Two stroke engine ban

[Marty_d]

Marty_d, do you have any science training or qualifications? Physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, engineering? If not, you likely don't even have the intellectual tools to begin understand the issue.The local pollution issue has been largely solved for both air and water pollution, mostly by 30 years ago. I can remember when the car exhaust emissions were first controlled and it was claimed to be great because the only things coming out the back of the car were harmless water vapour and CO2. Sometimes solving 99% of a problem is good enough.

If you are still worried about CO2 you should realise that NONE of the current or proposed measures in place to slow down/prevent/reduce CO2 emissions will have any significant effect by 2100 (or likely ever). Just a few days ago a bunch of climate modellers admitted their models run too hot. In 2009 we saw the release of the UEA computer data which revealed the inner workings of the minds of the climate "scientists" there. Intellectually dishonest bunch of bullies who make up stuff.

 

Last I heard 1500 or so coal fired power stations were under construction or planned around the world. If Australia built 15 new ones we'd have very cheap, reliable electricity and make really no difference to the world. As it is we'll have expensive unreliable electricity and no industry and will all be poor enough that we won't be worrying about private aviation at all.

 

I'm thinking we need to look at the standard of living in Argentina and realise this is the best case for us. Venezuela could be where we are heading though.

My reply is here.

Energy (from "Two stroke engine ban" on Rec Flying)

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

That training you mention is just education. Intellectual tools in my mind is intelligence, or ability to use your brain. You do not have to be educated in the sciences to be intelligent, although some of those with a good education may think they are intelligent, when they may not be.

Good point, Yenn. Although we should have enormous respect for the hard-earned qualifications and experience of our engineers and scientists, their training often limits their imagination. Ground-breaking innovations (disruptive technologies) often come from outside- even from amateurs.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Good point,

Read my signature ...

 

 

[jetjr]

Contrary to many beliefs Pumped hydro doesnt make any power in fact uses a lot and with evap and losses will burn a bit of water too.

 

Just a battery and not a very efficient one. Still not a bad idea its just still needs big power generated somewhere else.

 

A problem is the ability of some to use complicated ideas and language to influence others and push agendas.

 

Real data is fuzzy at best and it has to be manipulated (smoothed, rounded, seasonally adjusted, outliers removed etc etc) to make sense THEN someones opinion on THAT data somehow becomes fact.

 

I expect most data analysts would reject the data set and declare no conclusion possible if it wasnt such an potentially important issue.

 

In regards to two stroke emissions, I would be surprised if volumes of emissions from these was a major part of Australia's pollution problem. All the old ones arent going away either.

 

 

[octave]

ontrary to many beliefs Pumped hydro doesnt make any power in fact uses a lot and with evap and losses will burn a bit of water too.Just a battery and not a very efficient one. Still not a bad idea its just still needs big power generated somewhere else.

Pumped storage is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of 2017, the DOE Global Energy Storage Database reports that PSH accounts for over 96% of all active tracked storage installations worldwide, with a total installed nameplate capacity of over 168 GW.[3] The round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%,[4][5][6][7]

 

 

[ozbear]

And of course in Australia we have heaps of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) from napalm, er gum trees. They ain't called the Blue Mountains for nothing. I suspect a few two strokes are negligible. We are governed by idiots as will become obvious when the lights go out.

I think the term for some of it is polycyclic aromatics

 

 

[spacesailor]

Easy.

 

To send the water Up-hill use solar distillation & it floats slowly skywards, then condense back to water being at the cooler height.

 

Use salt (sea) water & reap all the minerals plus salt crystals.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[coljones]

Contrary to many beliefs Pumped hydro doesnt make any power in fact uses a lot and with evap and losses will burn a bit of water too.Just a battery and not a very efficient one. Still not a bad idea its just still needs big power generated somewhere else.

A problem is the ability of some to use complicated ideas and language to influence others and push agendas.

 

Real data is fuzzy at best and it has to be manipulated (smoothed, rounded, seasonally adjusted, outliers removed etc etc) to make sense THEN someones opinion on THAT data somehow becomes fact.

