Don't worry. The magical free market fairy godmother or the technological fairy godmother will come to the rescue and we can all go to the ball after all.
Why the sarcasm? Nearly everything Simon Michaux said was an outright lie or distortion of the truth. Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions. 1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill! 2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below! 3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need! re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/ 4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right! faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/ 5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands. EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/ 6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We have the potential to leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us. Michaux must know this to be forced to reach for such ridiculous strawman arguments to support his Doomsday fantasies.
So, in other words (as the Limits to Growth detailed in 1972), our way of life is not sustainable and we either change our supposedly "non-negotiable" lifestyles by choice or by force. My calculations suggest the limit is around 2 kWh/ person/ day. (Most people use ~50 kWh/day). Since no one will do this willingly, those of us who see the writing on the wall should build our own "buffers" to help insulate ourselves from the "change by force" scenario unfolding... and note the presentation above does not even factor in climate change heralding in FOOD limitations to 8 billion people! The question is always how fast will the "transition" happen. Will it be a slow, measured decline or a rapid system collapse? Either way it seems prudent to embrace the gift of these waning days of wealth and luxury.
Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions. 1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill! 2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below! 3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need! re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/ 4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right! faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/ 5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands. EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/ 6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We have the potential to leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us. Michaux must know this to be forced to reach for such ridiculous strawman arguments to support his Doomsday fantasies.
Rich people are those who can access organisational skills and knowledge, a pile of goods or RE is useless on it's own, and there's that same problem with the difference between potential values and continuously cycling ecological communities. All in agreement, that is.
Dismisses entire world fertilizer production with "we'll have to go to small-scale organics". Any idea how many billion souls with die of starvation if we do that?
I mean that was going to happen regardless as topsoil degradation, aquifer depletion, decreased anuual precipitation globally (already seeing this), and shorter more erratic growing seasons come into the picture. Worse still the climate induced emigrations will put further strain on global food supplies which means a lot of people are going to perish, at least with organic fertilizers we can maintain some of our current yields.
@@jghifiversveiws8729 I agree that climate change and topsoils are a concern - but with abundant renewable energy from abundant materials, many things can be fixed through regenerative agriculture. And if that doesn't work? Seaweed and shellfish farming by Bren Smith can feed the world many times over. And if that doesn't work? Here's the BEST! Soon we’ll be brewing up most of our food in factories. It’s called “Precision Fermentation” and it just needs electricity, water, and a tiny sprinkling of mineral fertilisers. It lets us grow all the fats and proteins we need. Food technicians can form and flavour it into fish-sticks, chicken tenders and bacon strips. The best bit? It could feed 10 billion people from a tiny area the size of greater London! Historically we’ve chopped down 2 billion hectares to graze livestock for very inefficient proteins and fats. That's enough space for 3 TRILLION trees. Let's regrow that. It would soak up ALL historical CO2 emissions. It would feed the world abundant cheap food that's proof against flood and drought and pandemics. It would save nature, giving forest homes to countless animals. And it would solve climate change. Win win win. "Brave Robot" are already selling PF ice-cream and cream cheese, and others are making palm oil and yoghurt and soon there will be lots of PF milk. Please watch George Monbiot explain more here - just 6 minutes. It's the best technology since renewable energy: ua-cam.com/video/6eaTIe_TBZA/v-deo.html
Simon, Did you miss out Thorum for nuclear Power plant? My feeling is human race, if it survives the latest upheaval from climate change, population, disease and pandemic, nuclear war, sea level and AMOK vulnerabilities - if society survives facing all that. We would have arrived at a cross road when we have to learn to throw away, I mean discard the ideas of having big families, national boundaries, heritage tradition cultural divisions but live as one society, the human society. The world will have to be planned where we live and reside set apart from where we grow food, set apart from where we generate energy, set apart from where we explore nature for recreation and holidays. Human race must accept that we must live together, irrespective of colour, creed, culture, religion and what have you in one gigantic habitation and the rest of the globe reserved for Food, Energy, and Recreation. The oceans will be pristine for marine ecosystem, energy generation and silent, not noisy ocean liners, but for quiet navigation. The Ice mountains in the Poles to remain to grow and provide the weather patterns that the whole Earth, the biosphere etc. to bring us Bio-Diversity survival for all lives on Earth.
