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."

Comments

use less energy

[js290]

If we start using a lot less energy. Using less is the only clean energy. Nicole Foss on renewables @AutomaticEarth http://bit.ly/2rzS5Pq

Re:use less energy

[Anonymous Coward]

The switch to CFLs and LEDs in the last decade has had a pretty significant impact on residential electric use. More efficient appliances coupled with hipsters never ironing their clothes has also contributed significantly.

Re:use less energy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the key... Use less energy and be aware of what you are using. Factories and other high-power use operations could evolve to work around the sun/power availability.

I have a $5000 solar electric system and live off-grid(far north east; 2 sunhr/day) with all the amenities(microwave,digital pressure cooking, washing machine, 24/7 router/computer/securitycameras, 16/7 40" TV, lights, dc fridge,etc)... Picking the right appliances and waiting for the sun to come out to do major work to reduce your storage needs at night/through cloudy week works very well.

Theres no good reason every house with their own private roof(and view of sky) couldn't be run off solar; and cheaper than grid alone.. off-grid or connected; The main problem is government regulation in the name of 'safety' which just drives costs up 4x higher than they could be.

Perhaps a new regulation that ended regulation for anything less than 32Volts say.. and approved grid-tied inverters wouldn't need 'approved people' to install.

Re:use less energy

[js290]

So you're the one writing those physics problems that assume spherical cows grazing in a vacuum?

I'm assuming we're using more energy that is necessary to survive & thrive. Technological salvation is a faith based proposition.

C. M. bruns will not like this

[Joe_Dragon]

C. M. bruns will not like this

Nuclear

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Nuclear

[Soft]

The simple fact is that nuclear is really the only energy technology that can reliably fill the growing need for energy.

Technically you're right, but only if we develop both reliable industrial-scale breeder reactors and the technology to extract seawater uranium on a large scale. There's just not enough U235 to generalize the use of nuclear energy on a worldwide scale, so we need breeders to burn U238, and get more of it than current reserves. Not sure about thorium reserves, but that would also require breeders. But indeed, with the aforementioned technologies we can sustain some growth, though not indefinitely. Further down the road, the only technology I'm sure would leave room for lots of growth is deuterium fusion; not deuterium-tritium (which would need to tap into lithium reserves to make tritium) but deuterium-deuterium, which is of course harder and much, much less certain than fission with breeder reactors.

What makes your point correct is that, although renewables can probably sustain us at current consumption rates, they won't allow for any significant growth. OTOH, any significant growth with any energy source will incur lots more waste heat, which would compound global warning. I don't have numbers for how waste heat would compare to current greenhouse-gas emissions in terms of warming the planet. But the numbers supporting my post can be found in Sustainable energy without the hot air, a bit dated but still a must-read.

Re:Nuclear

[careysub]

Fortunately on a continent with a third of a billion people and a $18 trillion dollar economy, we don't need to have just one source of electricity.

The levelized cost of nuclear power, cost over plant lifetime. is the most expensive form of electricity on the market. There is no dispute about it, any study will show this. So where ever possible you would Not want to use it, you would want to use one of the cheaper alternatives.

So you can have a distributed system of power plants of many different types, with the cheaper ones providing most of the aggregate demand.

And basic economics dictates that the cheaper power source will be deployed overwhelmingly.

Solar/wind do fine most of the time, you can push over 80% without much difficulty.

At worst then solar power deployment stalls at that point, with natural gas peaking plants taking up the slack.

But this is a problem some 30 years in the future - they provided 7.6% of U.S. electricity in 2017, it is going to be awhile before the >80% problem is encountered.

Ways will be found by then to push costs for gap-filling power below what is currently available, pushing the reasonable cost power gap closer to 100%. Perhaps we never get to 100% but keep use natural gas for that last little bit.

Getting nuclear power plants into the picture requires altering economic decision making - imposing carbon taxes to make nuclear more cost-effective (but this does not help against wind/solar, its long term competitors), or mandating construction by legal compulsion (or have the government build them). These last two are more-or-less what France did, and China is doing.

Re:Nuclear

[angel'o'sphere]

You obviously have no idea how much lithium we have on the planet.
Just saying ...

Re:Nuclear

[Qwertie]

More specifically, Fukushima and Chernobyl were "generation II" reactors, newer reactors are "generation III" (which achieve greater safety via expensive safety systems - hence the death of the dream of electricity "too cheap to meter").

