Other Energy Topics & Technologies

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En provenance du cours de Georgia Institute of Technology

Energy 101: The Big Picture

425 notes

Georgia Institute of Technology

Energy 101: The Big Picture

425 notes

As a society and individually, we use energy every moment of our lives to improve our quality of life. Energy 101 will develop the big picture and connect the details of our energy use, technology, infrastructure, impact, and future.

À partir de la leçon

Alternative Fueled Cars and Other Energy Issues

This module explores Electric Car, Carbon Emission and summarizes concepts of this course

Other Energy Topics & Technologies21:08

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. Sam Shelton
Professor Emeritus
Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Richard A. Simmons
Senior Research Engineer & Fellow
Strategic Energy Institute

Hello, welcome back to Energy 101. Today we're going to do an other lecture

talk about other energy issues and technologies,[COUGH].

I didn't quite to know what to call this, but it's the catchall for the issues that

in technologies that some of you that brought up, and that would, wanted to

want it covered. there's, there's just not, wasn't time to

cover everything. This is the last week.

But let me just make some general statements about them.

but how, how did I choose the topic, I think, self recognize how I chose the

topics that we did cover. it, it came from the course objectives in

that I wanted you to know where our energy use is going and, and what the

demand is and why we have that demand. Wanted you to know where the energy

sources are that we're getting them from, and the conversion technologies.

and then have at least some examples of how to access and the process of

assessing new energy technologies and deployment.

So this is all about deployment, assessing what happens when you deploy

new energy technologies, which we certainly hope will happen here over the

next 20 to 50 years or and including next year.

So that, that was my purpose and I always say we need to understand the 10 to 15

trillion dollar infrastructure that exists in our energy system today.

It's at least that, and we can't just bulldoze it all down overnight and

replace it with something new. But we've gotta have a plan, and just in

case haven't made the point that we need to do everything.

We need, no matter how small or how big, we need to do implement all the new

technologies to reduce energy consumption, increase our supply,

increase our renewable energy, decrease CO2 emissions and decrease particularly

oil supply but also of course for CO2, co, coal and gas.

so I'm going to talk about a lot of em, here so let me just race through them.

number one, one thing that's always a little frustrating to me, is that there's

an infinite number of, of ideas and suggestions that have been sa, ga, have

been brought to me over the last 35, 40 years that I've been in the energy area.

particularly in the 70's they started with the the energy crisis in the 70's

which if you Google it, and look back at it, had a dramatic impact on our

lifestyle and culture which I won't go into.

But th, th, there are either they want, they want somebody to access their

technology, analyze it, and develop it and build it.

Because it's such a great idea they're convinced it'll revolutionize the world,

they just want to keep the patent rights and want somebody else at no cost, to to

them to access it and develop it. obviously that doesn't work, in my

situation anyway. I don't have those resources available to

me from the university or otherwise. and, but a few of them also are building

prototypes, but they're not quite running, they hadn't, they won't work,

but all they need is a few million dollars more.

And the couple, they're generally raised a lot of money in some cases and to

amateur investors they convinced would work.

but the ones I hear about most, they immediately are recognizable as violating

the natural laws of nature. for instance, engines running on water.

hydro-electric power generators, that have more than 100% efficiency volleying

the conservation of energy law, that you cannot create or destroy energy.

engines running off of magnets, that's the really popular one.

That is free energy, because, you can get it from magnets and you won't demagnetize

the magnets, it'll just run forever for perpetual motion.

And often they have patents, but having a patent, people think because you got a

patent that it means it'll work. Patent knowledge does not substantiate

that it'll work. They merely substantiate that it's unique

compared to other patents that are out there and other technologies and ideas

that are out there. regarding engines running on water, I

always like to tell the story, I've been in that one for a long time.

When I was a teenager I had a friend that had an old car and the fuel tank,

gasoline tank rusted. And it would get rust in the carburetor,

so he just disconnected the fuel tank on the car, and put a five gallon can in the

back floorboard. Back then they had enough floorboard

space to do that in the back. And put gasoline in there, and just ran

the gas line in there, and pumped it out of there instead of out of the tank.

And so, one Saturday afternoon, we mischievous teenagers didn't have enough

to do, so we went to a, we, we'd go around to all the filling stations in the

town, and they were self service, I mean, excuse me full service back then, and

nobody pumped their gas. And we'd pull up and they'd say, can I

help you? We'd say, no we just need some water.

And we'd get the water hose and put water in the fuel tank.

And then we had an aspirin bottle that we had taken the labels off.

When you take a pill out, and we'd throw an aspirin in there, then get in and

drive off. And we thought that was hilarious, that

we trying to make people think we were running a car on water.