There is no mention of variation in demand by season. Warm climates have peak electricity demand in the summer due to AC use. Fall and spring produce low demand for heat and cooling. Winter is high for heating but is currently almost all gas in much of the US. Current practice in California is to use natural gas electricity generation to cover the summer peak for electricity between about 5-9 PM. The peaker plants remain idle most of the year. Regional climate should be considered when determining the amount of buffer needed. It would make the modeling more complex, but perhaps some regional examples could be developed to illustrate the range of buffer needed.
Real models by real renewable engineers do exactly that. The problem with Michaux? He's not a real renewable engineer but a charlatan and cheat. Simon Michaux referred to 2014 European studies developed in 2013 back when renewables were about 10 TIMES more expensive than they are today! The concept of 'Overbuild' had not entered the renewable discussion. But now wind and solar are so cheap, that if winter halves their output, you build DOUBLE the wind and solar! That's how cheap they are - vastly cheaper than trying to store power for 4 weeks. Second, Michaux rejected the cheapest large-scale energy storage which is pumped-hydro electricity storage on the basis that there were not enough sites. His study? He cherry-picked a feasibility study about pumped hydro in the tiny flat island of SINGAPORE! The highest hill is only 15m! I call this lie “Painting the world Singapore.” It really is very dishonest! Here he is admitting that's his source! ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html Fortunately the reality is we don't even WANT to build on-river. Off-river is cheaper because you avoid spillways for 1 in 100 year on-river floods. The world has over 100 TIMES the potential sites it needs when you look OFF-RIVER closed loop systems. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/phes/ BUT - batteries for 4 weeks storage ARE possible if you build them from sodium! Yes, sea-salt can now be made into a battery. There is 34 kg per cubic meter of seawater, or 50 quadrillion tonnes, which is enough for 10 billion people to EACH have 5 MILLION tonnes of sodium batteries each - and that’s just from the seawater. It's just a dumb lie that we MUST use batteries that have rare earths! They don't. He's consciously distorting the picture. Most brands of wind and solar are ALREADY built from abundant and fully-recyclable materials. Consider - 95% of all solar panels are silicon which is 27% of the earth’s crust. The 5% that use rare earth’s are thin-film or for enhanced for space. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon Solar also uses a little aluminium for the frame. Aluminium is over 8% of the earth's crust. Wind turbines are made from iron, aluminium, and fibreglass. Iron is used in the steel and can be magnetised for the generator. It is 5% of the earth's crust. How much is that? Digging down a km it’s 200 BILLION tons for each of 10 billion people. The wind blades are made from fibreglass which are made from entirely renewable polyester resin and glass fibres. Wind generators without rare-earth magnets are just a thing: www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/28/15-mw-rare-earth-free-offshore-wind-turbine-seeks-path-to-market/ www.greenbiz.com/article/myth-and-reality-alternatives-rare-minerals-ev-batteries www.nironmagnetics.com/ This really could be the future of wind power - meet the Twistac rotary electrical contact, which eliminates rare-earths AND ELIMINATES 3 or 4 service calls a year back to about 1 in 30 years! newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/ EV’s require lighter, more expensive Lithium - which should be preserved just for EV’s. The USGS says that in 2022 we have discovered about 89 million tons which is 89 BILLION KG's. Tesla's LFP batteries only use 6 kg lithium per battery, which is enough for 14.8 BILLION Cars - and we only need 1.4 billion. (As a New Urbanist I don’t even like cars - but I’m just being honest about how much lithium there is.) They also use iron and phosphorus, both of which can be recycled. These technologies CAN sometimes use rare earth’s for certain advantages - but they do not HAVE to. They'll dump the fancier stuff if the prices rise. Google it. I have. There are sciencey-sounding papers that claim the opposite - but they cherrypick only the fancier brands to make their case, and ignore stuff built primarily from the abundant materials above.
Yes, consider regional climates - exactly the way Simon Michaux HASN'T! Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions, and that's the first! 1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill! 2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below! 3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need! re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/ 4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right! faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/ 5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands. EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/ 6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We’ll leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us, and Michaux will be left with a legacy of silly videos illustrating what it is to cherrypick and dress it up as an 'academic' paper to promote his Doomsday fantasies. Shame on anyone here that falls for it!
