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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

No it doesn't.

It might be part of the solution, but the repeated talk about how we need some magical breakthrough before we can continue with electrification is just wrong.

The most important part, is to burn less fossil fuels, and we have lots of ways to do that, and we should do whichever is cheapest and easiest first.

Long duration storage comes after:

- put a price on carbon and other pollution

- efficiency/insulation

- electrify everything

- build more renewables

- vary existing tech to complement renewables (e.g. hydro, waste to energy)

- vary loads to absorb renewables when they are available

- build short term storage to shift energy (EVs and related battery tech)

- ship green ammonia/hydrogen around the world from places like chile.

And then there's a place for long term storage (which is a direct competitor to green hydrogren production and may never make sense compared with doing more of that)

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Yes, it does, if you want to get to a 100% decarbonized grid with renewables most economically, and particularly if you want solar to be a substantial component of energy supply at high latitude. Yes, other things come first, but storage has to be in there. Synthesis of chemical fuels at lower latitude for use at high latitude is effectively long term storage, since once one has paid to cost of making those fuels, storing them is cheap and adds robustness.

That's a pretty big if. Most people would be ecstatic if the grid was 99% decarbonized, and 99% decarbonized is probably an order of magnitude easier than 100% decarbonized. Unless you're some place like British Columbia with massive hydro reserves.

You can try for yourself at https://model.energy/

If you add "Dispatchable 1", which is gas, and give it zero cost, but then put a limit on the total CO2 emission, you can get the optimal setup to get X% (X < 100) of a synthetic baseload source from wind/solar/batteries/hydrogen. Then take out hydrogen and look at the cost difference.

https://model.energy/#background-and-warnings

The first 4 items are relevant here:

> Electricity systems with zero direct CO2 emissions can be built more cheaply by using additional technology options. The examples here are simply a toy model to put an upper bound on the costs for a very simple setup. Additional generation technologies which may reduce costs include using existing hydroelectric generators, biomass from sustainable resources (such as waste and agricultural/forestry residues), offshore wind, concentrating solar thermal, geothermal, ocean energy, nuclear and fossil/biomass plants with CCS. Two additional dispatchable technologies are provided under "advanced assumption settings". Additional storage technologies include redox flow batteries, compressed air energy storage, etc. Other options include allowing demand to adapt to renewable profiles (demand-side management).

> No import or export capacities with other regions are assumed, so each region must meet the baseload profile by itself. Existing and planned transmission grid connections between regions can reduce costs by up to 20% by smoothing wind over a continent-sized area (see e.g. this paper or this one).

> Including energy demand sectors other than electricity, like transport, heating and non-electric industrial demand can offer additional flexibility (e.g. load-shifting by battery electric vehicles and thermal storage for electrified heating), see e.g. this paper or this one.

> Costs here are for completely decarbonised electricity systems. Reaching lower levels of decarbonisation is much cheaper and doesn't necessarily require any storage at all. A non-zero carbon dioxide emission target and options for fossil-fuelled generators can be set under "advanced assumption settings".

I'm open to you showing me a more detailed model that comes to a different conclusion, but you will have to show me that model.

If you don't trust the warnings of the people who made the model, why do you trust their model?

They also made this nice interactive animation to demonstrate the impact of cross border flows:

https://viz.japangrid.researchvitae.com/pypsa-eur-animation/

What makes you think pfdietz doesn't trust the warnings of the people who made the model?

pfdietz said, long term storage is necessary if you want a 100% renewable grid, replying to me saying it's not necessary (though there's some potential confusion around whether responsive demand to make green hydrogen counts as long term storage or not).

Someone else said, that's a big if, since 99% renewable is probably much cheaper.

When they said you can try it yourself, I thought they were disagreeing with that point, which I, and the people who made the model, agree with.

(As another example, the current US strategy is to get to 95% low carbon electricity and then shift focus to electrifying more things, as that has a bigger impact on carbon at that point, and helps to absorb variability.)

Now, I'm not sure what point they were making.

The ironic thing here is that if you take that model, and play with it as I suggested, it would validate the earlier claim that long term storage is really just useful for the last percent or so. It's there to cover the "black swan" events when renewables are out for an extended period.

(Well, not quite, because it ignores seasonality of demand, and if that's out of sync with seasonality of supply then more long term storage might be useful.)

Sure, the model is wrong. All models are wrong, but some are useful.

So in the model, long term storage is only required for the last 1% or so. And the model makers mention a list of things, like interconnects and waste to energy that are not included in the model, and that would further reduce that need, so I feel the model supports my claim that long term storage isn't required, but I think you disagree.

One thing they didn't include in the model, but do mention is the electrification of other sectors, which would require a lot of green hydrogen to be produced. This increases the electricity generated, and also introduces a big modulatable load, which means more hydrogen would be 'stored' but less would need to be burned, which then makes it ambigous if that actually counts as storage, particularly as you could choose to burn it if necessary but then use it for other puproses, like fertilizer, if you didn't need it. I see green hydrogen as the main marketplace competitor to long term storage, so this distinction is important in my view.

But isn't the point that if you want to electrify more industry while eliminating thermal power generation then you will need massive energy storage to cover the gaps in real time energy supply from renewables..? If you rush and do what you are saying without finding an efficient way to store a surplus of energy then you will have blackouts come winter.

> If you rush and do what you are saying without finding an efficient way to store a surplus of energy then you will have blackouts come winter.

But this is only a problem while the economy is still in transition[1], once the transition has completed this will not be a problem.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Transition to what exactly? The link in your comment doesn't seem relevant.

To a carbon negative anti-racist economy that values LBGTIQ+ lives and the rights of birthing people.

I want to live in a positive society. "Anti-racist" "Carbon-negative" are both unattractive to me.

Without racism should be a property, not an identity. (I would go further: without bigotry). Ditto carbon.

Valuing lives is important. New ones. Black ones. Old ones. Gay ones. Etcetera. (All lives [will] matter [when ** lives matter])....

Are you joking?

Trolling, it appears; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046022

That is not trolling. It is having and expressing an opinion.

Poe's Law can make it hard to tell, but to me it looks like someone satirizing the extremes of anti-capitalist ideology. Surely there is someone somewhere who agrees that some LGTBTQI+ issue constitutes a real argument against grid-scale energy storage, but if they were the person who is commenting here, probably they would have tried to explain what the relationship is instead of just appending keyword salad.

What do you think now that you see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048756? Note that the paper they linked, which seems to be in earnest, doesn't mention trans rights.

Now they have been banned for trolling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049186

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