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wrote:
wrote:
The problem is that most people think you can just get hydrogen from
water. You are correct that electrolysis is one of the ways it can be
generated.
The nuke is the real source of the energy, not the water.
And these same people won't let anyone build a nuke in this country anyway.
Until that is solved, hydrogen is a myth. In fact, if you just built
the nukes, they could go a long way to helping even without getting to
the hydrogen for fuel stage.

Nuke is not the only source of energy for hydrogen separation, just the
cheapest for today's technology. Solar hydrogen, given proper
development, will be clean and cheaper. But it will never get the
chance if we take the fast route and jump to nukes.

No, nukes aren't the only source of energy for hydrogen. We could
continue to make it out of natural gas, where most of it comes from
today. But Dooh! What good is that, we could just burn the natural
gas! Or we could use oil, but same problem. Or hydroelectric plants,
but just about all the easy ones have been built and there are serious
environmental consequences to building more. (As in the usual pie in
the sky, free lunch environmentalists will object to all of them and
block it) That's why nuke is the most obvious source to generate the
hydrogen. It's here and cost effective.

In the sense that if the plant is already built, it's cheaper than
building a new wind farm or other such. Of course, if you need to build
a new nuke plant, forget it. See my last post for the MIT report
estimate of 50% greater cost per kwh if you have to pay for that. Of
course, if the government subsidizes construction, the cost becomes
cheaper. It's like magic money. Bushonomics.

As for solar, it's an option, but a long way from reality. Right now
you can install a system for your house for $60K. Only problem is,
it's an economic disaster, even at today's energy prices and no
credible experts have any way to dramatically reduce the cost.

Well, you're quite right about all that. But the ace up solar's sleeve
is that the conditions under which solar energy production peaks are
the precise same conditions where electrical demand peaks, due to air
conditioning, for obvious reasons. So, a relatively cost-ineffective
solar setup located at the point of demand, i.e. near the air
conditioning system, saves not just the cost of generating the
electricity, which would be a loser alone, but also the cost of
upgrading the delivery system, plus all the management and
administrative expenses thereof, which leverages its savings. The
bummer for the electrical industry is that you have to scale the system
to cover peak utilization, and the rest of the time you have this huge
investment sitting there basically idling. About as cost effective as
using a 750 hp car engine to putter around town. Any amount you can
shave off the peaks by local generation allows you to scale the system
closer to average utilization, which is much much more cost effective.
That was behind the push to plug-in electric cars a few years ago; the
electric companies saw a way to up utilization at night, when the
system was just sitting there wasting money. Of course, when you asked
them what if people wanted to charge up their cars at noon on a hot day
in August, they just looked at you like you had killed their baby.

Meanwhile, I don't know who else has this, but the electric company
came around last year to people's homes and offered people to install a
remote switch that shuts off their home central AC compressor by
central command for brief periods when demand is super high, to avoid
brownouts. It's done on a rolling basis through the neighborhoods for
like a half hour at a time, so the compressor can catch up when it's
back on again for minimal impact on comfort; plus they only do it
during working days and working hours. The total energy consumption
will be unchanged, but the peaks will be evened out slightly; but the
ability to avoid brownouts without having to invest in more
infrastructure is worth enough to them that they pay for installation
of this sytem and pay periodically for keeping it, even though in many,
maybe most of the homes they are paying it won't make any difference at
all because nobody's home during working hours. But obviously, the
total amount of difference it will make in shaving the peaks is enough
to cover the total cost of the program, since as you point out they
wouldn't do things that were losing propositions. And this is in the
Northeast, where AC use is pretty light compared to Arizona or Texas.
You can see where investing the same amount in local solar power to
handle the peak for each AC might be in the same neighborhood as far as
cost/benefit, even if it wouldn't be for overall generation.