 

I expect most data analysts would reject the data set and declare no conclusion possible if it wasnt such an potentially important issue.

 

In regards to two stroke emissions, I would be surprised if volumes of emissions from these was a major part of Australia's pollution problem. All the old ones arent going away either.

Are you asking us to reject the mainline data in favour of outliers that supports the status quo? When I did experiments at school, university and in the workplace it was the outliers that were greeted with suspicion, but tested. Invariably outliers, which represented a small count in the data set could be explained by a variety of reasons including contamination.

 

 

[jetjr]

Not askig you to do anything

 

Data modification is required however the more variable the data the more the modification becomes influential to the trends. This is done from all sides of the debate

 

Id be surprised if pumped hydro could reault in 80% net efficiency, pumping alone would be less efficient than that and then theres generation losses

 

 

[DenisPC9]

Contrary to many beliefs Pumped hydro doesnt make any power in fact uses a lot and with evap and losses will burn a bit of water too.Just a battery and not a very efficient one. Still not a bad idea its just still needs big power generated somewhere else.....

Blocks of memory return from many years ago and I thought that the reason the Snowy Mountains Scheme pumped the water back up into the top storage ponds at night time was because of the spare power in the Grid, because the coal fired stations had to run 24/7, and it was very cheap to do so.

 

If those parameters have changed, I am prepared to re-think my approach to that form of power generation.

 

 

[octave]

Not askig you to do anythingData modification is required however the more variable the data the more the modification becomes influential to the trends. This is done from all sides of the debate

Id be surprised if pumped hydro could reault in 80% net efficiency, pumping alone would be less efficient than that and then theres generation losses

Whether you are surprised or not, it is a fact that there are plenty of pumped storage power stations in operation List of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations - Wikipedia are you suggesting that these facilities are using more power than they generate?

 

The 80 to 90 percent efficiency figures that I quoted came with footnotes so you can tell where the figures came from. If you believe those figures are wrong then perhaps you could provide links to more accurate figures.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Simply put, you've got a bitching big solar / wind array which produces more power than is being used during the day. The excess is used to pump water uphill.

 

When the sun doesn't shine, or the wind doesn't blow, then you let the water back downhill and it turns a turbine on the way.

 

The efficiency doesn't really matter. It's not like you're burning anything to get the water up the hill.

 

 

[jetjr]

Dont have references, but its impossible to pump water up a hill with a pump maybe 85% efficient , then generate power through a turbine, which has losses too and end up with more power than you started with

 

Best you can argue is that it turns a large amount of cheap power i to a smaller volume of more expensive stuff.

 

Thermal generators can ramp up and down but its pretty slow process and there is for sure lots of wasted energy.

 

They can be a good thing and are used worldwide and i never said they werent a good option but they dont make power.

 

 

[kasper]

Whether you are surprised or not, it is a fact that there are plenty of pumped storage power stations in operation List of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations - Wikipedia are you suggesting that these facilities are using more power than they generate? The 80 to 90 percent efficiency figures that I quoted came with footnotes so you can tell where the figures came from. If you believe those figures are wrong then perhaps you could provide links to more accurate figures.

Well I remember the visit to Blowering 3 station in primary school - around 35 years ago - and they were telling us then that they pumped up from the lower dam as a big water battery when they had more electric in the grid than needed ... and that they could get any of the turbines back onto the grid in minutes which was faster than any coal station could so they were a central part of the load balance for the entire state.

Now pumped hydro may not be the answer to all storage issues but it has been and can be part of a leveling system to accommodate mismatch between electrical generation and demand ... sort of what the biggest problem with solar and wind seems to be.

 

Can't comment on efficiency or cost per MW storage but given the cost of electricity now makes alternates to coal cost competitive to create the exploration/expansion of pumped hydro to make it 'fit' use patterns would seem to be a better option to my mind than adding coal fired capacity regardless of how clean/efficient that coal station may be.

