Vayutuvan wrote:hgupta (since you are not putting the honorific, I am dropping) ji
Whatever floats your boat. It doesn't bother me.
Please get yourself educated about the difference between renewable and sustainable. Biogas is sustainable. In fact, it is the only sustainable energy resource. None of the others are. Minerals, metals, mining, and highly skilled workforce. Limits of physical resources will be the first limits reached.
You would think biofuel is sustainable. It is not. You have to ensure that you have healthy soil with sufficient nutrients to grow food you want and need. There comes a diminishing return when you try to convert valuable farmland into crops that does nothing but serve as fuel for biofuel as those Iowa farmers discover. And for biogas, you would need to ensure a steady supply of food to keep those animals that produce manure and that create its own set of issues.
With wind and solar, you have way more than ample supply. The only issue is capturing those energy and converting them into electricity. You mention minerals, metals, and mining. Yes right now they serve as the main raw materials for wind and solar but the world are turning into other materials that are more plentiful. Heck an engineering student from Philippines came up with an invention of using food waste and waste crops into solar panels.
See here:
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/ ... rect-light
That said, even if we import the raw materials, they are not consumption per se but converted into 20 year durable goods and which can be recycled to some extent. In that manner, I see the importation of raw materials the same thing as importing iron and other minerals and making goods out of them. Japan doesn't have large reserves of iron but they have a bigger economy than us because they produce highly refined machine goods and such and cultivated a highly skilled workforce which is a big boon to the economy.
We have solved the last mile problem. Wait till next year.
Oh really? I would be very curious how that turns out. You have solved the complexity of collecting enough supply from various sources that produce waste? If so, that is an engineering feat in itself. Are you doing this like small to medium scaled plant in localized settings not like a central setting where you have a feeder system but you situate each plant to each location? Are you thinking about creating waste collection companies or co ops where you have independent people collecting trash and you pay them by the kilograms?
If I may ask, what is your background? In another thread on BRF you said you have BS in CS with a JD. So no engg., I take it? Have you taken any courses in Numerical Analysis? Mathematical Programming? Management Sciences (Logistics, Supply Chain Mgmt. and/or PPC/Inventory Control), Economics?
I have an engineering background in computer engineering. I worked for several Fortune 500 companies and have engaged in various complex engineering projects that require engineering skills. However I decided to change track due to different reasons and go into law. I am not sure what you are trying to get at.
You are mixing up Ethanol (E85) with Biogas - Methane. Syngas is a different beast as well. In the US, Biomass is used as animal feed. Biogas is not economically feasible in the US as the factory beef farms pay more this input.
I brought Ethanol as an example of biofuel and why biofuel does not really work. Yes biogas is different from biofuel in the sense that it is generated through the anaerobic digestion. I get that. You may be thinking of using cow manure and food waste to produce methane. Using biogas is certainly environmentally friendly and I got nothing against using biogas but it is not the panacea as you make it out to be. I know this. we have a landfill nearby that is one of the largest in the state if not in the nation and there is a methane capture plant on there and it does produce energy but nowhere on the level needed. It takes in 3500 tons of waste per day and based on that it generates 11 MW of energy and feed it back into the electrical grid which means powering about 10k homes and that landfill serves a population of over 2 million people.
You may be arguing that we have enough supply to meet India's needs. For example, a cow produce about 12 tons of dung a year or 30 kg a day. 1 kg of cow dung produces 40 liters of gas so 40X30 gets you 1200 liters of gas. Multiply that by 300 million cows and you get 360 billion liters of biogas a day. Right now India consumes about 850 million liters of gas for cars a day. So yippee! Yay! our problems are solved! Not really. There are a lot of factors that go into production of biogas and collection of manure, timely capture of methane before decomposing and ideal temperature being several of them. And one liter of biogas does not equal one liter of gasoline in terms of energy content. For example, ideally, you need about 37 degrees celsius or higher to generate biogas efficiently from manure and food waste. See here:
https://www.solarcities.eu/content/how- ... an-you-get
For a good primer on how biogas plant works, see here:
https://www.solarcities.eu/content/how- ... an-you-get.
According to the link above, 132 tons of waste produce approx. 5.5M liters which translates into 625 kWh/h or 15000kWh a day. So 12 tons produced per year multiply by 300 million cows gets you 3.6 billion tons of manure which gets you 409 billion kWhs a year. Right now India consumes 1.176 trillion kWh and that consumption need is projected to triple in the next 10-15 years.
