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Wind and Solar Can Power Most of the United States, Says Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports of a recent paper, published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, that helps explain how wind and solar energy can power most of the United States: "The authors analyzed 36 years of hourly weather data (1980-2015) in the U.S. They calculated the available wind and solar power over this time period and also included the electrical demand in the U.S. and its variation throughout the year. With this information, the researchers considered two scenarios. In scenario 1, they imagined wind and solar installations that would be sufficient to supply 100% of the U.S. electrical needs. In the second scenario, the installations would be over-designed; capable of providing 150% of the total U.S. electrical need. But the authors recognize that just because a solar panel or a wind turbine can provide all our energy, it doesn't mean that will happen in reality. It goes back to the prior discussion that sometimes the wind just doesn't blow, and sometimes the sun isn't shining. With these two scenarios, the authors then considered different mixes of power, from all solar to all wind. They also included the effect of aggregation area, that is, what sized regions are used to generate power. Is your power coming from wind and solar in your neighborhood, your city, your state or your region?
The authors found that with 100% power capacity and no mechanism to store energy, a wind-heavy portfolio is best (about 75% wind, 25% solar) and using large aggregate regions is optimal. It is possible to supply about 75-80% of U.S. electrical needs. If the system were designed with excess capacity (the 150% case), the U.S. could meet about 90% of its needs with wind and solar power. The authors modified their study to allow up to 12 hours of US energy storage. They then found that the 100% capacity system fared even better (about 90% of the country's energy) and the optimal balance was now more solar (approximately 70% solar and 30% wind). For the over-capacity system, the authors found that virtually all the country's power needs could be met with wind, solar, and storage."
The authors found that with 100% power capacity and no mechanism to store energy, a wind-heavy portfolio is best (about 75% wind, 25% solar) and using large aggregate regions is optimal. It is possible to supply about 75-80% of U.S. electrical needs. If the system were designed with excess capacity (the 150% case), the U.S. could meet about 90% of its needs with wind and solar power. The authors modified their study to allow up to 12 hours of US energy storage. They then found that the 100% capacity system fared even better (about 90% of the country's energy) and the optimal balance was now more solar (approximately 70% solar and 30% wind). For the over-capacity system, the authors found that virtually all the country's power needs could be met with wind, solar, and storage."
If we start using a lot less energy. Using less is the only clean energy. Nicole Foss on renewables @AutomaticEarth http://bit.ly/2rzS5Pq
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
C. M. bruns will not like this
It's not "kosher" to say this, but we really should have got back into nuclear 20 years ago. The nuclear technology of today is cleaner and safer and more efficient than anything out there. But people are still stuck on *old technology* and Fukashima and so forth when that's *NOT* the technology we would use today. The simple fact is that nuclear is really the only energy technology that can reliably fill the growing need for energy.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Show me the stats where... The ozone hole kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. Climate change kills millions. I call BS on this.
This book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, although a bit dated, is a good reference on how much energy we actually consume, and what can possibly be produced with renewables and others. The conclusion agrees with TFA: North America probably can live on solar, wind and enough storage. Not that easily, but it seems possible.
Yeah we can get to 80% renewable with 150-200% times solar and wind capacity, HVDC and 12 hours of storage. It will be expensive and difficult. In California if you count all of our pumped hydro storage and if you include every battery in every phone and car we have about 23 minutes of storage. 12 hours of storage will be hard to achieve.
Also due to continental weather patterns we would need weeks of storage to get to 100% renewable. 12 hours is not feasible and 14 times that will be near impossible.
Aside from the glaring issue regarding Transmission, I was surprised that 12h of storage had as much impact as it did. I had modeled an off-grid location on the leeward side in Hawaii and found I needed 72h of battery for the system to support 90% of the hours in the year with PV only, or 48h with a wind/PV mix.
It would be interesting to see exactly what the production vs consumption map looks like to see what the real impact of transmission losses and capacity would be. As the wind turbines start to exceed 7MW, wind can become a much more stable resource.
Also curious how they established "100%"-- does it build in capacity factors? Peak-day or annualized?
Just look at the numbers, you can plainly see it.
538352852736826265237563846357353378352836384883628472937529472 and 8.
That depends upon what type of "solar collectors" you're talking about. If you're talking about photovoltaic panels, then yes there are hazardous materials used in their manufacture, but a lot less hazardous materials than used in say, hydraulic fracturing. And once you've got the solar panels made, there are no hazardous emissions created as they make electricity.
On the other hand, if you're talking about concentrating solar thermal plants (like the ones described in this story) there are no hazardous materials involved in their manufacture, which is definitely environmentally friendly.
And, once they are manufactured, there are no emissions when they make electricity.
Regarding "all the dead birds", I remember when I lived in Texas and a group of hunters was complaining on the radio about wind turbines killing birds before they could shoot them. It is one of my defining memories of the state of Texas.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How may solar panels and wind turbines would it require to generate that much electricity? I remember seeing someone talk about this and if I remember correctly, it would cover an area the size of a small to medium U S. State.
On the other hand, if you're talking about concentrating solar thermal plants (like the ones described in this story) there are no hazardous materials involved in their manufacture, which is definitely environmentally friendly.
You are a fucking monster.
And, once they are manufactured, there are no emissions when they make electricity.
You are discounting how much carbon living screaming birds on fire generate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... and sometimes the sun isn't shining. Something between you and the sun (the earth [at night], a building, clouds, etc.) might be obscuring your view of the sun's rays, but the sun is always shining; ALWAYS.
Yup, let's give up now. "Clean coal, Really Shiny Clean Coal."
It's a huge capital investment, huge on-going maintenance, outrageously huge decommissioning costs, and the penalty for falling asleep at the wheel (i.e., hiring a few MBAs to improve 'efficiency') is catastrophe. It's also centralized and makes a nice juicy target for terrorism. Oh, and it costs more than solar or wind--once you fully account for all the actual costs. Westinghouse just went out of business (ask South Carolina).
I'm guessing the future [for most of the US] looks like solar roofs with local battery storage, connected to a grid backed by natural gas peaking/backup plants and various other forms of utility power generation and storage.
if we could stop the 8 some odd wars we're fighting. We blow 600 billion a year more or less protecting our oil interests. But sad to say folks like war. I remember a story where Trump got a momentary bump in the polls from droping a $500k bomb in Afghanistan. And lots of folks want to go war with Korea and/or Iran. We'd need a huge change in how people think and vote to get around that. It's just frustrating, since we could tell OPEC to sod off if we'd just spend the money on our infrastructure.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You will notice that the blog in question is a "climate skeptic" blog, which is a nice way of saying, "denier". Also, let me draw your attention to the fact that Matt Ridley offers a ton of facts and figures, without offering a single citation or link. Also "Coyote Blog" also doesn't provide any links or citations. Just weasel-phrases like, "Such numbers are not hard to find" except apparently he couldn't find any to link to It's a 17-paragraph article without a single link. Has there ever been a 17-paragraph article on the Internet without a single, solitary link?
Matt does say things like "From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption". Except there's one problem. If you actually navigate manually to the International Energy Agency's 2016 Key Renewable Trends, you will find a very different picture. there's actually steady growth in the worldwide energy share created by renewables of all kinds and second (please pay attention here) THE REPORT REFERS TO WORLDWIDE ENERGY CREATION AND NOT FOR THE US SO WHY ARE YOU EVEN TELLING US ABOUT THIS JODKA? How the FUCK do you come here and try to compare worldwide energy use and generation in 2016 to US-ONLY use and generation in
2018?
Strangely, there are IEA reports from 2017 which apparently Coyote Blog has not chosen to report.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Renewable" energy is good, sure. But every energy source has its drawbacks. Solar panels take up lots of real estate, both solar and wind can kill wildlife, and some consider both to be unsightly. It's better, I think, to use all kinds of sources of energy, so that the drawbacks of a single source are not so pervasive. Even oil wasn't such a bad thing when there were only a few cars on the road.
Every time some dumbass like you posts shit like that, it lowers the collective IQ of the internet. Please stop.
The Second Mate's name was Carter,
By God, he was a farter,
When the wind wouldn't blow and the ship wouldn't go,
We'd get Carter the farter to start her.
(to fill in the gaps between sun and wind)
H2 technology is coming along nicely and could soon be powering vehicles and be used for storage.
Go well
> we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent.
See, here's the problem with those stats. Not only are they produced by a fossil fuel loving group, they are out of date.
Just the other day wind was producing 44.5% of total UK electricity demand from wind, and last year Germany was producing so much wind power the cost went to zero.
