Berkeley Engineering Alumni Event: “Can IT Innovation Solve the Energy Challenge?”
August 27, 2010 by thub
Filed under Engineering
Google Tech Talks April 9, 2009 ABSTRACT Berkeley Engineering Alumni Event: “Can IT Innovation Solve the Energy Challenge?” On April 9, 2009, Berkeley Engineering GOLD Alumni (Graduates Of the Last Decade) were invited to joint Berkeley Engineers and Google Researchers as they explored: “Can IT Innovation Solve the Energy Challenge?” Panelists: Moderator: Professor S. Shankar Sastry, Dean of Berkeley Engineering Professor Randy Katz, Berkeley College of Engineering Professor Costas Spanos, Berkeley College of Engineering Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Luiz Barroso, Distinguished Engineer, Google
The last closing contribution from the panel is really true. The mindset must change about comfort, about climate change, and the need to startup new energy saving initiatives and industry.
There is at present no market for hydrogen. There are 1,036 coal fired power plants. We can more easily pipe hydrogen to coal fired power plants than cover 1 million roofs and impact half the carbon emissions and half the energy in the USA. We import liquid fuels. We have plenty of coal. Add hydrogen to coal to make gasoline. Build 25% of the full scale system use solar for 100% of supply. Eliminate oil out of the ground competing head to head. Sell hydrogen, use oil as a loss leader.
We pipe hydrogen rather than wire electrons because you can send more power more cheaply longer distances with a pipe than with a wire. That’s why we don’t generate electricity with gas and oil in the oil fields and send the electrons with a wire to your house. Pipes are less costly. Just figure everything in terms of megawatt-hour miles and you’ll see. As far as missing the point – haha – you’re missing the point. It costs money to do things we want to do the most as quickly as possible
why discuss making and piping hydrogen, let alone burning hydrogen to make electricity, instead of transmitting and using electricity directly? as for using solar-generated electricity as a means to liquefy and burn coal … you are missing the point: 80% reduction in carbon emissions, not in your kid’s lifetime, but in what is left of your own.
Detecting presence by passive infrared through censor network sounds like quite a basic way to conserve energy. You leave the house and everything turns off : )
Making toast in a microwave haha.
This can be done in 8 years. 273 GW per year plants have been designed. These employ 1800 – and put out 1.5 sq km per day. Converting existing SMT and wafer fab – takes 6 months. Greenfield site, 36 months. 25,000 sq km of solar panels made in 8 years with ramp up requires that 14 plants be constructed. At a cost of $3 billion each this is $42 billion of the total cost. Total 25,200 employed in panel build cost $25 billion over period. Raw materials and other costs the balance.
AT $0.05 per peak watt 12 TW costs $600 billion to install. At 3.5% discount rate and 40 year lifecycle this translates to a total cost of $28.1 billion per year. That’s $93.65 per ton of hydrogen. The value of 1.14 billion tons of coal at $30 per ton is $34.2 billion per year. The value of 7 billion barrels of syncrude at $30 per barrel is $210.0 billion per year. So, $244.2 billion to the good, with a $28.1 billion cost. The 25,000 sq km is abandoned mine lands in the Southwest.
At 50% conversion efficiency we get a peak output of 500 MW per sq km. 25,000 sq km equals 12 TW peak output. In USA that translates to 18 billion MWh. At 60 MWh per tonne this is 300 million tons of hydrogen produced per year from 2.7 billion tons of water. 180 million tons of hydrogen are piped to 1,036 coal fired plants eliminating half our CO2 emissions. The other 120 million tons of H2 is combined with the stranded coal to produce 7 billion barrels of hydrocarbon liquids ending imports
How about the next decade? I have developed an ultra-low-cost solar panels made with multi-junction CPV and advanced optics to eliminate tracking and dramatically reduce cost. Made in large quantity we have achieved $0.05 per peak watt – including all balance of system costs. So, even with low capital utilization we make hydrogen for less than $100 per metric ton. At these prices the only thing we face are logistical and financial problems. Those are easily resolved too.
2 fucking hours?!?!?!
Yes it can. But first we need the global collaboration using the global cloud.
I think the power grid has to become individualized. Allow any man to possibly setup a power generation central and sell the power. Not like now when the government controls everything with an ironfirst and central planning communist Russia style.