Quote from: Hidyo on November 26, 2024, 14:33:39I not sure you are making sense. At high latitudes, intermittency is an unsolved issue.

You are confusing something, there is a difference of "for personal use" and "for grid use". Outside of personal use, solar is bundled with wind, hydro, geothermal, storage, transmission, demand response and etc. Intermittency has long been a solved issue.

QuoteThe amount of batteries has been calculated to compensate by various sources and most accurately by Finland GTK. The material requirement is enormous.

Again you are misunderstanding personal use with grid use. The main purpose of batteries is for home storage and in case of the grid, FCAS. Other than that, they do short term peak storage. Otherwise, there are much cheaper way to store energy than batteries. Things like pumped hydro and compressed air for example. If your end goal is heat, nothing beats thermal storage on cost.

QuoteIn the UK and Canada, typical monocrystalline solar can do about sustained 10% of their design capacity. We verified this with a friend who has a 30kW installation. He sells the electricity back to the grid and for the winter,he makes less than 1/10 of the amount of summer.

Not surprising since crystalline cells are known for having high peaks but do worse in lower lighting. Especially more so with string inverters who need a minimum to turn on. On top of that, in the case of house installations, they don't do tracking.

QuoteGermany began purchasing a lot more coal after the pipeline incident. So did a lot of European countries. This resulted in a nearly 8x increase in the price of coal. It led to South Africa, a coal exporter, being unable to supply high quality coal for itself because of higher prices for exports.

You are confusing panic with usage. Prices are based on futures, not usage. Here is coal consumption for electricity in Germany:

2018 - 806.69twh
2020 - 514.87twh (covid)
2022 - 641.76twh
2023 - 507.22twh
2024 isn't done yet but first 9 month saw a 39% drop in coal use

Europe's coal use is also down:

2020 - 3109.99twh
2022 - 3377.88twh
2023 - 2950.04twh

This is one of the problems with news headlines, they make bold statements about a short period of time, but when looking at actual data over time most of it is nothing.

But coal prices being up is true, mostly because after the prices went up after panic(4-8x that lasted till june 2023, then dropped), but they are still around 2x more than it was due to greed.

QuoteAs for Cali, the point was that regardless of the mechanisms of failure, you need secondary backups for critical infrastructure. This is the design rationale for gas and electricity in northern countries. Electricity goes out all the time but if it was used for heating and cooking as a single source, people would die in the winter when power went out. This is why many houses are still built with wood stoves.

This is why you decentralize the grid, no single point of failure. If electricity goes down, the solar panels on your roof+storage will give you enough to at least do bare minimum till it is back up.

QuoteThe use of electricity is not very common in the third world. Africa has its own petro development bank now called APPO, I think. Its entire premise is to generate any power for Africans. Abundant access to Electricity is mainly a Global North thing.

The issue of Africa is it being hard to build long wires that are quality spanning thousands of miles. Many  countries there have 25% grid losses compared to around 4-6% for most modern countries. Then of course failure rates are high and people stealing wires to resell.

In south africa, there has been a huge solar boom because people are sick and tired of the government pushing centralized coal electricity that has been unreliable. So much so that coal consumption for electricity in south africa has been falling.

Even for the entire africa, coal consumption has went down slightly. Even gas consumption is slightly down.

Fossil fuels are popular because it allows a select few to have control be it government or the elite. Once people are dependent, it is hard to ween off. But the writing is on the wall, as more and more people and providers generate their own electricity and becomes self sufficient, things aren't going back.

Quote from: A on November 25, 2024, 21:21:01

Quote from: Gjf on November 25, 2024, 13:50:27Solar is poor choice for people living in high latitudes like the UK and Canada. Instead, gas is way more available and energy dense.

Solar isn't a poor choice for people living in high latitudes like UK or Canada. You seem to be misunderstanding something, just because solar is much better closer to the equator doesn't mean it is a bad choice up north. Solar is still a great choice in UK and Canada.

As for your statement about gas being more available and energy dense, what in the world are you talking about? Did you just take a random talking point without even understanding it? There is nothing more available than the sun, 99.99% of the earth's energy comes from the sun. As for energy density, another useless metric, solar panels go on your roof, what does energy density matter? On top of that, solar panels are a generator, while gas is a fuel, you can't even cross compare them to begin with.

Quote from: Gjf on November 25, 2024, 13:53:39They are a net plus by a long shot. The world is in energy shortage not surplus. If you are being alarmist and sensationalist, how many people gets electrocuted per year? It is a few thousand for the US alone. That means the total for the world is about 60,000 or so per year. Ban electricity now!

