Friday, July 07, 2017

Sinners and Saints


Two provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the Yukon territory have already met Canada's climate change target emission cuts of of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. It's mainly the result of weaning themselves off coal powered electrical generation.

Ontario, meanwhile, is on track to meet the targeted emissions cuts.

Plenty of saints but there are a couple of sinners. It probably won't come as much of a surprise that petro-province, Alberta, is Canada's emissions bad boy. There emissions are increasing which is one reason why Alberta won't refine bitumen on site.

Expect the federal government to heap praise on itself for these results but the credit belongs to the provinces and definitely not Ottawa.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saint..



www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/sa-to-get-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery/8687268aint..

TB

Anonymous said...

Perhaps! another Saint?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/chinas_fusion_factory_record/

TB

Anonymous said...

Why yes, ole Elon Musk has promised to give South Orstrilia a bank of lithium cells worth a paltry 129 MWh in 100 days or they're free. The Greco Pizza model. Perhaps that's why Tesla was 3700 Model S car deliveries behind forecast this past quarter. He claims it was due to a lack of 100 kWh packs from his Giga Giganto battery factory, not lack of consumer demand for the seven year old design car, but 20% of the 100% of the froth that defines Tesla share price blew away in the wind anyway in a day. The company has NEVER turned an operating profit relying on religious donations from devotees to raise capital/operating monies to keep the place running. Most amazing and long-running scam I've seen.

If anyone with an electric utility background like me as an engineer looks at it, well 129 MWh is a drop in the bucket. The prewar electric plant in Halifax ran at that 129 MW power level, while our system normally sits well over 1200 MW these days, 2400 on a cold day. 129 MW times One whole hour gives 129 MWh. Just enough time to light the candles in luxury, turn off a few industrial processes in an orderly fashion instead of bang, uh oh what happened!? And so on.

The South Australia population is 1.7 million, just a little less than twice that of Nova Scotia. Their electric utility planners should be taken out and shot for not providing adequate generation capacity in the first place. There are probably a load of extremely competent electrical engineers hoping to leave the formerly great BC Hydro now gerrymandered by Crispy Clark into mediocrity, who'd be happy to help the Aussies out.

Still, 129 MWh storage is better than nothing, especially if it's free.

And for that matter, utility battery storage is hardly a new thing. There are many existing suppliers, none of whom, however, with the PR Department of Elon Musk hisself as carnival barker, self-promoter, prophet, and mesmerizer of self-identified greens with zero technical background. We need solid people to plan and lead energy conservation and power outage mitigation, not carnival barkers. The way it is now, people believe in self-promoting saviours and magic because they can't understand even basic science having dropped the subject in high school because it was too difficult to understand.

BM

Anonymous said...

I vaguely remember ,in my Grandmothers home, old glass accumulators the
predecessor of today's batteries.
They were used to power early radios .
The same home had gas lighting but only downstairs.
Then came electric light at 90volts DC.
We move on, we innovate, we improve.
Some systems work , some don't .

Musk is no worse than Edison..

TB

Anonymous said...

Anyong....Why was Newfoundland & Labrador left out please?