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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."
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.
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.
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.
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).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
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...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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
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..."
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.
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.
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.