Essay by Eric Worrall
Are greens replacing fantasies of energy sources which don’t work, with fantasies of energy sources which don’t exist?
For a clean energy future, our relationship to the grid must change. Here’s how
Jul 15, 2022
- Outdated domestic power grids are currently unable to integrate necessary renewable energy sources.
- As we transition to a carbon-free society we need to transform the way we power and manage the grid.
- Future grids that capitalize on the potential of distributed energy resources can help flatten the demand curve.
Our current domestic power grids are woefully inept to integrate necessary renewable energy sources – plagued by ageing, outdated technology and a regulatory structure that hampers the ability to upgrade the critical infrastructure required. In the US alone, the power grid operates at about 40% efficiency.
The answer to solving this problem lies within a new approach to electricity: one that focuses on optimizing the way customers and their technologies interact with the grid. The devastating effects of climate change demand that we take our next steps without introducing more pollution and unsustainable demand on extracted resources.
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A possible path forward
Enabling software and other technologies have only recently emerged, so there’s much to do to realize the potential of this future grid that capitalizes on the potential of DERs. Utility planning capabilities, regulatory structures, and business models are all in the very early stages. One critical requirement will be some type of central registry that classifies assets by type and significant characteristics, (e.g. the what, where, when, and the capacity and energy that can be offered). Each aggregator contract would tie it to specific assets, with that relationship documented in the registry. A permissioned-based approach, supported by appropriate grid architecture, would regulate both communications flows and hierarchy of behaviours (e.g. if a battery is contracted to support the grid, it must be available – it can’t have recently sold its energy for another purpose).
Our relationship to the grid – and how we power and manage it – must change. In the past, creating electricity has typically been an environmentally damaging endeavour – whether it’s extracting and burning coal, or harnessing the power of nuclear fission while creating radioactive waste. Powering our future also means developing sustainable, non-polluting energy that can withstand surges in demand and has more consistent availability than solar and wind power. Hydrogen-boron fusion energy is being developed at TAE Technologies to meet and exceed current demand, without burning coal or creating nuclear waste, with an anticipated date of 2030. The technology will be carbon-free and offer a new, vast supply of energy.
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Read more: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/clean-energy-future-relationship-to-grid-must-change
A 2030 timetable for hydrogen boron fusion seems absurdly optimistic.
Hydrogen Boron fusion in theory would be far cleaner than deuterium tritium fusion, because it is one of a class of relatively clean “a-neutronic fusion” reactions. But hydrogen boron is just under 10x more difficult than deuterium tritium fusion, which in my opinion puts hydrogen boron fusion well into fantasy land, with anything resembling current levels of technology.
As animals get larger the percent volume occupied by all blood vessels increases. This imposes the upper limit for an animal size somewhere around that of a blue whale.
A similar law probably applies to a country’s power grid. If it’s power sources are too numerous, small and diffuse – not to mention intermittent – from renewables, then the power grid gets larger with more and more interconnections and a larger percent occupancy of the land surface; eventually a limit will be reached where the space and resources consumed by the distribution grid itself (and energy wastage) will stifle the functioning of the whole power architecture and the country itself.
So a bigger and bigger grid needed for renewables will eventually choke off a nations power supply.
Based on what, Eric? Your expertise and keen insight into developments in aneutronic fusion?
LPPFusion, a small company in Middlesex, NJ has already reached two of the three criteria for achieving fusion breakeven output. The company in 2015 was able to sustain temperatures of more than 1B degrees C for the required confinement time, without yet using the pB11 fuel. That comes in 2023. The company has since been homing in on achieving required density to support breakeven. This has been a tedious process that involved much experimentation of materials and ultra-fast switching.
The fusion technology is not the mainstream Tokamak design, which, indeed is a dead end. Instead of trying to confine a plasma in a magnetic bottle, the LPP fusion device relies on plasma self-confinement in a small, modular design which generates no radioactivity. These units will deliver a far more distributed energy supply to about 30,000 customers each.
LPPFusion is not a multi-decadal program costing $50 B, but largely self-funded. see LPPFusion.com for news and details.
