Can Solar & Wind Fix Everything (e.g., Climate Change) with a battery break-through?

[LeoThomson]

That's a very high cost.. money that would probably be much better spent by replacing windows and upgrading insulation.

I just replaced all the windows in my home with some high tech stuff and have been amazed at the difference. The windows no longer get cold in the bitter winter wind.

If you mandate it on new homes, cost will be lower and the price of the home will not go up by much, if at all. (The price of the land will drop) Banks and developers will try to press governments to increase the max amount people can borrow for the adition of solar and heat pumps, but government would be wise not to fall for that.

 

[Hedges]

If you mandate it on new homes, cost will be lower and the price of the home will not go up by much, if at all.

You ought to be in California government ?

 

[MurphyGuy]

If you mandate it on new homes, cost will be lower and the price of the home will not go up by much, if at all. (The price of the land will drop) Banks and developers will try to press governments to increase the max amount people can borrow for the adition of solar and heat pumps, but government would be wise not to fall for that.

I don't think that's how it will work here in the USA. Anything that is mandated will skyrocket in price.. anything that can gain a tax credit will skyrocket in price.

Supply and demand.. when the government mandates you purchase a product, demand goes way WAY up, supply goes down, causing prices to go up.

About the only price change that will be beneficial to anyone will be current homeowners who will see their house values increase as some people try to stay away from the added excessive costs of building a home.

And to complicate the issue, geothermal doesn't work everywhere equally. Different soil conditions, weather, and geology, would make it very cumbersome...

The engineering for a geothermal system for a house built on rock is going to be very different than for a house built on clay, and different again for a house on sand.. The moisture level in the soil plays a big part in how much loop you need.. how deep you need to go, etc. It's not as simple as "Dig a 50 foot trench and put the poly pipe in".

 

[Sanwizard]

Yes and no.. There's a logical fallacy about attacking the person instead of the data, but if we break that logic down, what we find is that attacking THE PERSON is an invalid argument, but attacking a source is most certainly valid.

One of the things lawyers learned to do early on is to flood the opposition during discovery. When the plaintiff was looking for the smoking gun, bury it in a mountain of evidence so large that its like looking for a needle in a giant haystack. At best, they miss the information, at worst, they spend a lot of money and resources to find it. IE: Don't make it easy.

Today, that strategy has migrated to almost everything else. Want to spread false information? Create something that is 90% true and sneak in the other 10%.

This is the new information war, and it isn't directed at people like me, its directed at the uneducated and gullible who lack the relevant formal education to understand the science being attacked.

I don't have time to scour his link for the lie.. I have more important things to do.. (building a barn, changing brake pads on wife's car, change blades on mower today) And, more importantly, I already did this once with one of his favorite websites corbettreport-something or other.. I picked one article that my education qualified me (close enough) to look at, and I found the lie within 20 seconds.

Willing to teach him a lesson and educate him on how the misinformation works, I tried to engage him on that lie I found and he evaded the discussion like I evade Ebola.

An honorable person would have tried to defend the article, and either accepted victory or admitted defeat.. A dishonorable person, and none view themselves as dishonorable, will make internal mental excuses to avoid the discussion because in the back of their brain, that left over lizard part is telling them they're being intellectually trapped and they know it.

So what can I do? Exactly what I just did.. let people know the links he is posting are misinformation.. The guy is a fruitcake.. something seriously wrong with some of these people in this forum.. and I have to wonder if they own guns because they are totally quack-a-doodle in the head.

Stupid and evil can look just like each other sometimes.. and sometimes stupid leads to being evil.

I chuckle to myself when Murph gets his buttons pushed, and comes off as all opinions other than his own are misinformation, and everyone is stupid except him, even though all his information is from Google searches too.

Lets face it folks, there are believers that people are causing the climate to change, and we need to spend more than our GDP to fix it NOW, or ??? New Ice age in a couple weeks, higher tides? Bad weather? Warmer weather?

To me, its like a guy is holding a pistol to your head demanding money, and your more worried that you left the lights on in the office. Personally, I say let the climate do what it does and lets see what happens. But If you want, pay me a couple grand, and I will send you some carbon credits. Whats the going rate for carbon credits these days anyway?

Seriously, I like you guys. I have learned a lot from the info you send. Keep it coming.