Use of electricity is much more common than methane gas. Methane gas usage is generally mostly for stoves and heating, where as electricity pretty much powers everything.

Quote from: Zhu on November 25, 2024, 18:52:24Gas is a critical energy supply in northern communities. There is simply no way to generate enough electricity without nuclear up north. Even California went rolling brown and blackouts a few years ago during the summer. Any infrastructure that is critical must have redundancy. This is exactly why northern homes still have wood stoves, for redundancy. Even Germany is burning a massive amount of coal following the gas pipeline sabotage. No redundancy means weak geopolitical position and lack of options during natural emergencies and way more stress on a single infrastructure.

There is plenty of ways to generate electricity up north, norway generates most of their electricity from hydro. Then of course there is wind, solar, geothermal and etc. It is just a matter of building it out.

You seem to misunderstand why California has rolling blackouts during summer. The issue is 2 things, first is with old powerlines going through forests causing forest fires. The other one is too much demand during peak, too little demand during offpeak. No one wants to spend billions on a powerplant that runs for an hour during summer in a heatwave. This is why solar+battery is the best option, especially for a place like California.

As for Germany, their coal usage has dropped ever since the pipelines went down. Only reason why coal usage went up in Germany in 2022 was because covid recovery + half of france's nuclear reactors broke down forcing Germany to send power to France. Even then, Germany's coal consumption in 2022 was less than 2018. Now, Germany's coal consumption is record low, even below 2020 pandemic levels.

I not sure you are making sense. At high latitudes, intermittency is an unsolved issue. The amount of batteries has been calculated to compensate by various sources and most accurately by Finland GTK. The material requirement is enormous. In the UK and Canada, typical monocrystalline solar can do about sustained 10% of their design capacity. We verified this with a friend who has a 30kW installation. He sells the electricity back to the grid and for the winter,he makes less than 1/10 of the amount of summer.

Germany began purchasing a lot more coal after the pipeline incident. So did a lot of European countries. This resulted in a nearly 8x increase in the price of coal. It led to South Africa, a coal exporter, being unable to supply high quality coal for itself because of higher prices for exports.

As for Cali, the point was that regardless of the mechanisms of failure, you need secondary backups for critical infrastructure. This is the design rationale for gas and electricity in northern countries. Electricity goes out all the time but if it was used for heating and cooking as a single source, people would die in the winter when power went out. This is why many houses are still built with wood stoves.

The use of electricity is not very common in the third world. Africa has its own petro development bank now called APPO, I think. Its entire premise is to generate any power for Africans. Abundant access to Electricity is mainly a Global North thing.

Quote from: Gjf on November 25, 2024, 13:50:27Solar is poor choice for people living in high latitudes like the UK and Canada. Instead, gas is way more available and energy dense.

Solar isn't a poor choice for people living in high latitudes like UK or Canada. You seem to be misunderstanding something, just because solar is much better closer to the equator doesn't mean it is a bad choice up north. Solar is still a great choice in UK and Canada.

As for your statement about gas being more available and energy dense, what in the world are you talking about? Did you just take a random talking point without even understanding it? There is nothing more available than the sun, 99.99% of the earth's energy comes from the sun. As for energy density, another useless metric, solar panels go on your roof, what does energy density matter? On top of that, solar panels are a generator, while gas is a fuel, you can't even cross compare them to begin with.

Quote from: Gjf on November 25, 2024, 13:53:39They are a net plus by a long shot. The world is in energy shortage not surplus. If you are being alarmist and sensationalist, how many people gets electrocuted per year? It is a few thousand for the US alone. That means the total for the world is about 60,000 or so per year. Ban electricity now!

Use of electricity is much more common than methane gas. Methane gas usage is generally mostly for stoves and heating, where as electricity pretty much powers everything.

Quote from: Zhu on November 25, 2024, 18:52:24Gas is a critical energy supply in northern communities. There is simply no way to generate enough electricity without nuclear up north. Even California went rolling brown and blackouts a few years ago during the summer. Any infrastructure that is critical must have redundancy. This is exactly why northern homes still have wood stoves, for redundancy. Even Germany is burning a massive amount of coal following the gas pipeline sabotage. No redundancy means weak geopolitical position and lack of options during natural emergencies and way more stress on a single infrastructure.

There is plenty of ways to generate electricity up north, norway generates most of their electricity from hydro. Then of course there is wind, solar, geothermal and etc. It is just a matter of building it out.

You seem to misunderstand why California has rolling blackouts during summer. The issue is 2 things, first is with old powerlines going through forests causing forest fires. The other one is too much demand during peak, too little demand during offpeak. No one wants to spend billions on a powerplant that runs for an hour during summer in a heatwave. This is why solar+battery is the best option, especially for a place like California.

