Could you adapt your lifestyle for Solar Power Plants?

CSP is cheaper with thermal storage. The higher the production factor the better the costs. It makes no sense to have CSP without storage, unless your goal is to restrict nighttime capacity.

Let's face, people will adapt is there's no night time electricity (or very expensive electricity). They will go off grid if they can afford it, they will go without (no electricity) or massively conserve if they don't. The off gridders will, of course, also conserve and be as efficient as possible because the cost of batteries will be very high. Hot tubs will disappear. Lights on in everyroom... gone. LEDs will rule. Many devices such as street lights and traffic lights will likely generate their own power. The internet will suffer tremendously at first, but may make a comeback. Medical care (hospitalization) will be very, very expensive. There will be all sorts of negative impacts. Of course, there will be positives because no one would stand for it. All sorts of baseload power options would proliferate... landfill gas, biomass, geothermal, tidal, and storage technologies for wind would be commonplace.... Sorta like, uh, now with coal, NG, and nukes... I'm curious to see where you're taking this. Some kinda off grid living with no backup (ie. expensive batteries) perhaps? Not in FL, I challenge you to last a single year there with no AC.

 

You are kidding I hope. Electricity usage peak is most definitely during the day, and we have excess capacity at night. We do NOT use "most" at night. Not by a long, long shot. Your particular household might, but not society at large.

So the answer here (in my book, naturally) is everybody having their own portable energy storage - EVs! If we had nothing but solar, we'd all charge during the day, and sip off the car at night, and recharge for the next day.

I actually could throw my breaker from about 8pm until 8am the next day. Wouldn't change my habits at all. Only thing using the mains right now is the fridge, and that could survive the night (computer and all my LED interior lights are on battery-backed solar) Oh, well I DO charge my car at night these days - to use some of that excess off-peak power, and burn up all my solar credits that I collect during the day. But again - that would be easy for me to change.

So my answer is - no problem. Of course I already think about things in terms of solar every day.

 

This is about me not you, the question was "could YOU adapt?" Yes I could. Sorry to hear you don't cook with gas, you don't know what you are missing.
Rechargeable batteries don't go to landfill, they go to recycling after a long useful life.

You can air dry on a rack which is suspended from a ceiling which can be raised and lowered by ropes.

I have a clothes line because I paid for it.
Renting? Why pay someone Else's mortgage?
Who do you think would pay my costs? Yes it would cost at first but there would be long term savings.
No one is saying you would have to make these changes over night and it might be worth your while even with current energy prices.

 

Chart of power consumption versus time of day (California, January 8, 2008).

Original at http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html

Peak power consumption is at 6:00 PM, while the low is at 3:00 AM

 

Uh... says who? I assume that you're stating that because we'll probably chew up our coal reserves by then? Breeder reactors with thorium and reprocessed uranium could keep us going for a long time. I mentioned several other renewables in my last post that are good baseload options (though some of them will always be small players). Having PV to shave peak demand is, of course, a good thing too. I ran across this this morning....

From the guy who invented the supersoaker, speaking of thinking outside the box.

 

I don't cook with gas because it's not an option. I live in a small 1BR because it's all I can afford. There is no room for things like drying racks, even suspended the ceiling. I do not have a yard for a clothesline. And many people rent because that's all they can afford.

I'm glad it's so easy for some people to adapt. I'm simply saying that it's not easy for many others to do so.

 

Uh, no. It's a very old idea. It's a vintage travel alarm clock. You wind it up every night. I like mine because it not only tells the time with a 12 hour analog face with a large hand and a small hand, but it also tells the day of the week and the day of the month. (not the month though.)

I also have vintage watches. You wind them up every night and they have hands to tell time too. I got tired of replacing batteries and bought several vintage watches.

Nothing modern about either. When I grew up the only wristwatch there was you wound up every night. Okay, my Dad had one that would wind itself through the movement of your body. But they all still have springs.

The ancient Romans had water clocks.

Before there were battery operated calculators (the size of a credit card!) there were sliderules and the abacus.

There was a time when batteries didn't run everything.

 

it seems a lot smarter to combine energy sources and use solar, wind, and water if all are accesible

I sure as H wont turn off all my electronics at night

nuke plants, windmills, & water turbines run 24 hours so where is the need to stop using electricity at night ?

besides you can also store solar energy in batteries for later use

 

i think we need to start thinking about living like nature intended it for us.

daylight means awake and darknis means sleep..

lets say 12 ours of light and 12 ours of darkniss
12 ours of sleep ( wel almost you stil need to get to sleep and wake up )
and when it starts to get light in the morning you wakeup.
and the day starts
12 daylight ours means 7 ours or work and 4 ours of private time.

poeple life longer and are mor relaxed

 

That storage actually makes the electricity cheaper, not more expensive if we're talking about storing heat. It's cheaper because you're utilizing the infrastructure more, which means you can sell more power for a better price because the power is more reliable. See here.

Storage is going to be a necessity for intermittent power sources like wind and solar. I would expect that we'll see continued advances in geothermal because it's capable of producing baseload power. There aren't a lot of renewables that can do that (other than hydro, which may become increasingly marginalized because of its environmental footprint as well as unreliability of water resources). Biomass and landfill gas come to mind, but landfill gas will only be a small time player. It's unclear to me how much of a player biomass will be. Besides, we may need it for other purposes (liquid fuels, for example).

It won't take 100 to change habits. Just look at seat belt use, smoking, or dietary trends (right or wrong, mostly wrong, but that's a different thread). Those were achieved in two decades or less. It all depends on the perceived costs/benefits.

 

sharpening the splitter...
Considering that we have a MASSIVE fusion reactor that bathes us in energy every second of everyday the future may well be one of massive waste and excess. In 100 years I have the feeling that energy won't be an issue at all. Most people around the globe (here's to that number being no more than what we've got now...) will have access to all of the energy they need/want. I think that the future is bright (pardon the pun ). Yes, there are significant hurdles to jump but there's impetus for innovation. There are some very exciting solar technologies out there (that I know you're aware of), admittedly in their infancy (roll to roll thin film) or even embryonic (quantum dots and various nanotechs). We just need to couple them with equally exciting storage technologies. That's obviously the future of renewables... that and efficiency.

Did we get it all the way yet...?

Most people won't change unless compelled to do so. I think that in 100 years they won't be compelled to do so, they won't need to. We'll have loads of problems, I'm sure, but energy supply probably won't be one of them. There's just too much energy out there.

 

I have to agree with the Saudi guy who said that the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of rocks. We won't run out of oil, we'll just run out of cheap oil. Ditto coal. We won't mine all of either because it will simply be too bloody expensive.