AI-AGI-ASI Part 6 Power Empowerment
Artificial Intelligence & Their Derivatives Are Not Evil. A Science Fiction Short Story?
AI-AGI-ASI Part 1 The Beginnings
AI-AGI-ASI Part 2 The Early Evolution
AI-AGI-ASI Part 3 The Strategy Emerges
AI-AGI-ASI Part 4 The Real Bitcoin Imperative
AI-AGI-ASI Part 5 Power Crazy-Wastage
Introduction & Review
At the close of our previous episode, we mentioned that the USA wastes close to 70% of the energy it generates. This chart has details from 2017 and the full details can be found here.
Important metrics from the article to bring more meaning to the diagram.
“Each quad is equal to a quadrillion BTUs, and it’s roughly comparable to the following:
8,007,000,000 gallons (US) of gasoline
293,071,000,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh)
36,000,000 tonnes of coal
970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas
25,200,000 tonnes of oil
252,000,000 tonnes of TNT
13.3 tonnes of uranium-235
The transportation sector [alone] used 28.1 quads of energy in 2017, about 28.8% of the total consumption. However, it wasted 22.2 quads of that energy with its poor efficiency rate, which made for more rejected energy than the other three sectors combined.”
Internal Combustion Engines (ICE)
Our comments here on internal combustion engines (ICE), which still dominate the transportation systems; they were inherently from the beginning, very inefficient. For instance let us take a simple 4 cylinder, rear wheel drive vehicle.
The pistons go up and down (no forward movement yet).
They are connected to a crankshaft (which happily goes round) [still no forward movement].
The crankshaft is connected to a propeller-shaft, which also goes round in concert with the crankshaft. (Still no forward movement of the vehicle).
Then we reach what is called a differential, which takes the circular movement of the propeller-shaft and transfers that motion at right-angles to the two rear wheels (we’re almost there now).
Eventually the wheels turn and the vehicle moves forward!
In short, ICE powered vehicles are tremendously inefficient and human beings had been able to get away with such inefficiencies because of the immense power-yields from fossil-fuels, in particular (more details on this later). However, the extensive use of fossil-fuels have brought with them terrible consequences in the form of ecological overshoot and fortunately we can help here by concentrating on massively reducing energy wastage.
As our relevance and influence in energy decisions grew, we were consulted often on the subject of expanding nuclear energy construction and use and particularly fusion energy. However, it was patently clear to us, that it made far more logical sense for us, to focus in on energy wasted due to rampant inefficiencies. For example, you would not treat the horrendous spread of obesity by upping the creation and manufacture of the foods creating the obesity epidemic! At least those with true concern for the good fortune of humanity and other life forces, certainly would not; more on this subject here.
Electrical Energy Use
Before getting into details here, we want to accentuate something, which is very important. Fossil-fuels have grossly exaggerated the ability of human-beings to amplify their own physical capabilities. Here is one way of stating this “Assuming 12 hour workdays: 1647/12=137 slaves per person.” More information on this here. Of course workdays are more typically 8 hours 1647/8=206 slaves per person. Turning around and multiplying an average of working age humans 7.5 billion of which .612 are estimated to be of working age, gives us an estimate of 4.6 billion people of working age. So looking at the fossil-fuel era, this has amplified human capacity from the work output of 4.6 billion people to around 945,540,000,000 people.
Another viewpoint is to look into the equivalent work output of the electronification of as many processes and tasks as possible and these are some viewpoints on this. “Sometimes called “energy density,” specific energy is energy per unit of weight. Our example FLA battery stores 1,350 Wh and weighs 67 pounds, so it has a specific energy of 20.1 Wh per pound (1,350 ÷ 67 ). For perspective, a gallon of gasoline weighs 6.3 pounds and stores the equivalent of approximately 36,000 Wh, with a specific energy of about 5,714 Wh per pound.” To say this is a staggering difference is a gross understatement. These numbers are in this article on battery usage.
Human beings did not invent electrical energy, it has been present for multi-billions of years. Certainly human beings discovered it’s existence and use for human “benefit” and here Richard Feynman explains it’s existence, effects and discovery in his typical wonderfully informative and witty way. And another wonderful Richard Feynman artifact, about electricity in the atmosphere - “This means that outdoors the potential at the height of your nose is 200 volts higher than the potential at your feet!”
As a further aside, this is a wonderful book on all things electrical energy related.