Soon we will have "generation IV" reactors, and in this category the grassroots favorite is Molten Salt Reactors or MSRs. It's odd to call these things "generation IV" actually - it's like referring to the jet engine as a "generation IV propeller". MSRs, which are liquid-fueled and salt-cooled, are on a totally separate technology path from traditional reactors that are solid-fueled and water-cooled. They achieve higher safety and lower cost simultaneously through a philosophy of "don't manage risks - eliminate them."

The LFTR (liquid fuel thorium reactor) is the most well-known proposed MSR, and this has led to some confusion, because people sometimes think that the use of thorium is the main innovation, when in fact the molten salt is the main innovation. The main advantage of thorium is that the world supply is unlimited - we can never run out of it, making LFTR a fully sustainable technology. The advantages of molten salt reactors include high safety, lower cost, higher efficiency, high temperature (so they can use the same inexpensive turbines as fossil fuel plants), production of waste heat (which can be combined with desalination or negative carbon emission technology), ability to burn existing nuclear waste as fuel, and better load-following ability.

Re:Nuclear

[AmiMoJo]

In a few decades even the US will have a vast fleet of battery electric vehicles, and I expect vehicle-to-grid will become a popular feature due to being able to store solar power and get some feed in tariffs.

Re:Nuclear

[Gavagai80]

We should've invested much more heavily in nuclear 50 years ago all around the world, and then we wouldn't be in the climate bind we're in today. But since this is today, frankly nuclear is an irrational investment today. That's partly because of the insane legal hoops nuclear plants have to clear which make it take decades to build a plant, but even that is partly due to their centralized giant-project nature. Wind and solar work at any scale, which makes it a lot easier to get them built.

the growing need for energy

It's important to note that the need for energy in the USA is -- for the first time since the invention of electricity -- no longer growing. That's one of the problems for nuclear, a nuclear plant has to replace a huge chunk of the local energy market at once whereas wind and solar can be added gradually as previous sources are retired.

Re:Nuclear

[Gavagai80]

It's easy for something to be cheap when it's still on the drawing board. The space shuttle was going to drastically reduce the cost of space flight, too, until it actually flew. Hopefully it all works out with generation IV, but we can't assume and plan on that.

Re:Nuclear

[LynnwoodRooster]

The levelized cost of nuclear power, cost over plant lifetime. is the most expensive form of electricity on the market. There is no dispute about it, any study will show this.

This page which references the EIA's numbers, says you're wrong.

Re:Nuclear

[thegarbz]

which achieve greater safety via expensive safety systems

They do nothing of the sort. The safety systems in GenIII reactors are effectively off the shelf. Chemical plants install them by the dozen all the time. What becomes expensive is the regulatory overhead imposed on the project.

My own anecdote installing a Triconex system in a power plant in Spain was that by the time we finished that god forsaken 6 year long project we got a lifecycle notice from the vendor saying the system is soon to be obsolete. I literally just finished installing such a system in a nuclear plant only to move to the very next project at a hydrogencyanide plant and pull out an identical model and age system in the form of an obsolescence upgrade project. (That took 2 months by the way).

I never want anything to do with the nuclear industry again. On the upside the billable hours were huge. We never got anything done but boy did we get paid for it.

Re:Nuclear

[CrimsonAvenger]

Since "highly radioactive" is pretty much synonymous with "short half-life", you're not actually going to see "highly radioatctive for a couple millenia or even longer" in the Real World (tm)....

Re:Nuclear

[Trailer Trash]

The levelized cost of nuclear power, cost over plant lifetime. is the most expensive form of electricity on the market.

Exactly right!*

* If you add in every single externality for nuclear while ignoring every single externality for all other power generation technologies.

Re:Nuclear

[epine]

The space shuttle was going to drastically reduce the cost of space flight, too, until it actually flew.

Oh, come on. Nobody serious ever believed that. I was there where the sparkly unicorn farts were still fresh on the air.

Generation IV nuclear cycles would certainly have extremely costly teething problems, but little I've seen there makes me roll my eyes like the space shuttle propaganda once did.

Nothing defies economic common sense quite like sending human beings into outer space (times ten if you expect to retrieve them again, in working condition).