 

 

[jetjr]

Sure does warrant support but we still need large increase in low cost generation capacity too

 

Battery and pumped hydro have a larger place with renewables increase of the generation mix. The arguement that theres lots of spare renewable power to fuel batteries doesnt make much sense yet either

 

The spare capacity is from thermal generation in low use periods like off peak.

 

 

[kasper]

Well I'm agnostic to storage as part of load spreading on base load generation or as a core part of generation movement on intermittent generation - its established technology, its already part of the NSW grid and strangely there are increasing numbers of storage capacity sitting remotely on houses around the country that IF you looked big picture integration could be made smart and used as distributed storage capacity ... the move away from coal baseload generation is already happening and we may not have strong baseload capacity in decades to come so I'm all for expansion of alternate generation and storage options to deal with the way we are moving.

 

Basically without adding nuclear as a replacement to coal for baseload capacity (not going to happen due to politics and/or risk) Australia is going to have a very different structure and mix going forward.

 

 

[Ron5335]

Hate to put a damper on the pumped hydro supporters but the reality has to be faced after listening to the spin.

 

Tumut 3 Power Station has a total of 6 turbines, 4 of which have pumps.

 

Water coming off the top of Talbingo Dam falls 115m down each pipe at a rate of 189m/s into the turbine that has an internal area

 

of 1,132 m3 then the water discharges into Jounama Pondage

 

115m head gives it a pressure of 1,128 kph so when it comes time to pump uphill, it has to overcome a pressure of 1,128 kph before anything starts to move uphill.

 

The internal cubic capacity of each pump is 99.1 m3 or roughly 10% of the turbine size, and at full speed it pushes the water up the pipe at just on 90m/s

 

So for every hour of operation producing power, it will take 2 - 2 1/2 hours of pumping to shift the same amount of water, and it will use 30% more power than it produced to do it.

 

If it runs for only 4 hours a day, then that will require 8 - 9 hours of pumping to move the used water back up the hill, and there's the clanger, there is only about 6 hours of off peak time available after the power stations handle the peak and then top up everyone's off peak hot water.

 

Fact or Fiction ? Look at the current lake levels on Snowy Hydro. Lake Eucembene (The top Dam is only at 37%) capacity but the lowest dam at Blowering is over 80%

 

because they haven't been able to move the water back up into Talbingo Dam to re use because the power has not been in the grid.

 

They have to release what they cannot pump up from Jounama Pondage into Blowering, and then take it from Eucembene to top up Talbingo to feed Tumut 3 for the next day.

 

Snowy Hydro feed the grid at many times the price for their power compared to a coal fired power station, then buy back the power at off peak rates making it commercially viable .

 

So if it Snowy Hydro 2 goes ahead, then the first thing to go will be Off Peak Rates as all available power will be soaked up pumping water from Jounama up into

 

Talbingo, then the new proposed Power Station moving the water From Talbingo up into Eucembene. (And the head pressure for that is over 600m or over 5888 kph making it a mega power sucker upper) So the only way to feed that monster will be from coal.

 

 

[octave]

Hate to put a damper on the pumped hydro supporters but the reality has to be faced after listening to the spin.

There are many pumped storage facilities around the world working efficiently. Are you suggesting that all of these facilities are not viable List of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations - Wikipedia there is nothing new

 

or radical about pumped storage it has been used for years to stabilize the grid which involves evening out the load between the peaks during morning and evening. Here is an interesting video about the national grid in Britain in this clip they talk about how they love pumped storage because it is the quickest form of generation to bring online.

 

 

We are straying off the subject of 2 strokes somewhat

 

 

[Ron5335]

Octave,

 

No, I am not saying that ALL pumped hydro systems are not viable.

 

I am questioning the viability of Snowy Hydro 2.

 

All I've heard from the PM is the "Executive Summary"

 

The ingredients to make it operate aren't there.

 

You need lots of available Off Peak Power and it seems we haven't got near enough.

 

He spoke of Wind Turbines being a power source.