Thanks for clarifying. We’ve been hearing your bullshit since 2015. It’s always the big breakthrough coming in (current year + 1)
So ten years from now it will be coming in 2033.
Seven years of private funding to crack a vexing problem in physics seems like a pretty short time line. But that assumes you understand the physics and the technology to appreciate the achievement.
“Are greens replacing fantasies of energy sources which don’t work, with fantasies of energy sources which don’t exist?”
Isn’t that their MO?
My first experience of the cluster!!!! that is nuclear fusion was the ZETA project in the UK. A total disaster, major public embarrassment for all involved. Only thing that has changed is the orders of magnitude higher theft of taxpayers money to fund a never ending scam. Eisenhower was so very right.
I’m not up to speed on the engineering difficulties of containing a hydrogen/boron plasma relative to a deuterium-tritium plasma, but there is one physical advantage and one physical disadvantage of hydrogen/boron relative to deuterium/tritium.
As PCman999 commented, tritium costs $30,000 per gram, probably due to the difficulty of separating it from ordinary H-1, which is the overwhelming majority of hydrogen atoms in nature. If hydrogen-boron can use ordinary hydrogen, this would eliminate the difficulty of producing small amounts of tritium from vast quantities of water.
The major drawback to hydrogen/boron is the fact that it involves accelerating a proton (hydrogen nucleus) into a B-11 nucleus (5 protons and 6 neutrons, the most abundant isotope of boron), so the protons would have to be fast enough to overcome the electrostatic repulsion of the positively-charged boron nucleus.
As Philip Mulholland pointed out, the impact of a proton with a B-11 nucleus causes it to split into three He-4 nuclei (alpha particles), but does not generate any neutrons or fast protons, so that the reaction is not self-propagating like the U-235 reactions in classical nuclear fission reactors. For this reason, the amount of energy that can be obtained from hydrogen/boron is probably limited, due to the lack of self-propagation of the reaction.
Which is why the mega-ampere current is pulsed at 200 Hz to produce effectively continuous power. As long as you produce more power than you consume you have a nett energy gain. Look at the LPPfusion.com website.
I worked at DIII-D in La Jolla for five years as the cryogenics engineer. I left the program after hearing the Assistant Director of Operations (AK) tell a senior engineer “like this thing is ever going to work. 10-9 Torr components off the shelf. No way.”
I left and went into commercial cogeneration.
Regardless, the investment of $50 to $100 million per year is likely worth it.
Hope they can make it work someday.
Fusion research is being conducted by several companies. I do not know offhand how many but one can get a sense of the number by going to the website
<a href=”https://talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php“>Talk Polywell</a>
Regards
Climate Heretic
I had the opportunity several years ago to sit through a half day briefing by TAE on their technology. Had to sign an NDA. I was brought in as an independent expert to evaluate a potential business venture to mine He3 from the Moon and return it to Earth for use in He3-He3 fusion. My expertise was on the space side of things. That potential venture collapsed though the idea is still being pursued.
TAE was brought in to provide credibility for an eventual market for He3. Though a physicist by education, having spent my career in space, most of their presentation went over my head. However, I was impressed by the quality of their team and the reasonableness of their approach. It was (and is) very methodical, progressing along a path of increasingly large and complex machines, demonstrating key aspects of the technology incrementally. Their technology, using what they call a beam driven field reversed configuration, seems to have many advantages compared to the tokamak approach. In fact, they were very dismissive of the tokamak effort. And p-B11 fusion has clear advantages over d-t fusion in spite of the higher required temperatures.
I went into the briefing with an attitude similar to Eric’s but came away thinking maybe I should keep an open mind. TAE’s website claims early 2030’s for commercialization, not 2030.
Viable fusion has been 20 years away for at least 50 years, but maybe now it’s only 10 years away. (Which means maybe we can expect it in another 50 years).
Let’s accept what they say. Forget Net Zero. Use up our oil and gas and then switch over to free electricity courtesy of fusion in ten years. What’s not to like.