What actually happens is that we use the romance factor of the space program to organize damn hard things to do, simply because they are damn hard—and deeply embedded in the mil-space sector (which always adds a few more psi to national penis size, no matter what about the economic fallout).

Long ago the nuclear romance turned into an acrimonious divorce. Nothing nuclear will ever get financed on a giant romantic bag of unicorn farts.

The risk profiles have nothing in common.

Electricity is only a small part of the problem

[Soft]

That study is quite interesting. However, if you account for the global energy consumption, especially in transportation, heating, manufacturing, etc., electricity is only a fraction of the required energy. This may, I'd even say must, change in an electric-car future; but this will increase a lot the electricity demand.

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.

Re:Electricity is only a small part of the problem

[whoever57]

Any analysis that is more than a couple of years old is very likely to be wrong.

The cost of renewable energy has dropped significantly faster than predictions made just a few years ago. In the past 12 months, most, if not all bids for installation of renewable power have not required any subsidies.

A trial offshore floating wind power generation system recently installed off the British Isles is producing more electricity than anticipated, which translates into lower cost of energy. Because it is floating and not on the sea bed, this type of system can be installed in far more locations than traditional offshore wind power generators.

12 hours of storage is not feasible

[atomicalgebra]

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.

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[DogDude]

Yeah, lots of batteries and wires would be expensive, but certainly not "impossible". We can send people to other planets. We can build lots of wires and batteries. It is, quite literally, not rocket science. It's just a matter of willpower. Unfortunately, people are incredibly short-sighted, and incredibly selfish.

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[El_Muerte_TDS]

> We can send people to other planets.

We haven't done such a thing yet.

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[DamnOregonian]

No, we haven't... But you'd have to be pretty ignorant to argue that we couldn't, I think.

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[Barsteward]

the beauty of renewables is that they don't need refuelling. New tech is more expensive initially but thats is capital expenditure and wasteful expense in constantly buying fuel, and the renewable output is now cheaper than coal and catching upto gas. To follow your scare scenario, you'd better close all the coal stations now as they are killing off large sections of the poorest with expense and the added killer pollution. Business are now beginning to invest in their own solar as it makes sense.
try following a site like cleantechnica.com or a video channel called fullychargedshow - it'll expand your knowledge of renewables and their costs/benefits

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[BlueStrat]

the beauty of renewables is that they don't need refuelling. New tech is more expensive initially but thats is capital expenditure and wasteful expense in constantly buying fuel, and the renewable output is now cheaper than coal and catching upto gas. To follow your scare scenario, you'd better close all the coal stations now as they are killing off large sections of the poorest with expense and the added killer pollution. Business are now beginning to invest in their own solar as it makes sense.
try following a site like cleantechnica.com or a video channel called fullychargedshow - it'll expand your knowledge of renewables and their costs/benefits

I've read what they had to say and I am unconvinced of their arguments.

I am especially unconvinced that there is a climate "crisis" on the horizon that would .lend particular urgency to renewables such that they should be pushed ahead before they are cost effective. Global temperatures have not significantly risen over the past nearly 2 decades.

Forcing adoption before they are cost effective in my view is actually counter-productive. Guess what happens when electricity and heating fuel prices get too high? Poor people will use kerosene heaters, wood-burning traditional fireplaces that exist in many homes, or even just plain burn-barrels and other more-polluting but cheaper methods to survive.

Many who push renewables do not seem concerned about the effect of higher energy prices upon the poor. They appear to hold similar attitudes as the Chinese do in that the loss of life among the poor is not of great concern as there are always more poor, just as there are always more Chinese. Not surprising, as many hold collectivist views on society and government similar to the Chinese.

Strat

Re:12 hours of storage is not feasible

[Barsteward]

"I am especially unconvinced that there is a climate "crisis" on the horizon that would .lend particular urgency to renewables such that they should be pushed ahead before they are cost effective." What is "on the horizon" in your eyes? Tomorrow, next year, next decade? As far as i'm concerned the sooner renewables are in place the less chance of the problem getting any worse for later generations. How do you make any cost effective if you do not start to produce it and put it in place and allow more innovation? Remember how expensive mobile phones (and the lack of features compared to today) were when they were introduced?
Repeating "to not seem concerned about the effect of higher energy prices upon the poor. " does not make it true, i know that with my electricity provider i can choose to buy from 100% renewable, a mix or non-renewable sources. The pollution from fossil fuels kills lots of people or creates a lot of respiratory problems for people in those areas of high pollution output, this is an expense to the people i.e. medical bills. Renewables are a one off capital expense with some maintenance and no fuel to run it, fossil fuels also has some capital expense but has enormous amount of recurring expense of transporting fuel and burning it and polluting the air with it and maintenance.