Even if it's not always going to be at those levels, it's WAY higher than the figures you give suggest, and could easily be higher still, once we turn all Trump's golf courses into wind farms.
Foxconn buys Belkin, Linksys, and Wemo
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
https://archive.fo/0yIaF
It's obviously a time traveler, come back from the future to give you those numbers.
There are other ways to store energy. As heat using a large storage tank of hot working fluid. As potential energy by pumping water up into a large tank during times of excess. Using heat storage (with sterling engine solar) would also help to minimize bird kills since the heat could be directed at the heat reservoirs instead of up to the engine itself. Hell you could use a giant flywheel on a motor that is directly solar powered using the principles of thermal expansion. Batteries arent the only thing and the batteries best suited to mobile arent good for fixed locations where weight is not a concern - Robert Murray Smith's all carbon batteries would be a better fit and 1/100th the cost.
I wondered what they assumed about transmission losses. From the paper, last paragraph of introductory section:
Perfect transmission and energy storage, with no losses or
constraints, was assumed, yielding a best-case scenario for
realizing the benefits of geographic anti-correlation of the
resources and to allow isolation of the limitations associated
purely with geophysical characteristics of wind and solar energy
resources. Specific transmission constraints, higher-resolution
resource data, energy storage inefficiencies, optimization of the
choice of generation locations to minimize their mutual correlation
as opposed to maximization of local energy production, and
operational limits and market dynamics, among other practical
considerations, will play important roles in determining the details
of system- and site-specific design and operation of an actual
electricity system of this magnitude.
Looking up transmission losses in Wikipedia . A few numbers: 160km of 765kV transmission line has losses of 1.1% to 0.5%. Transmission losses in the USA were estimated at 6.5% in 2007.
As this plan will require more transmission, losses would be higher, and you'd need to spend quite a lot to upgrade transmission lines. I think this study is a useful starting point, but should be read as "getting beyond 80% renewable is really hard" rather than "getting to 80% renewable is easy".
Here is an interesting bit from the "discussion" section:
One proposed, and modeled,
U.S.-wide transmission system consists of an estimated
34 000 km (21 000 miles; 7 lengths of the US from Los Angeles,
CA to Portland, Maine) of line with a capacity of up to 12 GW.
An installed cost of $1 MM GW^-1 km^-1 implies a capital
expenditure on the order of $410 billion, as compared to >$1
trillion that would be required to install 12 hours of storage in
the US (mean demand is ~450 GW) assuming an installed cost
at present of $200 per kW h (pumped hydro; most other
systems (e.g. batteries, flywheels, etc.) have current costs in
excess of $500 per kW h).
So that gives some idea of the costs involved.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
42! You have the wrong number!!!
I remember looking at another article on that site and it was full of misleading, out of date and outright wrong information.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Both Exxon-Mobile and BP have wind and solar generation in 2016 in the 4-5% range. Predictions based 5-6 year old data is useless in the energy markets.
Plug in numbers here:
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatt...
I used retail pricing here: https://sunelec.com/home/
The whole point of the article is to point out that your canard is at best hopelessly out-of-date and at worst provably wrong for the majority of the geographical region of the continental United States during the majority of the year.
The other trick these guys always use (and just from your quote, I can tell it's being used here) is to conflate "electricity" with "energy".
"Total worldwide energy use" includes petrol and diesel for transport, wood burning stoves, aviation fuel... Generally, something in the ballpark of 30% of energy use is consumed in the form of electricity. So "0.46% of global energy" translates to a good 1.5% of global electricity, which is all we're really discussing here.
Energy budget for a one meter square column of the Earth's atmosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On average, 370 w/m^2 is received from the Sun. The energy in the form of light and heat ping-pongs around a bit between clouds, air, the ground and oceans. This is converted into kinetic energy like wind, waves. Orbit of the moon add more energy in the form of tides. Scaled up to the size of the planet, these values go into the Terawatt range.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Matt Ridley presided over the downfall of Northern Rock. His energy would be better spent reimbursing the people who were ruined by that disaster.
Every time something about green energy comes up you get the dumbass American trolls coming on here with their argument for why the United States should be allowed to keep poisoning our children with toxic fumes. Ignorant bastards who are full of their own self righteous to a point where it puts their own kids futures in jeopardy. These fine defenders love exhaling their BS over the planet.
The Guardian reports of a recent paper, published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, that helps explain how wind and solar energy can power most of the United States ...
A report developed by top scientists hand-picked by Scott Pruitt, Director of the EPA, has determined that if all the sunshine and wind are used up to generate power, there won't be any left for sunny days and cool breezes and recommends, instead, an increased use of coal to generate power.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If cost is no object, then yes, it is possible that we can power the country with wind and solar. However, it is not currently cost effective and will not likely be cost effective for a very long time.
Solar electricity generation is highly inefficient.
If it were cost effective, we'd all be doing it. Same goes with electric cars.
That's a load of horse manure. Solar energy and Wind energy are currently cheaper than coal and are about to beat gas for electricity production. With both of these technologies and storage you can guarantee prices for decades, there are no market fluctuations in the price of the solar energy or the wind that powers them.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
Solar and wind also employ more people in the US than oil, coal and gas combined:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
Throw in some smart grid technology and modern grid planning and we are likely to end up with a grid in places like Germany and China (which at one point installed more wind/solar than the US had online at the time) and we are likely to end up with power mixes that are up to 70% wind/solar with the rest being always-on powerplants. Anybody who thinks there is future in natural gas, oil or (*snicker*) 'Trump digs coal' is quite frankly delusional.
I ran the numbers a few years ago with very optimistic assumptions, and the land area required for the solar component is about 1/4 the size of New Mexico.
Yes, it's "possible". It's just that no society has ever built anything that big before in the entire history of the planet. That doesn't make it "impossible" but it makes assuming that such a thing could be accomplished a huge leap of faith with nothing to back it up except for hope and wishful thinking. Possibly the Great Wall of China measures up in terms of man-hours and complexity but that took hundreds of years and totally-didn't-use-slave-labor, neither of which are on the table now.
Doing it in a distributed fashion only increases costs (though doing a portion of it in a distributed fashion might be the best odds for success - which is what is already happening now).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Keep sowing division and hate among Americans, Ivan. That's exactly what Putin wants. A pity you're doing it for free, I heard it pays pretty well if you move to St. Petersburg.
oh shit.. a link to a blog ... remember what President Washington wrote on his blog, just because its on the internet it does not mean its true especially with a blogger who does not provide any creditentials
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Like the wall...if Mexico pays for it?
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Total worldwide energy use should also include all sunlight captured for photosynthesis by human-planted crops. And also all sunlight used for maintaining human-livable temperatures on inhabitated parts of Earth's surface. You might also include sunlight used in non-farm areas of human value such as national parks, fishable oceans, etc. In other words, 100% of all sunlight reaching the Earth is "used" by humans but most of it with poor efficiency. Just as we have always been at war with Eastasia, so also, we have always been Kardashev I.
We use about 18 TWh per day, worldwide. That means we'd need at least 9 TW of generation capacity (13.5 TW for the 150% case) for any arbitrary 50% of the Earth. That's quite a bit away from where we're at...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's a load of horse manure. Solar energy and Wind energy are currently cheaper than coal and are about to beat gas for electricity production.
All your /. links aside, the levelized cost of energy shows wind and solar as on the upper end of the spectrum.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sure! Fly without a net! Why not?
1: The infrastructure just isn't there right now.
2: What happens in a midnight lull?
3: What about windstorms?
4: What about the landfill problem with EOL panels? Because right now there's no plan for recycling.
5: What about the landfill problem with EOL turbines? Because right now there's no plan for recycling.
6: What about the disruption of local ecologies from all the wind and solar?
7: Where's all the land for this going to come from? Simply tearing down coal, oil and nuclear sites and throwing up panels and turbines won't get us there. It won't even get us close. SERIOUSLY, they're simply dismissing exactly how much land use we're talking about here.
Honestly, in the end, it'd probably be cheaper to build enough nuclear capacity, plus existing geothermal and large (utility-grade) hydro to cover the country's CURRENT peak demand. Start moving towards modular, liquid fueled reactor units. A building on a concrete pad with reactor bays (basically pits in the floor) that you slot a module into. You hook up the electronics, mechanicals, etc, then cap the pit. Once the unit runs out of fuel, you shut it down, uncap it and disconnect. Send it out for refurbishing and cleanup and drop a fresh unit in to start again.
Then use renewables for future peaking and for various high-energy projects (like desalination and CO2 sequestration) and STRATEGIC storage to smooth out instant demand spikes.
Also, we'd be smart to start pushing better building science into "code minimum" building specifications.
