Nostr notes by Icanbob

Battery powered ocean ships? Where are the electrons going to ...

2026-10-14T13:56:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…a35s
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Battery powered ocean ships? Where are the electrons going to come for that? My simple analysis of several renewable datasets shows that there is a problem with seasonal variations. Take Texas as an example.
https://energyasicit.ca/HomeEnergy/
Fortunately I believe that if climate is our goal there is a much better way to use our renewables.
https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/

Here’s an example of how difficult it is to provide 1GW 24/7 ...

2026-10-11T11:19:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…gps0
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Here’s an example of how difficult it is to provide 1GW 24/7 using the California dataset. Methodology is open sourced and fully described here. Bottom line is California would need an additional 600GWh of seasonal storage for 1GW firm. At $100/kWh that = $60B.
https://energyasicit.ca/HomeEnergy/

Or inflating and asset bubble which can also generate income ...

2026-09-24T22:16:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…369u
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Or inflating and asset bubble which can also generate income provided you can continue to find willing buyers as the bubble inflates.

If I understand Steve Keen correctly he says that the initial gov ...

2026-09-24T19:05:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…yaqf
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If I understand Steve Keen correctly he says that the initial gov spend creates money, but once bond sales move beyond the initial tier the gov bond sales cancel the gov money creation. He claims that by far the largest source of money creation is banks making loans. The question then becomes what are the banks loaning (creating) money for?

We can agree to disagree. Let’s go with your assertion that ...

2026-09-10T04:35:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…r6mr
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We can agree to disagree. Let’s go with your assertion that Ontario doesn’t need nuclear and see where the data leads us. In 2025 Ontario produced 78.3 TWh of nuclear. In your scenario we’d have to find that much power from hydro, wind and solar. In 2025 those 3 produced 37.8+13.4+0.8=52 TWh. So we’d have replicate all that renewable 1.5x just to break even on TWh. That still won’t decarbonize the grid because we’d need another 24.7 TWh to offset gas. In Ontario we use 248 TWh nat gas for heating. That would take another 62TWh electrical to power all the heat pumps we’d need to decarbonize. We haven’t even tackled converting personal vehicles to EVs or decarbonizing sectors such as steel. But most of all we’ve totally ignored the fact that all grid loads demand instantaneous supply from the grid. Wind and solar supply is totally uncorrelated with load demand. That requires enormous storage to rectify.

I spent my early years growing up in N Quebec. Those hydro ...

2026-09-05T01:40:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…c8zc
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I spent my early years growing up in N Quebec. Those hydro facilities had dams and reservoirs. They could be operated in a load following mode economically because when you didn’t produce power you didn’t lose water. Ontario on the other hand has a huge leak in it’s main hydro “dam “. If you examine the IESO dataset you will see that Ontario’s hydro runs as baseload. In Ontario the IESO dataset clearly shows that gas backs up the wind/solar resource when supply can’t match load.

Actually I’m working with any public datasets I can find. The ...

2026-09-04T22:02:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…8gkj
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Actually I’m working with any public datasets I can find. The best example I have of what you are suggesting is Texas wind+solar+storage. It still exhibits a sizeable seasonal slump. My real belief is that focusing our renewables on a JIT electricity grid is the wrong target if our objective is the climate.

That is what I like about Mastodon; we can agree to disagree. BTW ...

2026-09-04T10:16:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…v3qf
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That is what I like about Mastodon; we can agree to disagree. BTW that same headline could describe UK wind this summer due to same heatwave

As an engineer I’ve been contemplating climate optimizations of ...

2026-09-03T12:44:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…rh6x
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As an engineer I’ve been contemplating climate optimizations of our energy systems for over 50 years now. I’ve read countless reports just like the one you suggest. I’ve come to recognize that no matter how much you change it with smart tech, the electrical grid it will always be a JIT delivery machine in so far as when a load is connected it is met with an instantaneous supply.

With this viewpoint, grid storage is nothing other than a load (charging) that can time shift surplus supply (discharge). Grid storage has, and will always be, a capital intensive item. As such our current grid storage tech has a time shift cycle measured in hours in order to justify capital cost. To overcome seasonal supply deficits that all renewable systems I’ve studied exhibit, one needs enormous storage with duty cycles measured in months.

I’ve also recognized early in my journey that broken price signals are what got us into our climate mess. As such price optimization is not going to get us out of the climate crisis. Similarly the endless debate about renewables=good, nuclear=bad is largely a waste of cognitive resources. The fact is we need to build both as fast as we can to have any hope of supplanting fossil energy use and slowing the climate damage.

As such I’ve focused my cognitive energy on climate optimization recognizing that both the optimum, the path we chose and the speed at which we can reach that optimum are all equally important.

If one does a climate optimization for our increasingly available renewable resources (as I did for Ontario in post below) it is quickly obvious that simply dumping those electrons onto the grid to offset fossil (mostly gas) is far from an optimum use. From a CO2 accounting analysis is at least 2x better to leave the grid to the existing gas turbines and divert all of our renewables to green steel. I came up with the concept which I call a virtual wire which could quickly enable this.

