 75% - location of all nuclear plants in UK?

...That might be asking a lot but just wondered if any of you guys had this kind of info to hand?