As for Germany, their coal usage has dropped ever since the pipelines went down. Only reason why coal usage went up in Germany in 2022 was because covid recovery + half of france's nuclear reactors broke down forcing Germany to send power to France. Even then, Germany's coal consumption in 2022 was less than 2018. Now, Germany's coal consumption is record low, even below 2020 pandemic levels.

Gas is a critical energy supply in northern communities. There is simply no way to generate enough electricity without nuclear up north. Even California went rolling brown and blackouts a few years ago during the summer. Any infrastructure that is critical must have redundancy. This is exactly why northern homes still have wood stoves, for redundancy. Even Germany is burning a massive amount of coal following the gas pipeline sabotage. No redundancy means weak geopolitical position and lack of options during natural emergencies and way more stress on a single infrastructure.

This can be mitigated with proper ventilation. Unfortunately, most of the time the ventilation is subpar. A lot of post soviet countries use gas stoves in small kitchens that have no or meager active ventilation. Many kitchen ventilation systems are not properly cleaned - a lot of fires happen because of clogged ventilation intakes above the stove.
Basically this would not be a problem if everyone had good ventilation. And the easiest solution is to replace the gas stove with an electric one.
Children with asthma grow into adults who have limits in how they can participate in workforce. We should strive to solve these problems when there is an easy solution.
Arguments that you need a gas stove as a redundant source of energy are unconvincing since electricity supply is quite robust these days (well... except for Texas I guess).

They are a net plus by a long shot. The world is in energy shortage not surplus. If you are being alarmist and sensationalist, how many people gets electrocuted per year? It is a few thousand for the US alone. That means the total for the world is about 60,000 or so per year. Ban electricity now!

Quote from: ban-gas-now on November 25, 2024, 07:37:49

Quote from: HHk on November 25, 2024, 02:57:08Gas stoves are great. When the power fails, we always relied on gas and still can cook. Instant heat, not picky about cooking ware, and not using a sole source of energy is important for this unstable world today.

40,000 unnecessary deaths a year and child asthma. literally ban the hell out of these death machines. they are a net negative on society.

Solar is poor choice for people living in high latitudes like the UK and Canada. Instead, gas is way more available and energy dense.

Quote from: A on November 25, 2024, 11:09:58

Quote from: HHk on November 25, 2024, 02:57:08Gas stoves are great. When the power fails, we always relied on gas and still can cook. Instant heat, not picky about cooking ware, and not using a sole source of energy is important for this unstable world today.

solar+battery backup?

Quote from: Alexander_ on November 25, 2024, 09:04:55It is necessary to prohibit not the use of gas, but to prohibit the dangerous use of gas!
If the gas stove is of good quality and the hood and ventilation are properly organized, then I don't see any health effects. And besides, a person will have a choice: gas or electricity.

Technically, gas stoves are always leaking gas, even when not in use. And most people forget to turn on the ventilation, not to mention even when they do, there is usually a microwave there which has weaker vents

Quote from: HHk on November 25, 2024, 02:57:08Gas stoves are great. When the power fails, we always relied on gas and still can cook. Instant heat, not picky about cooking ware, and not using a sole source of energy is important for this unstable world today.

solar+battery backup?

Quote from: Alexander_ on November 25, 2024, 09:04:55It is necessary to prohibit not the use of gas, but to prohibit the dangerous use of gas!
If the gas stove is of good quality and the hood and ventilation are properly organized, then I don't see any health effects. And besides, a person will have a choice: gas or electricity.

Technically, gas stoves are always leaking gas, even when not in use. And most people forget to turn on the ventilation, not to mention even when they do, there is usually a microwave there which has weaker vents

Quote from: ban-gas-now on November 25, 2024, 07:37:49literally ban

It is necessary to prohibit not the use of gas, but to prohibit the dangerous use of gas!
If the gas stove is of good quality and the hood and ventilation are properly organized, then I don't see any health effects. And besides, a person will have a choice: gas or electricity.

Quote from: HHk on November 25, 2024, 02:57:08Gas stoves are great. When the power fails, we always relied on gas and still can cook. Instant heat, not picky about cooking ware, and not using a sole source of energy is important for this unstable world today.

40,000 unnecessary deaths a year and child asthma. literally ban the hell out of these death machines. they are a net negative on society.

Gas stoves are great. When the power fails, we always relied on gas and still can cook. Instant heat, not picky about cooking ware, and not using a sole source of energy is important for this unstable world today.