The fact is if we just allowed ourselves to look, there is a better path forward.
https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/
https://energyasicit.ca/VirtualWire/

I prefer to believe what the actual datasets are saying as ...

2026-09-02T23:39:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…chas
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I prefer to believe what the actual datasets are saying as opposed to some report. IMO it is very hard to argue with real world data. If you look closely at these datasets you will see that the large storage requirements are due to seasonal supply slumps. Batteries are simply not suited to that duty cycle even if the costs can decline.

I prefer to believe what the actual datasets are saying as ...

2026-09-02T23:28:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…chas
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I prefer to believe what the actual datasets are saying as opposed to some report. IMO it is very hard to argue with real world data.

Once again when you actually look closely at the datasets ...

2026-08-29T10:37:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…xxlz
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Once again when you actually look closely at the datasets themselves the narrative changes. Here is my analysis of Texas including grid storage for this year. Texas did perform the best of the 4 grid set I analysed but they still sit at 2x the cost of a new CANDU build per GW 24/7.
https://energyasicit.ca/HomeEnergy/

When you actually look at the supply dataset, a much different ...

2026-08-28T10:25:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…7ehc
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When you actually look at the supply dataset, a much different narrative emerges. That seasonal slump in supply is unbridgeable.
https://energyasicit.ca/WindModel/

Wonder if it would work in CANDU reactors. I seem to recall that ...

2026-05-09T21:44:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…f67a
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Wonder if it would work in CANDU reactors. I seem to recall that India did some Thorium work in their CANDUs some years ago.

Yup. Pretty much what my analysis of several publicly available ...

2026-02-13T11:19:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…xf3s
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Yup. Pretty much what my analysis of several publicly available datasets show. Using my concept of a virtual wire we can do much better. Ie. 10x more CO2 savings.

https://energyasicit.ca/WindModel/

https://energyasicit.ca/VirtualWire/

Why not just redirect all those renewable electrons away from the ...

2025-09-14T14:18:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…rnfv
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Why not just redirect all those renewable electrons away from the impossible task of balancing seasonal deficits on a JIT grid and do things that actually amplify the climate benefit like green steel.

https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/

Moltex reveals some interesting test results on recycling used ...

2025-06-22T10:09:21Z

Moltex reveals some interesting test results on recycling used CANDU fuel. If these result prove out it is a breakthrough IMO.

https://www.moltexenergy.com/moltex-energy-unveils-breakthrough-in-nuclear-waste-recycling-at-canadian-nuclear-society-conference/

My analysis for Ontario shows that maybe thinking about ...

2025-06-04T09:37:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…y37h
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My analysis for Ontario shows that maybe thinking about electrical storage with H2 is solving the wrong problem. Green H2 is a much more valuable climate fighting chemical than as a battery.

https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/

I wrote this piece recently about Ontario. My conclusion was ...

2025-02-09T19:22:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…xthx
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I wrote this piece recently about Ontario. My conclusion was Ontario should crash build both renewables and CANDU. However to optimize for climate 100% of renewables and all excess CANDU should be vectored to green steel and e-methanol destined for serial plugin hybrids.

https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/

We need to get units straight. The fuel is a measure of energy ...

2025-01-20T23:28:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…tptd
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We need to get units straight. The fuel is a measure of energy not power, which on the electrical input side is TWh not GW. I know you just assumed 24/7 and multiplied to get equivalent but it would be better to talk TWh. The main reason is if we chose to divert 100% of our variable renewable -> produce eJet fuel the aggregated TWh are what matter not the renewable nameplate GW.

I also doubt this claim. Here is the California solarPV for 2024 ...

2025-01-02T21:05:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…3kvs
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I also doubt this claim. Here is the California solarPV for 2024 from my study. Also the graph for last 31 days with loads of nat gas generation.

#solarPV

https://energyasicit.ca/WindModel/

How much of US per capita decline can be attributed to outsourced ...

2024-12-08T12:44:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…jwtz
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How much of US per capita decline can be attributed to outsourced manufacturing to other countries? The climate only “cares” about the total absolute global number.

We have to treat these stories with caution. Aggregate renewable ...

2024-11-10T21:53:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…zwmv
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We have to treat these stories with caution. Aggregate renewable electrical generation stats by themselves are problematic. The relative timing of electron supply and electron load is much more important.

https://energyasicit.ca/WindModel/

In my part of Ontario radon in basements is an issue. I tested ...

2024-10-05T13:15:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…zruh
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In my part of Ontario radon in basements is an issue. I tested mine. While it is below the Heath Canada limit, it is not zero. The concept of zero radiation exposure is not even possible to attain where I live. What happens to all the radon that co exists in the ground with natural gas? Ans. It is simply emitted when gas is combusted.

I agree with the idea that we need to move toward the highest ...

2024-08-17T21:26:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…jwdt
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I agree with the idea that we need to move toward the highest density energy source which is nuclear. However I’m not convinced that we can get there fast enough (from a climate perspective) with existing nuclear technology. Hence I believe we need to climate optimize the deployment of all our energy technologies. At the moment we optimize on price/profits which won’t get us there.
/1

Deployment of renewables in Ontario are not optimized for climate ...