But that, that's been around for a long time and I've gone to look at projects

over the years. I could write a book on, on the projects

that I've looked at including nuclear powered engines.

one in Daytona, Florida that, that could have, that raised a lot of money from,

from amateur investors, like a million dollars or so, and that claimed it was

running off of nuclear power. But none of those ever proved out when I

looked at em and was able to have the time and money to make an assessment of

it. But unfortunately, all these ideas keep

coming back, because negative assessments are never published.

the, it's, you don't publish in the science journal, or engineering journal,

or popular journal negative assessments. And as soon you make a negative

assessment, someone will make a small suggested change to it, that means you

gotta start all over again, do it again. But they never do the assessment.

They want you to do it and so, it is problematic.

But they're infinite number of them, and we can't cover an infinite number in this

course, obviously, can't even cover a finite number.

But let's just look at a few of them and I'll make some comments.

The first one being energy use efficiency and conservation.

This is a huge opportunity from the beginning, these are, the, every one of

these issues here are public policy issues.

They're not technology issues, we have the technology to do all these things.

And they're developed, and all you gotta do is just have a market for them, and,

and it's we'll have it. but the first one, which I've been

involved in, since, , what the 80s, early 80s.

I'm not doing it anymore, but, in existing factories and buildings to,

reduce their energy consumption by do going in and doing energy auditing.

And in many cases with no dollars spent, merely making adjustments, settings, you

can smugif, significantly, like 20%, reduce the energy consumption of the

factory or building. But, and you say, well that's wonderful,

and you do that once and it's done. But you can't do it once, because if you

go back in a year, you find that all the adjustments are out of kilter, and they

use as much energy as they were before. So it's an execution and management

problem again, it's not a technology problem, and, I'm a technologist.

I'm not a public policy person, I'm not a politician, so I try to stay to

technologies, and access the impact of those technologies, on our energy

consumption and our infrastructure and CO2 emissions.

an example are appliances, that refrigerators, that's a beautiful example

and it's brought up many, many times of what we can do.

Refrigerators today are the same size, use three times less electricity than it

did in 1975. How did that come about?

Well, it came about not by free market place, fortunately, even though the

economics were very positive, they by spending a little bit more money you

could always get a little more efficiency.

But their accomplish were thee, the Congress passing U.S efficiency standards

that, are set by, the ability for DOE to set those efficiency standards, and apply

minimum efficiency standards to any refrigerator that is sold, and was sold

starting in the 70s. And today and they're using three times

less so in 35 years, and with that technologies available in the 70s is

available now. heat pump water heaters is another one,

that hasn't been as success, as popular as refrigerators, because that one was

mandated, heat pump heaters were not mandated.

but heat pump water heaters, they use the heat pump affect compared to electric

water heaters they'll save 50% of the electricity used to heat water.

they bring the operating costs for electric resistance water heating down to

about that of natural gas. so they don't, heat pump water heaters

don't compete with natural gas water heaters but they will save about 50%

compared to conventional electric water heaters, including instantaneous water

heaters. and I, I could go on and on with

appliances. But that one merely, the heat pump water

heater is merely the economics are very good.

Typically a household will spend $600 a year for hot water heating and heat pump

water heaters are on the order of $1,500, so it's a 2 to 3 year payback, and better

than that in some areas like Hawaii or high, California high cost the

electricity years. regarding auto efficiency, that's another

example of that was accomplished by US EPA Standards when they were first

imposed in '70, mid '70s. average auto effi, efficiency was 13

miles per gallon. that improved to about 28 miles per

gallon due to standards set by the EPA. And but they didn't change from 28, for

about from the mid 80s or so, up until them mid 2000s or late 2000s.

So we went about 20 years without increasing that, even though Europe has

had the technology there for many, many years because they have more an economic

incentive. And, we, th, they have a large tax on

their gasoline and diesel fuel. So those again are examples that have

been done and can be done, but they're public policy issues, none of these are

technology barriers. we, we don't need to be doing R&D on them

particularly of significance, just developing the component base of the

technology that we have. other energy technologies, don't know

what else to call it other then other. sa, people have asked, you have asked for

items such as ocean energy, lightning energy, electric power transmission,

distribution smart grids, keystone pipelines, solar/wind electric energy

storage, and solar/wind backup power to be addressed.

We don't have time to go into all of those.

essentially most of these are not being deployed.

smart grid is the exception. and maybe Keystone Pipeline will be

implemated, who knows. but let's start with the beginning here

and look at ocean energy wave, tidal and currents looked at that many times, and

there's a lot of da, lot of analysis that's out there and available in that.

The bottom line is that it's a dispersed form of energy for, you gotta cover a

large area if you're trying to capture wave energy.

tidal energy many times will get in the way of navigation currents.

And that's caused by tides flowing with currents flowing in and out due to tides,

is the, the, the navigation issues, but the bigger problem is infrastructure and

robust system that you have to put in place to, to survive the 30 foot or so

ocean waves that develop just seasonally, not due to hurricanes or storms, but just

seasonal act, storms and activities. It requires robust, robust systems.

