You cannot build a grid out of solar and wind alone.
The fact remains that the physics of a grid powered only by distributed non-dispatchable wind and solar resources simply does.not.work. full stop without massive investments in storage and transmission upgrades. The physics isn't even debatable - it's simple. You only have to look at the very limited transmission infrastructure that currently exists and understand the simple fact that the power grid is a zero sum game. Power in = Power out or very bad things happen that lead to power out = 0. Zero sum generation + aging transmission = not enough power where you need it, when you need it if you get rid of traditional baseload sources.
It's good to champion renewable generation, storage, and transmission upgrades. It's necessary infrastructure for the economic and actual health of our nation. It is not going to be inexpensive by any definition of the term. It's going to be monumentally expensive even if it's completely necessary.
a) Once it's done, you're pretty much self sufficient energy wise. Sure, you may need the raw materials from other countries to make panels, turbines and batteries. But once you've achieved a 100% renewable clean energy grid, you're getting a fairly decent lifespan out of everything so you're not going to be as subjected to the whims of the market like most of Europe is experiencing with gas. The market should generally be more stable.
b) Once your citizens have free energy, they have a massive chunk of disposable cash they were once spending energy. They will spend that or invest it: and both general spending and investing are taxed at higher rates than fuel spending (5% VAT on fuel spending in UK compared to 20% general VAT rate). Yes that is a massive loan for the government to put on the books, but they will probably get it back much quicker than expected.
If you give people an unlimited amount of free power they're going to use it to mine cryptocurrency in a massively wasteful and expensive way.
Once we have built the machinery to harness that energy, it does become pretty much free and we can use as much or as little of it as we like. The cost of maintaining the machinery will become ever cheaper due to the amount of power we can get for little to no effort. It becomes self sustaining.
There are literally ongoing efforts right now to replicate Asimov’s vision which was to create space based solar farms and transmitting the energy back down in radio waves to specific points. We could literally harness our entire planets energy use from just a few of these in strategic locations if it was done right:
https://www.getsunsights.com/will-the-concept-of-space-solar...
It turns out your ability to harness energy is kind of important. We're nowhere near that level of energy capture. We can't even handle transmitting solar from one corner of one smallish continent to the other, we're nowhere near the level of technology and infrastructure development you're talking about.
What arm of the USA government do you trust most to get this job done efficiently and fairly? What do you think will happen when you use "more than your share" of electricity for a month or two and your (undoubtedly centrally controlled) account is deemed unacceptable? Or is it your thought that providing electricity free will reduce consumption?
As for the second part, privately owned houses would get as much energy as the solar panels and battery on their property can provide. Additional power would come from the grid and would have to be paid for as normal. For people in apartments, presumably you have records of normal energy usage for every house and apartment, you could use those to work out the amount of solar panels needed to add to a solar farm or the equivalent for wind. The government pays for the installation of that and the citizen gets the energy generated for free. Additional energy they use is then paid for out of their own pocket.
So, we build storage and transmission. Storage cost is falling even faster than generation, and there are zero physics problems to be solved, just practical civil engineering.
The cost of this much civil engineering will be very large, but much smaller than e.g. for that much nukes, and we will pay it, because the only other choice is global collapse when the degraded biosphere becomes unable to sustain our population.
> Storage cost is falling even faster than generation,
> and there are zero physics problems to be solved,
> just practical civil engineering.
[1] https://cleanenergynews.ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/grid...
> Alchemy is not a solved problem
Ah, trolling. OK.
I'm seriously hoping that aluminium-chalcogen batteries [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04983-9] can be scaled and commercialized soon
Other exciting chemistries include molten antimony/calcium, zinc/bromine, and iron/air. The antimony/calcium one would never wear out or catch fire. Zinc/bromine is most compatible with current lead/acid battery tech. Iron/air is very, very cheap. None are very attractive for cars, so utilities will not be in competition with the car industry for access to batteries.
What form of grid/utility energy storage do you expect will dominate in 20 years?
I provided a reference to back up my assertion. Do you have any?
Everything comes down as manufacturing volume goes up.
We can make it -- in a fusion reactor :)
Remember they were replying to a claim that it would be "inexpensive"
At issue is how this cost compares to that. Renewables and storage costs, as big as they will be, will be overwhelmingly less than alternatives, and can be fielded faster.
Oh is that all. How could nobody have thought of this yet?!?!
Seriously though. Maybe, if we solve the large capacity storage issues and are able to build a storage system to scale. So 3 or 4 decades if we are extremely lucky. But right now in reality....
And it's still not clear if it would be enough in the end. We'd need cover everything in panels and put towers everywhere. The amount of resources needed for solar and wind is actually realistically insane at the scales needed. (one of the many problems usually ignored by wind/solar evangelism)
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
> Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive.
Anyway, I now expect you will apply the same level of skeptical criticism to anyone stating renewables are insufficient, and demand they supply peer-reviewed references.
Of course, this is actually desirable imho, but yes, both geopolitics as well as cost, stops this from happening.
So, storage is just a part of the grid, and the grid may be fed by wind, solar, hydro, and geo "alone".
strictly speaking, sure. But it's a source for all intents and purposes, because in order to achieve the same outcomes using renewables as with fossil fuel powerplants, you'd need to pair it with storage. Or produce so much renewables, and be able to distribute it so widely, that no single location would lack power at any given time.
So?
> Nobody has put forth a credible theoretical model on how to do it.
HVDC global grid, mentioned loads of times on this forum. 60% antipodal loss with existing components that were optimised for much shorter connections, but even that loss is fine given how cheap optimally placed PV is. Cost about a trillion USD (ok) and a few decades of current global aluminium and copper production (meh), but that’s still absolutely in the realm of the “we could afford it, shame about the politics”.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
> Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive.
It is, in fact, not. And, you are no reliable judge of it. Your assessment will have exactly zero effect on how the transition to renewables plays out.
Either we transition to renewables fast enough, or global civilization collapses first. Nobody can say which.