Climate Science and Energy Engineering Dinner

Monthly Dinner Website with much more detail about this event.

On Monday, March 9th, at 7:00pm we will be hosting our monthly Climate Science and Energy Engineering Dinner, which will usually occur on the 2nd Monday of every month.

The event will be at the Skylight Diner, by 9th Ave & 34th St in Manhattan, within easy reach of the A/C/E & 7 subways, and one block from Penn / Moynihan station. The diner has a large menu with affordable prices, generous portions, and is willing to do separate checks for a large group, with everybody using their own credit card.

The topics of conversation will be

• Climate Science: you have to be able to debate climate science in order to reach out to conservatives, and also, even if you don't talk with conservatives, there is a lot of controversy over just how bad things will get, and how fast.
• Energy Engineering: We have to decarbonize the economy, but there are many unresolved / controversial issues to discuss -- which zero carbon sources of energy are preferable, how to decarbonize transportation, particularly aviation. To get public cooperation, we have to figure out a path to decarbonize that won't involve too much negative impact on per capita GDP, or too much disruption to our way of life.

This Month's Topic: Batteries:

If we are to transition to a non-nuclear grid powered by renewables (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, wave) we face the intermittency problem. People want the lights kept on even when the weather isn't cooperating, which means that some form of battery storage is needed. I was in the same room as Al Gore 7 years ago when he said "Wind and Solar are already cheaper than fossil fuels." which is highly misleading -- they are cheaper in the middle of a sunny, windy day, but on calm nights and calm, cloudy weeks, battery backup is needed, and that's expensive.

One approach that is suggested is to have an extensive long-distance power grid, to get electricity from places where the weather is cooperating with renewables to places where it isn't, greatly reducing the chances of blackouts. However, high voltage power lines have major NIMBY problems -- you need permission from every county they run through, which is difficult and time-consuming because they're ugly and spoil the view. There have been improvements in power line technology where much larger amounts of power can now be transmitted through a given set of power lines than was previously available

There are some places using lithium-ion batteries to back up renewables on the grid, but these usually have a capacity of about 4 hours, nowhere close to enough to keep the power on for a calm, cloudy week.

There is a battery storage site in Lincoln, Maine based on Form Energy iron-air batteries that is on the grid and has a 100-hour capacity (clarification -- this site is only a partial backup of the grid in that area, but the location, once fully charged, takes 100-hours to fully discharge the battery). Form Energy also has installations in progress going on in other states.