Lossless Transmission Lines

[aaarrrgggh]

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?

Re:Lossless Transmission Lines

[careysub]

There are 800 KV DC transmission lines being built in Europe and Asia that have losses of 3% per 1000 km. Very modest excess production capability can compensate for this, a mere 10% for a 3250 km run (far enough to take southwest solar energy to New England).

Re:Lossless Transmission Lines

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you can shift energy across the country for free it gets better than if you're "stuck" on an island and totally responsible for your own local conditions.

The superconducting line they put in across New Jersey cools itself the whole way and the cooling costs less than the resistive losses would have otherwise. But those economics are only valid for the highest density areas, as least provably. Running that same line across Nebraska may not be cost effective at all.

Re:Lossless Transmission Lines

[aaarrrgggh]

Plus a minimum of 3% at each end for inverting and rectifying. My point is that you need to include it in how you evaluate a system because you don’t have infinite lossless transmission capacity. Wind turbines in Wyoming would be hard pressed to provide all the power for the Northeast for two days in a storm.

I don’t dispute the findings in concept— just wish that they could have accounted for one of the major holes... or that I could see the information myself to understand the impact.

Re:Na na na, I can't hear you...

[PopeRatzo]

But seriously, the manufacture of solar collectors is not exactly environmentally friendly...

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.

Nuclear is done.

[Brannon]

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.

Re:Nuclear is done.

[bill_mcgonigle]

You just completely ignored the GP's point that "we're" stuck on old nuclear and wouldn't use that technology today but describing all the problems with old nuclear.

Try here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Re:Nuclear is done.

[AmiMoJo]

New nuclear isn't much better. The old stuff was supposed to be meltdown-proof and totally safe. And even if we believe the new claims, the really safe and low waste reactors are all theoretical at this point. Thorium? Get back to us when you have spent several billion building and proving one without any major issues, and come up with a way to dismantle it at reasonable cost.

Re:Nuclear is done.

[hey!]

The problem with Gen III and later reactors isn't confidence in their safety. The problem is that fracking has made new reactors economically unattractive. Natural gas is dirt cheap here in the US -- $3.50 per million BTUs. A natural gas plant can be constructed at 1/10 the cost per kw of capacity of a nuclear plant, and in a fraction of the time.

The most recent US nuclear projects started back in 2008, before fracking really took off. Those projects actually received construction green lights from the NRC after Fukushima, and the Obama administration even secured them billions of dollars of federal loan guarantees.

So the problem isn't government hostility to nuclear power, it's private sector reluctance to tie up billions of dollars in a nuclear plant that won't earn them a dime back for twelve years or more when they can have a gas plant up in less than half that time.

The only way nuclear plants will get built in the US is with federal government support.

We could do this in 5 or 10 years

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:We could do this in 5 or 10 years

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's just frustrating, since we could tell OPEC to sod off if we'd just spend the money on our infrastructure.

a) the USG is a member of OPEC
b) the oil-based economy enriches some of the biggest political donors
c) the oil wars benefit the power of the USG, the riches of the MIC (also huge political donors), and provide cover for petrodollar hegemony.
d) the oil wars benefit the projection of US power and excite those who want a world dominated by the US War Machine
e) the financiers make mint on all those wars and war spending and are some of the biggest political donors
f) most Americans are content to let it all happen as long as they have reality TV and the grocery store shelves have product.

After fixing those we should just spend our money on our infrastructure. Without fixing those they'll never allow it. There's a reason the Clinton Administration shut down the IFR program - we'd be facing vast amounts of cheap and clean energy right about now if the program had gone forward to commercialization, just by cleaning up the existing nuclear waste that already needs dealing with. But Al Gore makes money by pushing carbon taxes, not by enjoying a post-modern high-tech society.

We need a societal evolution before we can get the technological one. If Americans can ever throw off their shackles of domination, we'd stand a very good chance of progress.

