Transport of Energy

Regarding solar. . . most people tend to think of using solar power to make electricity, but biofuels are also a way to convert the sun's energy into fuel made from plants that can be transported and used. They aren't a panacea, but they have an important role to play.

Bob Waldrop

Oscar Romero
Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City
www.energyconservationinfo.org
see also www.oksustainability.org

Hey Mike

. . . sorry for the long delay . . . it's been a crazy (good) week. What claims did I make about Hydrogen that you would like some data on? Let me know and I'll send stats your way. I also see your point about my note. Clarification: The capital cost to construct a system to capture solar energy is expensive. However, once it is built, the solar energy does not cost you anything (at the margin) to capture. Sunlight that you do not capture and use (or store) is lost forever. Now . . . you could also make this argument about oil too . . . once the well is constructed the actual marginal cost of the oil out of the well is close to $0. The difference however is that the oil will run out from the well which means you have exploration costs to find other resources and the oil you extract actually has imputed costs associated with it.

Hope this helps.
Jim

Jim,

Do you have some data to back your claims about hydrogen? I notice too, that first you claim solar is expensive and then, further in your post, you claim solar is free. I'm not sure I follow your logic.

Cheers
MOC

Tess . . .

the only way to transport solar, wind and geothermal energy around is to first turn it into electricity and then send it through the standard electrical grid for immediate consumption. Unfortunately most wind resources are most abundant in areas remote from existing electricity grids, solar is expensive and both are intermittent. Geothermal on the other hand can be mined and used at source in many different applications . . . but will seldom generate the entire energy that you need at different and varying points in time. Notwithstanding all this, Hydrogen is an excellent Electrical storage medium that can be used to effectively move solar and wind around, along with stabilizing it. There are a few companies (ours included) that are at various stages of developing technology that will facilitate this. We'll be ready to help you in Australia and other areas of the world in 2011. Stay tuned . . . the climate change / oil shortage solution has already been developed . . . its just taking a while to get it to market. Fuel Cells have held us up, but now that Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines and Turbines operate at efficiency levels that rival fuel cells and Hydrogen Gas Storage technology is available safely and cost effectively at 10,000 psi, the barriers to Hydrogen becoming a major part of our energy structure have been removed. The only drawback is the round trip energy conversion ratio, which is 25%. However, given that wind and solar energy is free and completely limitless once you have the ability to capture it, 25% is much more substantial than 0%. If you want to stay tuned on our developments go to www.h2green.com in June of this year and you'll be able to track (and participate in) our development if you like.

Hope this was helpful.
Jim

The beauty of solar, wind, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy are that they are local and don't need to be transported at huge costs re establishing transmission lines and systems, losing a high percentage of the energy in transmission, etc. A lot of exciting work is being done in Minnesota (USA) to figure out how to tie distributed energy (DG) from local wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, etc. into traditional grid systems for local use. The Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis has a lot of information about Distributed Energy on its web site...www.ilsr.org. If I understood your question, I don't quite agree with your premise that coal and oil are easily transported -- all of it that we in Minnesota use (plus natural gas and uranium) is being shipped in from other states and regions of the world at increasing costs and threats from disruption of supply. We really need to be supplying as much of our energy locally as we can from renewable sources and save energy and use it more productively.

Nancy Adams