Doing so could help cut CURRENT energy demands by 25-30%.
Honestly, one of the few things I agreed with Obama about was that "energy is going to get more expensive".
In a way, GOOD! Our country's power infrastructure needs a HUGE overhaul. And if that means delivering power from more expensive nuclear reactors? SO BE IT.
This country's spent too long running away from the power equivalent of an internal combustion engine, insisting on using hamster wheels and steam boilers.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
0.75 TW generates 18 TWh in 24 h.
Solar electricity generation is highly inefficient.
It's absolutely the opposite. Direct solar electricity generation is extremely efficient compared to all the other ways that energy can possibly get from the stars to us. Coal? Photosynthesis is worse than PV junctions, and most of the plants in the past didn't become coal in the first place, so most of the historical photosynthesis is lost to us. Oil? Ditto. Wind? Most of the heat hitting Earth doesn't become mechanical movement of wind either, as the temperature differences are too low. Nuclear? The way stars work, synthesis of heavy elements is rare, and most of those that Earth got we can't mine anyway. And of their decay heat we can's extract too much energy either, again because of the low temperature differentials. Etc. etc. But of the solar flux hitting Earth right now, every panel can convert 20% directly into electricity. I mean, it seems low until you realize how convoluted and lossy all the other pathways are. So, no, it's not "highly inefficient", at least not in the sense that we have anything better.
If it were cost effective, we'd all be doing it.
But it is already cost effective, and will be even more in the future, so you will be doing it, whether you want it or not. (Of course, you Americans with artificially inflated prices of residential solar are fucked, but it's up to you to reform your own rules, solar can't be blamed for that.)
Ezekiel 23:20
On the other hand, if you're talking about concentrating solar thermal plants (like the ones described in this story) there are no hazardous materials involved in their manufacture, which is definitely environmentally friendly.
And, once they are manufactured, there are no emissions when they make electricity.
Ahh, yes the clean solar thermal plants like Ivanpah which consume tens of billions of BTUs per month from its natural gas generators required to get it running each day!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Too bad you only get to generate solar for - at most - 12 hours a day, and a conservative estimate for wind is about the same...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
When it comes to wind and solar (particularly solar), using data from just a couple years ago is already well obsolete. And even then, your link (under "Projected LCOE in the U.S. by 2022 (as of 2016) ") shows "wind onshore" as some of the cheapest electricity around, and solar around the middle of the list. Your link also includes a nice graph of how badly cost predictions missed reality. E.g. in 2010, EIA was predicting that solar in 2016 would cost $396.1/MWh - nearly an order of magnitude too expensive.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Generally people mean "land use efficiency". But even in that regard, solar isn't bad (and of course, rooftop uses no land). It's generally less (sometimes a lot less) than hydro (when accounting for reservoir area), way less than biomass, much less than wind if you count the entire area of a wind farm (but much more if you only count the tower bases and access roads), and not that much more than coal when you compare the size of mines for several decades of power generation. Nuclear and gas, however, both handily beat solar in terms of land footprint.
The spot where solar really shines (pardon the pun) is when you compare the amount of area you'd need to take up to power an electric car with solar, vs. the amount of land you'd have to cultivate to power an equivalent ICE with biofuels. It's orders of magnitude different (not even accounting for all of the water, fertilizer, etc)
When talking footprints, you also need to compare impacts, not just area taken up. For example, the main criticism of hydro is that it wipes out rare and sensitive ecosystems (river canyons) - exceptional places in the middle of more mundane surroundings. But solar is just the opposite - it works best in endless, mundane, identical stretches of indistinct flatland that don't in any way represent unique ecosystems. Furthermore, while sometimes solar is deployed with the ground kept cleared, this isn't always the case; when allowed to cooexist with its environment, it has significant potential to help, not hurt, habitats. In the desert, sun is not in short supply; water is. Places that provide shade tend to turn into oases of life. Solar panels also encourage dew collection. There's also some really interesting work going on paring solar with desert agriculture (such as is performed in the US around the Colorado River). The panels, spaced apart, basically act in the same way as agricultural shade cloth, and for some crops can even increase yields, while at the same time saving large amounts of water that's in short supply.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Yeah, good luck with that. If I got my math right, that's about 5 Terawatt-hours of electricity storage.
A couple of notes from Green energy obsessed Ontario in the middle of a wind farm under construction -- these huge investments in solar and wind capture technology are bets on the stability and predictability of the weather. Any casual observer will note that this is not what we are getting. And even my backyard weather station shows that as the climate warms (a small but very visible effect) the winds are slowly dying off -- instead of being windy all the time it is calmer with more violent moments. And we have more clouds... And the many acres of solar panels in the area do have to be cleared of snow in the winter... which no one seems to want to do -- likely because there is a huge power surplus that the costs of all this stuff discourage the locals from using. So Ontario pays several US states to take the power... lucky you. We see enough in the news about the 'rare' failures of wind turbines to suspect that the service life of these things are less than advertised -- sort of like the gen II nukes that everyone rushed to deploy. And finally, the visions of a continent-wide grid taking sunlight power from Arizona and easily moving it to New England have a small flaw... the dynamic properties of a huge interconnected grid with varying levels of automation and control are still unknown when perturbed by failures or a big coronal mass ejection. The 2004 blackout report makes interesting reading. Only the sales folk think it would be easy or cheap. As for me... local standby generator is my vote of no confidence.
You need to read your levelized cost of energy link more carefully. Those big numbers you're talking about are for solar-thermal and offshore wind, both admittedly the most expensive ways to use their respective power sources.
Look on the right end of the spectrum and you'll see onshore wind as being extremely cheap. Solar PV is still cost challenged, but there's hope for improvement. For some reason, people still keep building solar PV collection systems, so apparently its viable.
Ridley is heavily involved in coal mining.
Exactly. The only real problem to solve before solar and wind can do a 100% replacement is storage. Solar dosent work at night, works half well during heavy overcast or rainy conditions, and can stop if the panels get snowed on (until they are cleared or melt thier way to freedom). Wind power obviously needs wind, too much or little can also be a problem. You can pump water to store electric power, but it requires large volumes of water and expensive equipment. Batteries would be an ideal way, but they are still too expensive. I think Musk has the right idea, if we can use old electric car packs that are near the end of useful life for the needs of a car, the cost per kWh of storage should get quite cheap as electric cars go mainstream. Not only that, but wind solar and on site storage can remove the need for an electrical grid and centralized production, electric power companies are crapping thier grundies over this.
...when we estimate the need for future electrical energy usage by using historical electrical energy usage. Why? Electric cars. The demand for electrical energy should rise sharply if and when we get viable (cheap enough, with enough range and a short enough recharge time) electric cars. Converting all cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, and locomotives to battery power means an enormous activity in charging those batteries. We will be building wind generators to the point that absolutely every horizon in the country will look like fur, with wind generators taking the part of individual hairs. Its fortunate that they are beautiful / majestic, but still hoping to keep them off some of the notable scenic areas such as the Grand Canyon, half-dome, painted desert, etc.
I'm sure wind and solar scales just like that, not.
Tesla says their powerwall's usable capacity is 13.5 kWh. (I just wish they, and their solar panels, were cheaper.)
I like the idea of being independent of the grid as much as possible - with my solar panels or wind turbines or whatever collecting energy, and with the energy being stored in a large battery at my house. After a storm or earthquake, I don't want to be without power because the lines are down.
where will all successive generations of coal miners get black lung, bury their fathers at 30 years old, and die in holes in the ground? How will the salmon meet their daily nutritional requirement of mercury? Who will the rest of the world point to and say "if they can do it, so can we"?
#MAGA!
Battery production prices are dropping like a rock, too. Most of these studies budget something like $500/kWh, but I would not be surprised in the least to see ~$100/kWh in commercially available products in a few years time. And that's a gamechanger for solar timeshifting.
It works double when you need the pack for something else, too (for example, as a buffer to EV fast charging). Your buffer also contains at least an hour's worth of its peak consumption (multiple hours when charges are spread out) just in order to have enough power to feed the vehicles it's charging. No need to "double pay" for the battery.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Unfortunately, not a single author of the study has any experience at all in electrical transmission or distribution, not to mention zero experience or background in grid management. It is simply a math exercise that ignores the many real constraints on the grid.
But those that want to hear this don't care, they'll take this and run with it.
If we start using a lot less energy. Using less is the only clean energy.
Talk about a false equivalency. Yes using less is ideal. It doesn't follow that all sources of power are equally bad however. It's clear that fossil fuels are irredeemably polluting. When you need to use energy (and we all do) then you want to use the cleanest form of power generation available to you.