"We need to phase out fossil fuels... We should have started this 30 to 40 years ago". Greenpeace and Jane Fonda exit the chat as quietly as they can ☠️
Don't worry. The magical free market fairy godmother or the technological fairy godmother will come to the rescue and we can all go to the ball after all.
I detect a skosh of sarcasm.😉
The invisible hand of the market is touching me inappropriately!!
Why the sarcasm? Nearly everything Simon Michaux said was an outright lie or distortion of the truth. Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions.
1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill!
2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below!
3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html
Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need!
re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/
4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right!
faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/
5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands.
EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/
6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We have the potential to leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us. Michaux must know this to be forced to reach for such ridiculous strawman arguments to support his Doomsday fantasies.
And all the girls at the ball will be beautiful & out number us horn dogs 5 to one and we all get laid after free enterprise ice cream .
Great video thanks, I have shared this in New Zealand with degrowth and other groups.
So, in other words (as the Limits to Growth detailed in 1972), our way of life is not sustainable and we either change our supposedly "non-negotiable" lifestyles by choice or by force. My calculations suggest the limit is around 2 kWh/ person/ day. (Most people use ~50 kWh/day).
Since no one will do this willingly, those of us who see the writing on the wall should build our own "buffers" to help insulate ourselves from the "change by force" scenario unfolding... and note the presentation above does not even factor in climate change heralding in FOOD limitations to 8 billion people!
The question is always how fast will the "transition" happen. Will it be a slow, measured decline or a rapid system collapse?
Either way it seems prudent to embrace the gift of these waning days of wealth and luxury.
Yes!…doing that daily!…🫣
Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions.
1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill!
2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below!
3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html
Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need!
re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/
4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right!
faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/
5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands.
EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/
6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We have the potential to leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us. Michaux must know this to be forced to reach for such ridiculous strawman arguments to support his Doomsday fantasies.
Thank you
Would be great to re-post with better resolution - possible? Numbers and text on slides are quite difficult to read. Thank you.
Change the resolution of the video to the highest (720p) in Settings. It's much better then!
Could you please add a video description above which summarizes the content of this video?
Links to the slides please... 😎
Rich people are those who can access organisational skills and knowledge, a pile of goods or RE is useless on it's own, and there's that same problem with the difference between potential values and continuously cycling ecological communities.
All in agreement, that is.
Dismisses entire world fertilizer production with "we'll have to go to small-scale organics". Any idea how many billion souls with die of starvation if we do that?
I mean that was going to happen regardless as topsoil degradation, aquifer depletion, decreased anuual precipitation globally (already seeing this), and shorter more erratic growing seasons come into the picture. Worse still the climate induced emigrations will put further strain on global food supplies which means a lot of people are going to perish, at least with organic fertilizers we can maintain some of our current yields.
@@jghifiversveiws8729 I agree that climate change and topsoils are a concern - but with abundant renewable energy from abundant materials, many things can be fixed through regenerative agriculture. And if that doesn't work? Seaweed and shellfish farming by Bren Smith can feed the world many times over. And if that doesn't work? Here's the BEST! Soon we’ll be brewing up most of our food in factories. It’s called “Precision Fermentation” and it just needs electricity, water, and a tiny sprinkling of mineral fertilisers. It lets us grow all the fats and proteins we need. Food technicians can form and flavour it into fish-sticks, chicken tenders and bacon strips. The best bit? It could feed 10 billion people from a tiny area the size of greater London! Historically we’ve chopped down 2 billion hectares to graze livestock for very inefficient proteins and fats. That's enough space for 3 TRILLION trees. Let's regrow that. It would soak up ALL historical CO2 emissions. It would feed the world abundant cheap food that's proof against flood and drought and pandemics. It would save nature, giving forest homes to countless animals. And it would solve climate change. Win win win. "Brave Robot" are already selling PF ice-cream and cream cheese, and others are making palm oil and yoghurt and soon there will be lots of PF milk. Please watch George Monbiot explain more here - just 6 minutes. It's the best technology since renewable energy: ua-cam.com/video/6eaTIe_TBZA/v-deo.html
Simon, Did you miss out Thorum for nuclear Power plant?