 

Each of Tumut 3's turbines are 300Mw, so in four hours each will produce 1200Mw

 

So in 9 hours of pumping, each turbine will consume 1600Mw of power or 177Mw

 

per hour.

 

Given that the average Wind Turbine produces 2Mw, then each turbine would need

 

88 wind turbines to supply it. providing it's windy every night.

 

Another little glitch is the Manufacturers of Hydro Generators, who state that the maximum head

 

should be less than 600m. Tantangara to Talbingo is around 700m - 750m

 

Then that brings on the geologists who say that a tunnel with that amount of pressure in it,

 

will fracture the walls.

 

 

[jetjr]

As part of a large reliable wind or thermal generation system they can work great Im sure but the energy to run this battery has to be generated somewhere else. Europe has a very different energy mix and solutions.

 

Where power is used and generated is a key factor too. Response time and transmission losses in AU are pretty bad.

 

The volumes of power outloned above indicate why its hard for renewables to match old generators. If thse pumped hydro setups are simply to secure solar and wind generation, then they amount to a further subsidy.

 

Thats the same sunsidies already pushing up electricity pricing beyond what industry and others can afford.

 

Australian coal os still all beeing burnt, just in places where they dont care or have greater problems to deal with like hungry populations.

 

All.efforts to reduce impacts on earth is valued but at some point we cannot afford any price if it has no impact overall.

 

 

[Marty_d]

As part of a large reliable wind or thermal generation system they can work great Im sure but the energy to run this battery has to be generated somewhere else. Europe has a very different energy mix and solutions.Where power is used and generated is a key factor too. Response time and transmission losses in AU are pretty bad.

The volumes of power outloned above indicate why its hard for renewables to match old generators. If thse pumped hydro setups are simply to secure solar and wind generation, then they amount to a further subsidy.

 

Thats the same sunsidies already pushing up electricity pricing beyond what industry and others can afford.

 

Australian coal os still all beeing burnt, just in places where they dont care or have greater problems to deal with like hungry populations.

 

All.efforts to reduce impacts on earth is valued but at some point we cannot afford any price if it has no impact overall.

That's why you generate close to where you need it.

 

Solar batteries eclipse power poles in off-grid bush community

 

So in WA a power company has worked out that it's cheaper to give farms solar power with battery backup than to maintain transmission lines to them. For residential and light industry you don't need massive baseload, you can design intelligent distributed virtual powerplants.

 

 

[octave]

o in WA a power company has worked out that it's cheaper to give farms solar power with battery backup than to maintain transmission lines to them. For residential and light industry you don't need massive baseload, you can design intelligent distributed virtual powerplants.

Farmers hail 'off the grid' trial a success

 

 

[bexrbetter]

I'm really annoyed about this thread and seeing it every day, I love 2 strokes, they are uber light, powerful and as clean as any 4 stroke, but the title just impresses on people that just because it's a 2 stroke then it must be bad, otherwise why would the words "2 stroke" and "banned" be associated.

 

Farmers hail 'off the grid' trial a success

That sets a dangerous precedent, I hope the Government proceeds carefully with it.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I'm really annoyed about this thread and seeing it every day, I love 2 strokes, they are uber light, powerful and as clean as any 4 stroke, but the title just impresses on people that just because it's a 2 stroke then it must be bad, otherwise why would the words "2 stroke" and "banned" be associated.

The title is factually incorrect, and should have been changed long ago; it just fuelled a whole lot of nonsense.

 

 

[Ron5335]

So in WA a power company has worked out that it's cheaper to give farms solar power with battery backup than to maintain transmission lines to them. For residential and light industry you don't need massive baseload, you can design intelligent distributed virtual powerplants.

And that's fine, as long as the farmer does not want to diversify into manufacturing, where he needs more power. I'm sure there is no plans to install one of these systems next to the steel works at Port Kembla.

 

I can't seem to take the argument sensibly, where the Govt want you to believe that by not burning coal, you somehow are going to save the planet, yet at the same time, the same Govt are exporting the stuff at record levels for other countries (On the same planet) to burn.