It's not "kosher" to say this, but we really should have got back into nuclear 20 years ago.
It's not an unreasonable view point, just a politically impossible one. People are afraid of nuclear and you can't argue they are entirely wrong even if they aren't entirely well informed. It's somewhat a pity that they aren't as afraid of fossil fuels because fossil fuels are probably actually more dangerous.
The nuclear technology of today is cleaner and safer and more efficient than anything out there.
While I have no problem with using fission as a power source, no form of fission is safe. That's not even a debate. Most of the time it is fine but there is always a non-zero chance of a serious catastrophe. That's why there are so many regulations around it and why private insurance won't touch it without government guarnatees. When the people who have a profit motive to evaluate risk won't touch it that is the clearest possible evidence that it is not safe..
Nuclear fission is only "clean" in relation to fossil fuels. Nobody has come up with a workable plan for the spent fuel waste which is quite obviously not clean or safe. And because of the regulations and safety requirements around it, nuclear is not clearly more economically efficient than alternatives.
The simple fact is that nuclear is really the only energy technology that can reliably fill the growing need for energy.
That is clearly not true. Wind and solar have been shown to be able to fill a substantial portion of the need for clean energy. That is the whole point of the main article. Nuclear can (and should) be a piece of the portfolio but to pretend it is the only option is both untrue and unrealistic.
Only clean good appy coal can power most of the United States, not dirty bad luddite solar and wind. Coal!
#MAGA
Electricity prices are so low currently that it is difficult to fund new or old technologies. Cheap natural gas has driven all other power sources into the red. Three Mile Island is scheduled to close due to being unable to charge enough for electricity to make enough to operate the plant. This is an established, long running nuclear plant (with one broken unit). Operating costs are not that high, but you still need to generate money. Building other new technologies is equally difficult when the break even mark keeps being pushed to the right.
True. To get to 80% wind and solar across most of the US without you would need something like a minimum of 12 hours storage, 48+ would really start to shine. To get 100% robustly I'm guessing a full week. As soon as the price drops, and the secondary use market picks up, this will start being feasible.
Total worldwide energy use should also include all sunlight captured for photosynthesis by human-planted crops....blah blah
You think that sunlight is shining out your ass, but it's only your words that come from there.
>letting perfect be the enemy of the good
Peak US energy consumption will be about 250 GW. So worst case 12h of storage is 3 TWh. Over 12h the consumption won't always be at the peak, so a good guess at what 12h US energy storage really means is about 1TWh of storage capacity and this storage must be capable of delivering 250GW peak !! Wow that I big dam with hundreds of massive turbo-generators attached.. Assuming that we need to call on that 12h of storage several times per year, say 5, that about 5TWh/yr of hydro-electric capacity
About the only storage mecanism actual capable of delivery that type of storage is hydro-electric, the question is now is that realistic. At the moment the US has 282 TWh/yr and a peak of 80 GW. About half of that 282 TW/h is probably run of the river type and so must be used immedately or risk severe local flooding. But even still 140 TWh/yr of other hydro-electric capacity is well and truly in the ball park of the author estimations, though might need bigger dams to store the water and deliver power over 12 hours rather than over shorter periods.
One remaining problem is the peak production capacity which would need to be tripled. The logistics of doing that without creating waves you could surf on in US rivers will be amusing but probably not insurmountable. In any case there would need to be a massive investment program in hydro-electric power as well.
The last problem is that last 10% of production that the authors haven't addressed. If its not wind, solar or hydro, what is it ? With current technology, about the only thing that would make sense is combined-cycle gas turbines, allowing for high efficiency and rapid deployment when the wind ain't blowing, the sun ain't shining and after you've used your 12h of energy storage. So the authors are asking the energy industry to build 250GW of production capacity that is only used 10% of the time. That's ok, but it means the infrastructure costs need to be amortized over few production hours, and the price of a MW/h from the combined-cycle generation will cost many times the current cost.
In short, yes the authors proposal seems highly possible on paper, though the US citizens must decide that they are willing to pay much more for power that they are now, and/or go without 10% of the time. Seems to me its a politico-economic choice in that case rather than a technological one. Unfortunately, recent history in the US with the massive exploitation of shale oil and reduction in cost per MW/h of power in the US is the reverse of the decision the authors are advocating, and I'm not sure that US political system has the balls to stand up tell everyone they have to pay more.
D.
The article is about the US not the whole world.
If cost is no object, then yes, it is possible that we can power the country with wind and solar. However, it is not currently cost effective and will not likely be cost effective for a very long time.
Today, that is true (if you are considering the 100% case-- it is cost effective in some markets).
I don't think you have any basis to say "will not likely be cost effective for a very long time." That becomes untrue if you have efficient storage or efficient long-distance power transfer. Both of these technologies are improving rapidly.
Solar electricity generation is highly inefficient.
No, it's pretty efficient. you can buy 20% efficient solar panels today. That's roughly the same efficiency as your car's engine. You can make 35% efficient cells, but they're expensive. You can also make 35% efficient car engines, but they're expensive, too.
If it were cost effective, we'd all be doing it. Same goes with electric cars.
And, in fact, the world is rapidly installing solar capacity. https://octoenergy-production-...
artificially inflated prices of residential solar
That is interesting claim, I have not heard that. Would you mind clarifying a bit? How are the prices artificially inflated?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The ozone hole kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
The ozone hole that has been closing up again ever since AC refrigerant was refurmulted?
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...
Generally people mean "land use efficiency".
No, they don't.
Often, yes, people don't even know what they mean, but when they do mean efficiency, they mean efficiency.
Conservation could supply easily 80% of our energy needs. Almost all of the energy we use turns into heat/waste. All we need to do is stop wasting most of the energy.
It could work as long as people and machines only use power when the sun is up and the wind is blowing. Batteries are cute, but they are inefficient.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-modern-society-on-solar-and-wind-powe.html
and
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather.html
That depends upon what type of "solar collectors" you're talking about. If you're talking about photovoltaic panels, then yes there are hazardous materials used in their manufacture
No, not inherently. That's a myth. Today's solar panels are basically made of silicon and glass. There's no reason that you can't make them in an environmentally friendly, low-waste way. Silicon production uses chlorosilane, of course, but you don't release this to the environment-- you want to use it up. The main waste is actually the solvents used for cleaning, but with economy of scale it's cheaper to recycle these.
People talking about how hazardous solar panels are usually point to cadmium telluride panels, which had a -- hold on to your hats-- two-micron thick layer incorporating cadmium. But CdTe never got traction as a solar array material; silicon technology just evolved to so low a cost that CdTe (whose only selling point was low price) got priced out of the market.
but a lot less hazardous materials than used in say, hydraulic fracturing.
That's definitely true.
This will be a thing the instant that Wind/Solar become the prime money mover.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that the premise is quite impossible given today's technology to be cost effective -
"Assuming minimal excess generation, lossless transmission, and no other generation sources..."
Lossless transmission requires super conductor transmission lines. While it's possible, it's not when you factor in the logistical reality.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Too bad you only get to generate solar for - at most - 12 hours a day, and a conservative estimate for wind is about the same...
Many of the same solutions that are used by traditional power sources are also applicable in the case of solar. And then there is wind.
At present, we can power houses and buildings via solar, and all of the wind turbines popping up just north of here are providing a lot of power - they are doing the peaking to the point that you can see them switch on and off. They are even capable of shutting down individual turbines if they sense a raptor within a couple miles.
What exactly is your hard-on for the once alternative, now turning mainstream power sources? The stuff works, no matter how much you yell at it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's a load of horse manure. Solar energy and Wind energy are currently cheaper than coal and are about to beat gas for electricity production. With both of these technologies and storage you can guarantee prices for decades, there are no market fluctuations in the price of the solar energy or the wind that powers them.
I'm sure what you meant to say is that the theoretical price to build a coal or gas plant at current overregulated "not in my back yard" red tape dark ages mess is theoretically more than the cost to build a a heavily subsidized, EPA-approved wind or solar plant.
To consumers, electricity is electricity. I don't care where it comes from, I just want it as cheaply and reliably as I can get it. If you think utilities have a motive other than profit for how they generate electricty, and there's a secret cabal that wants to use coal and gas despite cheaper and reliable alternatives and is willing to use them even at the cost of profit, you're out of your bleeping mind.
I'm afraid that this forum is off-limits even to English illiterates; sorry, chum!
Depends on where you live. In Phoenix, $4160 of solar panel will produce roughly $1432 of electricity/year.
Plug in numbers here:
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatt...
I used retail pricing here: https://sunelec.com/home/
Damn, they used to talk about payback in 15 years, not in 3.
