Researchers propose ways to avoid blackouts with renewable energy (2018)
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...
"The main purpose of this study is to explore whether low-cost mixes using 100% WWS can match energy demand with intermittent supply, not to prescribe the only possible future energy mix in each region. Indeed, many different future scenarios can be constructed depending on the objective. The objective here is to determine whether a 100% WWS system, which we believe maximizes air quality and climate change benefits while minimizing catastrophic risk relative to systems using other technologies, can deliver energy reliably at a reasonable business cost worldwide."
So either way, if their modeling is good, it is still a useful assessment of options.
This got called a "modeling error", which among other things made him mad enough to sue for libel.
Well, quality of legal decisions aside, one of the main points of the new paper is that it's "suggesting several different solutions for stabilizing energy produced with 100 percent clean, renewable sources, including solutions with no added hydropower turbines and no storage in water, ice or rocks."
What the talk actually claims is that nuclear is cheaper than renewables + short term storage (batteries, for example) for 100% CO2-free power. Long term storage, like hydrogen, changes this greatly, as the cost of the short term storage solution is dominated by foolishly using batteries for seasonal load leveling/very rare prolonged outages. It's fascinating to watch the guy in the talk dance around this.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, I want to say that this research is incredibly misleading, particularly when it is presented as 'ways to avoid blackouts'.
What they present is an 'adequacy' model. That means, essentially running an accounting simulation of energy in and energy out. It is what power system engineers refer to as 'copper plate' model, in that it replaces the entire transmission and distribution network with a hypothetical infinite conductor where everything connects to everything else. Such a copper plate would never have a 'blackout' as long as Energy In = Energy Out.
Therein lies the bullshit. Blackouts don't occur just because Energy In =/= Energy out. They are incredibly complicated and nuanced, and often result from multiple minor events cascading into something larger [0].
You need, at a minimum, a steady-state power flow simulation to be able to analyse power system security. Particularly when assessing low inertia power systems (such as the systems proposed in this paper). The fact that the word inertia is not mentioned in a paper advocating high-penetration of wind and solar is a massive red flag (I'm talking, Moroccan palace style large).
I laughed out loud when I read "LOADMATCH runs quickly (e.g., ~2.6 min for a 5-year, 5.3 milliontime-step, simulation on a single Nehalem 5580 3.2 GHz processor)" knowing that it takes around that time to simulate a load flow on the pan-european grid, or around that long to do a basic security assessment on a single country's grid.
I worry that policy makers will be 'informed' by this research and will unknowingly sweep a lot of complexity under the rug until blackouts become more common.
[0] - https://www.entsoe.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/_library/publica...
My experience tells me that reducing consumption from the average American amounts by 50% to 90% is hard for the first 5% because you have to learn new ways of doing things, but then improves quality of life for the next 45% to 85%.
A negligible fraction of Americans have looked past that first 5%, let alone acted on it, but those who have keep finding more ways to improve their lives by reducing more.
I wake up earlier: walk or jog twice a day. It's quite relaxing if you have a park nearby, you breath better air, eat less, sleep better, and do more.
comical bonus point: saving the gym membership money.
We should invent an hybrid of modern and vintage. Go back to a lot of crafting (because it is ultra satisfying for your body and mind to have such skills), just no to primitivetechnology levels (not that I have anything against it personally). Keep a bit of modern but do more ourselves and in groups.
Maybe it’s the main one ?
As ever you need highly cohesive units, loosely coupled if you want them to be responsive to change.
Energy has been harvested by plants for millions of years before nation states were a thing. It is nothing like currency, which requires advanced political and technological development to exist as we have it today as a form of electronic credit. The only link at all is we can agree that both energy and currency have measurable value.
The only reason political authorities get involved in energy is to secure it for their own people, or for Safety/Environmental reasons. How energy gets used is a somewhat political question - but only in the sense that literally everything humans do is a somewhat political question. I could harvest and use energy for myself with very little state involvement, for example.
It's just the current amount of storage is tiny compared to the need. California has had 15 GW ramps before to give you the scale of what you'd need for only a grid with renewables and storage and technically you need much more than that.
Uncertainty is one of the big topics in this area. Load forecast is very accurate, but wind and solar is difficult to get right in the day out timeline.
"Key elements of the solution applicable to different cases are to (1) produce heat directly from solar and geothermal heat resources and from electricity; (2) store electricity as heat after current electricity demand is satisfied and electricity storage is full; (3) if thermal energy storage is used, store excess heat in water and underground rocks when current heat demand is satisfied; (4) if thermal energy storage is used, produce cold directly from electricity and store excess cold in water and ice; (5) produce hydrogen from excess electricity after all electricity and heat storage are full, and store excess hydrogen; (6) store excess CSP electricity in a phase-change material and remaining excess electricity either in pumped-hydro storage, as heat in underground rocks, or as hydrogen; (7) increase the maximum discharge rates of CSP, the number of batteries, or the maximum discharge rate of hydropower (while keeping its annual energy production constant) to help meet peaks in demand; (8) use heat pumps for cold and low-temperature heat loads wherever possible; and (9) use demand response for some loads to reduce peaks in load."