 

[svetz]

Problem is, when it gets cold outside, that radiator must get colder than the air around it.. and when it dips below freezing, water vapor begins to ice up on it.. when the ice builds up and clogs all the passage ways the fan is blowing air through, the unit stops working. This is why practice is better than theory. Although based on that I suspect they'd have to be designed to have an outside evaporation temperature well above the freezing point as humid weather in the 50 to 60F range would otherwise ice them up pretty quickly. That's what I meant by "standard" units.

Certainly, the R410A Pressure Enthalpy chart shows the refrigerant is quite capable of going down to -120F.

Colder air can't hold as much water; seems like reversing the cycle a few times a day would defrost it. I know you said it was inefficient, but I wonder just how inefficient? If the fan was off during the cycle seems like it would defrost very quickly.

At sub-zero temperatures, the humidity drops off to practically nothing (chart) so seems like there's only an inefficiency in humid climates and probably only between 40F to 30F. The colder it got, the more efficient it should be to operate as there would be fewer defrost cycles and the operating envelope in pressure enthalpy diagrams generally always gets wider at lower pressures.

Might be nice to have a two-expansion valve system (controlled via a valve/relay). That would better control the evaporation temperature based on outside temperature and tune the pressure delta for better efficiency.

 

[MurphyGuy]

This is why practice is better than theory. Although based on that I suspect they'd have to be designed to have an outside evaporation temperature well above the freezing point as humid weather in the 50 to 60F range would otherwise ice them up pretty quickly. That's what I meant by "standard" units.

Certainly, the R410A Pressure Enthalpy chart shows the refrigerant is quite capable of going down to -120F.

Colder air can't hold as much water; seems like reversing the cycle a few times a day would defrost it. I know you said it was inefficient, but I wonder just how inefficient? If the fan was off during the cycle seems like it would defrost very quickly.

At sub-zero temperatures, the humidity drops off to practically nothing (chart) so seems like there's only an inefficiency in humid climates and probably only between 40F to 30F. The colder it got, the more efficient it should be to operate as there would be fewer defrost cycles and the operating envelope in pressure enthalpy diagrams generally always gets wider at lower pressures.

Might be nice to have a two-expansion valve system (controlled via a valve/relay). That would better control the evaporation temperature based on outside temperature and tune the pressure delta for better efficiency.

They do run a defrost cycle and it does reduce the efficiency of the unit in heat pump mode. As you queried, the real question is how much penalty does it incur...

I don't know the exact numbers, but what I do know is that the efficiency curve in heat pump mode drops quickly as it gets cold. So while it might be 125% (as compared to an electric heating element at 100%) by the time that heat pump is operating in 35 degree ambient temperatures, that 125 number is down close to the electric heating element.... and that's where straight machine operating costs start to kick in.. going to cost a lot more to maintain and repair a heat pump than it is a straight electric element. A whole lot more.

Like I was saying, they don't work well in cold weather.. ahm.. to be specific, Michigan types of cold weather.. Because I know folks in Texas think its cold when its 40 degrees out.

It is my personal opinion that a heat pump is a very good investment for anyone living in the lower half or western coast of the USA.. But if you're up in the northern half where the ground is covered by snow all winter, don't waste your money.

 

[Checkthisout]

Heat pumps don't ice up below freezing as relative humidity at that point is zero. They ice up when it's 50ish and down to about 35ish.

They reverse and de-ice.

They work good down to about 20ish degrees but by then they are closing in on the condensation point of the refrigerant and there isn't enough temp difference between the air and refrigerant to extract much energy.

Anyways. What was I trying to say? Oh yeah, neighbor has a 2600 sf house and a ground source heat pump. His total energy bill (natural gas hot water, dryer) stupid cheap. Less than $1000.00 per year.

He does supplement with wood heat in the winter for ambiance.

 

[Hedges]

If we select a refrigerant which condenses well below Minnesota winter temperatures, can we get good heat-pump efficiency?
CH4? O2? N2? Something else?

 

[MurphyGuy]

If we select a refrigerant which condenses well below Minnesota winter temperatures, can we get good heat-pump efficiency?
CH4? O2? N2? Something else?

I'm pretty sure Ammonia is the reigning king of refrigerants.. We don't use it in residential applications because it is extremely dangerous if there's a leak... like painfully kill you suffering death dangerous.

 

[Checkthisout]

If we select a refrigerant which condenses well below Minnesota winter temperatures, can we get good heat-pump efficiency?
CH4? O2? N2? Something else?

No idea. I'm sure there are other limitations as well.