I've found that many of the payback points to be outlandishly pessimistic. My costs for installing extra installation and changing to natgas for heating paid off in just a few years, when the "experts" were telling me no less than 10.
My biggest issue with going totally solar at home is that I have a spa, which even with a very efficient unit would stress the storage batteries. But I'm expecting even that barrier will fall, sooner rather than later.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Wind and solar can power most of the US at 150% the cost of coal and natural gas. Fixed that for you. Enjoy paying 50% more. Its no big thing for consumers if their electric bill goes from $120 to $180 a month or whatever. Americans are rich enough that $60 a month wont bankrupt anyone, but if you're a manufacturer and your electric bill is $250,000 a month that 50% is a lot of money. It will undermine cost competitiveness of US manufacturing a hell of a lot.
Smellin' a lot of "if" comin' off this plan.
I have no idea how exactly it happens but the fact is that residential solar prices in the US hovering around or above $3/Wp are a significant outlier even in the ordinarily more expensive developed world. Even in Germany, the rooftop installation price is around 1.3 Euros/Wp now.
Ezekiel 23:20
Damn, they used to talk about payback in 15 years, not in 3.
It will probably be 45 years soon as the current administration continues its crusade against renewable energy and the environment, courtesy of Koch bros funding.
If cost is no object, then yes, it is possible that we can power the country with wind and solar. However, it is not currently cost effective and will not likely be cost effective for a very long time.
Solar electricity generation is highly inefficient.
If it were cost effective, we'd all be doing it. Same goes with electric cars.
That's a load of horse manure. Solar energy and Wind energy are currently cheaper than coal and are about to beat gas for electricity production.
I live in coal country, where the coal fired plants are a few miles from the mines. The cost of production has to be about as low as coal can go. Yet they are aging out. Our friend who thinks it is too expensive to produce solar or wind needs to research out the costs of new turbines.
So here in the place when coal should blow out other forms of generating power - it isn't.
But we are still meeting demand for power. Wind power is carrying the load, providing the electricity.
And for individual houses, solar is becoming significantly cheaper. If you build new outside of a development, and need to run power lines to your new house, you'll find that the cost of running those poles and lines will be higher than a solar install in many cases - with no payback period.
So the haters - probably a group of frustrated nuclearphiles and those who cannot handle change can yell all they want. This is happening, and t is happening now.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's a load of horse manure. Solar energy and Wind energy are currently cheaper than coal and are about to beat gas for electricity production.
Yes, but that's changing. Have you seen who's Secretary of Energy?
artificially inflated prices of residential solar
That is interesting claim, I have not heard that. Would you mind clarifying a bit? How are the prices artificially inflated?
Tariffs on chinese solar panels., for example.
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My understanding is: they have tried this in Germany, and it has turned out to be astronomically expensive. Energy costs have gone through the roof.
Put them in orbit of the sun and beam the energy back with a laser or microwave beam. Sure we may fry a few birds but it is 24 hour energy. :P
There was a massive push to replace incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs, an arguably far inferior lighting technology. It had to be done within a few years or global warming would kill us all. LED bulbs that have mostly taken over the market are a far superior technology. One can make the case that the CFL bulb industry was trying to recoup their development costs and eventual losses by getting politicians to help them out before it was too late. The LED writing was on the wall. One can make the same case with wind and solar power. They are inferior power generation methods compared to nuclear, natural gas, and more importantly, fusion power. What better way to make a killing quickly before a superior technology borks your industry than to fake your data.
Essentially they are saying that if you had a packet of Magic Ferry Dust, we could eliminate fossil fuel power generation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Everything is wind and solar. Other forms of energy are just storage methods for these two. Fossil fuels are just a chemical storage method for solar energy. Hydro is just a storage method for wind.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
" there are no market fluctuations in the price "
For some elitists, that is why they are against it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's kind of amazing how some SlashDotters, who would normally be inclined to love technological solutions like solar or wind power (and even take naturally to solving their challenges), still come out against them, and presumably in favor of continued reliance on fossil fuels. It's almost as if some tribal anti-government (or at least anti Democratic Party) prejudice is steering them away from these technologies.
If those types embrace any technological fix (at least they do acknowledge that some kind of fix is needed) to climate change, they tend to push for increased use of nuclear power. While there's certainly some interesting technology there, the challenges are well known. And certainly an anti-government bias ought to apply to nuclear, which was developed with enormous government backing. But politically induced blindness is indeed selective.
Now here's where I'll be accused of politically induced blindness for my demonization of fossil fuels. But hey, nobody said it would be cheap or easy to wean ourselves from carbon-based energy. Just necessary. And with the endgame involving a free, non-polluting resource, tons of jobs and a weakening of corrupt petro-states around the world, it sure beats an endgame of isolating nuclear waste for centuries while continuing to mine the stuff...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
If only we could figure it how to make it work....
I know, let's use Tony Starks magic power plant instead. That's even cooler.
Ok thanks, I'll dig around later if I remember. Maybe subsidies in Europe, or trade barriers in the US, or both. Or maybe in Europe you get better terms if you can't buy outright.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Because "energy storage" is a massive fucking unexplained handwave. We absolutely have nowhere near the energy storage capacity to make these "solutions" work. And recognition of the negative economic impact of increasing fossil fuel costs is another giant handwave, where the liberals suddenly embrace the Invisible Hand of the market to make everything wonderful.
It's not that people are against wind and solar; they just hear you claim things like reimplementing the electrical grid on wind and solar and it sounds like you're promising flying cars.
David MacKay says it all, quantitatively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Wind & solar today still depend on fossil fuels in its life cycle.
So what? That doesn't mean they will continue to do so in perpetuity. Once solar and wind are a sufficient percentage of the supply to the grid (which seems almost inevitable) your argument vanishes in a puff of logic.
That is for just the panels. Payback is just under 5 when you consider the rest of the system and inverters need replacement about every 10 years.
Prices are inflated through bad regulation and red tape. My 6KW system cost $24,000 installed a few years ago. The material cost was only about $8000. Another 8000 was installation labor. The rest of the cost was regulatory fees and required engineering approvals etc.
Most of the engineering stuff was literally copy and paste. They required a stamped electrical diagram and stamped wind loading diagrams, all of which would be identical for every single installation. Each of those cost $1000.
As an engineer, his book is the only thing worth reading on energy. It's all math which turns most people off because if you disagree with him you have to show why.
That's the problem with looking at new technology batteries. LEAD works great, and is easily completely recyclable. Industrial lead acid batteries are far cheaper and longer lasting. The only negative is their weight.
Example: $1600 GNB 6-100-13 battery; 11.35KWh of storage and designed for daily 80% DOD for years(1500-2500+ cycles) They are still quite useful for smaller load long term applications beyond that. So thats $140 per KWH storage, for I'd say at least 2500 cycles; and really if you don't need it all, they could last much longer(2x+). I bought one of them for scrap for $200 4+ years ago, maybe 6? it's still going; just has problems with larger loads now, can run lights/coimputer/etc for a week+- w/o sun.
http://gbindustrialbattery.com...
Precisely. MacKay is (well, was) an internet acquaintance of mine -- his book on Information Theory, AI, NNs etc is a classic, and we share(d) the same philosophy towards making the books we write available in print for money but free online (so you can actually still read his book online for free -- I bought a hard copy just to ensure he made some money from it and because hard copies are still sometimes useful).
This Ted talk is so f-ing sane that it should be mandatory viewing for all of the people participating in the discussion. Interestingly, when I discovered it I'd already done his first exercise in scaling to keep my mind occupied while driving back from the NC coast (something I do almost weekly at this point) to Duke. I was doing it more for solar -- if we completely filled the median strip of most US interstates with solar panels (or imagine making the road surface itself out of drivable solar panels) would it be enough to power 100% of the traffic on those roads? But I also did it for biofuels. The problem is that nobody pays the slightest attention to the scaling issues. One gallon of gasoline (for example) is IIRC 34 kWh. To "fill a car with gasoline" (say, a 20 gallon tank) is roughly 700 kWh. This is somewhere between half and a third the ENTIRE CAPACITY of a 16 kW premium cell array pretty much covering my SW facing roof for a MONTH. If I bought a roof-covering array and used it for nothing but running two cars for the month, with NO long trips, I'd be barely breaking even. It would, however, on average cover my electrical bill.
