What if there was free energy? (RAR)

[cosmicalstorm]

I was listening to a debate about nuclear power today. For some reason I asked myself the question, what if there was really free energy?
Lets say that tomorrow a physical breakthrough was made. By building something the size and the cost of a large nuclear power-plant you could tap zero vacuum energy, or some sci-fi dream like that. You would need to build the whole place, and once it was all set up energy would simply flow in at a steady rate roughly similar to the output from major nuclear power-plant.
What would be possible to achieve with something like this?
I think Clarke mentioned that "the entire planet would glow like a star" or something along those lines, that sounded really depressing.

(I tried to search for threads like these but the word energy and free pops up everywhere, if a thread does exist, please point me to it)

[Sarevok]

How expensive is this ZPM in terms of dollars per kilowatt/hour ?

[Hamstray]

Are we talking politics here? If yes then I'd say that several major industries with powerful lobbies just wouldn't be too happy about that. Maybe world peace, once you make replicators that can produce any free other necessary resource like food.
(though this probably may be prohibited by other hurdles like religion or jealousy, ...)
From a technical standpoint I'd say that stuff will be built much cheaper since it does not need to be made energy efficient.

[General Zod]

I predict a number of things, but none of them peace on earth.

Even if the energy itself were magically free, you still have to have workers capable of building, maintaining and upgrading the power plant's infrastructure. The money for that has to come from somewhere, so let's assume at best the plant drastically reduces power costs.

Even then, the utility companies would be fighting like hell to prevent it from becoming widespread, because it's going to cut into their bottom line. Of course this all assumes that the people in charge of the energy are magnanimous with good intentions in mind. The wrong people in charge could mean they'll be seeking to bleed the average customer dry even more in new and unexpected ways, and they'll be looking to keep a tight lockdown on who gets to manufacture the technology or distribute it. Being the only people who know how to make use of a highly desirable commodity gives you a lot of control.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I have serious doubts that such a technology would even appear. As General Zod said, power and utility companies are going to want to stop it from appearing. So if this tech comes from a lab funded by a power company, which would seem likely, it may never see the light of day.

If it comes from a government sponsered lab, I can also see the government being unwilling to release it, for fear of removing a fair number of jobs an companies from the economy as power companies wouldn't be able to compete with free energy.

Unless...how green is it? Because if it's really super-duper, no-toxic-or-radioactive-waste, no-carbon-emission kind of thing, and the eco people find out, they might be able to force the government to implement it. I can almost see the adverts now "not only is it ideal for the environment, it's great for you as well. Vote yes on the "Zero-Point Energy Generation" Bill and help save the planet."

[Spectre_nz]

I'm not sure this would change the status quo much, as it's not really free energy.
Imagine, say, hydro-power. You build a dam, rain falls, electricity comes out. Somewhat of a simplification, yes, but the principle is pretty much the same. You’re tapping a resource that arrives free-of charge at your facility. Your powerplant would, I assume, just produce more power for the cost of the plant. Cheaper, yes, free, no.
The cost of your electricity is then dependent on the cost of the power-plant, its upkeep, and the grid you use to deliver energy. And that’s already what happens in New Zealand. Rain is technically free, but we’re paying for the cost of the national grid that gets the electricity to consumers, the cost of building the dams in the first place, the cost of keeping them running and the cost of all the people that work for the power companies.
Even if you had free unlimited energy coming out of a powerplant, grids have finite capacity. Power companies would just charge you to use their grid and for the cost of them building power-plants.
If the power generators were small and everyone had one in their garage, that would change the scenario.

But what could you do with more electricity than you can use? Leave your lights on all day?
The cost of aluminium would come down. There are a lot of industrial processes that are unfeasible because of the power-requirements on scale up. I think you'd end up with everything generally cheaper, as happened in the industrial revolution; lower costs to run industries, cheaper to produce, cheaper to manufacturer. But infrastructure still isn't free.

[General Zod]

I'm not sure this would change the status quo much, as it's not really free energy.
Imagine, say, hydro-power. You build a dam, rain falls, electricity comes out. Somewhat of a simplification, yes, but the principle is pretty much the same. You’re tapping a resource that arrives free-of charge at your facility. Your powerplant would, I assume, just produce more power for the cost of the plant. Cheaper, yes, free, no.
The cost of your electricity is then dependent on the cost of the power-plant, its upkeep, and the grid you use to deliver energy. And that’s already what happens in New Zealand. Rain is technically free, but we’re paying for the cost of the national grid that gets the electricity to consumers, the cost of building the dams in the first place, the cost of keeping them running and the cost of all the people that work for the power companies.
Even if you had free unlimited energy coming out of a powerplant, grids have finite capacity. Power companies would just charge you to use their grid and for the cost of them building power-plants.
If the power generators were small and everyone had one in their garage, that would change the scenario.

