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Google Says It Is About To Reach 100 Percent Renewable Energy (blog.google)
Google said today it will power 100 percent of its sprawling data centers and offices with renewable energy starting next year. The company said today it has bought enough wind and solar power to account for all the electricity it uses globally each year. In comparison, 44 percent of Google's power supplies came from renewables last year. From a blogpost: To reach this goal we'll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity our operations consume, globally. And we're focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases. Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option. Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy.
"if I was starting a search company the potential for Evil would not even popup in my mind" and that's why you're not a billionaire, and Serge is.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
And we're focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases.
What exactly does that mean? Buying green power isn't really all that green: the renewable power you are consuming is power that is not going to be consumed by someone else. To be really green you need to work towards significantly increasing green energy [\production, not consumption. True, what they do does increase demand which may help drive investments in renewables. But I'd be more impressed if they would actually generate most of the power they need themselves. At the scale they use it, that should be economically feasible too.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Which tells you that no government incentives or actions are needed: if this is a reasonable accounting of costs, companies will switch to renewables all by themselves.
Of course, since the US is all about fair competition-you know, free market and all-then we can safely remove government subsidies to other forms of power such as oil or coal as well. We wouldn't want one segment of an industry working with an unfair advantage now, would we?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So they aren't necessarily using renewable energy, they are buying it? This sounds more like they're paying money to companies who have renewable energy credits to sell. They may also be taking part in that travel scam where you don't have to change how much your people fly and waste jet fuel at all... you just swap credits with other non-flying people and say you're being "green".
Someone in an earlier comment used the term "indulgences" - and it really is a lot like the medieval practice where rich people would pay the Vatican basically for pre-approved forgiveness of whatever unethical / immoral thing they were planning to do.
#DeleteChrome
So, am I about to reach 100% veganism if:
"I eat meat all day long, but I pay someone else to eat only vegetables too, so that's alright, isn't it?"
Modded insightful? What are you calling a oil or coal subsidy? Generally when people talk about subsidies for fossil fuels, they are really pulling bullshit out of their asses. Are there tax breaks and funds that indirectly go to oil and coal companies? Yes. Are those direct fossil fuel subsidies? Not really. They are tax benefits for capital construction that apply to all industries. Depreciation benefits that apply to all mining and resource industries. When they tout the really big numbers for oil subsidies they usually throw in infrastructure spending that benefits cars regardless of fuel source (but happens to be primarily oil based). Maybe some home heating subsidies which usually means gas, electricity from coal, or heating oil. Maybe they include military and civilian fuel purchases by the government that happen to be based on fossil fuels.
Those aren't really subsidies for fossil fuels as much as they are the reality that to provide energy, you have to generally use fossil fuels for a lot of it at this point. So those huge "coal and oil subsidies" are really just energy subsidies.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Peaking. Now do you have any other absurdly easy questions?
Yeah, it's not like variability has ever been a part of the grid before. Current grids have their own annoyances on the demand side, including daytime power consumption being much less than nighttime, summer and winter variations (sometimes major), etc - as well as also on the supply side, such as interlinks or plants suddenly dropping offline. It's not some sort of new ground.
The short summary of a high-renewables-penetration grid is:
1) Peaking plants (NG is a good choice).
2) Geographic smoothing (aka, while one front is leaving the US east coast, another is coming on the west; while there's a high stuck over one part of the country, a low is churning up winds elsewhere; also, midwest and east coast wind is strongest in the winter, while west coast wind is strongest in the summer)
3) Geographic timeshifting (aka, desert southwest sun is still shining when it's evening demand in NYC, the evening wind is blowing on the east coast during the morning rush on the west, etc)
(HVDC grid needed for #2 and #3 - est. 0,3 cents per kWh amortized cost for construction and maintenance, saving 1,1 cents per kWh in reduced generation hardware requirements)
4) Multiple source variability compensation (e.g., wind and solar tend to run opposite to each other - highs make low winds but lots of sun, and vice versa; winds are strongest at night, solar during the day)
5) Hydro uprating as storage. Optional storage additions = solar thermal, wind flywheel, battery (price is dropping fast), etc as needed/desired, but are not a fundamental requirement.
6) Demand shifting if needed (aka, power-hungry industries get favorable power rates if they're willing to occasionally shut off as needed; this is not a rare arrangement)
For the future, EVs also help, but are not required - insofar as they're mainly nighttime loads, steady draws, and easy targets for charge rate modulation (or even reversal). Nobody cares exactly when their vehicle takes power from the wall, so long as it has a full charge when they told it to be done by. The more flexible they let their car be, the cheaper they get their power for. But again, this sort of arrangement being wirespread is not a requirement - just a bonus.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
One word. Storage. Yes it can be 100% renewable. It just needs investment in storage to smooth the power peaks and troughs. Right now as Fossil plants are already built its cheaper to use them for base load instead of putting in storage for peak load. However as these plants get decommisioned they will be replaced with more green plants and more storage till we reach a point where we are fully renewable with storage.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Wikipedia says 4700 annually, 70 of which are eagles. It also says that it's due to the turbines being very small turbines that spin way, way faster than the modern large turbines, which spin a lot slower.
