Still no answer to how they’re going to solve those moments when there is no wind or sun. Are we just going to accept that businesses and residences have to turn off all their appliances and machines when that happens?
Shared grids, small industrial estate sized battery farms, heated sand, hydrogen generation and recovery.
In the real world [1]:
> South Australia has been effectively powered by green energy for a week, with one expert predicting it could extend to a month by early next year.
> From December 12 to 19, National Energy Market data showed wind and solar contributed on average 103.5 per cent towards the state's energy demand.
> No coal was used during the period, but gas accounted for 5.9 per cent of electricity when renewable sources were not enough to power the state at points at night.
ie. For an entire Australian state total internal renewable production exceeded total usage for a full seven day period - spot excess was exported to neighbouring states, minimal baseline generation in a shortfall period was boosted by gas.
That's a dramatic change from nearly all coal generated power of some years ago.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-19/renewable-energy-prod...
It's "small", sure, but it's much bigger than a single house (which was the comment I responded to "sure, a house is easy, but does it scale?)).
It's also relatively isolated (although not a fully isolated independent grid like W.Australia) and so serves as an interesting test case with almost a circle about it.
[1] https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2021-11-2...
[2] https://www.nyrstar.com/operations/metals-processing/nyrstar...
> The Port Pirie plant is one of the world’s largest multi-metal smelters, producing lead, silver and by-products such as sulphuric acid.
I was in my hometown during the holidays, between heavy fog and clouds we didn't see the sun for two weeks straight, not even mentioning almost constant snow
Is that correct?
Have you considered asking an engineer to design a system optimal for German conditions?
BTW - we (Australia) have signed a large contract ($50 billion) with Germany recently to export Australian sunlight to Germany [1] as Ammonia ...
[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/forrest-strikes-huge-green-hydro...
It's a very localised future, won't work for half of the year in half of the world, the half in which most people are living.
Could you explain again how this doesn't work in half the world?
Is there no wind in Europe, no ability to lay long power lines (like like gas lines lines, only towards the equator rather than Russia), no path upwards past 46% ?
On the face of it you don't seem to be putting much effort into finding a solution past fossil fuel usage .. is that because you don't accept climate change, you don't care what happens when they get increasingly scarce and more expensive, etc?
How many kwh was it when you bought it and how many kwh can it still store today? How old is it? How much did it cost you?
It not only 'works on my machine' - it's cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.
I'm sure we've got it better here, but that doesn't mean renewables can't continue to make up a growing slice of Europe's energy supply.
Would it be a big problem for you if energy was essentially free 12 hours a day and 10 times more expansive than it is right now in the other 12 hours?
This is the only thing that we will need to change - granular, dynamic pricing to reflect the new constraints.
The rest will be solved by consumers adapting to that pricing. It might be by shifting the usage of non-essential devices (does it matter to you to have your laundry done at night?). It will likely include some batteries.
But for me the best option to me seems to be synthetic fuel production. Make hydrocarbons when there's too much solar and wind, and burn them again when there's not enough. The roundtrip efficiency is low (I think about 10% currently), but the capacity of such "battery" is effectively infinite and the investment is very cheap compared to regular batteries. The whole world already is adapted to burning hydrocarbons. So we wouldn't need to change much - just produce hydrocarbons in place instead of drilling for them in dictatorships all over the world.
BTW the implications on world politics are Earth-shattering. The difference in available renewable power per square meter in best vs worst countries is about 3 to 1 - maybe 4 to 1. Imagine if the least fortunate country on Earth had 25% of the oil that OPEC countries have.
I would find this extremely annoying, yes.
And if you need to, you pay for it. Otherwise you can use the cheap power.
You seem to think renewables will win because people are ecologically minded. That's not the case. It will win, because it scales better, it has very little paperwork or planning required, and it's very cheap.
Yes - in some cases it's less convenient than traditional powerplants. But early cars couldn't go everywhere horses could. Didn't stopped them from replacing horses for 99% of usecases.
The answer is a mix of demand side management, sector coupling and power-to-x technologies.
I also want to point out that this is already going on, not just theory crafting. Solar and wind isn't just a good possibility, it is happening and in use right now. Batteries for grid stabilization is also an existing technology that is in practical use.
During this time then more electricity is imported, a lot of gas is burned, and coal stations are put on standby.
To my knowledge, then no industry needs to shut down .
If we have huge amounts of overproduction, hydrogen is a viable storage medium. But the conversion losses are too big for it to be viable unless the electricity is practically free.
For large scale storage pumped hydro seems to be the best option, albeit it requires compatible geography and isn't cheap to build.
On the other hand even a mid-priced electric car can run an American McMansion for a day, maybe even two. More if you actually pay attention to your energy consumption.
5-20kWh batteries aren't really that expensive and will pay themselves back if you're using market rate electricity instead of a flat rate. You can charge them up during the night with a few cents per kWh and use during the daily peaks - maybe even sell back to the grid if that's possible in your area.