But what could you do with more electricity than you can use? Leave your lights on all day?
The cost of aluminium would come down. There are a lot of industrial processes that are unfeasible because of the power-requirements on scale up. I think you'd end up with everything generally cheaper, as happened in the industrial revolution; lower costs to run industries, cheaper to produce, cheaper to manufacturer. But infrastructure still isn't free.

Industry and agriculture would be the most obvious benefactors of nearly unlimited power. Hydroponics and greenhouse technologies would likely see a much more widespread use once the power consumption issue isn't a concern anymore. You could also get everyone off fossil fuels and switch cars and other transportation to pure electric. So there's incentive to get the auto industry booming again.

[Darmalus]

Well, if it almost exactly like a nuclear power plant (like in the OP) with fuel that lasts forever, then the price would be exactly what it is for current nuclear, minus refueling and disposal costs. I don't see a price drop, just padding on the profit, which may be reason enough for the utilities to embrace it.

I could see this replacing current fossil fuel engines in the navy, so you get a navy who's endurance is limited only by food supplies and the sanity of the crew. Big change for the small ships, not so much of a change for the sub and carrier fleets. Speaking of the military, those old plans for nuclear powered aircraft may see the light of day again.

I could see the ecologically minded nations switching their power generation over as fast as they can manage, and even the not-so-green nations would switch for reasons of energy independence.

[Hamstray]

Unless...how green is it? Because if it's really super-duper, no-toxic-or-radioactive-waste, no-carbon-emission kind of thing, and the eco people find out, they might be able to force the government to implement it. I can almost see the adverts now "not only is it ideal for the environment, it's great for you as well. Vote yes on the "Zero-Point Energy Generation" Bill and help save the planet."

Wait, who is paying for those adverts? It's not like the utility companies would have a hard time seeding propaganda amongst the eco protesters to convince them of the opposite. After all this has worked in the past concerning drying up funding for research in fast-neutron reactors, and in various other cases.

[Spectre_nz]

Industry and agriculture would be the most obvious benefactors of nearly unlimited power. Hydroponics and greenhouse technologies would likely see a much more widespread use once the power consumption issue isn't a concern anymore. You could also get everyone off fossil fuels and switch cars and other transportation to pure electric. So there's incentive to get the auto industry booming again.

so, everything generally cheaper was my assertion...

I hadn't considered agriculture. Good point. There's lots of indoor-underground things you could do with low cost light and low cost heat.

And as I think on it, commodity chemicals would all come down in price. With cheaper electricity, you can run high temperature, high pressure reactions at lower cost. That means a large number of bulk chemical catalysis processes get cheaper. Cheaper ammonia, cheaper fertilizer. Any molecule that isn't too complex to tolerate high heat and high temperature. Wouldn't help pharmaceuticals any, but being able to steam-reform methane without care for the cost is useful That'd drop the cost of methane-to-gasoline conversions. You'd also bring down the cost of turning tar-sands into oil.

I dunno about electric cars. Unless battery tech gets better, you still have to install recharging stations all over the place. I guess it's just how much these zero point energy plants cost and how much a network of recharge points cost. Weather it is cheaper to distribute your electricity to a plethora of charging points, or is it cheaper to use all your cheap energy to drive down the cost of tar-sand to oil and natural gas to petroleum to keep running your liquid fuelled cars.

[Sarevok]

Solar power is technically "free". You build a panel and voila free electricity as long as there is light outside. Yet it has not changed the global energy situation much has it ? Hence I asked about costs. If this ZPM costs as much as solar panels in terms of production then it will also be relegated to same niche.

That is the great irony here. We humans on planet Earth have several sources of energy that are practically "free" like solar, geothermal, tidal etc. But the cost of building machines that can tap them make it very difficult.

[Dooey Jo]

It says right there in the OP that it costs and outputs as much as a large nuclear plant but presumably produces electrical energy directly and needing no fuel and minimal maintenance.

Even if an electrical company doesn't want to build it (and if they could charge people for electricity that costs them nothing to produce you better believe they would), it is clearly in the public interest to have such presumably safe, clean and reliable power, so you let the state build it, and then you can drastically lower or eliminate electrical bills (but since the output is limited and there's a high initial cost, you probably wouldn't eliminate them).

As for what you could accomplish with them. Obviously anything you can accomplish with nuclear plants, but you can build more of them as they don't have the social stigma, risks nor waste of actual nuclear power plants. The high-energy industry would be happy, and everyone could get rid of their goddamn coal power plants.

[Hamstray]

As for what you could accomplish with them. Obviously anything you can accomplish with nuclear plants, but you can build more of them as they don't have the social stigma, risks nor waste of actual nuclear power plants.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. For instance the ITER project does have the social stigma of nuclear power.