Re: We could do this in 5 or 10 years

[LynnwoodRooster]

Better check your own pipes, because apparently (and to my surprise as well), the US is the number 1 producer of oil, pumping nearly 15 MM barrels per day.

Re:We could do this in 5 or 10 years

[K. S. Kyosuke]

$5 trillion would buy you about 4000 GW of solar power capacity today. Much more than that in the future, in fact. Depending on the place and type of installation, this would provide roughly between 400 and 1200 GW of average generation. The US apparently uses about 400 GW on average. So, what was the problem again?

Re:I'll see it when I believe it.

[PopeRatzo]

Matt Ridley quoted at Coyote Blog here [coyoteblog.com]:

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.

Re:Diversity of energy sources is more important

[whoever57]

Bullshit fossil fuel industry talking points...

The USA has plenty of real estate that can be used for solar and the number of birds killed by wind turbines has always been vastly over estimated and a tiny fraction of the kills by domestic cats. Finally, the latest, larger, turbines kill even fewer birds per kWh generated.

No transmission losses

[Michael Woodhams]

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.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[PopeRatzo]

You are a fucking monster [latimes.com].

For those of you who aren't following along, the article SuperKendall links to talks about how the giant sollar thermal collection plant in California kills 6000 birds a year.

What it doesn't tell you is that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that a minimum of 10 BILLION birds breed in the United States every year and that as many as 20 BILLION may be in the country during the fall migratory season. It also doesn't tell you that during the 2016-2017 hunting season, Texas hunters killed over 24 MILLION birds for sport. And they do this every goddamn year.

To summarize, 6000 birds die at a power station and it's the fucking bird apocalypse, but 24 MILLION birds get blown all to shit by Texas hunters and it's a manly and culturally significant ritual. I wonder what all that birdshot does to the lead levels in Texas surface water.

Oh, here's the statistics from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, in case you want to see for yourself what goes on in that god-forsaken state.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/publica...

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[zieroh]

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 you didn't actually refute PopeRatzo's statement. Let me repeat it, since you seem to have misread it the first time:

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

Can you tell us, SuperKendall, exactly what the hazardous materials involved are?

Re:I'll see it when I believe it.

[dprimary]

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.

Re:You dont need batteries

[zieroh]

It is unlikely will be able to double our pumped hydro storage let alone increase it ~30 times for 12 hours of storage.

Why? And if not pumped hydro, why not increases in any (or all) of the other alternatives? What's the actual limiting factor?

I'll tell you what the limiting factor is: it's your imagination.

People right here on Slashdot have been saying for years that electric cars would never achieve enough range to be marketable, and yet here we are in 2018 with people driving around in them all over the world, and almost every manufacturer planning new electric models. The slashdot pessimists were just flat-out wrong. Shocking.

If you've learned nothing else from slashdot, it's that the naysayers here are largely unimaginative dolts.

Re:Diversity of energy sources is more important

[zieroh]

and some consider both to be unsightly.

More unsightly than a coal plant? More unsightly than a mountain in Kentucky that's been leveled, ground up, and re-deposited on the same spot as a giant pile of gravel? More unsightly than a nuclear plant on a river? (there are lots of them)

I call BS. If "unsightly" is really the objection to renewable energy, I think I would like to kindly invite you to go fuck yourself.

Re:Everything is possible!

[thinkwaitfast]

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/

Re:Everything is possible!

[Narcocide]

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.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[Narcocide]

I wonder what all that birdshot does to the lead levels in Texas surface water.

More people should be asking this question. And not just about Texas, either.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[PopeRatzo]

At least they eat their birds which brings down the 10 billion chickens that die every year number.

I can guarantee that 1) Not all birds shot in Texas are eaten (at least not by humans). Other non-drunk predators probably eat half of them off the ground and get to swallow all that lead shot which adds to the circle of death. Oh, and those are just the ones taken legally. There are tens of thousands of poachers in Texas. They go out there and believe it's their god-give right to blast anything that moves with the most inappropriate firearm imaginable. I knew someone who shot turkeys with a fucking AR-15. Just empty his clip, drink a few cans of Shiner Bock and load up another 30 round clip. Rinse and repeat. He was otherwise a decent human being. He took me fishing off Baytown and Galveston. Oh, and 2) there are a lot more birds killed than Parks & Wildlife have in their reports, because the reports are on the honor system, and a lot of the bird holocaust takes place on private lands, well away from rangers.. Figure all together there are at least 30 million birds massacred every year in Texas all together. Since there are only 28 million people in the whole state, there are way too many people there who have never tasted a game bird for all those birds to have been eaten.

