The world can transition to 100% clean, renewable energy
thesolutionsproject.org
thesolutionsproject.org
Currently, there just isn't an economic need to switch off fossil fuels. The US has an enormous supply of coal. Combine that with fracking oil, and it'll be a long time before we really need other energy sources. (I'm of course sidelining environmental concerns. It's economics that drive energy.)
...But once fossil fuels do finally run out in years and years and we have to finally get serious, we'll choose the obvious solution: one that's compact, location/weather independent, and sufficiently plentiful.
That's if you don't consider externalities - most importantly, CO2 levels and climate change.
I get that we can improve our energy options, but you need that base load covered, and that is either nuclear or fossil fuels at the moment.
I've seen hybrid systems sold to homeowners where solar power is used to charge a battery, and surplus beyond that is used for heating hot water storage. They're more of less completly independent from the grid, both for power and heat.
A global power network.
Peak loads would balance themselves approximately with the lack of need of energy at the opposite side of the earth.
Also, wind and solar energy generation would vary much less on a global scale.
Of course, there are calculations as to why this currently ineffective (AFAIK mainly loss of energy through transmission) but who knows when the next superconductor appears that could make it feasible.
Economically, it shouldn't cost much more than an internet.
There are examples of "fixed loss" systems where your loss is independent of distance, one of those is to use your excess power to make a long chain hydrocarbon and then transport the hydrocarbon by supertanker and then burn it to convert it back into electricity. You could also simply charge giant battery ships which would then head over to the destination and discharge (this is another electricity -> chemical ... chemical -> electricity transaction)
[1] I realize that is imprecise, the definition I'm using is put a megawatt of electrical power "in" (power cables) in Paris and pull a megawatt "out" of the other end in New York.
There was a really clever German idea to have giant concrete cylinders that sat on top of a hydraulic fluid (could be water, could be something else) and excess energy would pump in fluid, raising the cylinder, and then excess energy draw would drain fluid through a generator. It has the advantage that it can be built locally without the need for a big height difference. But you need a lot of them for serious base load compensation.
[1] http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch...
This reminds me of being on a tour in an old salt mill in Italy and at one point the guide asking some people where they are from. The answers were: Spain, France and then "Boston". The guide asked again and then he said, because obviously that clarifies it: "Boston, Mass".
US: 300 million people, 3.8 million sq miles
EU: 500 million people, 3.9 million sq miles
1. Most of the mentioned energy sources are not provide stable baseline (e.g. solar, wind). We will need significant amount of storage which is omitted.
2. Some sources doesn't exist yet at any significant scale (wave devices, tidal turbine). It may be just more economical to have more solar or wind thanks to scale effect.
So if you have a regular peak demand of 10GW, you provision for 12Gw of predicted continuous production, then simply turn off the portion of production that is not required.
This is not possible with steam or gas turbines because they have a huge lead and lag time to cope with while wind and solar are for all intents and purposes instantly switchable.
No storage required.
One use for storage storage is when 1kWh of storage becomes cheaper than an extra kW of production required to meet that 1hr peak. Since wind power is around 7¢/kWh at the moment, there is not much chance of this happening any time soon.
A more likely use for storage is to remove dependency on fragile interconnects. Remote towns can use batteries today to help insulate the residents from temorary loss of power due to ice, wind, fire, etc damaging transmission lines and equipment.
The biggest pumped storage plant in the world is in the US, and it can generate 3GW at peak. Peak demand for the California ISO is about 40GW. California would need maybe ten plants of that size. A pumped storage plant requires two reservoirs with a big height difference, and California has lots of unused mountains. It doesn't use much water once filled up; the same water is pumped up and down.
Yes, at 5-10% of its present population and with a sudden, overwhelming and universal attack of wisdom about the problems caused by uncontrolled population growth. Otherwise, this is more eco-fantasy that ignores the obstacle produced by ... too many people.