2024-08-17T21:26:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…wvwl
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Deployment of renewables in Ontario are not optimized for climate goals. We have a very large CANDU nuclear fleet followed by a close second in gas. Currently we dump all our renewables onto the grid allowing gas to follow that. My calculations show that a better climate optimization would be to match renewable production in real time with solid oxide electrolysers with the H2 deployed to heavy transport.
/2

Not disagreeing with this. Question remains; how can we achieve ...

2024-08-17T00:59:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…udt4
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Not disagreeing with this. Question remains; how can we achieve this extra energy in a climate neutral manner?

What is your “vision” for a climate optimized energy system?

2024-08-16T10:04:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…jryy
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What is your “vision” for a climate optimized energy system?

In Ontario the chasm that seasonal storage of renewables has to ...

2024-08-15T15:46:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…96fv
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In Ontario the chasm that seasonal storage of renewables has to bridge is huge. This is why I’m beginning to lean towards a different climate optimization for our renewable resources: smart grid loads exactly matched to renewable supply in real time. Best example of such a load I can think of is a solid oxide electrolyser. My quick analysis appears to show this is often better than dumping renewables onto a gas peaked grid.

There are better fission technologies out there like molten salt ...

2024-08-15T15:34:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…2uqc
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There are better fission technologies out there like molten salt reactors that can “burn” much more than 0.5% of potential in the fuel=way less waste per kWh. I grew up near an Aluminum smelter and know what permanent chemical waste discharge can do to a pristine environment. Unlike our nuclear waste which decays away over time, the mercury in the Saguenay River mud is there permanently=no more shrimp industry ever again.

I agree. Costs need to come down. I just don’t think we will ...

2024-08-15T15:15:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…pr59
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I agree. Costs need to come down. I just don’t think we will have a choice not to do seasonal thermal storage. Renewables and heat pumps, while in theory low carbon, don’t actually match load->supply in Ontario.

https://energyasicit.ca/solarPVpaper2/

Seasonal storage of heat (and cool) will be an important tech for ...

2024-08-15T13:33:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…qzs9
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Seasonal storage of heat (and cool) will be an important tech for climate mitigation. In Canada they used to cut blocks of ice from Hamilton harbour and put them in sawdust insulated ice huts for summer refrigeration. Drake Landing demonstrated what is possible with seasonal storage design in Canada.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community#:~:text=The%20Drake%20Landing%20Solar%20Community,and%20other%20energy%20efficient%20technologies.

2024Aug14 was lowest daily wind total yet. As a result my 1GW ...

2024-08-15T10:42:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…tmcd
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2024Aug14 was lowest daily wind total yet. As a result my 1GW 24/7 model had to resume a storage drawdown. We are now at 390GWh storage required to navigate this summer wind slump all at a time when Ontario’s air conditioning demand has driven gas generation to yearly highs.
#wind

Looked like wind in Ontario was coming out of the slump for last ...

2024-08-14T10:33:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…6k54
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Looked like wind in Ontario was coming out of the slump for last few days, but 2024Aug13 was lowest daily wind production yet.
#wind

Wind slump in Ontario continues. My 1GW 24/7 model now needs ...

2024-08-09T14:19:18Z

Wind slump in Ontario continues. My 1GW 24/7 model now needs 375GWh of storage to level out this slump. Since 2024 July1 there have only been 5 days where wind production exceeded 24GWh in a day. Since my model prioritizes storage refill when there is “surplus” we get the flat line portion in the graph below.
#wind

Check out Ontario’s massive CANDU retrofit project which is ...

2024-08-06T16:13:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…vkz4
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Check out Ontario’s massive CANDU retrofit project which is coming in on time and on budget. Shows that with good project management tools nuclear can be done without overruns. The group below was almost single-handedly responsible for reversing our Pickering CANDU plant shutdown in favour of a retrofit.

https://www.canfornuclearenergy.org/

What is needed IMO is a carbon free alternative to the nat gas ...

2024-08-01T19:03:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…5gk2
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What is needed IMO is a carbon free alternative to the nat gas turbine generator. In Ontario, as in many other places, we have renewable-gas marriage. It is lower carbon than gas alone, but can never reach zero. In some cases it can be “climate stupid” where in Ontario we burn gas to air condition. Hot weather=no wind.

Wind slump in Ontario is now a month old. It is now taking 285GWh ...

2024-08-01T11:47:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…ss4d
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Wind slump in Ontario is now a month old. It is now taking 285GWh for my 1GW 24/7 model to navigate this slump.
#wind
#solarPV

https://energyasicit.ca/WindModel/

The wind slump in Ontario continues. It is now taking 245GWh of ...

2024-07-29T15:10:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…40gy
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The wind slump in Ontario continues. It is now taking 245GWh of storage to allow 1GW 24/7 to navigate this slump. Weather continues to be hot with very little wind so Ontario is air conditioning with nat gas.

Wind slump continues in Ontario. My model now requires 210GWh to ...

2024-07-27T10:50:16Z

Wind slump continues in Ontario. My model now requires 210GWh to hold 1GW 24/7 through this slump.