And I was born and grew up down in the southeastern coast of Florida near West

Palm Beach and the, the Gulf stream, is the closest to the coastline down there,

than any other place along the Atlantic seaboard, where the where the where the

Gulf stream flows. And, for, probably 50 years, people have,

including the Navy, have gone out there and tried to put turbines in the gulf

stream to capture some of that energy and to generate electricity, none of it to

any avail because they would always break loose and they have to, they just used to

have to have a incredibly robust structure to make them sto, stay fixed,

and all of this is economics. That's one thing I probably haven't

mentioned enough, is economics, economics, economics, economics.

We need to be in deploying the, the renewable energy technologies, for

instance, and oil saving technologies that will save the most oil and the most

CO2 emissions with a minimum capital investment and minimum cost.

And in a free marketplace, which is what we have, given thee, thee restrictions

and the policies you'll come up with the least cost way to accomplish that.

People will mention lightning, lightning is so sporadic, both in time and location

it's just it, it's just not practical. Electric power distribution and

transmission, the smart grid is, is, is already being implemented essentially.

remote meter reading is part of the smart grid.

And when you've got dispersed power generation with photo altag systems on

roofs. Or, or large privately owned wind farms

that are distributed around your grid, you've got a lot more generation,

generation out there that's dispersed. And you gotta have a smart grid to

control it, and know when it's coming up and down and it's varying with the wind,

it's varying with the sunlight, et cetera.

So that's something that's happening and this is, requires a lot of effort for

deployment and demonstration but that's the mode we're in with transmission and

distribution. DC And, versus AC, we use a lot of DC

transmission today, at very high voltage over longer distance.

and even for offshore wind farms, they many times will convert the, the AC

generated by the generator in the turbine to DC and pipe it underwater.

For, went with DC power, and then convert it back to AC when it goes into the grid.

Wireless technology for transmissions. That's, we, we use wireless transmission

for information and there's very little power to it.

that's, that's just several orders of magnitude less power.

Then, then what would make it practical, and I, they can be used in some isolated

cases like wireless powering, wireless phones or wireless tele, televisions or

things, but as far as transmitting bulk power, to power a home, It's, I don't

think that's in the cards. Keystone pipeline even, that's obviously

a policy issue there. and thee, there's, there's some good

assessments done by quality people with all the assumptions in it, and stated and

that have looked at the CO2 emissions from oil, that is produced from the tar

sands up in Canada. And it, it, it does, the oil coming out

of the tar sands up in Canada do produce more CO2 than the ones that in which we

just drill a hole in the ground and the oil comes up.

But, it's it, it, it is produce, does produce more global warming.

Whether we should have, should have the Keystone pipeline is a, is a permeating

policy issue, that everybody can have their own opinion on that.

solar/wind electric energy storage, is something we really need, if we're going

to have a dominate amount of our electricity coming from solar and wind.

But the economics of that today are just really far off.

and we need to keep working on that, but this is not in the near term deployment

phase at any economical or competitive situation, that we are getting to with

wind and solar power generation. But in that same line, the backup without

the energy storage for solar and wind, then we have to have backup power, so

that when a cloud comes across our PV system or the winds slackens off, for our

wind power, that we get conventional dispatchable, we call it power plants

that can be cranked up and turned on to meet the power demand that people want.

so that's just a quick run down of some of those other, I call em energy

technologies, and we're, we're at the end of the road here, regarding this course,

Energy 101. sorry we didn't have more, time to, to

cover more topics. your posts were great, and the, the the

disccusion was great. The one that created the most controversy

was electric cars and CO2 emissions. I wanted, I did that in order to make a

point and I was reacting to the zero emissions emblem that's on the back of

every leaf. that is true with the proper assumptions,

in other words, if you're look at the tailpipe only, there are 0 emissions

coming out of the tailpipe, because it doesn't have one.

But when you look back at where the get their electrical power, you have to make

a lot of assumptions, that I made some in my assessment that I think are reasonable

from national perspective, and that has to do with energy policy is applicable

today, today. In the future you always create a, a

scenario in which, things will be worse or better.

And, locally, you can always create a specific state event, for instance, that

they save significant fuel, that significant CO2, other states, it

doesn't. But I think always in doing assessments

and compare, comparing technologies, you always need to look at apples to apples

and comparing, a Leaf's CO2 emissions, with an SUV is an unfair comparison

because that, you can, got a lot of options to replace this SUV for a less

fuel consumption and CO2 emissions than going to a, a, leaf.

so I, I think you need to look at that, that, that has to do with change in our,

our mix of types of vehicles that we have, and we certainly need to do that.

Europe is the best place that example for that, that we can see.

I consistently, when I'm over there get 40 to 45 miles per gallon, in a five

passenger midsize car. Technologies here, is not a technology

issue, again, its a policy, policy issue. So thank you.

We'll do a wrap up and summary next. Thank you.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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