Whats the "Greenest" way to produce electricity?

[Learjet]

Rubbing your feet on the carpet. Produces static electricity.

Dynamo on an exercise bike?

For what purpose did you have in mind? Personal, household, or commercial?

For household use, I think solar or wind power is perhaps the "easiest". It's not the most green, it takes most of their life to pay back the emissions from manufacture, but all other options are still on the drawing board.

If nothing else, at least I've saved a few dollars off the electricity bill, although that doesn't nearly cover what I've spent on solar panels. Ah well, it's a hobby.

 

[Furcifer]

Sorry. I'm not quite following you. The idea was to grow biomass (trees) that was not edible, close to the conversion plant. I'll try and find the paper tomorrow if I get a chance.

ISTR wrt Lambton was they were experimenting adding X% of something to the coal. I'll take a look for that info too.

I think it was some sugar cane like plant. That and wood pellets last I heard. Lambton said it was a bust but I'm not sure about the northern plants. Lambton burns bituminous and that doesn't work as well as lignite, or vice versa.

The problem is anything that is grown as a fuel could potentially be used as an edible (or whatever the word is) crop, and displacing that is a big no no as far as the UN is concerned. You need waste and you can only transport waste so far before it becomes unfeasible. And that isn't very far, less than 50 KM or so.

 

[MG1962]

Wind

Geothermal

 

[Furcifer]

Rubbing your feet on the carpet. Produces static electricity.

Dynamo on an exercise bike?

For what purpose did you have in mind? Personal, household, or commercial?

For household use, I think solar or wind power is perhaps the "easiest". It's not the most green, it takes most of their life to pay back the emissions from manufacture, but all other options are still on the drawing board.

If nothing else, at least I've saved a few dollars off the electricity bill, although that doesn't nearly cover what I've spent on solar panels. Ah well, it's a hobby.

Welcome.

If you live in an area with good wind turbines might be more than a hobby in the near future. PV solar I don't think will ever be more than a hobby, but Concentrated Solar Power might. Maybe not around my latitude, but certainly others in NA.

 

[Furcifer]

Wind

Geothermal

I'm not sure about wind, but I beg to differ about geo. I've heard Iceland is having major problems with "cold spots". It's not as limitless as once thought. That's what I've heard at least???

 

[MG1962]

I'm not sure about wind, but I beg to differ about geo. I've heard Iceland is having major problems with "cold spots". It's not as limitless as once thought. That's what I've heard at least???

Well not all the world has access to surface magma like Iceland. So the idea is to go to the heat. In Australia they are piloting an idea of drilling down then creating a huge u shaped connection. Run water down the piper, use the steam comming back to power a turbine. Let water condense, run it back through again

 

[Furcifer]

Well not all the world has access to surface magma like Iceland. So the idea is to go to the heat. In Australia they are piloting an idea of drilling down then creating a huge u shaped connection. Run water down the piper, use the steam comming back to power a turbine. Let water condense, run it back through again

I assume the plan is to use some underground cavern for the horizontal portion? Deep enough I guess this would work, it's just that I've heard there are serious problems with geothermal.

Sorry, just stirring the pot a bit. I don't know what the problem is exactly, just something I heard recently. I've never done any research on the matter myself.

 

[Learjet]

Welcome.

If you live in an area with good wind turbines might be more than a hobby in the near future. PV solar I don't think will ever be more than a hobby, but Concentrated Solar Power might. Maybe not around my latitude, but certainly others in NA.

Solar is quite strong here in Northern Australia, even in winter. At -21 degrees latitude the Sun still gets to about 45 degrees elevation in mid winter. Winter in northern AU is also our dry season so little or few clouds to contend with.

Also at the moment there are government subsidies for grid connect PV systems. There is incentive to do so since we are able to sell power back to the electric company for a higher price than we can buy it for!

And yes where I live near the coast it's always windy. Wind turbines offshore would make great use of a resource that is just going to waste otherwise.

Of course not all locations are suitable for these types of power stations. Other options will need to be looked at.

 

[Furcifer]

Solar is quite strong here in Northern Australia, even in winter. At -21 degrees latitude the Sun still gets to about 45 degrees elevation in mid winter. Winter in northern AU is also our dry season so little or few clouds to contend with.

Also at the moment there are government subsidies for grid connect PV systems. There is incentive to do so since we are able to sell power back to the electric company for a higher price than we can buy it for!

And yes where I live near the coast it's always windy. Wind turbines offshore would make great use of a resource that is just going to waste otherwise.

Of course not all locations are suitable for these types of power stations. Other options will need to be looked at.

PV is good to offset personal use, but it sounds like Australia has some prime land for CSP. Molten salt reservoirs allow for several hours of off peak generation. I wouldn't be surprised if there were several facilities under or nearing construction. Polygeneration with CSP is very green and highly efficient. If I was building a plant in Australia that's what I'd be doing.

 

[Trakar]

Depends upon how you define "green" mostly.