[Dooey Jo]

No, ITER does not attract society-wide paranoia.

[Sarevok]

You sure ? Other than extreme fringe lunatics/luddites who opposes nuclear fusion ?

[General Zod]

You sure ? Other than extreme fringe lunatics/luddites who opposes nuclear fusion ?

How many people have even heard of ITER? I actually had to google the name to figure out what the fuck it was.

[Sky Captain]

I imagine once significant amount of those generators are built and have recovered their building costs electricity would significantly drop in price and anything that recquire lot of energy to prouce also would become cheaper.

If those generators can be built with similar power to mass ratio to jet engine for a reasonable cost we would see very large cargo aircraft becoming reality and start to compete with long range rail and ship transport. Passenger air travel would become cheaper, maybe supersonic or hypersonic aircraft would take over long distance routes. A viable SSTO space planes might also appear.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's a good point on the planes and power to mass ratios.

I know NASA was messing around with nuclear thermal rockets back in the late 60's or so. If this new hypothetical generator would be used the same way (superheating a propellant liquid to provide thrust) then we may see a new breed of spacecraft. If they are true Zero Point generators they wouldn't require fuel either so satellites and space stations could use them in place of solar panels.

[Sela]

I don't know too much about thermodynamics, but if we're able to so painfully violate it as in the OP, wouldn't that have drastic consequences? Or would it require orders of magnitude more power than we'd likely be able to generate over the course of 1-2 thousand years?

[Spectre_nz]

You sure ? Other than extreme fringe lunatics/luddites who opposes nuclear fusion ?

Well, there's the old fallicy that a fusion reactor is a bottled sun that's going to asplode your entire city if containment fails... That will put a few people off if they don't know any better.

I'm sure someone will complain about radioactive byproducts coming out a fusion reactor. And, you know, Terrorists might steal the plasma and make a fusion bomb out of it. They do that you know...

So, Fringe lunatics, Luddites and about 25% of politicians.

Plus, NIMBY's complain about everything

[Enigma]

Wouldn't the utility companies jump at the chance to build their own? Green, low maintenance and requires no fuel, hell they'll make money hand over fist once they recover the cost of their investment. They can charge less than previously yet won't need to lower it even more once their investment is paid off (they can claim some profit loss due to transmission loss over the power lines so they can keep the rates as is.).

No worries about harming the environment and they'll need less employees (assuming so since the plant is low maintenance).

Once the initial hurdle is passed, it'll be business as usual but with a lot more money in the bank.

The ones that will hate this will be the mining and oil industries. Oil, coal and natural gas prices will nose dive. But the upside for consumers would be lower gasoline prices (unless the oil companies are dicks and raises gas prices due to massive loss of profits.).

Overall for the consumer, should the utility companies build these magic power plants, will slightly benefit while the utilities themselves will rake in the cash.

[Darmalus]

Petroleum prices wouldn't change much, if at all. Only about 1% of electrical generation is petrol based. But your right, the big losers would be coal and natural gas, which are about 70% of US power generation. Massive drop in demand if you remove coal as a fuel source, that would be some nasty unemployment right there.

[General Zod]

Wouldn't the utility companies jump at the chance to build their own? Green, low maintenance and requires no fuel, hell they'll make money hand over fist once they recover the cost of their investment. They can charge less than previously yet won't need to lower it even more once their investment is paid off (they can claim some profit loss due to transmission loss over the power lines so they can keep the rates as is.).

Maybe the ones capable of hiring people familiar with the technology. I'd expect the ones who can't attract that sort of talent will be busy trying to quash the competition.

[J]

Petroleum prices wouldn't change much, if at all. Only about 1% of electrical generation is petrol based. But your right, the big losers would be coal and natural gas, which are about 70% of US power generation. Massive drop in demand if you remove coal as a fuel source, that would be some nasty unemployment right there.

These "free energy" plants only come in jumbo industrial size so we still need oil for heating and transportation. If the US is serious about energy independence the free energy plants can be used to power coal to liquids plants so that all oil imports can be replaced with domestic sources. This keeps the coal industry running though I admit I haven't crunched the numbers to see how much coal will be required for this program.

[Darth Tanner]

I haven't crunched the numbers to see how much coal will be required for this program.

link

This source seems to suggest current tech requires 3.5 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of oil.

The USA used around 937 million tonnes of oil and produced 973 million tonnes of coal

Add in about 450 million tonnes of domestic oil production and you can get around 70% domestic supply of oil.

What percentage of the cost of running a nuclear PS is fuel? I'd imagine its relatively small so we are not going to be seeing a large drop in wholesale energy prices especially seeing as fossil fuels will remain a cheaper option.