You could have a mini combined cycle furnace. Burn natural gas in a small engine to generate power then recover the heat from the cooling system and exhaust through an air to air heat exchanger and heat the house. Then, use a heat pump to extract the remaining heat from the exhaust gasses after they have pass through the air to air exchanger.


That actually sounds like a neat diy project.

 

[svetz]

If we select a refrigerant which condenses well below Minnesota winter temperatures, can we get good heat-pump efficiency?
CH4? O2? N2? Something else?

The existing R410a would work.

The evaporator pressure for a "standard" heat pump is probably set to around ~100 psia, so from the R410A pressure enthalpy chart below, that's a fixed temperature above freezing, and probably set that way so the outside coils don't freeze up (for those units that don't have defrost cycles as @MurphyGuy said). Probably around 90 psia for those that do (a boiling temperature of 20F), If the outside temperature is close to or lower than the boiling temperature obviously no heat can flow into the system (that is if the evaporator boils at 36 degrees and it's 30 degrees outside, heat flows from hot to cold, so heat couldn't flow into the evaporator to do its job).

Svetz's two-second guide to PE charts The chart to the left represents the pressure, temperature, and enthalpy of a gas. Given any pressure you can find the boiling temperature and calculate the change in enthalpy (heat) at that pressure between gas and liquid phases. The "hump" is the interesting part. The left side is a fluid (e.g., water) and the right it is a gas (e.g., steam). Because the transition between phases at constant pressure is a constant temperature, the horizontal lines across the hump are the temperature. So, at 90 psia, the phase change is about 120-20, or 100 BTU/lb. The red line in the diagram below shows a full cycle.

As you can also see from the chart above, if you drop the evaporator pressure to 25 psia, then the evaporation temperature is -40F, so it'll work in a lot colder environment.

Different refrigerants have very different properties. For example, water to water is 970 BTU/lb at 1 atmosphere (PE Chart). I believe water is the "king" of heat moved per lb. Also non-toxic!

So why don't they all go to 25 psia for -40F? To get to the condensation temperature (where the heat comes out) you always need to compress it to around 310 psia to get ~100F. The larger the pressure delta, the more work the compressor needs to do. So it will become slightly less efficient.

If the expansion valve were dynamic to where you could set evaporator pressure, then the system could dial in the optimum pressure for the outside temperature and ambient humidity (e.g., defrost cycles).

In Summary
Theoretically, heat pumps can work at any temperature. Practical concerns (like coils icing up) prevent them from working as efficiently with air as they need defrost cycles. But, getting heat from other mediums such as being buried solves that problem. Going deeper for geothermal heat rather than ambient heat makes them even more efficient.

 

[svetz]

You could have a mini combined cycle furnace. Burn natural gas in a small engine to generate power then recover the heat ...

I like the way you think about reusing what's normally waste heat, except as this thread is about climate change maybe not an ICE engine .

But, perhaps @MurphyGuy could get his heat pump to work with thermal solar panels banking heat during the day and not using air.

... but for the heat pump technology to work, it has to use buried piping, which is stupidly expensive to install.

If digging into the bedrock is too difficult/expensive (but who doesn't want to blow stuff up?), then why not entomb the evaporator in the new concrete slab for the new patio? That is put the pipes down, put some fill over them, then put a slab of concrete on top and paint it black in winter and white in summer.

I like @LeoThomson's idea of making it mandatory for new construction, seems like a freebie if you do it when the foundation goes in. Although, servicing leaks might be a problem? Foundations do crack after all. I guess in the south it's not an issue (except the humidity), but in the north, it might only make sense with an unfinished basement you could jackhammer through to fix it. Unless it's buried under the foundation and some sort of self-sealer compound could work (it's not like the refrigerant needs to circulate in that system).

 

[svetz]

Supreme Court restricts the EPA's authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions​

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court said that any time an agency does something big and new – in this case addressing climate change – the regulation is presumptively invalid, unless Congress has specifically authorized regulating in this sphere.

That was from June 2022. And below is from March 2023:

World's Highest Court paves way for Climate Change Consequences​

Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu on Wednesday won a historic vote at the United Nations that calls on the world’s highest court to establish for the first time the obligations countries have to address the climate crisis — and the consequences if they don’t.

Then on April 25th there was:

U.S. SUPREME COURT ALLOWS CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUITS TO PROCEED IN STATE COURT​

...the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals by several major energy companies that sought to remove lawsuits filed by state and local governments from state court into federal court. The Court’s certiorari denials reject companies’ appeals in five separate cases, which involved claims brought by municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. Each municipality claims that it has been harmed by the effects of climate change, allegedly attributed to the companies’ carbon emissions.