In India, rice straw is being burnt creating largescale pollution in nearby cities. I am sure (IDK now after reading your posts but let me give you the benefit of doubt) you have read about the stubble-burning in Punjab at the end of the paddy season which affects Delhi air quality enormously.
yes I am familiar with that issue. Right now India produces 352 million tons of rice stubble a year. Based on the link I provided above, that gets you around 40 billion kWh a year which barely makes a dent in India's electrical consumption. Hardly a panacea for India's energy issues. However converting rice stubble is a great way of reducing pollution massively and provides more income to Indian farmers at the same time while providing an extra bit of energy. I see nothing wrong with that. However it is not enough. We need more.
RIght now we are using coal but we are seeing the limitations of coal right now. With RE sources, we can overcome those limitations and generate more power at a cheaper scale and at a scale where we don't see destruction of India's environment and landscape and suffer poor air quality.
Ethanol has no economic viability anywhere in the world but the US has to keep the farmers in business and hence GOTUS gives subsidies. It is a boon doggle. I know because I live right in the middle of sq miles upon sq miles of cornfields and soy farms.
Then we are in similar agreement.
Vayutuvan wrote:
1. Are you proposing that India compete with China in manufacturing? IOW, replace China as the factory of the world?
2. China has advantages India doesn't.
3. If you don't quantify "too long", it is difficult to say whether India wants to wait "too long". You might be surprised if I say that Indian politicians of all stripes in addition to the tycoons are well aware of what needs to be done and are acting as we speak.
Think of any large entity as a complex system that reacts to external stimuli. The smaller the entity, the easier it is to make the system behave the way you want it to behave. Larger the system harder it is due to the curse of dimensionality. Internal and external linkages, feedback loops, and inertia need to be taken into account.
In response:
1. Why not? That's what Modi and this government are trying to do. Present an alternative to the world besides China.
2. So what? That is what technology is for. To overcome advantages of others and your own disadvantages. That is why I see RE as a long term solution for India. It allows India to overcome its disadvantages and other countries' advantage and be ahead.
3. in 2005, US was the world leader in producing solar panels. Manufacturing of solar panels in China was nonexistent and same thing in India. Ten years later, China is number one and killing every of its competitors out in the rest of the world, including India. Not only that, China is busy pouring billions of dollars into R&D in creating smarter grids to cater to the RE sources so as to derive maximum benefits. Now these chinese products are being shipped to everywhere in the world at a grand scale that India is finding hard to match. Wait five years too long, India might as well throw in the towel and start accepting CHinese goods because Chinese manufacturers are already far ahead. A good example to compare to would be the semiconductor industry. India cannot even compete with China or South Korea and is still very far behind. It would take massive investments just to get on the page if not even the same page but a couple pages back.
Vayutuvan wrote:Norway is an atypical country. 5 million population, a $1 trillion fund, plenty of oil, homogenous "well-behaved" population with a majority Christian, and low population density.
They were never sacked and subjugated by rapacious Islamic invaders nor under the uncaring native hating of colonial powers of Europe.
I really don't get your point you are trying to make. I thought your point was that the stats for Norway didn't apply to rest of Europe. I brought out that graph to show that you are seeing the same trend in the rest of Europe as you see in Norway with respect to adoption of EVs.
Vayutuvan wrote:
Three Ds of engg. - design, design, design. If you bring some tech to the market before its time, then you will lose in the long run unless you are able to impose your design as the standard on the world. Only very few people have that kind of pull. Tesla is not one of them nor the many Chinese state-supported copycat battery/EV companies.
I beg your pardon. Tesla does exactly have that pull. Before Tesla there was no EV market. It was practically nonexistent. It was all due to Tesla that an EV market was created on a grand scale. For better or worse, Tesla is the leader in the EV market by a long mile and everybody is racing trying to catch up to Tesla and follows closely to whatever Tesla does. OTA updates? That was Tesla first. Autonomous driving as a feature? That was Tesla. EV charging stations? That was Tesla.
Sure Tesla's idea about battery swap didn't work out. But that doesn't mean they didn't try their best to make it work. You may say design, design, design but I also say economics, economics, economics. What works in design may not work out in the real world. You may create the perfect battery swap but as the link that I gave you gave another reason. It was simply more economical and better to build more EV charging stations with faster charging times than to implement battery swap on a wide scale and they saw better returns in putting more R&D into faster charging batteries than in battery swap technology.
Vayutuvan wrote:
Tesla's success is not a given irrespective of how much some of you in CA, expat Eurotrash, and Euros themselves want it. Not gonna happen.
I do not get your intense dislike/hatred for Europeans nor do I care for it. Let's continue debating without devolving into name calling as certain posters are wont to do.