So your argument is
1) wrong on the numbers
2) not applicable to modern wind farms with slower spinning turbines
3) not applicable to this wind farm, which is replacing the turbines with safer ones
moox. for a new generation.
1. It's a good start for what could be considered to be a chicken-and-egg problem.
2. It tells any local would-be renewable energy company that chooses to step in that there is local demand for your product.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
So much for "green" power. I'm all for it, really, but let us not be deceived that "green" means at no cost. There is a real cost to everything. Tens of millions of birds (and bats) are killed the world over annually the world over.
The number of birds killed by windmills is several orders of magnitude smaller than the number killed by domestic cats. Heck FAR more birds are killed in collisions with cell phone towers than by windmills - roughly an order of magnitude more.. Bird deaths are a very minor issue especially compared with the number of deaths that will occur if we don't do anything about climate change. You're focusing on the little problem when it is the big one you should be worrying about.
Lick my balls, bro.
Buying "carbon credits" and the like don't mean that you're actually using sustainable energy. What happens when the wind plants and solar plants aren't producing? Covering average demand is ONLY covering average demand. Idiots.
Its an accounting trick. They are actually using energy produced by non-renewable generators much of the time. They are simply signing contracts and paying a bit more to say it comes from renewables. Meanwhile, every neighbor is using the exact same mix of power from the exact same generators. The only difference is the piece of paper..
Yes, once again we have another green fanatic talking about the POTENTIAL of green technology, when it still doesn't work NOW. Just because you've read a lot of Facebook stories about new green tech doesn't mean it works for a national power infrastructure.
Well great! Someone should do that. And Hell, I'll be HAPPY to say that they've figured out how to make it work. But I'm not, because the technology just isn't there yet. Once again... just because you can build a photo-voltaic panel that's good doesn't mean you can build an entire nations power infrastructure around them automatically.
Hell, one the reasons why Solar and wind aren't really viable options isn't the panels or turbines themselves. It's because of the fact that just pushing current isn't good enough. That current has to be consistent so it doesn't start frying sensitive electronics all along the power grid.
Peaking does not cause blackouts; peaking prevents blackouts. I'm thinking that perhaps you're confused about what a peaking plant is.
Interconnected HVDC grids offer increases in grid stability, as cascading failures can't propagate through them (AC failures are prone to cascade as different parts of the grid go out of sync with each other). Yet most of the time a nationwide renewables-supporting HVDC grid is not used at near peak capacity (its capacity is sized for peak load transmission requirements, not average), and thus can generally have their power routed through other legs if one line goes down without curtailments (often, even, without need for peaking - it depends on timing). The grid itself is designed, as with everything else concerning electricity generation and transmission, to provide a statistically-guaranteed level of power reliability.
It's important to remember also that in the US you have basically three separate power grids today - west, east (which is kind of a patchwork), and "ERCOT", which is basically Texas doing its own little weird thing. To allow them to support each other, they have a number of converters, mainly DC ties. Basically, HVDC terminals without any actual long-distance transmission lines. So it's already done to improve grid reliability and economics. Also, certain parts of the grid already rely on long HVDC lines. Not just for "moving peak power because of intermittent shortages in one region", as a grid for supporting high renewable penetration does, but actual baseload. For example, in the northeast, RMCC moves 2 GW of remote Quebec hydropower to New England. It's almost always run at near capacity.
Europe and China uses HVDC a lot more than the US. Europe mainly for undersea lines, China to move power from inland to its densely populated coast. Both have major plans for expansion.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Domestic cats don't kill eagles and other typical endangered species of bird.
Domestic cats most certainly do kill endangered species of birds. They may not kill eagles but the certainly kill other threatened species in substantial numbers. Cats are an invasive species and a poorly controlled one at that.
Let us not also forget about bats,
Same deal as with birds. Windmills are simply not a significant threat to their populations.
and the fact that renewable provide a tiny amount of energy today.
You think 10% of US energy consumption is a tiny number? I think you don't understand the definition of the word "tiny".
Other than coal, oil, and gas companies being allowed to dump their waste into the atmosphere, causing health problems and climate change for which the rest of us are paying by means of health coverage and property insurance?
The real subsidies for fossil fuels are military (trillions spent in the Middle East to secure our oil supply) and medical (massive amounts of exhaust pumped in the atmosphere and no need to pay for the resulting medical harm).
Lick my balls, bro.
Buying "carbon credits" and the like don't mean that you're actually using sustainable energy. What happens when the wind plants and solar plants aren't producing? Covering average demand is ONLY covering average demand. Idiots.
Its an accounting trick. They are actually using energy produced by non-renewable generators much of the time. They are simply signing contracts and paying a bit more to say it comes from renewables. Meanwhile, every neighbor is using the exact same mix of power from the exact same generators. The only difference is the piece of paper..
No, there's a little more to it than that. The fact that they're paying more for renewable means that utilities can afford to invest in more renewable production. Buying renewable energy, even if it does get all mixed together with non-renewable in the grid, actually causes renewable energy production to be built out -- and eventually to replace non-renewable production.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.