hunter
hunter's JournalGun fetishes are disgusting. Every time there's a mass shooting...
... the posts of gun fetishists only reinforce my opinion.
Listen to MineralMan.
If, whenever there's a mass shooting you just have to come to DU to defend your gun habit, then maybe you have a problem.
I don't respect the second amendment as it's now interpreted any more than I'd respect someone's right to own slaves. Yet at one time owning slaves was Constitutional.
Most people in the U.S.A. don't care enough about guns to bother owning one.
Most gun owners may have one or two guns safely locked away that they rarely think about, and wouldn't be offended by any reasonable regulation.
But the gun fetishists are keenly aware of any possible threat to their bizarre obsession and will leap up to defend their guns before the bodies of the last victims of the latest mass shooting are laid to rest.
Nice dream... but the math doesn't support it.
Adding even a few hours storage to "free" wind and solar power pushes the the cost per megawatt hour up through the roof.
The current Tesla "Power Wall" stores 13.5 kwhr and costs $5900. Optimistically that's enough to run a small window air conditioner (and nothing else in your home) for about 24 hours.
The basic problem doesn't go away with scale, it's the same for a private home or a regional electric grid. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. People off-the-grid tend to buy dirty fossil fuel generators as "backup" to their dream solar and wind systems and end up making a much bigger environmental mess than they would have if they just moved to the city. Urban and high density suburban living can have a surprisingly small environmental footprint.
Germany's ambitious wind and solar program has brought the price of electricity to about 35 cents a kilowatt hour for home and small business users, but it's a sleight of hand because heavy industry is exempt and use coal generated electricity at less than 5 cents a kilowatt hour. The problem is simple, if German industry had to pay for wind and solar energy they couldn't compete in world markets.
In places amicable to pumped hydro storage the cost of storage is about $150-$200 a megawatt hour and the lifetime of the plant is indefinite, provided climate change doesn't dry up the supply of water.
Big Lithium battery plants are about $200 a megawatt hour, and Tesla is aiming for $100, but the lifetime of batteries is limited and this does not include recycling costs. Last I heard, Tesla is claiming their batteries will go 5000 cycles before they reach 80% of their original capacity.
Lead acid batteries cost less initially but I don't know anyone who has had to care for them who doesn't loathe them, not to mention the extreme toxic lead problems they've caused in less developed nations where battery recycling technology is primitive and poisons entire communities.
Batteries become very problematic if they have to be replaced every ten years and stations have to install excess capacity to account for battery degradation.
Here's the thing to remember: None of these costly storage schemes are necessary if you have responsive gas and hydro power systems.
Batteries can compensate for less responsive power systems, but in such cases battery capacities are measured in minutes.
There are some interesting numbers and analysis here:
https://www.lazard.com/media/438042/lazard-levelized-cost-of-storage-v20.pdf
I'll put this movie on my list. Thank you.
As an aside, although there are no labs developing Kodachrome using the Kodachrome process anymore, there are still a few labs that will develop it in black and white. The color information could conceivably be recovered later by various means since the color information on the film isn't lost, it's just not visible.
There's been some progress in color processing of kodachrome but unlike the original process the color is not stable. Best scan it before the color fades. Some of the chemicals used in the original Kodachrome process are unacceptably toxic or no longer available.
The image will be lost if the film is never developed so it may be a worthwhile to have Kodachrome developed in black and white if you happen to find some never-developed rolls of kodachrome in grandma's closet.
Profile Information
Name: HunterGender: Male
Current location: California
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 38,310