Re:Everything is possible!

[mikael]

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.

Re:I'll see it when I believe it.

[shilly]

Matt Ridley presided over the downfall of Northern Rock. His energy would be better spent reimbursing the people who were ruined by that disaster.

Re:Diversity of energy sources is more important

[DamnOregonian]

We've actually got a nuclear plant on a river about 100 miles south of me. I think it looks... cool as hell. I don't find anything unsightly about it. To each their own, I guess

Re:Everything is possible!

[Freischutz]

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.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[Joce640k]

I wonder what all that birdshot does to the lead levels in Texas surface water.

That's already been answered: It makes them want to go out and shoot things.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[Barsteward]

"The mining processes involved for the materials necessary are incredibly environmentally unfriendly." -what mining is environmentally friendly? I hope you didn;t get fooled by the photos going around the internet of copper mining that was labelled as lithium mining.

Re:Everything is possible!

[LynnwoodRooster]

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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.)

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Don't forget the one billion killed by cats, collisions with rise buildings, and power transmission and distribution lines.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Rei]

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.

Re:Land use problems, as well as resource issues

[angel'o'sphere]

Why would there be no plan for recycling perfectly fine silicon sources like old panel?
Only an idiot would put them on a land fill. On top of that they contain useful metals ...
Solar you build mostly on existing buildings, because that is also the place the power gets consumed.
Wind plants you build offshore, and even on land they don't use much land, you simply put them on farms and farm around them, like everyone else does.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Rei]

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.

Re:How many?

[Stephan Schulz]

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.

Musk claimed it needed 100 miles times 100 miles for solar alone (10000 square miles), which is about the size of Massachusetts. See this article and the accompanying image. Massachusetts is the 7th-smallest US-State. The average US state is about 7.5 times larger. Or, in other terms, it's 0.2% of the total US land area. With the US Interstate Highway System having about 50000 miles, it would be a 200 m strip to the left and right of every interstate highway.

It's not trivial, but a) it not going to be solar alone, and b) other energy forms also have significant land use, from mountaintop removal to roads for fuel shipment.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[Rei]

Just need to destroy the Salar of Atacama in Chile for your lithium!

Lithium mines on salars usually take up a few/several percent of the surface area. And complex life actually on the salars themselves generally ranges from "minimal" to "none"; where present at all, most complex life is usually confined to the periphery.

Pump the dirty water

The salt water. The same salts that form the salars. Salars that in many cases flood annually, erasing the evaporation ponds and causing them to have to be rebuilt (for example, the largest lithium salar in the world, Salar de Uyuni is like this). Remember that we're talking about salt. Water soluble.

ship it across the ocean on big freighters

There's about 7kg of lithium in a typical Tesla battery pack, or about 35kg of carbonate. Even jumping into a future with 500k Model 3s produced per year and 700k Model Ys and the equivalent of 300k "other", that's 52,5 kT of carbonate per year. A large bulk carrier can carry over 80 kT in a single trip.

Lithium mining from salars is one of the least environmentally destructive forms of "mining" you can have, only proportionally small amounts are needed, and you make yourself look desperate to find a talking point when you act like it's the greatest scourge of mankind. Ever looked into the sort of mines that produce the alloying agents used in the steel for engines, or the platinum used in spark plugs and pollution control systems, mined at low-PPM/high-PPB quantities with significant overburden? Just ignoring what you're blasting out the tailpipe every time you drive, dumping on average the car's entire mass worth of fuel into combustion products into everyone's air to breathe.

Re:Math is not just Math

[thegarbz]

It's just that no society has ever built anything that big before in the entire history of the planet.

A quick look at the earth from google maps will show that we have built many such things, not only flat covering surface area but also with multiple layers of vertical structure beneath.

We just haven't built it as a single project in one place. You could put solar panels on every roof in America for less than the cost of the annual military budget. We don't have the construction capability to do so at this stage, but the point is don't be afraid to think big. A lot of problems are easily surmountable when broken down.

