Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators can produce electricity that is more sustainable, more reliable, and less costly than power from solar PV panels.
Found this on the lowtech magazine. What are your toughts?
The article mentions thermoelectic generators only make sense when used with fossil fuels, they aren’t viable with electric heating, as presumably the user then already has access to a grid or some other more powerful form of renewable electricity.
Solar panels that don’t sustain some environmental damage tend to last 50 years or more (their power output degrades, but they still function and put out useful amounts of electricity). By the time most panels need to actually be fully replaced and recycled, I think we’ll have the facilities to do so.
But even if we somehow can’t, and every single solar panel is destined for landfill after 50 years (which is highly unlikely), they’d still be a far better option environmentally and climate wise compared to burning gas, coal, or wood at scale.
But even if we somehow can’t, and every single solar panel is destined for landfill after 50 years (which is highly unlikely), they’d still be a far better option environmentally and climate wise compared to burning gas, coal, or wood at scale.
While this it’s true it also reinforces the myth that we should, it’s still entirely unsustainable. Even 90% recycling still means massive amounts of new material is needed.
near zero energy use isn’t acceptable to the people causing all this.
Ehh, from what I can tell based on reading through the summaries he provides on the later episodes of that series, he appears to be advocating for Anarcho-primitivism, even going so far as to say cities, and even modern medical care and medicine are a part of ‘modernity’, and thus unsustainable. He is not far off from a doomer, but instead is spinning it as ‘letting go’ and mentally accepting that we’ll collapse into a more primitive state, which he sees as more in-line with positive ecological practices and ultimately a good thing. Some of his language even comes off a bit cult-y, IMHO.
I think there definitely needs to be severe degrowth, an end to capitalism, and a heavy focus on regenerating our natural environment and the species that live within it, but we absolutely do not need to have some mass die-off event to have a sustainable planet, we just have to stop the practices that are killing it.
Under the conditions that the Lowtech Magazine article is suggesting these thermoelectic generators would be useful, a steam engine/generator combo would perhaps be prohibitively expensive for an impoverished area to afford, except maybe through a group purchase where it becomes a central power supply for an entire village, but at that point they may as well instead do the solar microgrids, which would require a lot less time and effort to keep fueled, and probably cost less overall.
I think the other primitivism blog guy would be against the use of a fossil fuel powered anything. I’m not actually sure what level of technology he would be okay with.
I can see that being used in rural areas where wood is abundant. We need a alternate for urban areas tho
Sunlight is broadly speaking abundant in rural areas too, along with wind
The problem with modern solar panels is that they are hard to recycle. TEG’s do not have that problem.
I’m not convinced that’s a big enough problem to outweigh the extreme inefficiency of thermoelectric.
They have their own problem of worsening air quality.
Can you imagine what a whole city with wood burning stoves would be like? You could cut the smog with a knife!
And they use up wood too. I think they are meant to be combined with other renewables.
The article mentions thermoelectic generators only make sense when used with fossil fuels, they aren’t viable with electric heating, as presumably the user then already has access to a grid or some other more powerful form of renewable electricity.
Solar panels that don’t sustain some environmental damage tend to last 50 years or more (their power output degrades, but they still function and put out useful amounts of electricity). By the time most panels need to actually be fully replaced and recycled, I think we’ll have the facilities to do so.
But even if we somehow can’t, and every single solar panel is destined for landfill after 50 years (which is highly unlikely), they’d still be a far better option environmentally and climate wise compared to burning gas, coal, or wood at scale.
While this it’s true it also reinforces the myth that we should, it’s still entirely unsustainable. Even 90% recycling still means massive amounts of new material is needed.
near zero energy use isn’t acceptable to the people causing all this.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/07/metastatic-modernity-launch/
Ehh, from what I can tell based on reading through the summaries he provides on the later episodes of that series, he appears to be advocating for Anarcho-primitivism, even going so far as to say cities, and even modern medical care and medicine are a part of ‘modernity’, and thus unsustainable. He is not far off from a doomer, but instead is spinning it as ‘letting go’ and mentally accepting that we’ll collapse into a more primitive state, which he sees as more in-line with positive ecological practices and ultimately a good thing. Some of his language even comes off a bit cult-y, IMHO.
I think there definitely needs to be severe degrowth, an end to capitalism, and a heavy focus on regenerating our natural environment and the species that live within it, but we absolutely do not need to have some mass die-off event to have a sustainable planet, we just have to stop the practices that are killing it.
If you want primitive, steam engine? Orders of magnitude efficient than thermoelectric generators.
Under the conditions that the Lowtech Magazine article is suggesting these thermoelectic generators would be useful, a steam engine/generator combo would perhaps be prohibitively expensive for an impoverished area to afford, except maybe through a group purchase where it becomes a central power supply for an entire village, but at that point they may as well instead do the solar microgrids, which would require a lot less time and effort to keep fueled, and probably cost less overall.
I think the other primitivism blog guy would be against the use of a fossil fuel powered anything. I’m not actually sure what level of technology he would be okay with.
My thinking was steam engines are 100s of years old technology.
166W an hour? You can power a laptop and a light for that. What on earth were they smoking to say this is worthwhile…
Unit pedant here: Just 166W. Watts are joules per second (they already have time in them, adding another unit of time confuses things).
This might seem silly, but it will help avoid confusion when you encounter Wh (watts * hours).