So far, there just isn't a good replacement for gasoline in energy density and (the thing nobody thinks of) POWER density. It isn't JUST having the battery capacity needed to equal the range of a gas car between fillups, one has to be able to deliver 700 kWh of energy in (say) five minutes. That is, one needs close to 10 MW of POWER -- a small, dedicated power plant -- to fill a car in the same amount of time it takes to fill it now with gasoline. Obviously, one could take an hour to fill and do it with more like 1 MW, or ten hours and do it with 10 KW, etc, but bottom line is that even 10 KW is maybe 5x the typical peak power consumption of an entire household. Thermodynamic efficiencies and so on screw around with this some, but in a "back of the envelope" calculation like this, they still total less than an order of magnitude difference, and that is STILL too much.
That isn't to say we can't eventually make cars all electric -- but to do so will very likely require a massive restructuring of the concept of "the car", possibly a restructuring of urban and suburban developments everywhere, and much more. Or, as MacKay points out, major lifestyle changes.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
They obviously mean Solar Winds. The winds that keep blowing. Otherwise when itâ(TM)s dark or when youâ(TM)re under ground where there is no wind ..
Whatever. I canâ(TM)t write the joke this morning. You got the pieces, now make it funny. Do it! Now!
Essentially they are saying that if you had a packet of Magic Ferry Dust, we could eliminate fossil fuel power generation.
What on earth do ferries have to do with it? Ferries burn fossil fuels, generally.
There are efficiency losses throughout that entire conversion cycle. The only clean way to minimize those efficiency losses is to use less energy.
We're going to utilize energy. Your argument is null and void if you pretend otherwise. Yes using less is optimal but not realistic with a growing and economically advancing civilization. Your argument is akin to a company trying to endlessly cut expenses to become profitable. It works to a point but then it becomes counterproductive. We're not going to all go back to living in caves with no electricity, no plumbing, and no transportation. If you want to go off grid and live in the woods knock yourself out. The rest of us will be living here in the real world where we have an optimization problem.
Huh?
A 1.350kwh battery (225Ah x 6v) is $83 from costco for $62/kwh ($83/1.35kwh).
There are no subsidies for solar in Europe anymore. The installation prices are somewhat higher than raw hardware prices because the installers have to eat, too, but they're fairly efficient at their jobs and there's (perhaps surprisingly) not much bureaucracy in the field. Either US installers are greedy, or inefficient, or someone skims a lot of money in extra fees.
Ezekiel 23:20
T105 (true deep cycle golf cart batteries) are an even better value @ ~$61/kwh.
That is for just the panels. Payback is just under 5 when you consider the rest of the system and inverters need replacement about every 10 years.
Even at 5 years, it's pretty good. I would hope that they'd wait for a failure before simply replacing them instead of cluttering landfills or some third world recycling dump with perfectly good electronics.
I have some small solar installs that aren't showing any signs of deterioration after 10 years now. They're used for powering radios. The batteries (gel cels) get rotated out, then used for other purposes before failure and recycling. Its difficult to determine any payback for that, because traditionally generated power simply isn't available for that use. If I had to design a difficult to access system with extreme life, I'd probably go with Solar/Nickel-Iron batteries.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This has been reported back in the early 2000's... I can pinpoint the time because I was out of work due to dot-bubble. I remember listening to a radio program and a investor saying a 95x95 mile square grid in the sunnier, warmer states in the US could fully power the US with heat/steam generated by solar mirrors. Everyone at the time was dismissing it as quack science, never work, nuclear is the future, blah blah blah.
Here we are now nearly 2 decades later only now to be taken seriously.
I have to disagree there is no future in hydrocarbons. Though a poster below makes mention of rapidly falling costs in renewables, we are also seeing the same in hydrocarbons as competing energy sources and newer production methods come online. For anyone who knows industry well (and I will venture this does not include you or Rei in this thread), you would know there are simply a large number of applications where fuel is far more advantageous, even if they were to cost more. If we find an easy way to synthesize fuels, and emission technology improves at the speed it does, we may actually find there is no future in wind/solar.
This was in reference to li-ion battery packs with an expected lifespan of ~15 years in typical grid duty. Longevity strongly factors into the economics equation. There's also issues of efficiency.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
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It'll work, under conditions that don't and never have existed in the real world.
Wind and solar -never- operate at 100% of capacity. Not even close.
Produce hydrocarbons from air+excess power to use when sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow?
This Ted talk is so f-ing sane that it should be mandatory viewing for all of the people participating in the discussion.
There are some pretty wicked assumptions in all of that. While I wasn't speaking of gasoline specifically, I was speaking of electrical generation. And here's the rub.
The assumptions are rather rigid. While none of us can predict with 100 percent accuracy exactly how the future will pan out, but aoow me to take a stab at what I consider some errors. Why on earth would we decide to produce biofuels via old school farming? Might biofuel from algae be practical? You'll probably note that after a promising start, a lot of the companies pulled back from algae biofuel. At which point I'll point out that battery technology of today was considered impossible by engineers I worked with in the 1970's. Not being feasible now does not mean never feasible.
As well - he seems to assume that the only way to be really efficient is for people to revert to pre-industrial levels. Sorry, none of this requires a lifelstyle change. I pay only a bit more than than my neighbors for electricity, even though the ones on the north side are only there a couple days a month and presumably hardly use any electricity.
I have a spa too. I bought an efficient one, I insulated my place over the good quality insulation that is already there. I converted to a 99 percent efficient gas furnace which extracts so much heat from the natgas that it's chimney is a 2 inch PVC pipe. I have all LED lights in the house. No lifestyle changes at all, and an arguably better lifestyle than my neighbors
Now yes if we use a supply only setup that uses a paradigm that only present methods are allowable, that it is not possible to produce energy more efficiently and that any changes on the consumer end will result in markedly lowered standard of living - you are 100 percent correct - this is not possible. We might as well just use up the petroleum and move back to the caves. Because nothing is as good, and nothing will ever be as good.
But even the level with alternatives we are at now was considered completely impossible 50 years ago. I was doing it more for solar -- if we completely filled the median strip of most US interstates with solar panels (or imagine making the road surface itself out of drivable solar panels) would it be enough to power 100% of the traffic on those roads?
Well, to be certain, modern medians won't be accessible because they are constructed a specific way for safety, whereas a car in an accident will be more likely to end up coming to rest in the median rather than in the middle of the opposite lane. So the idea isn't worth pursuing other than as a BOTE exercise.
But I also did it for biofuels. The problem is that nobody pays the slightest attention to the scaling issues. One gallon of gasoline (for example) is IIRC 34 kWh. To "fill a car with gasoline" (say, a 20 gallon tank) is roughly 700 kWh. This is somewhere between half and a third the ENTIRE CAPACITY of a 16 kW premium cell array pretty much covering my SW facing roof for a MONTH.
Come on now, your idea that no one is paying the slightest attention to scaling is patting yourself on the back a bit too hard. Yes, there is nothing like the energy density of Gasoline and diesel fuel 116,090 and 128,488 BTU/gal respectively. But what are we going to do with that now? Simply say well, they are the best, so when we use most of it up, we'll fold the tents and go die? We have what we have - or are you arguing for nuc reactors in cars?
If I bought a roof-covering array and used it for nothing but running two cars for the month, with NO long trips, I'd be barely breaking even. It would, however, on average cover my electrical bill.
So far, there just isn't a good replacement for gasoline in energy density and (the thing nobody thinks of) POWER density.
Sigh, c
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Nuclear professional here for full disclosure. I am not shilling, I just think you don't know what you're talking about.
"Oh, and it costs more than solar or wind--once you fully account for all the actual costs."
Citation? Here is a nice projection for 2020 even which says that statement is not true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:Projected_LCOE_in_the_U.S._by_2020_(as_of_2015).png
"Westinghouse just went out of business (ask South Carolina)."
Westinghouse DID NOT go out of business. Chapter 11 doesn't mean "going out of business". I work with them all the time, and we still have contracts with them.
"hiring a few MBAs to improve 'efficiency' is catastrophe."
Exaggerate much? In fact, my plant is trying to make cost cutting measures at the moment to compete with gas, yet NOBODY is considering jeopardizing nuclear safety. Stuff may break more often, but it's not like every component here is essential to keep the fuel safe.
"It's also centralized and makes a nice juicy target for terrorism."
No. It is a juicy target for military conflicts maybe, but not terrorism. The security at these places and the difficulty to actually cause damage that would cause a release of contamination make them not so attractive. How many terrorist attacks have caused a release? Any?
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
The usual /. rant supporting nuclear has to be thorium nuclear, specifically. It's what all the cool kids want to do!
Have they figured in the need for limited resources, like rare earths, the impact on solar panel prices when the demand exceeds supply by so much, high power semiconductors, etc. Solar needs nighttime storage so those systems need to be accounted for, as do windless and sunless days. And, very importantly, wind and solar are very much dependent on semiconductors which are subject to EMP damage, natural or nuclear. So backups of nearly everything electronic needs to be stocked in protected warehouses.