Re:Everything is possible!

[burtosis]

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.

We Have to Be Careful...

[rally2xs]

...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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Rei]

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.

False equivalency

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Not This Study

[Mr D from 63]

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.

Yes, the study is does not seem to adequately depict reallity, such as the massive transmission buldiout required if such a plan were even feasible. It also glosses over the true meaning of "150%" of total US energy. This would be 150% annual production, not capacity, so given an averge 35% capacity factor of wind, and 20% capacity factor of solar, we would actually require about 450% of us rated capacity. That not only would be extremely cost prohibitive up front, but the amount of curtailment would be absolutely huge and costly as well.

Even the 90% case would have huge curtailments, as curtailments get pretty significant after 30%. Why no talk of the cost of curtailment folks? And if anyone ever sat down and calculated the cost of 12 hour of storage for the entire US demand, they'd quickly realize how unrealistic it is. Remember, with storage you pay for your power twice, once for generating the power, and again for storing it.

Maybe a study where there is at least one guy that actually worked at a utility or power plant or even something close would be a bit more practical.

No, not toxic

[XXongo]

But seriously, the manufacture of solar collectors is not exactly environmentally friendly...

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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[turp182]

Let's not forget about cats.

Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the continental U.S. each year.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Re:Everything is possible!

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Rob Y.]

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...

Re: Everything is possible!

[reanjr]

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.

Re: Everything is possible!

[reanjr]

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.

More bad logic

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[rgbatduke]

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.

Re:Everything is possible!

[Ol Olsoc]

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

Re:Everything is possible!

[Guy Smiley]

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).

Re:Do you know what thermal plants do to birds

[Rei]

That pdf is completely riddled with errors on every page, and most of its links are either dead, obsolete, or both. And when you can find the links, they're usually riddled with errors. For example, in their attempts to talk up a lithium "water crisis", they link to "DClithiumfullreportenglish.pdf", but the link is dead. However, you can find it scattered around elsewhere, such as here. Here's what it says on the subject:

One major problem that lithium development could cause is a major water crisis. The region already suffers from a serious water shortage, impacting quinoa farmers, llama herders, the region’s vital tourism industry, and drinking water sources. While Bolivian officials contend that the lithium project’s water requirements will be minimal, their estimates are based on very limited and incomplete information.

This is, of course, an absurdity (no references, of course!). The water lithium is produced from is not freshwater. It's brine. You don't dump brine on quinua or give it to llamas and people to drink. Furthermore, there are no farmers, herders, and tourism lodgings in the middle of salars. It's salt. You can't grow crops and graze animals on salt.

This pdf is from "Rebecca Hollender and Jim Shultz, May 2010". So first off, 8 years old. Secondly, who are these world-renowned mining experts? This appears to be her. Samples of her work:

"A Politics of the Commons or Commoning the Political Distinct Possibilities for Post Capitalist Transformation"
"Prescription for Failure: Examining the Drug Policy and Development Nexus for Shaping the UNGASS 2016 Discussion"
"Northern Fixes and Southern Realities: Three Climate Policy Debate Primers, Primer Three: Climate Finance and Bolivia"

Etc. Clearly a mining expert! Well, what about Jim? This appears to be him:

I was raised in Whittier California, President Richard Nixon’s hometown, while he was President, which has a lot to do with how I became a political activist at an early age. After college at UC Berkeley I spent two decades deeply involved in California politics, as staff to the California Legislature, and as an advocate with Common Cause and Consumers Union (and in the middle took a detour to Harvard to earn a master’s degree). In 1991 my wife Lynn and I spent our first year of marriage as volunteers in an orphanage in Cochabamba and came home with a surprise daughter (today I am a father of three and soon to be a grandfather). In 1998 we returned to Bolivia for what was supposed to be a year and have stayed for almost twenty. As executive director of the Democracy Center for 25 years, it has been my privilege to work with citizen activists on five continents, from indigenous communities in Bolivia to senior leaders in the United Nations. I’ve also written three books, many articles and all along the way have done my level best to make sure David beats Goliath as often as possible. I publish on Medium, and I Tweet

You know, the author of such articles about intricate mining details such as "Feeling ‘the Bern,’ Before Bernie Sanders and After" and "When Anti-Immigrant Politics Came Back to Haunt the Republican Party"