My feeling is human race, if it survives the latest upheaval from climate change, population, disease and pandemic, nuclear war, sea level and AMOK vulnerabilities - if society survives facing all that. We would have arrived at a cross road when we have to learn to throw away, I mean discard the ideas of having big families, national boundaries, heritage tradition cultural divisions but live as one society, the human society. The world will have to be planned where we live and reside set apart from where we grow food, set apart from where we generate energy, set apart from where we explore nature for recreation and holidays. Human race must accept that we must live together, irrespective of colour, creed, culture, religion and what have you in one gigantic habitation and the rest of the globe reserved for Food, Energy, and Recreation. The oceans will be pristine for marine ecosystem, energy generation and silent, not noisy ocean liners, but for quiet navigation. The Ice mountains in the Poles to remain to grow and provide the weather patterns that the whole Earth, the biosphere etc. to bring us Bio-Diversity survival for all lives on Earth.
There is no mention of variation in demand by season. Warm climates have peak electricity demand in the summer due to AC use. Fall and spring produce low demand for heat and cooling. Winter is high for heating but is currently almost all gas in much of the US. Current practice in California is to use natural gas electricity generation to cover the summer peak for electricity between about 5-9 PM. The peaker plants remain idle most of the year. Regional climate should be considered when determining the amount of buffer needed. It would make the modeling more complex, but perhaps some regional examples could be developed to illustrate the range of buffer needed.
Real models by real renewable engineers do exactly that. The problem with Michaux? He's not a real renewable engineer but a charlatan and cheat. Simon Michaux referred to 2014 European studies developed in 2013 back when renewables were about 10 TIMES more expensive than they are today! The concept of 'Overbuild' had not entered the renewable discussion. But now wind and solar are so cheap, that if winter halves their output, you build DOUBLE the wind and solar! That's how cheap they are - vastly cheaper than trying to store power for 4 weeks.
Second, Michaux rejected the cheapest large-scale energy storage which is pumped-hydro electricity storage on the basis that there were not enough sites. His study? He cherry-picked a feasibility study about pumped hydro in the tiny flat island of SINGAPORE! The highest hill is only 15m! I call this lie “Painting the world Singapore.” It really is very dishonest! Here he is admitting that's his source! ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html Fortunately the reality is we don't even WANT to build on-river. Off-river is cheaper because you avoid spillways for 1 in 100 year on-river floods. The world has over 100 TIMES the potential sites it needs when you look OFF-RIVER closed loop systems. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/phes/
BUT - batteries for 4 weeks storage ARE possible if you build them from sodium! Yes, sea-salt can now be made into a battery. There is 34 kg per cubic meter of seawater, or 50 quadrillion tonnes, which is enough for 10 billion people to EACH have 5 MILLION tonnes of sodium batteries each - and that’s just from the seawater. It's just a dumb lie that we MUST use batteries that have rare earths! They don't. He's consciously distorting the picture.
Most brands of wind and solar are ALREADY built from abundant and fully-recyclable materials. Consider - 95% of all solar panels are silicon which is 27% of the earth’s crust. The 5% that use rare earth’s are thin-film or for enhanced for space. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon Solar also uses a little aluminium for the frame. Aluminium is over 8% of the earth's crust.
Wind turbines are made from iron, aluminium, and fibreglass. Iron is used in the steel and can be magnetised for the generator. It is 5% of the earth's crust. How much is that? Digging down a km it’s 200 BILLION tons for each of 10 billion people. The wind blades are made from fibreglass which are made from entirely renewable polyester resin and glass fibres.
Wind generators without rare-earth magnets are just a thing:
www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/28/15-mw-rare-earth-free-offshore-wind-turbine-seeks-path-to-market/
www.greenbiz.com/article/myth-and-reality-alternatives-rare-minerals-ev-batteries
www.nironmagnetics.com/
This really could be the future of wind power - meet the Twistac rotary electrical contact, which eliminates rare-earths AND ELIMINATES 3 or 4 service calls a year back to about 1 in 30 years!
newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/
EV’s require lighter, more expensive Lithium - which should be preserved just for EV’s. The USGS says that in 2022 we have discovered about 89 million tons which is 89 BILLION KG's. Tesla's LFP batteries only use 6 kg lithium per battery, which is enough for 14.8 BILLION Cars - and we only need 1.4 billion. (As a New Urbanist I don’t even like cars - but I’m just being honest about how much lithium there is.) They also use iron and phosphorus, both of which can be recycled.