Personally, I prefer advanced (gen III-IV) nuclear to provide baseline, for most urban industrial centers. Solar can be designed into building codes to vastly supplement, and in many cases, meet, a large percentage of individual needs. Wind, geotherm, solar-therm, and tidal/current systems are all good where applicable. Hydro is tricky, vast masses of concrete that bring their own CO2 issues (concrete is one of the leading sources of manmade CO2 emissions) then you create large standing masses of water flooding green-mass basins (mostly) behind massive blockages of river flow, lots of ecological concerns, for the most part I support hydro but think that any new, and many old systems probably need to be extremely carefully (re)designed to take such issues into concern, actually, however, large dammed resevoirs are a good location for nuclear power plants, especially in more northern lattitudes. I've no real problem with tree farms and power plants designed to convert their biomass into electricity, but you're gonna need a lotta land and some pretty snazzy electric harvesters to keep them fed and producing enough excess power to make a profit off of. In my opinion, the greenest option is the one that best fits the local need without causing more problems than it resolves.

 

[JoeyDonuts]

Energon.






_What?

 

[bit_pattern]

Hydro. We've tapped most of it, but there is a little more yet. I'd like to see someone challenge falling water as the greenest source. GO!

Dams. The principle is all good and dandy but the implementation generally involves flooding vast valleys and releasing huge stores of gasses like methane from rotting vegetation. And that's not even beginning to touch on the damage they do to river eco-systems.

 

[valis]

Organic free-range electric eel farming perhaps?

Burning all natural, renewable whale oil.

 

[manofthesea]

Here in the US we have the largest natural gas reserve. But, we've already distanced ourselves from the rest of the world, which is now regressing compared to our latest discovery. They're now promoting the greenest, least costliest, (and it protects a culchrl chadishun) source of power. It's called clean coal.

Where would America be without a continued source of mine horrors and underground fires?

 

[Brian-M]

Hydro.

Wind

Geothermal

How about a hydro power plant where the water at the bottom is piped to supply a geothermal power station, with the hot steam and water that comes out of the turbines at the geothermal power station being pumped by windmills for domestic heating throughout the general population?

 

[Cuddles]

Matter-Antimatter annihilation.

Not a source of energy, only storage.

I'd like to see someone challenge falling water as the greenest source. GO!

Very easy. Not only does it usually requiring flooding large areas, destroying the environment in the vicinity of the dam, it also has massive effects on ecosystems downriver. Deltas disappear due to lack of silt, fertile land disappears because of lack of flooding and lack of silt. Fish and other aquatic organisms get stuck in restricted areas and can suffer from lack of oxygen and increases in pathogens due to stagnant water. Hydro is great in terms of emissions, but in many situations it's easily one of the worst sources of energy in terms of actual environmental impact.

 

[kevinquinnyo]

"This car runs off of my own sense of self-satisfaction..."

one of the best simpsons lines ever

 

[akama1]

Not a source of energy, only storage.

Very easy. Not only does it usually requiring flooding large areas, destroying the environment in the vicinity of the dam, it also has massive effects on ecosystems downriver. Deltas disappear due to lack of silt, fertile land disappears because of lack of flooding and lack of silt. Fish and other aquatic organisms get stuck in restricted areas and can suffer from lack of oxygen and increases in pathogens due to stagnant water. Hydro is great in terms of emissions, but in many situations it's easily one of the worst sources of energy in terms of actual environmental impact.

Hydro in Nepal is a different kettle of fish, as your hiking in the middle of nowhere, you see these tiny metal shacks next to steep glacial streams, with power lines connected. These streams would create a fair chunk of power, which was then sold to India. The near by village had to struggle on solar, whilst the government made money selling the electricity to others for a profit

Well not all the world has access to surface magma like Iceland. So the idea is to go to the heat. In Australia they are piloting an idea of drilling down then creating a huge u shaped connection. Run water down the piper, use the steam comming back to power a turbine. Let water condense, run it back through again

This sounds cool as, I did not realize we were looking at this type of electricity production , Will have to look for more info on it. (I do remember a talk I went to on building a glass, 1 kilometer diameter upside down funnel to super heat the air and force it through the tube to waiting turbines in the Desert, but never hear anything new about it)

 

[Furcifer]

Dams. The principle is all good and dandy but the implementation generally involves flooding vast valleys and releasing huge stores of gasses like methane from rotting vegetation. And that's not even beginning to touch on the damage they do to river eco-systems.

That rotting mass of vegetation is a one time deal, no more than say a tomatoe field of about equal area that gets turned over say a year or two. At least around here were it's valleys that get dammed. I assume you're referring more to the large facilities like in China and South America that flood very large areas. Even then I'd be curious what effect a large body of water has on convection and albedo compared to that same area when it was farmland (most of the time it isn't the best land that gets flooded)

I'd say a close second would be nuclear. If you replace the same hydro station with a comparable nuclear reactor you have to consider the large amount of concrete that goes into the reactor and the cooling towers. Less than a dam perhaps, but certainly a considerable amount. There's also transportation. Hydro electric runs with very few employees compared to nuke. There's probably less than 1/10 of the operators required to run a 5000 MW hydro compared to nuke. Then there's the transportation of fuel rods to and from the facility. The mining and processing that goes into the fuel. Thermal pollution from the cooling towers, tritium leaks etc.
Compared to hydro nuclear is very dirty indeed.

 

[Complexity]

Saw some magnificent lightning while driving on my recent vacation.

How could atmospheric potential differences be taken advantage of to produce electricity?