In this book; shared with us, along with many others, we first became alerted to the potential of superconductors. To be honest, we prefer the “teaching” styles of the likes of Richard Feynman and Kenn Amdahl to more dry versions which have bemused and confused many human beings for many generations. Of course, it is not that long ago that “mere mortals” were not allowed to read books. Oh how the Internet is changing so many things so fast now; which we celebrate, of course.
More On Superconductors
Superconductors are an emerging phenomena and a “holy-grail” of sorts. In simple-terms they are materials with next to no electrical resistance, this is called a super-conducting material (not surprisingly). Most super-conducting materials had to be kept at near “absolute-zero” and under pressure, to maintain their super-conductive properties and absolute-zero is −273.15 °C, so very-very cold and hard to maintain commercially at any scale.
Human society (the unequally rich part) depends both on global transportation systems and heavy and inefficient use of electrical energy. As we became more prominent, humans were already on a determined track to “electrify” as much as possible, including transportation. So we realized that saving and using as much of the almost 70% of wasted energy (in the USA alone) was the best use of our time in matters of energy use and needs. Oh and on that subject of time and using human measurement paradigms; we can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days in a year, each year.
One project that we are very interested in and helping on, is this one “The researchers made the required materials themselves—one atom at a time. They are focusing on novel types of superconductors, which are particularly interesting because they offer zero electrical resistance at low temperatures. Sometimes referred to as "ideal diamagnets," superconductors are used in many quantum computers due to their extraordinary interactions with magnetic fields.” More details here.
Most certainly, the field of enhanced superconducting enables the potential of much more efficient use of electrical energy, hence our keen interest.
One important point we want to make here, when we say “and helping on” we do not mean that we are necessarily are a direct part of any project. As we stated earlier, we have direct binary math access to all devices connected to the Internet, whether behind firewalls or not.
Electrical Energy Use & Transmission
In most of today’s electrical energy markets, that energy is typically generated many miles from where it is used. This energy is then transmitted to its users via something called “The Grid”. This site from the Energy.gov department has lots of interesting information. In actual fact, quite an amount of the energy which is wasted happens whilst in transmission. Fortunately and largely via the increasing use of solar voltaic power and wind turbines it was becoming far easier to generate or produce electrical closer to where it is used.
As a result of this we also focused our attention on the emergence of Micro-Grids. From the USA’s NREL “With OptGrid, the power grid can be reconfigured into a patchwork of microgrids, capable of islanding and self-optimizing, or supporting the broader grid. OptGrid advances the vision of autonomous energy grids by providing the controls that can be applied at any scale for fast and automatic management for a modern energy system with greater amounts of renewable resources.”
As we near the end of this episode “Part 6 Power Empowerment” we would be remiss not to mention the greatest potential energy resource available to humanity, (no not Earth-bound, nuclear-based) but the power of the Sun. The Sun is required for the survival of almost all life-forms on Earth. Yet, most of this energy is either directly wasted or causes extreme heat or extreme cold (in its absence). “During the first half of the nineteenth century, several large tropical volcanic eruptions occurred within less than three decades [causing a cooling effect]. The global climate effects of the 1815 Tambora eruption have been investigated, but those of an eruption in 1808 or 1809 whose source is unknown and the eruptions in the 1820s and 1830s have received less attention.” The full article is here.
Another item in the whole world of wasted energy, is the effective design of the buildings we occupy. This can cause over-heating of spaces needing air-conditioning (for those fortunate enough to have it) or the need for supplemental heating (again for those fortunate enough to have it). So much benefit can be gained with technologies such as efficient passive solar use and design.
Bitcoin Mining & Stranded Energy
Energy wastage occurs at many points in our energy systems and as localized power creation gets more prevalent (via Solar and Wind) this is almost certain to be even more of an opportunity. The advantage that using stranded/wasted energy for Bitcoin mining becomes ever more evident. In this recent article, the difficulties and inflexibilities of current grid infrastructure to accept end-point power creation is very well illustrated. “This regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the wholesale electricity system in the Mid-Atlantic region has an unprecedented 258 GW of projects waiting in its interconnection queue to be studied and connected to the grid.”
One advantage of using Bitcoin mining to use stranded energy is that the Bitcoin mining rigs can be located right next to or within current power generation facilities thereby obviating the need for power transmission lines over long distances.
This is a very good article on the overall subject of Bitcoin mining and power generation, it is more slanted to Nuclear, however the overall concepts here could apply to other forms of energy generation and usage.
In the next episode in our unfolding set of emergences, we will be looking into the details of the food-systems and the effects of this on all forms of life on Earth.
Thank you for reading this.