These technologies CAN sometimes use rare earth’s for certain advantages - but they do not HAVE to. They'll dump the fancier stuff if the prices rise. Google it. I have. There are sciencey-sounding papers that claim the opposite - but they cherrypick only the fancier brands to make their case, and ignore stuff built primarily from the abundant materials above.
Yes, consider regional climates - exactly the way Simon Michaux HASN'T! Simon Michaux's paper relies on a number of false assumptions, and that's the first!
1. EUROPEAN WINTERS ARE NOT GLOBAL: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about specifically European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. Michaux plucks this 4 weeks out of context and applies it to the world. Talk about overkill!
2. OVERBUILD SOLVES WINTER: The studies he's quoting are 10 years out of date, back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid was economically impossible. European studies thought they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If your wind and solar output halves during winter, then simply build DOUBLE your wind and solar! Spread the weather risk over huge geographic regions, majoring in wind up north and solar down in southern Europe. HVDC transmission is cheap enough, and only loses 1% per 1000km. EG: Spanish solar could easily shoot power all the way up to Finland. Michaux just ignores Overbuild. As he does all the points below!
3. When you DO need a few days storage, use OFF-RIVER pumped hydro which are much cheaper than metal batteries. A good pumped hydro site should be over 600 or 700 metres high - because if you triple the height between 2 reservoirs, you halve the cost. Pumped hydro is the cheapest way to store grid power for DAYS. But Michaux rejects pumped-hydro by claiming there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? His 1000 page PDF doesn't reference a source - but he shares it here. ua-cam.com/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/v-deo.html
Get this. Michaux cherry-picked a PHES viability study about SINGAPORE! I laughed out loud when I heard him admit that. Their highest hill is only 15 metres. Gee - I wonder why they had trouble finding enough sites!? I call this dumb trick “Painting the world Singapore.” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times the sites they need. If they don't, a neighbour does. ua-cam.com/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/v-deo.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
Off-river pumped hydro is cheaper than on-river, can be built faster, and you pump the water in later from a river dozens of kilometres away and cover it with solar panels to reduce evaporation. There are greenfield sites where both reservoirs are off-river, or Bluefield where you build one next to another already existing river - but not ON it. Australia has 1500 Bluefield sites - but the top 3 would provide DOUBLE what we need!
re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/
4. SODIUM BATTERIES COULD DO HIS HYPOTHETICAL 4 WEEKS : Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium, making it perfect for home or grid scale batteries. 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days. The ocean stores a ridiculously huge 38.5 quadrillion tons, which is enough to hypothetically store THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY GRID for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, A WHOLE YEAR of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and claimed Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But the first orders had been placed over a year before he published. When making extraordinary claims, one should take extraordinary care to get the facts right!
faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/
5. ALL RENEWABLES CAN BE MADE FROM ABUNDANT MATERIALS: Sometimes renewables use rare earth’s for a specific performance boost - but this is usually a more expensive niche market. Michaux just cherry-picks these and ignores all the 'plainer' brands.
EG: 95% of Solar brands use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. China’s BYD “Seagull” even has an EV that uses SODIUM batteries! I’ve collected evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/
6. All the alt-right climate sceptics and alt-left Peak Oil Doomer renewables sceptics will be SHOCKED at how fast the Energy Transition kicks in. Wind and solar are now the cheapest power we've ever enjoyed, period. Even with extra HVDC transmission and batteries and PHES. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years! Wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s. Electric Semi's are now a thing, with Tesla with their dinky little 40 ton truck, and Janus Australia doing 100 ton Road-Trains with a 1 minute-battery swap! It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We’ll leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us, and Michaux will be left with a legacy of silly videos illustrating what it is to cherrypick and dress it up as an 'academic' paper to promote his Doomsday fantasies. Shame on anyone here that falls for it!
"We need to phase out fossil fuels... We should have started this 30 to 40 years ago". Greenpeace and Jane Fonda exit the chat as quietly as they can ☠️
we can't phase out fossil fuels. our economy would collapse instantly without them. anyone saying otherwise is a liar or delusional.