[Webstral]

I'm now thinking that fertilizers will be a secondary consideration for anyone who can make ammonia and does not have access to fossil fuels. The ability to transport troops and move AFV will be so important that the farmers might have to go without. I’ve been doing a little research on geothermal power and the synthesis of ammonia using electrolysis of water for hydrogen. Without getting too much into the details of converting MW into gallons of ammonia, a decent-sized geothermal plant like many of the plants in California and Nevada devoted entirely to ammonia production (at the expense of all of all other uses for electricity) can produce enough ammonia for fuel in a month to keep a modest fleet of trucks or a very modest fleet of AFV supplied. I’ll be happy to post my back-of-the-envelope calculations if anyone is interested. Otherwise, I’m definitely veering away from ammonia for fertilizers and towards ammonia for fuel.

Going a little further with my energy budget for SAMAD, energy from renewable sources like solar and wind needs to be stored in order to provide consistency. This is one of the biggest headaches in mainstreaming solar and wind. I’m now leaning towards dedicating all of the power from these sources to water electrolysis. The energy then gets stored in hydrogen and oxygen and can be inserted into an ammonia synthesis system whenever a batch is large enough.

This leads me to a modest but important re-write for Thunder Empire. In the interests of cutting back the reliance of the military on fossil fuels and bringing greater economy to military bases, the Pentagon in 1995 sets aside some money for geothermal. As real life fortune would have it, the San Pedro River Valley is a promising location for geothermal using technology available in the 1990’s. There is a well in the Huachucas that yields ground water >50 degrees Celsius. Following the thesis that momentum is real phenomenon in military politics, Fort Huachuca wrangles herself a modest geothermal plant that gets put down on unoccupied land separated from the main post by Highway 82. The rationale is that instead of buying electricity at commercial rates from Sulphur Springs, the post purchases electricity from the geothermal plant at a preferential rate similar to the scheme by which California photovoltaic array owners sell electricity during the day at day rates (good for the seller) and buy electricity during the night at night rates (good for the buyer). As an added bonus from a contingency standpoint, the geothermal plant is invulnerable to disruptions in the flow of fossil fuels. After the nukes strike, and after the damage to the electronics at the geothermal plant is repaired, someone at the University of Tucson observes that ammonia can be produced from electricity. It takes until late 1998 for an ammonia synthesis facility to be brought on-line near the geothermal plant, which is just about the time when the last conventional fuel for military uses is consumed.

Managing this grid will take a bit of work. However, if the solar and wind systems are only connected to an electrolysis facility, then the energy is converted to hydrogen as it becomes available. Machinery and other functions that require power all day long will draw their power from the geothermal plant, leaving a few MW for ammonia production. This is another reason why the Samadi don’t project lots of power beyond SAMAD; the fuel just isn’t there.