And it's not just in the U.S.:

Italian oil firm Eni faces lawsuit alleging early knowledge of climate crisis​

The Italian oil major Eni is facing the country’s first climate lawsuit, with environmental groups alleging the company used “lobbying and greenwashing” to push for more fossil fuels despite having known about the risks its product posed since 1970.

 

[Sanwizard]

Supreme Court restricts the EPA's authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions​

That was from June 2022. And below is from March 2023:

World's Highest Court paves way for Climate Change Consequences​

Then on April 25th there was:

U.S. SUPREME COURT ALLOWS CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUITS TO PROCEED IN STATE COURT​

And it's not just in the U.S.:

Italian oil firm Eni faces lawsuit alleging early knowledge of climate crisis​

So China keeps pumping out coal based energy, and grows their economy, while all the western countries sue themselves out of business, and only the lawyers get rich. So sad.

 

[Checkthisout]

I like the way you think about reusing what's normally waste heat, except as this thread is about climate change maybe not an ICE engine .

But, perhaps @MurphyGuy could get his heat pump to work with thermal solar panels banking heat during the day and not using air.


If digging into the bedrock is too difficult/expensive (but who doesn't want to blow stuff up?), then why not entomb the evaporator in the new concrete slab for the new patio? That is put the pipes down, put some fill over them, then put a slab of concrete on top and paint it black in winter and white in summer.

I like @LeoThomson's idea of making it mandatory for new construction, seems like a freebie if you do it when the foundation goes in. Although, servicing leaks might be a problem? Foundations do crack after all. I guess in the south it's not an issue (except the humidity), but in the north, it might only make sense with an unfinished basement you could jackhammer through to fix it. Unless it's buried under the foundation and some sort of self-sealer compound could work (it's not like the refrigerant needs to circulate in that system).

Making a more efficient combustion device falls within the scope of reducing CO2 output.

Ground source is null if not buried in the ground. Your slab would just get covered in winter snow. Many areas in the U.S., the ground freezes for a measurable depth during the winter.

 

[Checkthisout]

So China keeps pumping out coal based energy, and grows their economy, while all the western countries sue themselves out of business, and only the lawyers get rich. So sad.

C02 isn't a pollutant so it falls out of EPA'S scope.

And yes. Large lawyers groups chase government and corporate money. They are flies on the wall just waiting for one little error so they can "settle" for legal fees.

 

[svetz]

So China keeps pumping out coal based energy, and grows their economy, while all the western countries sue themselves out of business...

China's doing more than we are.

China spent $546 billion in 2022 on investments that included solar and wind energy, electric vehicles and batteries.

That is nearly four times the amount of U.S. investments, which totaled $141 billion. The European Union was second to China with $180 billion in clean energy investments. ref

We're 13% of the problem and China is 27%, so effectively they're spending twice as much as we are.

Also, Chinese firms do have litigation too, I found a particularly interesting lawsuit:

The Friends of Nature Institute v. Gansu State Grid
At issue: Whether a company's failure to connect renewable energy to the grid is unlawful as it generates additional GHG emissions.

 

[svetz]

Here's another interesting court case from China:

The first lawsuit to be resolved was brought by the Zhejiang People’s Procuratorate against a company that illegally released freon - a banned ozone-depleting substance - when making insulation materials. Last March, a court ordered the company to pay over 460,000 Yuan (around £50,000) to compensate for the ecological damage it caused, as well as 150,000 Yuan to cover investigation costs. ref

The government seems to be pushing the courts to take an active role, from the same reference:

Last year, the China’s Supreme People’s Court and UNEP organised a conference in Kunming, which emphasised the role of the judiciary in tackling climate change. The resulting Kunming Declaration calls on courts to play a proactive role in tackling climate change, and envisages climate litigation in areas such as carbon reduction, emission trading and green finance.

 

[svetz]

C02 isn't a pollutant so it falls out of EPA'S scope.

In 2007, the US Supreme Court decided CO2 is a pollutant ref
I'm not sure what body normally decides something is classified as a pollutant or not. I would have thought it was the EPA.

 

[Checkthisout]

In 2007, the US Supreme Court decided CO2 is a pollutant ref
I'm not sure what body normally decides something is classified as a pollutant or not. I would have thought it was the EPA.

No. Not under the clean air act guidelines.