The only way this is true is if you live in fantasy-land. Scientists involved in this travesty should be stripped of any credentials they may possess and be fired.
One gallon of gasoline (for example) is IIRC 34 kWh. To "fill a car with gasoline" (say, a 20 gallon tank) is roughly 700 kWh.
That assumes gasoline is used 100% efficiently to move the car, which it definitely is not. I've read more like 30% efficiency, but don't have a source handy. If you have, say, a 30 MPG car and a 20 gallon tank (which is IMHO on the large side for most cars), that is 600 miles range. A 100 kWh Tesla Model S has a rated range of 335 miles, so by that estimate you need a 180 kWh equivalent battery for 600 miles range.
This is somewhere between half and a third the ENTIRE CAPACITY of a 16 kW premium cell array pretty much covering my SW facing roof for a MONTH.
Even with the over-inflated 700kWh estimate, that is 700 / 16 = 43 hours of peak generation to fully charge. With a more accurate 180 kWh estimate that is about 11 hours to fully charge. Most panels get between 1-6 kWh/kW/day depending on location and time of year (say 3 kWh/kW/day), so more realistically it would take about 180 kWh / (3 kWh/kW/day * 16 kW) = 3.7 days to fully charge for a 600 mile drive. Fortunately, most people only drive about 60 miles/day, which is 10% of your tank, so you need only about 37% of your daily generation to charge the car.
It isn't JUST having the battery capacity needed to equal the range of a gas car between fillups, one has to be able to deliver 700 kWh of energy in (say) five minutes. That is, one needs close to 10 MW of POWER -- a small, dedicated power plant -- to fill a car in the same amount of time it takes to fill it now with gasoline.
Or not. Fill up overnight, as I do, and you have a full "tank" every day. Don't even spend the 10-15 minutes at the gas station, ever. I have a 10kW charger, but I actually limit it to about 4kW so that the battery charges more slowly overnight, and is still warm in the morning (useful in the winter).
The important thing to notice is that even with rather fast adoption of renewable generation, large scale grid storage still won't be needed for quite some time. Maybe a decade or two. So the fact that we don't have that storage right now is irrelevant. The question is whether we'll have it once we need it in the future.
Ezekiel 23:20
With solar being that 20% figure, how good is molten salt towers by comparison? The CSP mirror things.
Just hydrogen would be enough. Assuming very cheap inputs in the future, even the 40% round-trip efficiency in an electrolyzer/CCGT cycle wouldn't be unacceptable, especially in the light of storage capacity disconnected from generation capacity in this scenario (unlike with batteries, you only need a really large tank here) and the ability to re-use, e.g., the natural gas storage infrastructure in many countries. For example, for seasonal storage in Germany (to get through winter), it's a likely application in the future.
Ezekiel 23:20
Personally I believe we should be pursuing next gen nuclear right now. Storage requirements and mass of deployments required to make wind/solar a tenable solution are simply fantastical at this point. Nuclear could easily do it - we'd need about 100 of the Kashiwazaki plants in Japan, to provide 100% of our needs, and it would be, effectively, 100% reliable (due to the always-available nature of nuclear plants). Each plant occupies a little more than 1 square mile, meaning we'd need about 30 or so Ivanpah-sized plants around the US to provide all that power. To me, that makes much more sense. Modern society pretty much demands constant, reliable power and without massive storage options renewables simply are not tenable.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Consider that all of the US is dark for several hours at a time, every day. We need several hours of storage capacity at a minimum, especially since the current mantra is for everyone to recharge their cars at home, overnight - when it's dark.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I know. It's much closer, but when you do the math, lead acid still comes out ahead. There is the problem of maintenance and you have to know what you're doing.
I'm perfectly happy with the possibility of advances in technology -- I'm watching the slide in PVC solar prices and expect that any year now they'll reach the point where I can amortize the cost of going solar in less than a decade. I've actually followed a path in my own house that isn't that different from yours, except that I live where electricity costs around $0.11/kWh (and comes from a nuclear plant, buffed out with commercial Solar as NC is second in the nation behind CA in large scale solar implementation -- mid-scale 50 acre or so solar "farms" are popping up all over the state, one of my ex-student/mentees just got a job at a big commercial solar company located ten miles away). The difficulty is that investing in super efficient HVAC -- where I'm over $20K in and ALSO have PVC pipes for outflow chimneys, as well as external condensers for the AC that are three times the size of the units they replaced -- PLUS overhead R40 insulation PLUS low E double pane windows PLUS tight doors PLUS CFS that I'm replacing with LEDs as fast as they burn out -- has dropped by electrical bill by roughly 40%, maybe a bit more and dropped my gas bill by close to the same amount. That's still amortizing the investment in the HVAC units and will be for the rest of my life, but the original equipment had literally worn out so in some sense I'm only amortizing the marginal cost of the good units compared to the cheapest possible adequate units and might recover that sort of "break even" in another five years of payback.
However, it only leaves me with a monthly budget of $147 for payback on going fully solar, assuming that I can cram enough panels on my roof to go full solar. There the biggest problem is going to be dormer windows -- I don't have a single flat expanse on the SW facing section that otherwise would be perfect and will have to patch it out in between, which the wife and neighborhood association may or may not tolerate. $147 won't even service the interest on the cost of full solar, so amortization time is still "infinity", especially since I'll literally have to borrow the money to do it as we don't have $20K or so lying around (a rough estimate of the cost, but as you note highly variable as technology improves). I'm guessing sometime in the next 3-5 years dropping prices, especially in storage, will intersect my means and I'll put something together, more likely on our house at the ocean than here first, because that one has the least reliable and most expensive electricity in an all-electric house, no natgas at all. Hence one of the lessons -- the more one invests in energy efficiency, the lower the available residual for amortizing further investment. But I digress.
I think you miss the point of the TED talk. It isn't intended to be the last word. It is intended to clearly distinguish between a public debate all too often based on science fiction and ignorance and one that is based on the sober contemplation of the scaling of various solutions. To give you an extreme example -- I continue to have fond hopes for thermonuclear fusion as "the" inexhaustible power source that will catapult us into becoming a full type 2 civilization. If we master DD fusion in commercial scale reactors with anything like a reasonable efficiency, we will evolve before we burn 10% of the D in the ocean alone, and have the rest of the solar system to mind for D, He3, and other fusibles if need be. Should I go around and buy up suitable sites for future fusion plants in anticipation, or build lots of not-quite-break even plants anticipating that by doing so I'll somehow stimulate the physics of fusion into "working"? I could wax similarly poetic about LFTR -- on paper it sounds almost heavenly -- a thousand year energy supply for the US PLUS all those lovely rare earths using Monazite sands in NC alone, or some such, burns nuclear waste, can't melt down -- except for the wee fact that it doesn't yet "exist" as an actual implementation. Again, should I be buying up suitable real estate containing Monazit
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Are you deliberately trying to be difficult?
No. Are you deliberately trying to be stupid?
"High efficiency"
Efficiency I can define. "Awesome" I can't.
How high "high efficiency" is will be a judgement call. I had pointed out that the efficiency of photovoltaic panels is roughly the same as efficiency of the gasoline engine in your car, so if conversion efficiency is actually your criterion, actually, photovoltaics are not terribly bad compared to other engines. They're slightly lower in efficiency than the chemical-to-electrical-energy conversion efficiency of coal-fired power plants, but that's only the generating efficiency-- add in the fact that the coal has to be mined and transported to the plant, and the electricity has transformer and transmission losses, and they are comparable to on-site solar efficiencies. However, if (as the original topic proposes) the PV energy is to be distributed over long distances to smooth out geographical variations in power production, or stored, then transforming and transmission and storage losses have to be added to PV, too. As with many things, efficiency depends on application, and assumptions.
In general, though, "efficiency" is not the same as "awesome," and neither one is the same as "cost effective for a particular market."
commentator K. S. Kyosuke above had an interesting calculation of efficiency starting with the solar photons, pointing out that fossil fuel is actually just solar energy that was absorbed millions of years ago. Interesting, and in some ways insightful to trace the energy back to the source... but not terribly relevant.
