Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: Yahya on 11/07/2017 14:33:56
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how much using clean energy in power stations will help solving climate change? what is the percentage of the amount of gases emitted from these power stations? the typical problem of petrol cars is solved by electric cars , but power stations are still a problem .
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Far more fossil fuel is used directly for heating and transport than for producing electricity. Burning fossil fuel to produce electricity for electric cars is a temporary tax scam with very little impact on the overall emission of CO2: it requires as much energy to make the average car as it consumes in its lifetime, and the economic life of the best traction batteries is only a couple of years, so the lifetime fuel consumption of an electric car from ore to dust is hardly different from that of a diesel. Hybrids require less new infrastructure than electrics but have a worse power-to-weight ratio than pure electric or pure diesel vehicles, so don't save on emissions overall.
The trick is to reduce the need for travel, and encourage people to wear wool instead of heating their homes.
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, .......and the economic life of the best traction batteries is only a couple of years,........
Just had my electric car (purchased second hand) serviced. It is now about 3 1/2 years old. The service report claims that my battery's status is 100%.
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The Australian government has had wild swings in Energy Policy over the past 10 years, switching with every change in government. This has left the industry in a very confused state.
The current government seems intent on discarding recommendations from the Chief Scientist, and has talked about backing the very dubious Carbon Capture & Sequestration theory: you still burn coal for power, but you inject all the CO2 back into the ground. Given that California (with its considerable oil well expertise) cannot contain valuable methane in underground storage, I don't see how you can reliably store worthless CO2.
The government just announced a pilot scheme for the upcoming summer: "We will pay you to change your airconditioner settings on hot days". This "Demand-Side Management" makes more Megawatts of power available by generating "Negawatts" - the Megawatts you don't consume!
Meanwhile, the population is voting with their wallets, and installing solar power on their roof. As battery prices come down, more will install battery packs so they can use their own power in the evening, instead of selling it to the grid during the day at low prices, and buying it back in the evening at high prices.
One important factor limiting the deployment of rooftop solar is that the passive transformers in our electricity distribution network don't cope well with power that sometimes comes from the power station, and sometimes comes from people's homes; this produces undesirable swings in mains voltage.
Some efforts are underway to bring our electricity distribution network into the 21st century by incorporating electronics into "digital transformers", which can easily deal with bidirectional power flows.
See: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/smart-transformers-will-make-the-grid-cleaner-and-more-flexible