I think he meant Furry
In the US, back in 2010, it was obvious that the grid was sustaining demand (barely). Now the Grid owners that don't want to shell out infrastructure, unless the Govt. pays for it, saw the wave of rising demand coming. So, as a result, even the electric company is saying switch to gas! As a society, we have spent a fair amount more on LED bulbs, and high efficiency everything, this has helped the grid grow some margin, a nice place to be for free. The wave is the Ecar load that is coming on gradually, gotta charge them batteries! Sure, there are a few pushing the carbon tax, another money scheme. I cracks me up when the solar panel companies call us, I tell them to look up our house on google earth, 5 prime acres of woods, old and new, you know, the ones that create oxygen from our garbage air. Their proposal it to cut down the trees and put a small sized solar farm in our back yard! This solar growth isn't people thinking about the outcome, all they are thinking about is their wallets.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Just because something "can" doesn't mean it "ought."
All of this is moot. The intense power of the catalytic reactions in the corona of the sun can now be captured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh1rOoYnZS0
The world will have energy at $0.05kw with $100/kw install cost. If you are accredited AND not a tried and true skeptic locked in your logic box, reach out zh@hydrino.33mail.com for info
So the fact that we don't have that storage right now is irrelevant. The question is whether we'll have it once we need it in the future.
Right, and that's the handwave. If you're going to depend on technology which doesn't yet exist then you may as well just keep burning fossil fuels and hope that fusion becomes a thing in 20 years.
All the energy we need is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh1rOoYnZS0
This has been known for a while.
But that isn't enough by a long shot and here's why:
Electricity generation only accounts for about 30-40% of carbon emissions.
When you factor in replacing carbon used in domestic heating, transportation and industrial processes, electrical demands are set to rise by a factor of 6-8
Come back when solar and wind can fiil that gap. The problem is that they simply can't and the only way forward is nuclear - preferably Molten Salt as these can load-follow and virtually every commercial nuclear incident has been caused or exacerbated by water.
Here is a QUICK shoot down of it
What happens if Yellowstone blows? Keep in mind that our grid is supposed to work 100% of the time. That is ESP. true during emergencies. More importantly, if we are moving to EVs, then during emergencies we need that grid.
And yet, with just wind/solar, it would not work.
I would also be curious about the economics of this. I will bet again, that this will go up in price quite a bit. CA's has. So has Germany and Portugal.
OTOH, Sweden, Iceland, Costa Rica, all have CHEAP or relatively cheap energy. Why? Because they use a MIX.
We need to add in Geo-thermal and Nuclear. The idea of depending on JUST wind/Solar is about as stupid as you can be.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Tell me oh wise one -- if solar and wind were cheaper than coal and about to beat gas, then why does the Government need to subsidize its use? And you mention energy storage in passing - is this some trivial thing to figure out, an economical form of energy storage to handle all of the fluctuations with wind and solar?
And since when does the number of people employed in an industry somehow make that industry more economically attractive? There were many more farmers at the turn of last century - does that mean it was more efficient then?
Wow, you have really bought into the fantasy.
They don't have to use molten salt, although storage would be welcome in future projects. You're right, they're quite decent, they should be able to reach similar efficiencies as other types of heat engines. There are two major problems, though. First, radiative balance means there's a loss in the concentration process itself - you want the "hot end" of your heat engine cycle to be at hot as possible, but in case of radiative heating (as opposed to burning fuel), the heat transfer process goes both ways and the Stephan-Boltzmann law, by causing some losses, limits your range of efficiencies and operating temperatures. Having said that, efficiency is as much of a red herring for concentrated thermal solar power as it is for photovoltaics because the input is free (which is why solar panel efficiency debates are mostly irrelevant).
The second problem is more prominent in practice, but it has nothing to do with conversion efficiency as such: Due to its nature, concentrated solar power of any kind (not just thermal power but concentrating photovoltaics as well) is sensitive to clouds. Of course even flat photovoltaic panels decrease their output when it's cloudy but they do readily accept light from any side hitting their surface so they still generate at least some output. Concentrators, however, require a point source of light (the solar disk) and in cloudy conditions, their output diminishises way more sharply. This changes the ratio of capacity factors of CSP plants and PV plants in cloudier regions in favour of PV plants. For the same reason, CSP plants require mechanical tracking and are therefore not as maintenance-free as flat PV panels. That makes them generally more expensive to operate.
Ezekiel 23:20
Distribute the fried birds to the poorm
It's not a handwave and the technology exists. It just needs to come down in price, which is a thing it is doing already. It merely trails behind power generation itself, hitting similar milestones like fifteen years later, but it's not like we don't have an idea what will be used in the future. We absolutely do.
Ezekiel 23:20
Battery production prices are dropping like a rock, too. Most of these studies budget something like $500/kWh, but I would not be surprised in the least to see ~$100/kWh in commercially available products in a few years time. And that's a gamechanger for solar timeshifting.
It works double when you need the pack for something else, too (for example, as a buffer to EV fast charging). Your buffer also contains at least an hour's worth of its peak consumption (multiple hours when charges are spread out) just in order to have enough power to feed the vehicles it's charging. No need to "double pay" for the battery.
I'm of the opinion that individually, solar costs are prohibitive, for the amount of electricity we need. However, if residents formed an energy union (like a credit union), and transmission stations could be erected to ship surplus electricity to the areas in the dark, then it is possible that uninterrupted electricity could be made available everywhere at low cost. That is the theory.
When you bring in profit motive, private enterprise, and contracts that give long term favouritism to certain investors, the average homeowner is going to get screwed.
Hydro Quebec made a deal with NY state, Vermont, and Mass for electricity that is below 4 cents per kwhr. Electricity producers in Mass rejected the construction of transmission lines between Quebec and Mass. Electricity lines are not oil or gas.
So, Plattsburg residents pay around 4.2 cents per KWH, and so do other locations in the N.E USA.
Plattsburg council has put a stop to new bitcoin mining, as that raises the total city consumption to where the infrastructure cost goes out of reach.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You can't re-use methane infrastructure for hydrogen, and hydrogen causes metal embrittlement. Ammonia would be a better target for that.
Comparing MW*hr to MW*hr, wind and solar are the cheapest option out there right now to adding capacity to the grid. Yes storage and timing is an issue, but a well planned system could use solar/wind to supplement during peak demand. Right now base-load at EOL should shift to natural gas, and anything more than 5 years out should seriously signal a willingness to use 4th gen nuclear designs.
You also get regenerative braking essentially for free with an electric car. A reasonably effecient electric car with consume 15 kW*hrs per 100 km.
But for most people to charge their car from solar, you'd need a battery bank at home and lose a lot of efficiency there. If you have solar, you're better off sending excess to the grid an charging the car at night during off-peak hours. Right now if a household has more than one car, having one on them electric is not going to be too much of a pain to manage.
You can't re-use methane infrastructure for hydrogen
Strange that Germans are considering it, then, or even implementing it in pilot projects.
Ezekiel 23:20
For offshore wind or solar, no, nuclear is still cheaper on a levelized cost of energy. And that is just for generation, it does NOT include the cost of the backup needed for "always available" power, which nuclear pretty much guarantees. Solar should be dropped until its costs come down quite a bit, and wind should be used for intermittent things like desalinization to refill reservoirs and such - things where a 1 to 100 hour interruption is a non-issue.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Your source is two years old. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a... The cost of solar PV is rapidly decreasing, while advance nuclear projections are nearly static, and the only current nuclear construction project has gone way over budget. Right now storage is mostly infeasible, but long distance transmission lines are quite feasible and being built at a fast pace. If the sun isn't shinning where you are, the wind might be blowing strong two states over.
So yes, all solar and wind is silly given current tech and prices, but "a good bit more" is not, especially compared to currently approved nuclear designs.
Digging in, I can see they rate PV as lower. But something isn't adding up to me... Check table 1A. Nuclear has 40% more capital cost - sounds reasonable. It has about 75% more fixed operational costs. But check the next column - apparently PV has ZERO variable operational/maintenance costs? And the first column - capacity - has nuclear at 2.7 times that of solar. Yet somehow PV is cheaper? Something's not making sense at all with those numbers...
As far as transmission of power, the cost of transmission for solar is ~3.7 times that of nuclear, per that report. Again, something is pretty wonky there - they should be about the same (one major grid-tied point versus several major grid-tied points, for a grid with hundreds of thousands of existing tie-points).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It good your digging into the data. Look at the footnote 3 on that table. Costs are expressed based on energy delivered to the grid, not raw Watt ratings. And variable costs are costs based on variation in production. PV maintainance is basically the same no matter how much or little the sun shines. (clean once a weak, replace failed panels).
As for transmission cost, it includes upgrades and extensions to the gird, as utility-scale PV and wind are located far away from consumption centers. A lot of times I see wind farm locations being considered because a new line has been installed. At work we joke we're chasing that same damn power line across the country. It's still a cost though, but may or may not be internalized to the final wholesale price.